Jia mountain

Meaning

Jia, 甲 jiǎ, is the first mountain of the east (E1): the fifteen degrees from 67.5° to 82.5°, centred on 75°. It takes its name from Jia, the first of the ten Heavenly Stems, yang Wood: one of the eight stems that stand round the compass, while Wu and Ji, the stems of Earth, keep the centre.

Jia carries the image of the first stem, the tall tree that grows straight towards the light, the push of a beginning. On the compass it opens the east, from the line at 67.5° where the north-east ends, and with Mao and Yi it makes the east Wood three times over, the palace of Zhen, thunder, which the Lo Shu numbers 3. A home facing Jia looks a little north of east and sits in Geng, a little south of west: a Dui house, of the West group.

For the Flying Stars Jia is the east’s Earth dragon and counts as yang, unlike Mao and Yi, so its main chart is its own, and it runs a course unlike its neighbours’: both of the period’s stars at the front for a home built in Period 8, at the back for one built in Period 9; in the middle periods the prosperous chart with a Combination of Ten in Periods 4 and 6, and the reversed one, with the Lo Shu repeated, in Periods 3 and 7.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 67.5° and 82.5° faces Jia, and sits in Geng, W1: a Dui house of the West group. The Home lens tints Jia on its dial and draws Geng dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 67.5° or 82.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 67.5° the line between the north-east and the east, towards Yin; at 82.5° the line towards Mao, inside the east.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Jia has the formation Double stars at the sitting; built in Period 8, the formation Double stars at the facing.
• The year: with its two neighbours Jia holds the Three Killings in some years, such as 2025, 2029 and 2033, which the classics suggest facing rather than having at one’s back. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the east, in 2029 and 2038.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Jia goes with the Awakening of Insects, the Sun at 345°, halfway through Pisces in the Western zodiac.
• The hidden Jia: Qimen Dunjia, 奇門遁甲, one of the three great methods of Chinese divination, is named after the way it hides this first stem among the others on its board.
• Shell and bone: the Shang diviners’ inscriptions are called 甲骨文 jiǎgǔwén, the writing on shells and bones, with the same character, 甲, here the turtle’s shell.

Origin and history

Jia heads the ten stems as spring heads the year. Read in order, the stems turn clockwise round the compass from the east, two to a quarter, Jia and Yi east, Bing and Ding south, Geng and Xin west, Ren and Gui north, with Wu and Ji kept for the centre: the sun’s own course through the day and the year. In the Huainanzi the Dipper’s handle points to Jia when thunder wakes the insects, the term the luopan still sets here.

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°: Jia takes every facing from 67.5° up to 82.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Geng. For the Flying Stars, Jia is the first mountain of a cardinal palace, of the group the classics call the Earth dragon, and so counts as yang: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star forward. 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