Jin Kou Jue (金口訣)

The Golden Mouth Formula — Four Characters, One Verdict

Overview

Jin Kou Jue (大六壬神課金口訣, 'the Golden Mouth Formula of the Divine Six Ren Course') is the rapid-consultation form of Da Liu Ren — the system whose reputation in China is captured in the saying that one who masters it 'speaks with a golden mouth': the answer comes fast, and it comes true. Where the full Six Ren course erects heaven and earth plates, four lessons and three transmissions, Jin Kou Jue reads a single palace. The querent indicates a direction — the 地分, the ground branch, classically the direction from which they approached or a branch they name — and on that single branch four positions are stacked, bottom to top: the ground itself; the 將神, the month-general carried onto it by the hour; the 貴神, one of the twelve noble spirits counted onto it from the day's Heavenly Noble; and the 人元, the day-stem's deputy stem. Four characters, their five-element relations read downward — a complete divination in the time it takes to ask the question. askTIAN's engine shares its day pillar, hour branch and month-general with the Da Liu Ren and BaZi endpoints, and reproduces the classical textbook course exactly, on its real historical date.

Origin & history

The tradition ascribes Jin Kou Jue to Sun Bin (孫臏), the Warring States strategist of the lineage of Sun Tzu — which is why it also travels as 孫臏預測學, 'Sun Bin's predictive art'. Its architecture is pure Six Ren compressed: the 月將 (month-general) is the sun's own general, changing at each 中氣 as the true solar longitude crosses each 30-degree boundary; laying it on the hour and counting to the ground branch is exactly the heaven-plate operation of the full course, collapsed to one palace. The twelve noble spirits — 貴人, the Coiling Snake, the Vermilion Bird, Six Harmony, the Hooking Array, the Azure Dragon, Empty Sky, the White Tiger, Great Constancy, the Dark Warrior, Great Yin and the Heavenly Empress — are the same twelve generals of Da Liu Ren, launched from the day's 天乙貴人 and running clockwise when the noble stands in the branches 亥 through 辰, counter-clockwise from 巳 through 戌. The human layer comes from the 五子元遁, the hour-stem formula that deputizes the day stem across the twelve branches. The mnemonic that opens every manual compresses all of it into four lines: 入式之法妙通玄，月將加時方上傳。更看何神同何位，日干須用五子元。

Jin Kou Jue circulated for centuries as a practitioner's art — prized precisely because it needs no table, no plates, no writing: a diviner who knows the rhymes can erect the course mentally while the querent is still standing in the doorway, which made it the field divination of travelling consultants across Shandong and northern China, where its strongest lineages survive. Transmission through rhymes has left real school divergences, and askTIAN discloses them rather than flattening them: the 金口訣 noble-rhyme gives the 壬癸 days the snake by day and the rabbit by night (壬癸蛇兔藏) where the mainstream Da Liu Ren table reads it the other way around — this endpoint follows the Golden Mouth's own line and says so in every response; and the day/night boundary for choosing the noble follows the Shandong school's convention of sunrise-at-卯, sunset-at-酉, with the sky-visibility variant recorded. The deeper judgment layers — selecting the 用爻, classifying the 課體, weighing seasonal strength — diverge further between lineages and are deferred until a second source confirms each, the same restraint this API applies across its catalogue.

How it works

The engine computes the day pillar and hour branch with the same 節氣-correct BaZi engine every Chinese system here uses, and the 月將 from the true solar longitude with the same computation as the Da Liu Ren endpoint — one engine, one truth: the two Six Ren systems can never disagree about the sun-general. The 將神 is then the month-general laid on the hour branch and counted forward to the 地分. The 貴神 starts from the day's noble by the Golden Mouth rhyme — 甲戊庚牛羊, 乙己鼠猴鄉, 丙丁豬雞位, 壬癸蛇兔藏, 六辛逢馬虎 — day hours (卯 through 申) taking the first branch, night hours the second; the twelve nobles then run clockwise or counter-clockwise by the 亥–辰/巳–戌 rule from the noble's own branch to the 地分. The 人元 is the day-stem's 五子元遁 deputy on the ground branch — and the stems written on the 將神 and 貴神 come from the same deputation, the noble's taken at its inherent branch, exactly as the classical worked example demands: on a 己丑 day at the 巳 hour with the ground at 午, the course must read 庚 above 天空(甲戌) above 功曹(丙寅) above 午 — and the engine reproduces that course to the character on the real date it was cast, December 23rd, 1938, with the month-general 丑 confirmed from the sun's true longitude just past the winter solstice. Every response carries the four positions with elements and roles, the adjacent five-element relations, and a method string that names the disclosed divergences.

Good for

• Casting an instant four-character course for a question — the fastest consultation in the Chinese catalogue
• Reading the four layers: the ground, the general's momentum, the noble spirit's color, and the human hand
• Direction-based divination — the 地分 is the querent's own indicated branch, a mechanic no other endpoint has
• Checking which of the twelve nobles stands over a matter, from the Azure Dragon's wealth to the Empty Sky's hollowness
• Pairing with daLiuRen.calculate: the compressed and full forms of the same art, sharing one month-general
• Timing-sensitive questions where the hour branch matters — the course changes every two hours by construction
• Studying an oral-tradition system whose rhymes and divergences are carried openly in the response

Use cases

The Doorway Reading

The classical use: a querent arrives, indicates a direction, and one call returns the full course — four characters, five-element relations, the noble's verdict — before they have finished sitting down.

Twelve-Direction Scan

Cast all twelve 地分 for the same moment in one batch and render a compass rose of courses — which directions carry the Azure Dragon and the Noble, which the White Tiger and the Empty Sky.

Six Ren Pair

Show jinKouJue.course beside daLiuRen.calculate for the same instant: the one-palace snapshot and the full three-transmission course, provably sharing the same 月將 — a study in how the tradition compresses itself.

Hour-by-Hour Timing

The course turns with every double-hour: sweep a day's twelve hours for a fixed 地分 and chart when the noble spirits favor the matter — a 金口訣 timing board.

Key terms

地分 (The Ground)

The branch the querent indicates — a direction, a position, a named branch. The whole course stands on it; changing the ground changes everything above it.

將神 (The General)

The month-general carried onto the ground by the hour: 月將加時 — lay the sun's general on the hour branch and count to the 地分. The matter's outer momentum.

貴神 (The Noble Spirit)

One of the twelve nobles — 貴人, 螣蛇, 朱雀, 六合, 勾陳, 青龍, 天空, 白虎, 太常, 玄武, 太陰, 天后 — counted onto the ground from the day's Heavenly Noble. The spirit standing over the matter.

人元 (The Human Origin)

The day-stem's deputy stem on the ground branch, by the 五子元遁 formula — the human factor in the course, the querent's own hand.

月將 (The Month-General)

The sun's own general, changing at each 中氣 as the true solar longitude crosses a 30° boundary — computed here from the ephemeris, identically to the Da Liu Ren endpoint.

天乙貴人 (The Heavenly Noble)

The day-stem's noble by the Golden Mouth rhyme, with day and night positions. The 壬癸 pair differs between the 金口訣 and mainstream 六壬 tables — a genuine school divergence this endpoint discloses.

五子元遁 (The Five-Zi Deputation)

甲己還加甲, 乙庚丙作初, 丙辛從戊起, 丁壬庚子居, 戊癸壬子途 — the formula deputizing the day stem across the twelve branches; it writes the stems on every position of the course.

順行 / 逆行

The nobles run clockwise when the day's noble stands in 亥 through 辰, counter-clockwise in 巳 through 戌 — equivalently, 壬癸 and 辛 days reverse by day and run forward by night.

API

The askTIAN Jin Kou Jue API erects the four-position course from a date, time, timezone and the querent's indicated 地分: the course context (day pillar, hour branch, month-general with its 中氣, which noble was used and its direction), all four positions with stems, deity names, elements and roles, and the adjacent five-element relations. Its day pillar and hour branch come from the shared 節氣-correct BaZi engine and its 月將 from the same true-solar-longitude computation as Da Liu Ren — one engine, one truth. The rules were cross-verified across two independent expositions and locked to the classical worked example, reproduced to the character on its real historical date. The 壬癸 noble divergence and the Shandong day/night boundary are disclosed in every response; the deeper judgment layers are deferred until a second source confirms them. Pure deterministic compute, no LLM.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/jinKouJue.course — 3 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.