2 Black star

Meaning

The 2 Black, 二黑 èr hēi, is the second of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 2 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the south-west. Its classical name is Ju Men, 巨門 jù mén; its phase is Earth, its trigram Kun ☷.

The classics give the 2 Black land and property, care for others and the patience of the ground: the earth that receives, the mother of the trigrams’ family. In season it brings gains from land and property and a household well cared for. Out of season the classics read it as the heaviest of the stars and ask that its sector be kept calm, bright and uncluttered rather than made a room for long stays; just past its season, as a heaviness to keep light.

In Period 9 the 2 is timely, the second of the two stars rising after the 9, and its own Period 2 will come round in 2064. Its name in the classics, Ju Men, the great gate, is the second star of the Dipper; its colour, black, is the earth’s dark soil.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: timely now, the 2 as the water star suits an active space where the home allows it, and as the mountain star a steady room; the classics still ask it for brightness and order, the same counsel they give it out of season, and when it meets the 5 they ask for quiet above all.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 2 is timely, one of the two stars rising after the 9; the classics read it as support where it stands.
• The year’s star: the 2 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2025, 2034 and 2043, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the north-west, in 2027 in the west. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as asking for calm.
• Its pairs: with the 7 it makes the He Tu pair of fire; with the 8 two earths adding to ten; with the 3 the fighting bull, which asks for patience; with the 5 the two earth stars, for which the classics ask quiet above all.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: Ju Men is the Daoist name of the Dipper’s second star, Merak in the West, the other Pointer: a line from Merak through Dubhe leads to the pole star.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 二黒土星 jikoku dosei, the 2 Black Earth star; and a yang-count Kua from the same years is 2, Kun, as is every Kua of 5 for that count.
• The Eight Mansions give Ju Men to Tian Yi, restoration, and Zi Wei Dou Shu keeps Ju Men among its fourteen main stars.

Origin and history

In the Lo Shu the 2 stands at the top right as the tradition draws the square, the south-west, with the 4 and the 6 at the other corners and the 8 across from it: the even numbers hold the corners, the odd ones the four directions and the centre. The trigram the Later Heaven order sets in the south-west is Kun, the receptive earth, so the 2 inherits the mother’s place in the family of trigrams that the Shuo Gua describes, Qian the father and Kun the mother with their three sons and three daughters. The Xuan Kong verses read the 2 with special care because it is Earth, like the 5, and the two together are the pair they treat most gently.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune keeps the nine stars as the numbers of the Lo Shu, each with its colour, its classical name and its phase. The 2 is timely in Periods 1, 2 and 9, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 3, the one after its own; dormant in the other four. In a home’s chart it can stand in any palace as the period star, the mountain star or the water star: it goes where the flight from the centre sends it, forward or backward by the polarity of the mountains, and when it is the number met in the sitting or the facing palace it goes to the centre itself. As the year’s star it comes back to the centre every nine years.

Correspondences