Constant (太常 Tai Chang) is the sixth of the nine deities, and the one the Flying Plate adds to the rotating plate's eight. The flying-palace summary says it in four characters, 「增一太常」, add one Tai Chang, and the court becomes nine. The name means the great constant, yet the deity is the least constant of the court: the same summary calls its temper unsettled (「性格不定、无常」). Its element is earth, and 奇門遁甲鳴法 names it the transforming qi of the five phases (「太常五行化气神」). In the Flying Plate convention followed here, Constant stands on every plate, five palaces on from the Chief in Yang Dun and five back in Yin Dun by Lo Shu number, and takes the center when the count lands there.
The banquet keeper: the classical portfolio
Tai Chang's file is the table and the ceremony. The summary gives it a taste for song and drink and hands it feasts and hospitality, sacrifices and rites, cloth, garments and dress, food and wine: the whole register of occasions where people gather under a form. What it governs is not wealth or rank but their display, such as the banquet that seals an alliance, the robe that marks an office, or the ritual that turns a private arrangement into a public one. It is the court's master of ceremonies, and its domain is everything done properly in front of witnesses.
A deity that follows its door
What defines Tai Chang is that it has no fortune of its own. 鳴法 says so directly, 「吉凶无应皆不喜」: it answers to neither good nor ill. The flying-palace summary gives the working rule, 「与吉门并为吉，与凶门并则凶」: beside an auspicious door it is auspicious, beside an inauspicious one, inauspicious. This is why the plate reads it neutral and why a Constant palace is judged by what stands beside it. Under the Life or Open Door the feast is generous and the rite well received; under the Death or Injury Door the same occasion turns wasteful, or the ceremony marks something that should not have been celebrated. Of all nine deities it is the one least worth reading alone.
Constant as your natal deity
A natal Tai Chang is read as the host's signature: ease with occasion, a feel for form and presentation, and a gift for making gatherings work, the person who knows how a thing should be done and makes it look effortless. The reading points such natures toward hospitality, events, ceremony, dress and the arts of the table, and toward any role where the form of a thing is part of its substance. Because the deity takes its colour from its surroundings, the caution is the chameleon's: a Constant native reflects the company and the circumstances around them, and the counsel is to choose both with care. Beside a good door this is generosity; beside a bad one, indulgence.
Meeting Constant in a period plate
A Tai Chang hour is read by its door first. Beside a favourable door it is one of the better windows for anything social and formal: the celebration, the ceremony, the hosting of a guest who matters, the presentation where appearance counts. Beside an unfavourable door the same hour counsels restraint at the table and caution about celebrating too early, because the rite takes its fortune from the matter it marks. Constant stands on every plate, in both halves of the year, in the sixth seat of the court. The counsel compresses to the steward's rule: under the Banquet Keeper, check what you are celebrating before you set the table.
References
Canonical sources that inform this guide.
- 奇門遁甲鳴法 (Qi Men Dun Jia Ming Fa), chapter 1 · BOOK
- 易德轩 — 飞宫奇门的神盘用法 (the flying-palace deity plate) · WEBSITE
- Qimen Dunjia · WIKIPEDIA