Period 5

Meaning

Period 5, 五運 wǔ yùn, is the fifth of the nine periods of twenty years that the Flying Stars count in a cycle of 180: from 1944 to 1963, then from 2124 to 2143, ruled by the 5 Yellow. It is the second period of the middle age, one of the cycle’s three ages of sixty years.

Its star is the 5 Yellow, Earth and the Lo Shu’s own centre, with no trigram: the middle period of the middle age, the heart of the whole cycle. Its period chart, the 5 in the centre flown forward, is the Lo Shu square exactly, each number in its own palace.

Its period chart sets the 5 in the centre and flies it forward along the Lo Shu’s path: north-west 6, west 7, north-east 8, south 9, north 1, south-west 2, east 3, south-east 4. 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 5 homes: a home built or last fully renovated between 1944 and 1963 is a Period 5 home. For its main chart, a front facing Zi, Gui, Chou, Mao, Yi, Chen, Wu, Ding, Wei, You, Xin or Xu gives the prosperous chart; facing Ren, Gen, Yin, Jia, Xun, Si, Bing, Kun, Shen, Geng, Qian or Hai, the reversed chart; in this period every facing gives one or the other.
• The period’s stars: through Period 5 the 5, the 6 and the 7 are timely, the 5 being the period’s own star; the 4 is waning, and the other four are dormant.
• Read today: a Period 5 home keeps its Period 5 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 5 began in 1944, a Jia-Shen year, 甲申, of the Monkey; 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 1961 falls in Period 5, 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.
• The magic square: the chart of Period 5 is the Lo Shu itself, the 3 × 3 magic square that Renaissance Europe knew as the table of Saturn.

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. This cycle’s Period 5 ran from 1944 to 1963; it comes back from 2124 to 2143. 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 1944 to 1963 gives Period 5. It counts by the calendar year alone: a home finished in January 1944, before Lichun, would strictly belong to the period before, and the Home lens shows the year it used. The period chart sets the 5 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