Peak stage

Meaning

The Peak is the fifth of the twelve life stages, after Prosperity, and the height of the cycle. The classics call it 帝旺 dìwàng, “imperial prosperity”: in the Ziping Zhenquan’s image, vigour at its utmost, like a person able to serve at the emperor’s side and do great things. The phase is at full growth, the plant in high summer, the season in its middle month.

The tradition reads strength, drive and determination, and the care it takes not to overreach. A Day Master at its Peak in a pillar’s branch is read as at its most forceful there, sure of itself and hard to move. What is at its height can only turn: the stage that follows is the Decline, and the classics prize a Peak that knows it, spending its strength on something worth it rather than on holding the summit.

For the yang stems the Peak has a sharper name too, the Sword Edge, 羊刃: the same branch read as a blade, decisive and bold, at its best in a good cause. No stage is too strong in itself; the tradition only asks what such strength is used for.

In practice

• For each Day Master: Jia peaks in Mao, Bing and Wu in Wu, Geng in You and Ren in Zi; Yi in Yin, Ding and Ji in Si, Xin in Shen and Gui in Hai.
• The heart of the season: the yang stems peak in Zi, Mao, Wu and You, the middle months of winter, spring, summer and autumn, and each of these is the middle branch of its phase’s three harmonies, which the tradition also marks with the General star.
• The Sword Edge: for a yang Day Master the Peak branch is its Sword Edge, and when the month branch is that branch Ulune names the Sword Edge structure; the yin stems’ Sword Edge is disputed, and Ulune leaves it out.
• Its twin: a yang stem’s Peak branch holds its yin twin, as main qi for Jia, Bing, Geng and Ren (Yi in Mao, Xin in You) and beside it for Wu: the Rob Wealth, a peer of the other polarity, standing at full strength beside the self.
• Before and after: the Peak follows Prosperity and leads to the Decline; across the wheel, in the clashing branch, stands its Conception, the seed opposite the full growth.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the stage is teiō, jewang and Đế Vượng.
• In Western astrology the nearest ideas are a planet’s exaltation, the sign where it is honoured, and its culmination, the moment it stands highest in the sky at the Midheaven: strength at its height, read from a sign or a moment of the day rather than from a branch.
• In Chinese thought the Peak carries the old lesson that what reaches its extreme turns back, which the Book of Changes gives to its first hexagram’s top line, the dragon that has gone too high.

Origin and history

The Huainanzi, in 139 BC, gives each phase its moment of maturity, 壯 zhuàng: Wood in Mao, Fire in Wu, Metal in You, Water in Zi, the middle branches of the trines. The Zi Ping school’s books of the Song and Ming dynasties, the Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui, name it the imperial prosperity, the fifth of the twelve stages, and set the yin stems’ Peaks by their backward count. The Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, explains the name as the utmost of vigour, gives the Sword Edge its own chapter among the forceful signs to be tempered rather than avoided, and adds that the Peak is where decline begins, since every height turns.

How Ulune calculates it

The Peak is stage 4 of the count, four branches from the Birth: forward for a yang stem, so Jia, born in Hai, peaks in Mao; backward for a yin stem, so Yi, born in Wu, peaks in Yin. Earth follows Fire, Wu peaking in Wu with Bing and Ji in Si with Ding. Ulune’s table of the Sword Edge takes the same branch for the five yang Day Masters, Mao, Wu, Wu, You and Zi for Jia, Bing, Wu, Geng and Ren, and none for the yin ones; the structure uses that table. The board shows the stage under each pillar whose branch it is, and the full table in the luck pillar and the year too.

Correspondences