Annual afflictions

Meaning

The annual afflictions are the places in a home, and the directions round a person, that the classics ask to leave quiet for a year: where the 5 Yellow flies, where the Grand Duke sits, where the Year Breaker stands across from him, and where the Three Killings fall. Each moves with the year at Lichun, around 4 February, and the 5 Yellow moves with the month too.

Affliction is the books’ English for the Chinese 煞 shà and its kin, a sharp, unbalancing force. Ulune keeps the books’ names and reads them as the classics’ counsel always was, a matter of timing and never of a place’s worth. What they ask is simple: no heavy works, digging or renovation that can wait on that side for that year; for the Grand Duke, not to face him for the year’s new beginnings; for the Three Killings, to face them rather than to have them at one’s back.

In 2026, a Horse year whose star is the 1 White, the 5 Yellow is in the south, the Grand Duke sits in Wu in the south, the Year Breaker stands in Zi in the north, and the Three Killings cover the north’s three mountains, Ren, Zi and Gui. In 2027, a Goat year, the 5 Yellow flies to the north, the Grand Duke moves to Wei, the Year Breaker to Chou and the Three Killings to the west.

In practice

• In the Home lens the year’s stars lie over the home’s chart, with a short list of what to leave quiet this year: the 5 Yellow’s palace, the Grand Duke’s and the Year Breaker’s mountains, the Three Killings’ direction. The 5 Yellow’s palace carries a dashed frame.
• In the Cycles lens they fall over your own eight directions, each with its counsel: one of your supportive directions where an affliction falls rests for the year, and the direction across from the Three Killings is never the one suggested for a desk or a long task.
• The month: the month’s 5 Yellow visits another palace with each solar month, a month to keep that side quiet; in October 2026 it is in the north.
• Nothing to buy: no cure and no object to hang. The counsel is about when to do works and which way to face, and when a year asks a side to rest, the other sides carry what is new.

Across traditions

• The zodiac reads the same Grand Duke for people: the year of one’s own animal meets him face to face, and the animal opposite the year’s clashes with him, the zodiac’s word for a year that moves things.
• The almanac, the Tong Shu printed every year, opens with a chart of the year’s spirits and their directions; the afflictions of Feng Shui are read from the same calendar.
• In India, Vastu’s builders choose an auspicious moment, a muhūrta, for breaking ground, the bhūmi pūjā: another tradition that makes building works a matter of timing.

Origin and history

The afflictions come from two traditions the almanacs set side by side. The first is the old calendar’s spirits of the year: Tai Sui, the counterpart of Jupiter that moves one branch a year, the branch across from him, and the Three Sha opposite the year’s trine, which almanacs have long marked on their chart of the year. The second is the flying stars of the year, whose 5 Yellow the Xuan Kong verses treat with the most care of all. Feng Shui practice joined them into one list, read every year at Lichun.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the year’s afflictions from the solar year, which turns at Lichun. The year’s star goes back one each year, the 1 White in 2026, and flies forward through the nine palaces; the 5 Yellow is wherever the 5 lands, in the centre in a year whose star is the 5 itself. The Grand Duke is the mountain of the year’s branch, the Year Breaker the branch across from it, and the Three Killings the three mountains of the cardinal direction opposite the year’s trine: south for a Monkey, Rat or Dragon year, north for a Tiger, Horse or Dog year, east for a Snake, Rooster or Ox year, west for a Pig, Rabbit or Goat year. The month’s star, and with it the month’s 5 Yellow, goes back one each solar month from the Tiger month’s: the 8 in a Rat, Horse, Rabbit or Rooster year, the 5 in a Dragon, Dog, Ox or Goat year, the 2 in a Tiger, Monkey, Snake or Pig year.

Correspondences