Period 9

Meaning

Period 9, 九運 jiǔ yùn, is the ninth of the nine periods of twenty years that the Flying Stars count in a cycle of 180: from 2024 to 2043, then from 2204 to 2223, ruled by the 9 Purple. It is the third period of the lower age, one of the cycle’s three ages of sixty years.

Its star is the 9 Purple, Fire and the trigram Li, the middle daughter, which the classics give to celebration, recognition and joy. It is the present period: every chart Ulune casts reads its stars by their state in it, and it closes the cycle of 180 years that opened in 1864.

Its period chart sets the 9 in the centre and flies it forward along the Lo Shu’s path: north-west 1, west 2, north-east 3, south 4, north 5, south-west 6, east 7, south-east 8. 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 9 homes: a home built or last fully renovated between 2024 and 2043 is a Period 9 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 Zi, Gui, Gen, Yin, Mao, Yi, Chen, Bing, Wei, Geng, Qian or Hai, at the back for the others.
• The period’s stars: through Period 9 the 9, the 1 and the 2 are timely, the 9 being the period’s own star; the 8 is waning, and the other four are dormant.
• Now: this is the present period, and the Home lens reads the stars of every chart, whatever its period, by their state in Period 9; each palace’s reading says so.
• 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 9 began in 2024, a Jia-Chen year, 甲辰, of the Dragon; 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 2040 falls in Period 9, 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 south’s period: the 9 Purple’s own palace is the south, the Li palace of fire; the present period is the period of the trigram the Later Heaven order sets at the top of the compass as the books draw it.

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 9 is the last of the cycle that opened in 1864; in 2044, a Jia-Zi year, Period 1 will open the count again. 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 2024 to 2043 gives Period 9. It counts by the calendar year alone: a home finished in January 2024, before Lichun, would strictly belong to the period before, and the Home lens shows the year it used. The period chart sets the 9 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