What is Tie Ban Shen Shu? Iron Plate Divination Explained

Tie Ban Shen Shu (铁板神数, "Iron Plate Divine Numbers") is the branch of Chinese fortune study that relies on directly quoted classical verses. Traditionally attributed to Shao Yong (邵康节) of the Song dynasty and transmitted in modern times through Cao Zhuoshuo's Huangji Tieban Suanpan Shu and Tieban Shenshu Daodu, it does not reason from the Five Elements. Instead it converts the Four Pillars into hexagrams and numbers, then looks up line after line in a corpus of 12,000 classical verses — statements about relatives, marriage, offspring, career and lifespan that are often specific down to zodiac animal, head count and year.

1. The Base Hexagram, cast from the Four Pillars

The first step assigns a number to every stem and branch of the birth chart using the Yangzi Taixuan numbers (甲己子午 9, 乙庚丑未 8, 丙辛寅申 7, 丁壬卯酉 6, 戊癸辰戌 5, 巳亥 4). The odd numbers are summed and divided by eight to give the upper trigram; the even numbers are summed and divided by eight to give the lower trigram. Mapped through the Luo Shu numbers, the two trigrams form the base hexagram.

For example, for the Four Pillars 丁巳 丙午 壬寅 辛丑 the odd numbers total 30 (remainder 6 → Qian) and the even numbers total 24 (remainder 0, treated as 8 → Gen), giving the base hexagram Tian Shan Dun.

2. Base Number and three-era weighting

The base hexagram is then looked up in the Bagua Basic Number Table to obtain the base number (upper-trigram value plus lower-trigram value; Tian Di Pi, for instance, is 180 + 4230 = 4410). To this is added a three-era weight: counting from the upper-era Jiazi year of 1864 and stepping 60 years at a time, the birth year's Taixuan numbers are multiplied differently in the upper, middle and lower eras — and within the middle era there are separate formulas for "yang male / yin female" and "yang female / yin male".

The two together form the rolling total, which decides which line changes at every later step. That is why two people sharing the same base hexagram but born in different years receive different hexagrams and different verses.

3. The Six-Relatives Life Gua

Once the base hexagram has been fitted with Najia stems and branches and its Six Relations have been assigned to the six lines, eight "Six-Relatives Life Gua" can be derived:

• Father's Gua — the Parents line of the base hexagram, yang changed to yin
• Mother's Gua — the Father's Gua with upper and lower trigrams swapped
• Elder Brother's Gua — the Siblings line of the base hexagram
• Elder Brother's Wife's Gua — that Gua with trigrams swapped
• Second Brother's Gua — the Elder Brother's Gua with line 1 changed
• Wife's Gua — the Wealth line of the base hexagram
• Second Wife's Gua — the Wife's Gua with line 1 changed
• Eldest Son's Gua — the Offspring line of the base hexagram

Each Gua yields six verses devoted to that relative's birth year, zodiac animal, survival and fortunes. This is the "direct reading of the six relations" for which the system is best known.

4. The Ba Gua Gun: forty-eight verses

The Ba Gua Gun ("rolling the eight trigrams") produces the main body of verses — eight hexagrams and forty-eight base verses:

• Hexagram 1 — inner trigram from lines 2–4 of the base hexagram, outer trigram from lines 3–5 (the mutual hexagram)
• Hexagram 2 — the rolling total divided by nine; the remainder chooses the changing line (remainders 1–6 change that single line; 7 changes lines 1 and 4; 8 changes 2 and 5; 0 changes 3 and 6)
• Hexagrams 3 and 4 — the inverse (all lines flipped) of hexagrams 1 and 2
• Hexagrams 5 to 8 — each of the first four, with the line given by the rolling total divided by six changed, and then upper and lower trigrams swapped

Every hexagram contributes three number pairs (its Bagua ordinal, its prenatal Luo Shu numbers and its postnatal Luo Shu numbers). Combining them two at a time gives six numbers, which become six verse numbers once the base number is added — eight hexagrams, forty-eight verses in all.

5. Yearly verses and corrected verses

Beyond the forty-eight natal verses there is a verse for every year of life: the "four tones of heaven" give a postnatal destiny number, a yearly marker and a yearly letter, from which verses are looked up for ages one to one hundred and eight. Practical traditions also print a corrected verse for each year — the same tables re-read using an age correction factor — so that the original and the corrected text can be compared side by side.

6. What the verses look like

Most verses are four- or seven-character lines of classical Chinese, such as "Father's destiny is a Renzi birth" (父命壬子年生方合), "Father rooster, mother dragon — a predetermined number" (父羊母龙，先天定数), "Three brothers, music of several kinds" (兄弟三人，乐奏几般音), "Wife's destiny, a Xinchou birth, fixed from the start" (妻命辛丑年生，先天注定), or "Mother dies, child is born — one grief, one joy" (母亡生子，一忧一喜). Phrases such as "方合此刻" and "先天定数" are the classical way of stating a verification condition — they mean "if this fits, the birth hour is correct", not a verdict about fate.

7. Notes for study (important)

• The birth hour must be accurate. The system is built on the double-hour, and this app performs neither birth-time rectification nor the traditional "testing the hour" procedure. If the hour is uncertain, rectify it with BaZi birth-time candidates first.
• The verses form a candidate pool, not established fact. Traditionally each verse is verified against known facts and the fitting ones are kept. When several verses address the same topic, they are shown side by side for the reader to check rather than reduced to a single claim.
• If the base hexagram lacks a given Six-Relations line, that Life Gua is simply absent; and when a relation appears on two lines, both readings are listed for comparison.
• Lineage note: this app follows the Cao Zhuoshuo line (Huangji Tieban Suanpan Shu, Tieban Shenshu Daodu) — hexagrams 3 and 4 are inverse hexagrams, and verse numbers beyond the upper bound are normalised by 12,000. The Zhengtong Tieban Shenshu line differs in a few steps, so results between the two will differ; everything on this page refers to the former.

8. Try Tie Ban Shen Shu with AI

Chinese Astrology ships a proprietary Tie Ban Shen Shu engine: it derives the base hexagram, base number, three-era weight, the Six-Relatives Life Gua, the forty-eight Ba Gua Gun verses and the yearly verses automatically, then groups the direct-reading verses by topic (parents, marriage, offspring, yearly fortune), marks the source of each one, and lets the AI help you check them line by line.