6 White star

Meaning

The 6 White, 六白 liù bái, is the sixth of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 6 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the north-west. Its classical name is Wu Qu, 武曲 wǔ qū; its phase is Metal, its trigram Qian ☰.

The classics give the 6 White heaven and authority, leadership and the support of those above: the father of the trigrams’ family, strength that does not tire. In season it brings promotion, recognition from those in charge and wealth earned through responsibility. Out of season they read it as stubbornness and distance, authority that stands alone; just past its season, as authority that hardens and help that comes more slowly.

The 6 ruled Period 6, from 1964 to 1983; in Period 9 it is dormant, yet it remains one of the white stars the verses welcome, and in the year’s chart the Cycles lens reads it as a support. Its classical name, Wu Qu, is the martial counterpart of the 4’s Wen Qu, the arts of command beside the arts of letters.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: where the 6 stands, practitioners like a place for work that needs backing, a desk or a study, with a steady wall behind; dormant now, it is read gently, its authority wanting warmth and company more than force.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 6 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 6 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2021, 2030 and 2039, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the north, in 2027 in the south-west. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as supportive.
• Its pairs: with the 1 it makes the He Tu pair of water; with the 8 standing and wealth; with the 4 a Combination of Ten, rules and creativity; with the 7 crossed swords, with the 9 fire at heaven’s gate, two pairs read with care.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: Wu Qu is the Daoist name of the Dipper’s sixth star, Mizar in the West, in the middle of the handle, with its faint companion Alcor, the eye test of old Arab and European tales.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 六白金星 roppaku kinsei, the 6 White Metal star.
• The Eight Mansions give Wu Qu to Yan Nian, harmony, and Zi Wei Dou Shu keeps Wu Qu among its fourteen main stars.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Qian, heaven, in the north-west and calls it the father; the 6 of the Lo Shu stands there, at the bottom right as the tradition draws the square, across from the 4. In the old correspondences heaven is round and earth square, and Qian the head of the family of trigrams: the 6 White carries that sense of the one who holds things together from above. The Xuan Kong verses welcome it with the 1 and the 8, the three white stars, and with the 9 Purple, the colours of the Zi Bai Jue’s title.

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 6 is timely in Periods 4, 5 and 6, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 7, 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