Pearl string

Meaning

The pearl 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 are three numbers in a row, the 9 closing on the 1, as 8, 9, 1.

連珠三般卦, liánzhū sānbān guà, the pearl string. Three numbers in a row in every palace make a chart whose stars connect like pearls on a thread, each star leading to the next. 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, 3, 5, 7 and 8.

In practice

• What practitioners suggest: reading the string as a counterweight; in Ulune’s charts every pearl 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 Chen or Xu.
• 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

• A string of numbers: the pearl string is the Lo Shu’s order seen in a single palace, three numbers that follow one another; the parent string, its companion, joins numbers three apart instead.
• Linked pearls in literature: 連珠, joined pearls, also names a classical literary form of short linked sentences, which Lu Ji wrote in the 3rd century; the chart takes the same image for numbers.

Origin and history

The pearl string, 連珠, the joined pearls, is the second of the Xuan Kong school’s strings of three. Sixteen of the 216 main charts carry it: a home facing Chen or Xu in Periods 2 and 8, and Xun, Si, Qian or Hai in Periods 3, 5 and 7. Every home that carries it faces the south-east or the north-west, along the axis the luopan calls the door of earth and the gate of heaven.

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

Correspondences