Ren mountain

Meaning

Ren, 壬 rén, is the first mountain of the north (N1): the fifteen degrees from 337.5° to 352.5°, centred on 345°. It takes its name from Ren, the ninth of the ten Heavenly Stems, yang Water: one of the eight stems that stand round the compass, while Wu and Ji, the stems of Earth, keep the centre.

Ren carries the image of its stem, the sea and the great river, a water that keeps moving and carries far. On the compass it is where the north begins, just past the line at 337.5° where the north-west’s Hai hands over: a home facing Ren looks a little west of north, with its back to Bing, a little east of south, where the noon sun stands. The north is Water three times over, Ren, Zi and Gui, a stem, a branch and a stem of the same phase, and the Lo Shu gives their palace one number, 1, the palace of Kan.

For the Flying Stars Ren is the north’s Earth dragon and counts as yang, unlike Zi and Gui beside it, so a home facing Ren has a main chart of its own in the palace. Its rhythm is steady: in every period but the fifth both of the period’s stars meet in one palace, at the front in Periods 1, 3, 6 and 8 and at the back in Periods 2, 4, 7 and 9, and in Periods 1 and 9 the chart also repeats the Lo Shu’s own numbers. Practitioners’ suggestions follow that rhythm: an open, lively front with something steady nearby when the stars meet there, a quiet back with some space behind when they meet at the back.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 337.5° and 352.5° faces Ren, and sits in Bing, S1: a Li house of the East group. The Home lens tints Ren on its dial and draws Bing dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 337.5° or 352.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 337.5° the line between the north-west and the north, towards Hai; at 352.5° the line towards Zi, inside the north.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Ren has the formations Double stars at the sitting and Repeated chart; built in Period 8, the formation Double stars at the facing.
• The year: with its two neighbours Ren holds the Three Killings in some years, such as 2026, 2030 and 2034, which the classics suggest facing rather than having at one’s back. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the north, in 2027 and 2036.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Ren goes with the Major Snow, the Sun at 255°, halfway through Sagittarius in the Western zodiac.
• The Three Styles: Da Liu Ren, 大六壬, one of the three great methods of Chinese divination with Taiyi and Qimen Dunjia, takes its name from this stem, the yang Water, and from the six pairs of the sixty that begin with Ren.

Origin and history

The twenty-four directions are older than the needle. The diviner’s boards of the Han dynasty, found in tombs, already set the branches and the stems, all but Wu and Ji, round a square earth plate, much as the luopan’s ring of mountains does, and Joseph Needham saw in such boards the forerunners of the compass’s dial. Ren stood there beside Zi as it does on every luopan since, the first mountain met when the round of the north begins.

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°: Ren takes every facing from 337.5° up to 352.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Bing. For the Flying Stars, Ren is the first mountain of a cardinal palace, of the group the classics call the Earth 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 2, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences