Period 1

Meaning

Period 1, 一運 yī yùn, is the first of the nine periods of twenty years that the Flying Stars count in a cycle of 180: from 1864 to 1883, then from 2044 to 2063, ruled by the 1 White. It is the first period of the upper age, one of the cycle’s three ages of sixty years.

Its star is the 1 White, Water and the trigram Kan, which the classics give to learning, careers and journeys. Period 1 opened the cycle in 1864, a Jia-Zi year, the first pair of the sixty, and it will open the next one in 2044, when the 9 Purple hands over.

Its period chart sets the 1 in the centre and flies it forward along the Lo Shu’s path: north-west 2, west 3, north-east 4, south 5, north 6, south-west 7, east 8, south-east 9. It is the base of the chart of every home built in it, over which the mountain and water stars then fly.

In practice

• Period 1 homes: a home built or last fully renovated between 1864 and 1883 is a Period 1 home. No facing gives the prosperous or the reversed chart in it: every main chart brings the period’s two stars together, at the front for a home facing Ren, Chou, Jia, Xun, Si, Wu, Ding, Kun, Shen, You, Xin or Xu, at the back for the others.
• The period’s stars: through Period 1 the 1, the 2 and the 3 are timely, the 1 being the period’s own star; the 9 is waning, and the other four are dormant.
• Read today: a Period 1 home keeps its Period 1 chart; the Home lens reads its stars by their state in Period 9, the present period, and says so under each palace.
• A full renovation: if the home has been fully renovated since, the Home lens asks for that year, which gives another period and another chart; some schools take instead the year one moved in, and Ulune follows the more common rule.

Across traditions

• The sixty-year cycle: Period 1 began in 1864, a Jia-Zi year, 甲子, of the Rat; every period begins in a Jia year, since twenty years make exactly two rounds of the ten stems.
• Jupiter and Saturn: the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn of 1881 falls in Period 1, as one falls in each of the nine; some modern writers have linked the two twenty-year rhythms, which the classics count by the calendar, not by the planets.
• Nine Star Ki counts the same nine stars year by year for people; the 1 White is also the star of 2026 itself, in the centre of that year’s chart.

Origin and history

The count of three ages of sixty years, the Three Yuan, 三元, belongs to the Chinese calendar, and the Xuan Kong school divided each into three periods of twenty years, each ruled by a star of the Lo Shu. Period 1 opens the count: the one of 1864 opened the cycle we still live in, and the next begins in 2044. The school’s manuals, Shen Zhureng’s first among them, give for each period the charts of its twenty-four facings.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds a home’s period from the year it was built or last fully renovated: twenty years a period from 1864, so that any year from 1864 to 1883 gives Period 1. It counts by the calendar year alone: a home finished in January 1864, before Lichun, would strictly belong to the period before, and the Home lens shows the year it used. The period chart sets the 1 in the centre and flies forward; the stars’ states follow the period’s rule, timely for its number and the two after it, waning for the one before.

Correspondences