Prosperity star

Meaning

The Prosperity star is the branch where the Day Master finds its own resources: steady means, work that sustains you, and the confidence of standing on your own ground. Its name, 祿神 lùshén, is “the spirit of the stipend”: 祿 was the salary an official lived on, and the star marks the branch that holds the Day Master’s own stem, as its main qi or, for Wu and Ji, close behind it, the place where it is paid, so to speak, in its own coin.

It is not a separate sign so much as a life stage seen as a star. The branch is the stem’s Prosperity stage, where its phase takes up its office, mature and able; read as a star, it says where in the chart that self-reliance is found. The tradition reads independence and means earned by one’s own effort, a solid footing in the part of life the pillar stands for.

Its nuance is the one the stage has: a strength that has what it needs may hold it tightly. The classics look for what the stipend serves, the work, the gifts or the people it can support, and Ulune reads the star as resources, never as wealth promised.

In practice

• Found from the Day Master: Jia in Yin, Yi in Mao, Bing and Wu in Si, Ding and Ji in Wu, Geng in Shen, Xin in You, Ren in Hai and Gui in Zi, sought in every pillar, the day’s own included.
• In the month, the same branch gives the chart its Prosperity structure, 建祿格: a Day Master standing in its own month.
• In the day, four day pillars hold their own stem’s stipend: Jia Yin, Yi Mao, Geng Shen and Xin You, where the stem sits on its own ground.
• Its neighbours: two branches on lies the Golden Carriage, and for a yang Day Master one branch on lies the Sword Edge, the phase at its sharpest.
• In time, a luck pillar or a year whose branch is the stipend brings the star for its while, which the tradition reads as a time of self-reliance and steady work; the full table shows it in that row.

Across traditions

• In Japan and Korea the stipend is best known as a stage, kenroku and geollok, “the stipend established”, the name both give to the Prosperity stage.
• In Chinese popular religion the stipend has its own god, Lu, one of the three star gods of fortune, office and long life, shown in an official’s robe on New Year prints.
• In Western astrology the nearest ideas are a planet in its domicile, acting with its own means, and the second house, of resources one earns and keeps.

Origin and history

The stipend is one of the oldest notions of Chinese birth reading. The “three lives” method of the Tang and Song looked for the stipend of the year stem; the Zi Ping school read it from the Day Master, and the Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui give its table as the tradition still teaches it, with the old phrases for its places: the stipend in the month, the stipend sat on in the day, the stipend returned to in the hour. The Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, treats the month’s stipend as a structure of its own, read by the other gods that show beside it, since a Day Master in its own month needs something to spend its strength on.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune’s table of the Prosperity star is the branch of each stem’s Prosperity stage: Yin, Mao, Si, Wu, Si, Wu, Shen, You, Hai and Zi, from Jia to Gui, Earth following Fire. It looks for that branch in every pillar, the day’s own included, and in the branch of a luck pillar or a year. The same table gives the Golden Carriage, two branches further, and the Prosperity structure, when the month branch is the stipend.

Correspondences