Gui mountain

Meaning

Gui, 癸 guǐ, is the third mountain of the north (N3): the fifteen degrees from 7.5° to 22.5°, centred on 15°. It takes its name from Gui, the tenth of the ten Heavenly Stems, yin Water: one of the eight stems that stand round the compass, while Wu and Ji, the stems of Earth, keep the centre.

Gui carries the image of its stem, rain, dew and mist, a quiet water that seeps everywhere, and it is the last of the ten stems as it is the last of the north’s three mountains: past it, at 22.5°, the north-east begins. A home facing Gui looks a little east of north and sits in Ding, a little west of south. With Ren and Zi it makes the north Water three times over, the palace the Lo Shu numbers 1.

Gui is the north’s Man dragon and counts as yin, like Zi beside it, so a home facing Gui has the same main chart as one facing Zi: built in Period 9, both of the period’s stars at the front with the opposed chart; built in Period 8, both at the back. Even their replacement star, 1, is the same. Where they differ is at the edges: Zi’s lie inside the north, while Gui’s upper edge is the line between the north and the north-east, where the eight directions themselves change.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 7.5° and 22.5° faces Gui, and sits in Ding, S3: a Li house of the East group. The Home lens tints Gui on its dial and draws Ding dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 7.5° or 22.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 7.5° the line towards Zi, inside the north; at 22.5° the line between the north and the north-east, towards Chou.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Gui has the formations Double stars at the facing and Opposed chart; built in Period 8, the formation Double stars at the sitting.
• The year: with its two neighbours Gui holds the Three Killings in some years, such as 2026, 2030 and 2034, which the classics suggest facing rather than having at one’s back. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the north, in 2027 and 2036.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Gui goes with the Minor Cold, the Sun at 285°, halfway through Capricorn in the Western zodiac.
• On the Western rose: Gui’s upper edge, 22.5°, is the north-north-east of the 16-point compass: the half-winds of the Western rose fall exactly on the luopan’s lines between its eight directions.
• The end of the sixty: Gui-Hai, Gui with the Pig, is the sixtieth and last pair of stems and branches, after which the cycle opens again with Jia-Zi.

Origin and history

In the Huainanzi’s treatise on the patterns of heaven (139 BC), the handle of the Dipper sweeps round the horizon through the year, fifteen days to each of twenty-four directions, and a solar term is named at each: at Zi the winter solstice, fifteen days later at Gui the Minor Cold, then at Chou the Major Cold. It is the oldest form of the match the luopan keeps between its mountains and the terms, and it sets Gui in the deepening cold before spring turns at the north-east.

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°: Gui takes every facing from 7.5° up to 22.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Ding. For the Flying Stars, Gui 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 1, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences