Qian mountain

Meaning

Qian, 乾 qián, is the middle mountain of the north-west (NW2): the fifteen degrees from 307.5° to 322.5°, centred on 315°, the exact north-west. It takes its name from the trigram Qian ☰, the Heaven, which holds the whole north-west in the Later Heaven order: these are its middle fifteen degrees, the corner itself.

Qian is the north-west itself, 315°, the middle of the corner, named after the trigram of heaven, a strength that does not tire. Its trigram holds the whole north-west in the Later Heaven order, and the mountain is its heart, between the Dog’s Xu and the Pig’s Hai. A home facing Qian looks due north-west and sits in Xun, the south-east: a Xun house, the wind at its back and heaven ahead.

For the Flying Stars Qian is the north-west’s Heaven dragon and counts as yang, like Hai beside it, so the two share their main chart, the mirror of Xun’s across the compass. Built in Period 8, a home facing Qian had the prosperous chart; built in Period 9, it has both of the period’s stars at the front, with the Combination of Ten for the water stars. The prosperous chart comes to it in Periods 2 and 8, and the reversed one, softened by the pearl string, in Periods 3, 5 and 7.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 307.5° and 322.5° faces Qian, and sits in Xun, SE2: a Xun house of the East group. The Home lens tints Qian on its dial and draws Xun dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 307.5° or 322.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 307.5° the line towards Xu, inside the north-west; at 322.5° the line towards Hai, inside the north-west.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Qian has the formations Double stars at the facing and Combination of Ten, water; built in Period 8, the formation Prosperous at sitting and facing.
• The year: Qian is never the Grand Duke’s mountain nor the Year Breaker’s, which are branches, nor one of the Three Killings, which fall in the four cardinal directions. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the north-west, in 2032 and 2041.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Qian goes with the Start of Winter, the Sun at 225°, halfway through Scorpio in the Western zodiac.
• The gate of heaven: Chinese cosmology calls the north-west the gate of heaven, 天門, and its trigram is heaven itself; on the Mediterranean rose it is the maestrale, the mistral of Provence, and in Vastu Shastra it belongs to Vayu, the wind.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua says that in Qian, the trigram of the north-west, yin and yang meet and press on each other, 戰乎乾: the year’s light grows short there, and the cold begins. On the ring of terms Qian carries the start of winter, across the compass from Xun’s start of summer, and with Gen’s spring and Kun’s autumn it completes the four corners, the four seasons’ beginnings.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the mountain a home faces from its magnetic facing, among 24 mountains of 15° counted from Ren at 337.5°: Qian takes every facing from 307.5° up to 322.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Xun. For the Flying Stars, Qian is the middle mountain of a corner palace, of the group the classics call the Heaven dragon, and so counts as yang: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star forward. Its replacement star, from the classical verse, is 6, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences