Peach Blossom star

Meaning

The Peach Blossom is the star of charm: attraction, ease with people, a gift for the arts and for being liked. Its name, 桃花 táohuā, comes from the tree that flowers first and most brightly in spring, the image of a lovely face in Chinese poetry since the Tang, when Cui Hu wrote of a girl’s face and the peach blossom reddening each other. In everyday Chinese, “peach-blossom luck” still means luck in love.

The tradition reads warmth and attractiveness, social ease and a feeling for beauty, the pleasure of being with people and of being noticed. A pillar holding the Peach Blossom is read as the part of life where that charm shows; in a luck pillar or a year, as a time of meetings, friendships and a busier heart.

Like every star it is a nuance and has its other face, which the readings keep gentle: charm can scatter itself, and being liked can matter too much. The tradition values a Peach Blossom that serves a talent, an art or a lasting bond, and Ulune reads it as charm, never as a promise of romance or a warning against it.

In practice

• Found from the year and day branches, by the trine each belongs to, and looked for in the other pillars: You for the Water trine, Shen, Zi and Chen; Zi for the Wood trine, Hai, Mao and Wei; Mao for the Fire trine, Yin, Wu and Xu; Wu for the Metal trine, Si, You and Chou.
• The Bath of the trine: each Peach Blossom is the Bath stage of its trine’s phase, the young phase washed and seen, as You is for Water and Zi for Wood: the stage of charm and the star of charm share their branch.
• 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.
• In time, a luck pillar or a year whose branch is the Peach Blossom brings the star for its while; the full table shows it in that row.
• Its companions: the Travelling Horse, the Canopy and the General are found the same way, from the same trines.

Across traditions

• In Korea the star has passed into everyday speech: dohwasal, the “peach-blossom influence”, describes someone of irresistible charm. Japan reads it as tōka, Vietnam as Đào Hoa, a minor star of Tử Vi too.
• In Chinese myth its old name, 咸池 xiánchí, the Xian Pool, is where the Sun bathes at dawn in the Huainanzi: the star of charm took the name of the Sun’s bath.
• In Western astrology charm, attraction and the arts belong to Venus and to the fifth house: the same qualities, read through a planet and a place rather than through a branch.

Origin and history

The Peach Blossom is among the most widely known of the stars, already in the tables of the “three lives” method and kept by the Zi Ping school; the Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui give its rule, the Bath of each trine, and its older name, the Xian Pool, from the pool where the Huainanzi has the Sun bathe. Over the centuries the popular almanacs made it a star of romance, and modern teachers have widened it again to charm, art and popularity, the reading Ulune keeps.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads the Peach Blossom from two bases, the year branch and the day branch. For each it takes the branch’s trine and its Peach Blossom, You, Zi, Mao or Wu, and looks for it in the other pillars: the year’s Peach Blossom 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