General star

Meaning

The General is the star of leadership: authority, a gift for organising, and for being followed. Its name, 將星 jiàngxīng, is “the general’s star”, and its branch is the centre of a trine, the middle of the three branches that make an alliance of one phase, the place from which the other two are led.

The tradition reads a natural authority rather than a title: the person others turn to when a group needs direction, someone able to hold a team together and to take responsibility for it. A pillar holding the General is read as the part of life where that capacity shows, at work, at home or among friends; in a luck pillar or a year, as a time to take a lead, organise or be given charge of something.

Its other face is the commander’s: a habit of deciding for others, a weight of responsibility carried alone. The tradition values a General who listens and delegates, and Ulune reads the star as a gift for leading, never as rank or power promised.

In practice

• Found from the year and day branches, by the trine each belongs to, and looked for in the other pillars: Zi for the Water trine, Shen, Zi and Chen; Mao for the Wood trine, Hai, Mao and Wei; Wu for the Fire trine, Yin, Wu and Xu; You for the Metal trine, Si, You and Chou.
• The heart of the trine: each General is the middle branch of its trine, the Peak of its phase, where the phase is at its fullest: leadership sits where strength is greatest.
• On the board, the star is listed with the pillars whose branches hold it; its reading says from which pillar it was found and of which trine. When the year or the day branch is itself the centre of its trine, the General is found in any other pillar that shares that branch.
• In time, a luck pillar or a year whose branch is the General brings the star for its while; the full table shows it in that row.
• Its companions: the Peach Blossom, the Travelling Horse and the Canopy are found the same way, from the same trines.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the star is shōsei, jangseong and Tướng Tinh, read there too as a star of command.
• In Western astrology authority and the capacity to lead belong to the Sun and to the tenth house, the place of standing and vocation, and Mars lends them drive: the same qualities, read from planets and a place rather than from a branch.

Origin and history

The General belongs to the trine stars of the “three lives” method that the Zi Ping school kept beside its gods. The Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui give its rule, the central branch of each trine, and its classical reading, authority over others and the respect of those one leads. Shen Xiaozhan’s Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, keeps such signs out of the structure, and the modern reading has softened accordingly into leadership, organisation and responsibility.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads the General from two bases, the year branch and the day branch. For each it takes the branch’s trine and its General, Zi, Mao, Wu or You, and looks for it in the other pillars: the year’s General in the month, day and hour, the day’s in the year, month and hour. For a luck pillar or a year, it looks for either in its branch. The star is shown with the pillars it falls in, and its reading says which base found it.

Correspondences