7 Red star

Meaning

The 7 Red, 七赤 qī chì, is the seventh of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 7 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the west. Its classical name is Po Jun, 破軍 pò jūn; its phase is Metal, its trigram Dui ☱.

The classics give the 7 Red the lake, speech, charm and pleasure: the youngest daughter of the trigrams’ family, the joy of the gathered harvest. In season it brings eloquence, good company and income from speaking and selling. Out of season they read it as sharp words and things taken, and ask for care with belongings and with what is said; just past its season, as talk that turns to gossip.

The 7 ruled Period 7, from 1984 to 2003; in Period 9 it is dormant. Its classical name, Po Jun, belongs to the last star of the Dipper’s handle; the Flying Stars read it, like every star, by its number and its season rather than by its name.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: dormant now, the 7 is read for care with words and belongings; practitioners suggest a calm, well-kept palace there, a room for quiet conversation rather than for argument, and doors and windows kept in good order.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 7 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 7 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2020, 2029 and 2038, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the south-west, in 2027 in the east. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as mixed.
• Its pairs: with the 2 it makes the He Tu pair of fire; with the 8 the young couple, the hexagram Xian, attraction; with the 3 a Combination of Ten, two stars of dispute; with the 6 crossed swords and with the 9 seven and nine crossing, read with care.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: Po Jun is the Daoist name of the Dipper’s seventh star, Alkaid in the West, the tip of the handle, which the Chinese sky watched turn round the pole through the seasons.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 七赤金星 shichiseki kinsei, the 7 Red Metal star.
• The Eight Mansions give Po Jun to Jue Ming, and Zi Wei Dou Shu keeps Po Jun among its fourteen main stars.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Dui, the lake, in the west, the middle of autumn where all things rejoice, and calls it the youngest daughter; the 7 of the Lo Shu stands there, at the right of the middle row as the tradition draws the square. In the Huainanzi and later almanacs it is the handle of the Dipper, Alkaid at its tip, that points to the seasons as it turns. The Xuan Kong verses read the 7 as Metal that speaks, delightful in its own time and sharp out of it.

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 7 is timely in Periods 5, 6 and 7, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 8, 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