Parent string

Meaning

The parent string is one of the Flying Stars’ formations that Ulune names, a pattern that runs through the whole of a home’s chart: in all nine palaces the period star, the mountain star and the water star belong to one of the three groups 1-4-7, 2-5-8 or 3-6-9.

父母三般卦, fùmǔ sānbān guà, the parent string. Each group joins one period of each of the three ages, upper, middle and lower, of the 180-year cycle, so a chart whose every palace holds one such group is said to hold together across all of time. The classics read it as a chart whose stars hold together, and say it softens what else it carries.

Of the 216 main charts, the twenty-four facings of each of the nine periods, 16 carry this formation, in Periods 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8.

In practice

• What practitioners suggest: reading the string as a counterweight; in Ulune’s charts every parent string comes with the reversed chart, and the classics count it as that chart’s softening.
• In the Home lens: the chart’s reading names its formations. No home built in Period 9 carries this one; built in Period 8, a home facing Gen, Yin, Kun or Shen.
• Near an edge: the replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one for a facing close to the edge of its mountain, has formations of its own, named the same way; it may keep this one or not.

Across traditions

• The three ages: 1, 4 and 7 open the upper, middle and lower ages of the cycle, 2, 5 and 8 stand second in each, 3, 6 and 9 close them; the string ties a home to the whole cycle rather than to one period.
• The sixty-year cycle: each of the three ages lasts sixty years and opens on a Jia-Zi year, 1864, 1924 and 1984, the first pair of the sixty; the Flying Stars’ cycle of 180 years is three turns of the almanac’s sixty.

Origin and history

The parent string and the pearl string are the Xuan Kong school’s two strings of three, 三般卦, patterns the classics prize because they run through all nine palaces at once. The parent string is the rarer: sixteen of the 216 main charts, for a home facing Gen, Yin, Kun or Shen in Periods 2, 5 and 8, and Chou or Wei in Periods 4 and 6. Every home that carries it faces the north-east or the south-west, along the Gen–Kun axis.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune casts each home’s chart, then checks it against every formation it knows. For this one the rule is: in all nine palaces the period star, the mountain star and the water star belong to one of the three groups 1-4-7, 2-5-8 or 3-6-9. It is read on the main chart and on the replacement chart alike, each on its own. Ulune’s tests check its formations against charts worked by hand.

An example: a home facing Gen, built in Period 8. The period chart sets 8 in the centre; the mountain star goes to the centre as a 5 and flies forward, the water star as a 2 and flies forward. At the back, in the palace of the south-west, stand mountain star 2 and water star 8; at the front, in the palace of the north-east, mountain star 8 and water star 5. Palace by palace, the three stars: centre 2-5-8, north-west 3-6-9, west 1-4-7, north-east 2-5-8, south 3-6-9, north 1-4-7, south-west 2-5-8, east 3-6-9, south-east 1-4-7.

Correspondences