3 Jade star

Meaning

The 3 Jade, 三碧 sān bì, is the third of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 3 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the east. Its classical name is Lu Cun, 祿存 lù cún; its phase is Wood, its trigram Zhen ☳.

The classics give the 3 Jade thunder and the first movement of spring, drive and ambition: the eldest son of the trigrams’ family, at home in the east where the year’s growth breaks out. In season it brings energy, initiative and advancement won through effort. Out of season they read it as the quarrelsome star, arguments and disputes that ask for patience and care; just past its season, as impatience and competition that runs hot.

The 3 ruled Period 3, from 1904 to 1923, and will again from 2084; in Period 9 it is dormant, out of its time, and its pairs are read with that in mind. Its colour, jade, 碧 bì, is the blue-green of new leaves and deep water.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: dormant now, the 3 as the water star is read as lively but argumentative; practitioners suggest a calm, orderly use of that palace, where conversation is easy to leave and nothing pushes. As the mountain star it asks for the same patience among the people of the home.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 3 is dormant, out of its time: the classics read it by its out-of-season face, described above, and by the stars beside it and the years that pass.
• The year’s star: the 3 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2024, 2033 and 2042, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the west, in 2027 in the north-east. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as mixed.
• Its pairs: with the 8 it makes the He Tu pair of wood; with the 4 thunder and wind, the hexagram Heng, duration; with the 9 wood and fire, bright minds; with the 7 two stars of dispute, and with the 2 the fighting bull, both read as asking for patience.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: Lu Cun is the Daoist name of the Dipper’s third star, Phecda in the West, at the corner of the bowl.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 三碧木星 sanpeki mokusei, the 3 Jade Wood star.
• The Eight Mansions give Lu Cun to Huo Hai, friction, and Zi Wei Dou Shu keeps Lu Cun as a star of preserved fortune beside its main stars.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Zhen, thunder, in the east, the place where things come forth, and calls it the eldest son: the 3 of the Lo Shu inherits both. The three of the square’s middle row, 3, 5 and 7, make its horizontal axis, east, centre and west, as 9, 5 and 1 make its vertical one, and each line of the square adds up to 15. In the Xuan Kong verses the 3 is the star of thunder’s energy, prized when it is in season and read with patience when it is not; the classical name of its pair with the 2, the fighting bull, is one of the school’s best-known images.

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 3 is timely in Periods 1, 2 and 3, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 4, 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