9 Purple star

Meaning

The 9 Purple, 九紫 jiǔ zǐ, is the ninth of the nine stars of the Flying Stars: the number 9 of the Lo Shu square, whose own palace is the south. Its classical name is You Bi, 右弼 yòu bì; its phase is Fire, its trigram Li ☲.

The classics give the 9 Purple fire and light, celebration, fame and joy: the middle daughter of the trigrams’ family, Li, brightness that clings and makes things seen. In season, as through the present period, it brings recognition, celebrations and the warmth of good news. Out of season they read it as heat, tempers that flare and haste; just past its season, as excitement that outlasts its reasons.

The 9 rules Period 9, from Lichun 2024 to Lichun 2044: in every home’s chart it is the period’s own star, and the formations Ulune names are read by where the 9s stand. Its colour, purple, is the one the Verse of Purple and White, the Zi Bai Jue, sets beside the three white stars as the most welcome.

In practice

• In a home’s chart: the 9 is the star practitioners look for first in a chart of Period 9. Where it stands as the water star, they like an open, lively space, a front door, a living room; as the mountain star, a steady room for the people of the home; where both 9s meet, the chart’s formations say which side carries the period.
• Now: in Period 9, from 2024 to 2043, the 9 is the period’s own star, timely, in the centre of every chart of the period; the classics read it as support where it stands.
• The year’s star: the 9 stands in the centre of every home’s year chart in 2027 and 2036, the year’s star going back one each year at Lichun; in 2026 it is in the south-east, in 2027 in the centre. The Cycles lens reads it over your own directions as supportive.
• Its pairs: with the 4 it makes the He Tu pair of metal; with the 1 a Combination of Ten, water and fire in balance; with the 8 celebration; with the 3 wood and fire, bright minds; with the 6 fire at heaven’s gate and with the 7 seven and nine crossing, read with care.

Across traditions

• The Dipper: You Bi, the right assistant, is the second of the Dipper’s two attendant stars in Daoist lore, the one no eye can find, sometimes called the hidden star.
• Nine Star Ki calls a person born in its years 九紫火星 kyūshi kasei, the 9 Purple Fire star; the year 2027 is such a year.
• The Eight Mansions give You Bi with Zuo Fu to Fu Wei, and Zi Wei Dou Shu counts You Bi among its six auspicious helper stars.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Li, fire, in the south, where all things see one another, and calls it the middle daughter; the 9 of the Lo Shu stands there, at the top of the square as the tradition draws it, across from the 1. Purple was the colour of the pole and of the emperor’s palace, the Purple Forbidden enclosure of the sky that gave the Forbidden City its name, 紫禁城; the 9 Purple, at the head of the square, takes that colour. Period 9, its period, began at Lichun 2024 and closes the cycle of 180 years that opened in 1864.

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 9 is timely in Periods 7, 8 and 9, its own and the two before it, where it is one of the two stars rising; waning in Period 1, 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