How to Read Suitable / Unsuitable Activity Lists
Every ranked day carries two lists. One is what the almanac calls suitable, 宜. The other is what it calls unsuitable, 忌. In English the card leads with a gloss and keeps the Chinese term in parentheses, so “travel (出行)” is still the same entry the formula sees. The lists are long on some days and short on others. Reading them well means knowing which lines can move the number and which lines are only there to be read.
Key facts
- Occasion activities are floated to the front of the visible list so you see the match first. The rest follow.
- Travel scores 出行. A wedding scores 嫁娶. Memorial rites score 安葬 and 祭祀. A meeting scores 会友 and 订盟. An opening or move scores 开市, 移徙, and 入宅.
- Each of those names on the suitable side adds four. Each on the unsuitable side subtracts five. A day can carry both, and the unsuitable hit is larger.
- Custom does not use the lists for points. It still shows them. Points come from path and from the officer only.
- Four medical names are removed before display: seeing a doctor, treating illness, seeking treatment, and acupuncture. Removal also means they never add or subtract.
- Phrases such as “nothing is favored” can still appear. They are not a hidden medical code. They are the day’s own blunt line, when the source has it.
A mixed line
If travel is suitable and also unsuitable, the why-text says the rank is mixed. The arithmetic is four minus five for that one activity, before path and officer. People sometimes screenshot only the suitable column and miss the twin in the other column. Read both. The avoid sentence on the card is built from the unsuitable side, plus sha direction and the public clash, so the caution is not buried.
Path is independent. Yellow adds two. Black subtracts two. Officer adjustments are Success or Open, plus two; Full, plus one; Close or Destruction, minus two. A beautiful suitable list on a black-path Destruction day can still sort below a quieter yellow-path Open day. That is intended. The lists are not the whole score.
Entries that look relevant and are not scored
Starting school, learning a craft, hanging a signboard, buying property, trading, haircuts, groundbreaking: many of these have English glosses and may show up. Unless the name is in your occasion’s small set, it does not change the total. A reader planning a studio day may be glad to see carving or dyeing, and may still be on Custom, where those words are commentary. If you wanted them to behave like points, the honest move is not to pretend. Either accept Custom’s path-and-officer sort, or ask whether your real act is an opening, a meeting, or a move, and switch occasion.
Buying property is a common false friend. 置产 may be printed. The opening occasion does not award points for it. It awards points for opening a business, moving house, and moving in. A viewing is not automatically any of those. Read the list. Do not tell yourself the tool “recommended a purchase.”
Entries you will not see
求医, 治病, 求医疗病, and 针灸 are in the underlying almanac and are stripped in the product. The purpose is plain: a day card must not read as advice to delay care or to seek a procedure. They do not affect rank. If you need a clinician, go. Do not hunt a paper tongshu for those four words and then import them as if our score had used them. We did not.
“Nothing else is advised” and “nothing is favored” are different. When the source day says them, the gloss can show. They are general cautions, not a diagnosis. They still are not a substitute for the numeric sort, which may be carried by path and officer even on a stern day.
How the sentence on the card is built
The explanation names the occasion, says whether the matched activities were suitable, unsuitable, both, or absent, then states the path and the officer. A birth-date note is appended only if a penalty fired: year branch, day pillar, or both. Sha and Peng Zu sit in the avoid line rather than inside the score. If the prose and the number ever feel at odds, trust the structure above over a paraphrase. Paid fulfillment may later polish wording. The order of days is not supposed to change with that polish. The same window returns the same order.
Labels are capped in spirit by the method, not by a mood. A forty-character custom note does not add a private activity to the scoring set.
What this is not
This is not a complete classical commentary on every activity name. It is not medical, legal, or financial advice, and the hidden clinical lines are the clearest sign of that limit. It is not entertainment. The lists are professional almanac guidance, partial by design, so a reader can see why a date sorted where it did. They do not promise that a suitable label produces the outcome in real life.