Shen mountain

Meaning

Shen, 申 shēn, is the third mountain of the south-west (SW3): the fifteen degrees from 232.5° to 247.5°, centred on 240°. It takes its name from Shen, the ninth of the twelve Earthly Branches, the Monkey’s, and carries its phase, Metal.

Shen is the Monkey’s branch, Metal, the late afternoon and the first month of autumn, when the harvest begins and things grow firm. On the compass it closes the south-west, up to the line at 247.5° where the west begins: a Metal mountain in Kun’s palace of Earth, the Earth that feeds Metal in the order of the phases. A home facing Shen looks between south-west and west-south-west and sits in Yin, the Tiger’s mountain: a Gen house.

For the Flying Stars Shen is the south-west’s Man dragon and counts as yang, like Kun, so a home facing Shen has Kun’s main chart: reversed with the parent string and a repeated chart if it was built in Period 8, both of the period’s stars at the back if it was built in Period 9. They part at the edges: Shen’s replacement star is 1 where Kun’s is 2, and its upper edge is the line between the south-west and the west.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 232.5° and 247.5° faces Shen, and sits in Yin, NE3: a Gen house of the West group. The Home lens tints Shen on its dial and draws Yin dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 232.5° or 247.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 232.5° the line towards Kun, inside the south-west; at 247.5° the line between the south-west and the west, towards Geng.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Shen has the formation Double stars at the sitting; built in Period 8, the formations Reversed, Parent string and Repeated chart.
• The year: Shen is the Grand Duke’s mountain in a Monkey year, 2028 and 2040, which the classics suggest not facing for the year’s new beginnings, and the Year Breaker’s in 2022 and 2034, a side they suggest leaving undisturbed by works. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the south-west, in 2028 and 2037.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Shen goes with the End of Heat, the Sun at 150°, entering Virgo in the Western zodiac.
• On the Western rose: Shen’s upper edge, 247.5°, is the west-south-west of the 16-point compass, where the luopan passes from Kun’s palace to Dui’s.

Origin and history

Shen and Yin face each other across the compass, the Monkey and the Tiger, the first months of autumn and of spring, and BaZi calls their meeting a clash, the zodiac’s word for an axis. On the luopan the same line is simply an axis: a home facing Shen sits in Yin and one facing Yin sits in Shen, the two ends of one diameter, and the Flying Stars read their charts as mirror images of each other, both yang, both Man dragons.

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°: Shen takes every facing from 232.5° up to 247.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Yin. For the Flying Stars, Shen is the third mountain of a corner palace, of the group the classics call the Man 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 1, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences