Step three

擇吉 (choosing the moment): so when is a better time to move

The first two steps worked out the shape of the moment and whether it runs with you. Step three is what this is actually for — it is not built to predict outcomes, it is built to pick a time.

The kind of question it answers

✗	“Will this contract make me money?”
✓	“This contract — sign it this week or next?”

The difference: the first asks about a future outcome, which no method can promise. The second asks which of two moments has the better conditions, and that is precisely what this was designed to handle.

Why time comes in two-hour branches

The old calendar splits a day into twelve branches of two hours each. The chart changes with them: inside one branch it holds still, and crossing into the next re-casts the whole thing.

So a good window is never a single point — it is a stretch. What you see looks like “today, 23:00–01:00”.

⚠️ That stretch is worked out in true solar time, so it will not necessarily line up with the clock on your phone. Anything from a few minutes to an hour out, depending on where you are.→ Why where you are changes the hour: see step one

How a good window is arrived at

Cast a chart for every branch across the period ahead, read each one against your particular question, and pick out the ones where you and the thing you asked about sit most easily together.

Put plainly: run the same question at a series of different moments and compare. By hand that took a very long time, which is why historically almost nobody could afford it — and one real reason it got called “the emperors' study”. Not mystique. Cost.

Along with the time you usually get a direction as well — which way to head — because the chart is a nine-square grid and each square answers to a compass direction.

Where the limits are — this part matters more than the rest

It does not guarantee the outcome.Acting at a moment whose conditions are better is not the same as it working out. No chart can tell you how something will turn out.
It is not a reason to put things off.An unfavourable hour is never a reason to delay seeing a doctor, and not a reason to miss a legal deadline, a closing date or anything else with a clock on it. If you should see a doctor, go. If something is due, file it.
It is not a substitute for preparation.A contract still has to be read clause by clause. Choosing a moment can make something that was already going to work go more smoothly. It cannot make something that was not going to work, work.

So what is it, really

Not magic, not an occult art. It is what you get when people take the conditions of the time, the lie of the land and the human factor and organise them into rules you can compute, in order to answer one very practical question: when is a better moment to move on this.

In the end it is “act with the timing” — see clearly what the situation is, then pick a moment you can stand on. The rest is still yours to do.

Makes sense — but you would rather not cast one yourself?

These three steps were always a fixed set of rules; they just used to run in a human head and pass from master to student. We hand the arithmetic to a computer and the explaining to AI. All you do is write down what you are weighing.

Write your question

奇門遁甲 is a traditional Chinese practice for choosing timing. This page is background reading — not medical, legal or financial advice, and it will not tell you how anything is going to turn out.