Ding mountain

Meaning

Ding, 丁 dīng, is the third mountain of the south (S3): the fifteen degrees from 187.5° to 202.5°, centred on 195°. It takes its name from Ding, the fourth of the ten Heavenly Stems, yin Fire: one of the eight stems that stand round the compass, while Wu and Ji, the stems of Earth, keep the centre.

Ding carries the image of its stem, the lamp, the candle and the star, a light that is small and steady and shows the way. On the compass it closes the south, a little west of due south, up to the line at 202.5° where the south-west begins. A home facing Ding sits in Gui, a little east of north: a Kan house, like every home that faces the south.

For the Flying Stars Ding is the south’s Man dragon and counts as yin, like Wu, so a home facing Ding has Wu’s main chart: both of the period’s stars at the front if it was built in Period 8, at the back with an opposed chart if it was built in Period 9. Even its replacement star, 9, is Wu’s; the two part only at the edges, Ding’s upper edge being the line between the south and the south-west.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 187.5° and 202.5° faces Ding, and sits in Gui, N3: a Kan house of the East group. The Home lens tints Ding on its dial and draws Gui dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 187.5° or 202.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 187.5° the line towards Wu, inside the south; at 202.5° the line between the south and the south-west, towards Wei.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Ding has the formations Double stars at the sitting and Opposed chart; built in Period 8, the formation Double stars at the facing.
• The year: with its two neighbours Ding holds the Three Killings in some years, such as 2024, 2028 and 2032, which the classics suggest facing rather than having at one’s back. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the south, in 2026 and 2035.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Ding goes with the Minor Heat, the Sun at 105°, halfway through Cancer in the Western zodiac.
• People and resources: the Flying Stars’ classical saying, 山管人丁水管財, ‘the mountain governs people, the water governs wealth’, writes the people of a house with Ding’s character: the mountain star is read for people and their bonds, the water star for activity and resources.
• On the Western rose: Ding’s upper edge, 202.5°, is the south-south-west of the 16-point compass, where the luopan passes from Li’s palace to Kun’s.

Origin and history

The south holds the present period. The Lo Shu numbers the south 9, the 9 Purple’s own palace, and Period 9, from Lichun 2024 to Lichun 2044, is that star’s period, so the south’s three Fire mountains, Bing, Wu and Ding, make the home palace of the star the present period turns on. Ding, the last of them, carries the Minor Heat on the ring of terms, the term that opens the Goat’s month.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the mountain a home faces from its magnetic facing, among 24 mountains of 15° counted from Ren at 337.5°: Ding takes every facing from 187.5° up to 202.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Gui. For the Flying Stars, Ding is the third mountain of a cardinal palace, of the group the classics call the Man dragon, and so counts as yin: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star backward. Its replacement star, from the classical verse, is 9, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences