Reversed

Meaning

The reversed chart, 上山下水 shàng shān xià shuǐ, is one of the Flying Stars’ formations that Ulune names, a pattern that runs through the whole of a home’s chart: the period’s own number stands as the mountain star in the facing palace, at the front of the home, and as the water star in the sitting palace, at its back.

The classical name, 上山下水 shàng shān xià shuǐ, says it in four words: the water star has climbed the mountain and the mountain star has gone down to the water. Each of the period’s stars stands where the other belongs, the star read for people at the busy front and the star read for activity at the quiet back.

Of the 216 main charts, the twenty-four facings of each of the nine periods, 48 carry this formation, in Periods 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. No main chart of Periods 1 and 9 carries it: in the present Period 9 the period’s stars always meet there in one palace, at the front or at the back.

In practice

• What practitioners suggest: an answer through the surroundings rather than the building, something steady or tall at the front and open space at the back, so that each star finds what it wants where it has landed. Nothing is moved and nothing bought.
• In the Home lens: the chart’s reading names its formations. No home built in Period 9 carries this one; built in Period 8, a home facing Gen, Yin, Chen, Kun, Shen or Xu.
• Near an edge: the replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one for a facing close to the edge of its mountain, has formations of its own, named the same way; it may keep this one or not.

Across traditions

• A reading, not a verdict: the classics never ask anyone to leave a reversed home; their counsel works through what surrounds it, a solid wall or a tall plant before the door, a garden or a window behind, the counsel Ulune repeats.
• The Form School reads the same image in the land, a home with a hill before it and open ground behind sitting the wrong way round in its site; the Flying Stars find that reversal in time rather than in the landscape.

Origin and history

The phrase 上山下水 comes from the Xuan Kong verses, which describe how a period’s stars can land the wrong way round; their answer was never the building but the land around it, the mountains and waters the Form School reads. The school made the reversed chart one of the four basic charts of every period, and the strings of three, which so often come with it, its classic softening.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune casts each home’s chart, then checks it against every formation it knows. For this one the rule is: the period’s own number stands as the mountain star in the facing palace, at the front of the home, and as the water star in the sitting palace, at its back. It is read on the main chart and on the replacement chart alike, each on its own. Ulune’s tests check its formations against charts worked by hand.

An example: a home facing Gen, built in Period 8. The period chart sets 8 in the centre; the mountain star goes to the centre as a 5 and flies forward, the water star as a 2 and flies forward. At the back, in the palace of the south-west, stand mountain star 2 and water star 8; at the front, in the palace of the north-east, mountain star 8 and water star 5.

Correspondences