Hurting Officer
Also called Shāng Guān, the Injuring Officer
A chart describes tendencies in a traditional system. It cannot decide health, money, law, marriage or children.
In the classical sources
伤官虽凶，乃我所生，自家之物
Though the Hurting Officer is harsh, it is what I produce, a thing of my own household.
三命通會 卷六
About this relation
伤官 sounds like an attack on somebody, and the object of the attack is a stem. Take a 壬 day master: water makes wood, and the wood stem of opposite polarity is 乙, so 乙 is its Hurting Officer. 三命通會 卷六 gives the reason for the name using 甲, whose Direct Officer is 辛: when 丁 comes, it draws strength from 甲 and also overcomes 辛, the officer.
Old manuals are loud on the subject. 淵海子平 opens by saying that its readings come true like a god's and that when this stem meets an Officer a hundred troubles follow, a line 三命通會 卷六 also cites from an earlier book. Both then demand that it be 伤尽, hurt to the finish, and 三命通會 spells that out as no Officer stem left anywhere in the chart. Treated that way, the same book says, it produces wealth and wealth produces office, a chain it calls affectionate.
Character is the other half of what these chapters discuss. 淵海子平 gives it many talents and a lofty contempt for others, and it adds that high people are wary of it and ordinary people dislike it. Those remarks are the book's own and concern a formation in a chart. The modern popular version recasts the same position as the rebel or artist, and that flattering label is just as much a later idea.
Where this text comes from
The quotation and the attributed statements follow the Wikisource texts listed here. The relation rule is the method used by the calculator.
The English name follows common modern usage. The wording here is our own plain summary.