Star formations

Meaning

A formation is a pattern that runs through the whole of a home’s Flying Star chart rather than one palace. The classics of the Xuan Kong school name many; Ulune names ten, in three groups, and each has its own page.

The first group says where the period’s two stars stand, the mountain star and the water star of the period’s own number. Every main chart has exactly one of the four: Prosperous at sitting and facing, the mountain star at the back and the water star at the front; Reversed, the other way round; Double stars at the facing; and Double stars at the sitting. The second group runs through every palace: the Combination of Ten for the mountain stars and for the water stars, and the two strings of three, the parent string and the pearl string. The third belongs to the 5: when it reaches the centre as the mountain or the water star, the chart either repeats the Lo Shu, the Repeated chart, or turns it round, the Opposed chart.

A formation describes a chart; it is never a verdict on a home. The classics read each with its counsel, and the readings of the nine palaces, each with its pair of stars, stay the heart of the chart.

In practice

• In the Home lens the chart’s reading names its formations, with what the classics read in each; when a chart has none, as a replacement chart can, the reading says that each palace is read on its own.
• The present period: in Period 9 every main chart is one of the two double-star charts, twelve facings each, the prosperous and the reversed charts appearing in no main chart of Periods 1 and 9.
• Near an edge the replacement chart has its own formations, and may have none of the four basic ones, the period’s stars landing elsewhere; Ulune names what each chart has.
• The years on top: the repeated and the opposed charts ask for a little more care when the year’s stars are read over them; the others are read with the palaces as usual.

Across traditions

• The Form School reads in the landscape what the first group reads in time: a mountain behind and water ahead is its ideal site, which the prosperous chart repeats with stars.
• The Lo Shu’s pairs: two numbers across the Lo Shu’s centre always make ten, the balance the Combinations of Ten carry into every palace.
• Chinese divination: the words 伏吟 and 反吟, the repeated and the opposed, come from the divination boards of Qimen Dunjia and Da Liu Ren, where they name a plate on its own places and one set opposite.

Origin and history

The Xuan Kong verses describe their charts by such patterns, and Shen Zhureng’s school, at the turn of the 20th century, set the main ones in order: the four ways the period’s stars can land, the Combinations of Ten, the two strings of three and the 5’s two flights. The schools know others, the Seven Stars’ robbery, 七星打劫 qīxīng dǎjié, and the Castle Gate, 城門訣 chéngmén jué among them, which need more than the chart alone, the land and the doors around a home, and which Ulune does not name.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune casts each home’s chart, the main one and, near an edge, the replacement one, and checks it against the ten rules. The first group compares the period’s number with the mountain and water stars of the sitting and facing palaces; the second adds or orders the three stars of every palace; the third looks at a 5 that reaches the centre and the way it flies, by the home’s own mountain. Over the 216 main charts, every one carries exactly one formation of the first group; the second and third groups appear in a minority of them. Ulune’s tests check the formations against charts worked by hand.

Correspondences