4 Green star

Meaning

The 4 Green, 四綠 sì lǜ, is the fourth of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 4 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the south-east. Its classical name is Wen Qu, 文曲 wén qū; its phase is Wood, its trigram Xun ☴.

The classics give the 4 Green letters, study and the arts, and romance: the wind that enters everywhere a little at a time, the eldest daughter of the trigrams’ family. In season it brings success in study and writing and attachments that grow well. Out of season they read it as attachments pulling in too many directions and words that wander; just past its season, as studies that lose their thread.

The 4 ruled Period 4, from 1924 to 1943; in Period 9 it is dormant, yet its pair with the 1, the scholar’s pairing, keeps its name for study in every period. Its classical name, Wen Qu, is the star of letters, and Chinese folk belief long held that great scholars were Wenqu xing come down to earth.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: the 4 is the star practitioners look for when a home has a desk for study or writing, above all beside the 1; dormant now, they suggest keeping its palace orderly and its uses few, so that attention gathers rather than scatters.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 4 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 4 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2023, 2032 and 2041, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the north-east, in 2027 in the south. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as supportive.
• Its pairs: with the 1 it makes the scholar’s pairing; with the 9 the He Tu pair of metal; with the 6 a Combination of Ten, rules and creativity; with the 3 thunder and wind.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: Wen Qu is the Daoist name of the Dipper’s fourth star, Megrez in the West, the faintest of the seven, where the bowl meets the handle.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 四緑木星 shiroku mokusei, the 4 Green Wood star.
• The Eight Mansions give Wen Qu to Liu Sha, and Zi Wei Dou Shu counts Wen Qu among its six auspicious helper stars, with Wen Chang, for learning and letters.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Xun, the wind, in the south-east and calls it the eldest daughter, the gentle penetrating force; the 4 of the Lo Shu stands there, at the top left as the tradition draws the square. The star’s scholarly name made it beloved of examination candidates: the pairing of the 1 and the 4, 四一同宮, the four and the one in one palace, is the school’s classical image for study, and many families set a student’s desk where it fell. Ulune reads it as the classics do, a support for study and writing, never as a promise of success.

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 4 is timely in Periods 2, 3 and 4, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 5, 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