8 White star

Meaning

The 8 White, 八白 bā bái, is the eighth of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 8 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the north-east. Its classical name is Zuo Fu, 左輔 zuǒ fǔ; its phase is Earth, its trigram Gen ☶.

The classics give the 8 White the mountain, stillness, property and savings: the youngest son of the trigrams’ family, at home in the north-east where the year ends and begins. In season it brings wealth, property and lasting gains. Just past its season, as now, it keeps a gentle steadiness, the last period’s gains to keep rather than chase; further out of its time it reads as things that stand still, savings held back and changes slow to come.

The 8 ruled Period 8, from 2004 to 2023, and is the waning star of Period 9, the one just past. Its classical name, Zuo Fu, the left assistant, is one of the Dipper’s two attendant stars, and with the 1 and the 6 it is one of the three white stars the verses welcome.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: practitioners read a waning 8 gently, a palace for what is already established, savings, a quiet study, a room that keeps; where a home built in Period 8 had its 8s at the front or the back, those palaces carry the last period’s strength, to keep in good order rather than to stir.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 8 is waning, the star of the period just past; the classics read it gently, as something to let rest.
• The year’s star: the 8 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2028 and 2037, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the east, in 2027 in the south-east. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as supportive.
• Its pairs: with the 3 it makes the He Tu pair of wood; with the 2 two earths adding to ten; with the 9 celebration; with the 6 standing and wealth; with the 7 the young couple.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: Zuo Fu, the left assistant, is often identified with Alcor, the faint companion of Mizar in the Dipper’s handle; Daoist lore counts it with You Bi as the Dipper’s two attendant stars.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 八白土星 happaku dosei, the 8 White Earth star.
• The Eight Mansions give Zuo Fu with You Bi to Fu Wei, stability, and Zi Wei Dou Shu counts Zuo Fu among its six auspicious helper stars.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Gen, the mountain, in the north-east, where all things end and begin, and calls it the youngest son; the 8 of the Lo Shu stands there, at the bottom left as the tradition draws the square, across from the 2. Period 8, from 2004 to 2023, made the 8 the most quoted star of a generation of Feng Shui books, and Period 9 now makes it the star just past, which the classics read as steadiness to keep. Its turn will come again in 2184.

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 8 is timely in Periods 6, 7 and 8, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 9, 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