Red Phoenix star

Meaning

The Red Phoenix is a star of romance and celebration: love, union and happy events. Its name, 紅鸞 hóngluán, is the red luan, a bird of the phoenix family that Chinese poetry pairs with the phoenix itself as the emblem of a happy couple; red is the colour of weddings and of every festive day. In a chart the star marks a branch where the heart and its celebrations are close at hand.

The tradition reads warmth in love and friendship, a talent for occasions, and times when bonds are formed or celebrated. A pillar holding the Red Phoenix is read as the part of life where affection shows readily; in a luck pillar or a year, as a time of meetings, engagements, weddings and other happy gatherings, one’s own or those of people close.

It is a light and festive star, read as a nuance. Ulune reads the Red Phoenix as warmth and celebration, never as a marriage foretold, and never as a measure of anyone’s worth in love.

In practice

• Found from the year branch, counted backward from Mao, and looked for in the other pillars: Mao for a Zi year, Yin for Chou, Chou for Yin, Zi for Mao, Hai for Chen, Xu for Si, You for Wu, Shen for Wei, Wei for Shen, Wu for You, Si for Xu and Chen for Hai.
• Its partner: Heavenly Joy stands directly opposite it on the wheel, six branches away; the two are read together, the romance and the rejoicing.
• On the board, the star is listed with the pillars whose branches hold it; its reading says it was found from the year branch.
• In time, a luck pillar or a year whose branch is the Red Phoenix brings it for its while, which the almanacs read as a year for gatherings and celebrations; the full table shows it in that row.
• Beside the Peach Blossom: the Peach Blossom is charm and attraction, the Red Phoenix the bond and its celebration.

Across traditions

• In Zi Wei Dou Shu the Red Phoenix and Heavenly Joy are minor stars placed by the year branch, read as in BaZi; in Vietnam, Hồng Loan and Thiên Hỷ are known from Tử Vi, and Japan reads the star as kōran.
• In Chinese symbols, the luan and the phoenix singing together, 鸞鳳和鳴 luán fèng hé míng, are a wedding wish still written on cards and banners.
• In Western astrology love and celebration belong to Venus and to the fifth and seventh houses: the same warmth, read from a planet and places rather than from the year of birth.

Origin and history

The Red Phoenix and Heavenly Joy belong to the year stars of the older Chinese birth arts, shared by the “three lives” method and by Zi Wei Dou Shu, and kept by the Zi Ping school; the San Ming Tong Hui gives its rule, Zi counted from Mao and going backward. The almanacs used the same pair to mark years and days for weddings, which is how the star kept its festive reading. Wolfram Eberhard’s dictionary of Chinese symbols records the luan and the colour red as the emblems of marriage that give it its name.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads the Red Phoenix from the year branch: it starts with Zi at Mao and counts backward, one branch for each, so that the star of a year branch b is the branch three less b, round the twelve. It looks for that branch in the month, day and hour pillars, and in the branch of a luck pillar or a year. Heavenly Joy is found the same way, six branches on.

Correspondences