Monthly Virtue star
In Chinese: 月德
Heavenly Virtue’s companion, a yang stem found from the month branch’s trine: gentleness, generosity, and help that eases the way.
Meaning
Monthly Virtue is Heavenly Virtue’s companion: gentleness, generosity, and help that eases the way. Its name, 月德 yuèdé, is “the virtue of the month”: where Heavenly Virtue is the sky’s generosity in a given month, Monthly Virtue is the month’s own good grace, the yang stem of the phase its branch belongs to by trine.
The tradition reads a mild and generous temperament, one that smooths things over and finds help in turn, and a way of meeting difficulties that takes the sting out of them. Read with Heavenly Virtue, the two are the classic pair of helping stars of the month: one protects, the other softens.
As with every star, it is a nuance. Ulune reads Monthly Virtue as gentleness given and received, a quality to recognise and to use, never as a guarantee that the way will always be easy.
In practice
- Found from the month branch, by the trine it belongs to, among the stems of the other pillars: Ren for the months Shen, Zi and Chen, the Water trine; Jia for Hai, Mao and Wei, the Wood trine; Bing for Yin, Wu and Xu, the Fire trine; Geng for Si, You and Chou, the Metal trine.
- The trine’s own stem: each Monthly Virtue is the yang stem of its trine’s phase, Ren of Water, Jia of Wood, Bing of Fire and Geng of Metal: the alliance of the season, given a face among the stems.
- On the board, the star is listed with the pillars whose stems hold it; its reading says it was found from the month branch.
- In time, a luck pillar or a year whose stem is the month’s Monthly Virtue brings it for its while; the full table shows it in that row.
- Its companions: Heavenly Virtue, from the same month, and the Nobleman, from the Day Master, the other helping stars.
Across traditions
- In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the star is gettoku kijin, woldeok gwiin and Nguyệt Đức.
- In the Chinese almanac the Monthly Virtue days are marked beside the Heavenly Virtue days as good for beginnings, for building and for travel: the same virtue, read for days.
- In Western astrology the nearest idea is the softening the tradition gives the benefic Venus, the lesser of the two benefics, mild and generous: the same gentle help, read from a planet rather than from the season of birth.
Origin and history
Like Heavenly Virtue, Monthly Virtue comes from the calendar of chosen days, set out month by month in the almanacs of the Tang and Song, and carried into birth charts by the Zi Ping school; the Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui give its rule in a line: months Yin, Wu and Xu have Bing; Shen, Zi and Chen, Ren; Hai, Mao and Wei, Jia; Si, You and Chou, Geng. Together the two virtues were among the stars the classics most wished to see in a chart, as softening every harsher sign.
How Ulune calculates it
Ulune reads Monthly Virtue from the month branch’s trine: Ren for a Water month, Jia for a Wood month, Bing for a Fire month and Geng for a Metal month. It looks for that stem among the stems of the year, day and hour, the month’s own pillar aside, and among the stems of a luck pillar or a year. The star is shown with the pillars it falls in, by their stem, and its reading says it was found from the month.
Correspondences
| Correspondence | Monthly Virtue star |
|---|---|
| Characters, pinyin | 月德 yuèdé, “the virtue of the month” |
| Read from | The month branch, by its trine |
| Shen, Zi, Chen months (Water) | Ren |
| Hai, Mao, Wei months (Wood) | Jia |
| Yin, Wu, Xu months (Fire) | Bing |
| Si, You, Chou months (Metal) | Geng |
| Rule | The yang stem of the trine’s phase |
| Companion | Heavenly Virtue |
| Ulune’s reading | Gentleness, generosity, help that eases the way |
| Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese | Gettoku kijin, woldeok gwiin, Nguyệt Đức |
Related
- Symbolic starsThe traditional signs BaZi finds by fixed tables, the Nobleman, the Peach Blossom, the Travelling Horse and others: nuances read after the gods and the balance.
- Heavenly Virtue starA star of protection found from the month branch, a stem or a branch: kindness returned, difficulties softened, a good nature that others trust.
- Nobleman starThe most valued of BaZi’s symbolic stars, two branches found from the Day Master: help that arrives when it is needed, people of good will, a way through.
- Month pillarThe second of the four pillars, the solar month of birth, from one opening term to the next: the season the self was born into, the strongest pillar.
- TrineThree branches four places apart, a phase’s birth, peak and storehouse, making that phase together: the zodiac’s allies, a triangle on the wheel.
Sources
- Xu Sheng (ed.), Yuanhai Ziping, Song dynasty
- Wan Minying, San Ming Tong Hui, 16th century
- Shen Xiaozhan, Ziping Zhenquan, 18th century
- Ho Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology, 2003
- Richard J. Smith, Chinese Almanacs, 1992