Dear Dharma,
May I know how do we identify Mao as the mother. Is it looking at the year pillar rather than looking at the stars that produce the Gui DM which is Geng?
Hope to get some pointers here.
There are other representations besides the common ones. But the jist of what was used is:
The Year and Month can represent parents (These are the pillar and palace representations)
Besides Resource that produces the Day Master, the Output Star is also a representation of a female.
In some other cases, the same element as the Day Master can also be used to represent the mother, but this is usually reserved for female chart owners.
Given the information above, when you look at the chart, we can see that the chart owner is not a female. This eliminates the same element being used to represent the mother.
We now look at what else is in the Year and Month and can see that there is an Output star as well (Wood) that is located in the Year pillar. With two representations matching a representation of the mother (Year or Month Pillar/Palaces + the Star representation), this indicates that this is likely to be the mother.
If we look further, we can also see that sitting in the Stem of the Year is Ding fire, that is also a Wealth star; a common representation of the father. Since the representation of the Father and the Mother are in the same pillar, we can safely assume that the Mao wood can be used to represent the mother.
From there you then apply the usual interpretation methods to obtain ifurther nformation on how things progress or why they end up as they do.