十二長生 · Bìng
Ailing病
weakening — the sickness stage, strength leaking away
The seventh stage — an element's qi grown weak, its strength leaking away.
01概覽
Ailing (病, Bìng) is the seventh of the Twelve Life Stages. The name means 'illness' — but, crucially, it describes an element's qi being weak, not a person being sick. After Waning, the energy continues to fall: at Ailing the element is genuinely weakened, its strength leaking away, no longer able to do much work on its own.
Read strictly as an energy curve, Ailing is the low-but-not-yet-empty part of the descent. The element is faint and needs support; left unaided it cannot assert itself. The vivid medical name is a metaphor for low qi, nothing more.
02在命盤中
An element at Ailing reads as weak — present but depleted, dependent on help from elsewhere in the chart to function. It is a genuinely low placement for that element's strength. This is a statement about the element, never a prediction of illness for the person.
03實例
Yang Wood (甲) is at Ailing in Si (巳): Wood weakened in early summer, its energy drawn off by Si's Fire. The yin stems run the cycle in reverse.
04跨系統對照
| 系統 | 最近的原型 | 備註 |
|---|---|---|
| Zi Wei Dou Shu | Also a Zi Wei star — 病 in the 長生十二神 (the twelve life-stage stars), placed by the 五行局 | Zi Wei runs the identical twelve-stage cycle as its 長生十二神 star series, dropped onto the palaces according to the chart's element class (五行局). 病 is the same-named Zi Wei star — read there as a palace's phase-strength, not a Bazi element's qi. Both are strength-phase readings; neither is a life-event forecast. |
| Western astrology | A loose analogy to a planet in detriment — weakly placed | Not an equivalence: detriment is the nearest Western idea of a planet poorly placed, but the Twelve Life Stages' descent has no direct counterpart. |
跨系統對照只是鬆散的定錨參考，不是字面對等。十二長生追蹤的是某個五行之氣在地支循環中的強弱——這個機制西方占星沒有；最接近的概念是行星按位置而定的力量（廟旺陷落）。
05以描述而非預言來讀
常見問題
What is the Ailing life stage (病) in BaZi?
The seventh stage — an element's qi grown weak, its strength leaking away.
Does the Ailing stage describe your fortune?
Ailing describes the strength of an element's energy at a branch — weak and leaking — not a person's health, illness, or any life event. It is read for what it says about that element, and the same stage plays out very differently across different charts.