Pairs of stars

Meaning

In every palace of a Flying Star chart a mountain star and a water star stand side by side, and the classics read them together, as a pair. Nine stars make 81 ordered pairs, which come down to 45 pairings once the order is set aside: nine of a star with itself, such as the 9 twice, and thirty-six of two different stars, such as the 1 and the 4. Each has its own page.

The classics read a pairing through what the two stars are: their phases, which feed, check or match each other, their trigrams, which make them members of one family, the father and the eldest son, the mother and the youngest, and the patterns they make, the He Tu’s four pairs, 1 and 6, 2 and 7, 3 and 8, 4 and 9, and the four that add up to ten across the Lo Shu. Some pairings carry classical names from the school’s verses: the scholar’s pairing of the 1 and the 4, the fighting bull of the 2 and the 3, the crossed swords of the 6 and the 7, fire at heaven’s gate of the 6 and the 9.

Every pairing has two faces, the one the classics give it in season and the one out of season, and which applies depends on the two stars’ states in the present period. Ulune says which, palace by palace, and keeps the school’s tone: counsel about how to use a room, never a threat, nothing to buy.

In practice

• In the Home lens: each palace’s reading names its pairing, gives its text, then how the two phases meet in that order, mountain star first, and which face Period 9 reads.
• Which face: when both stars are timely, the classics read the pairing in season; when neither is, out of season; when one is, in season for what that star speaks for and out of season for the other, the mountain star speaking for the people of the home and the water star for what comes in.
• The rooms: when you have placed rooms in the palaces, the reading names the room beside the pairing, and practitioners match lively rooms to lively pairings and quiet rooms to the pairings that ask for calm.
• The quietest pairings: the 2 with the 5 and the 5 with itself are the ones the classics ask the most quiet for, no works and no clutter, a counsel that passes with the periods.

Across traditions

• The hexagrams: two trigrams set one above the other make a hexagram of the Book of Changes, and some pairings carry one: the 1 and the 9, water over fire, Ji Ji, after completion; the 3 and the 4, Heng, constancy; the 7 and the 8, Xian, attraction.
• Western astrology reads two planets in aspect as one conversation, a trine or a square between their natures; the Flying Stars read two numbers in one palace in the same way, through their phases.
• The He Tu, the River Chart, pairs the numbers by five, 1 with 6 and 4 with 9, as the Lo Shu pairs them by ten across its centre; both kinds of pair are among the classics’ favourites.

Origin and history

The Xuan Kong school’s verses read the stars almost always in pairs. The Zi Bai Jue, the Verse of Purple and White, the Xuan Kong Mi Zhi and the Fei Xing Fu name their meetings in images, the four and the one in one palace, the two and the five joined, the seven and the nine crossing paths, and Shen Zhureng’s school gathered them into readings for each pairing in each season. Ulune’s texts are written in its own words from that tradition, and its tests hold them to the school’s gentleness.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes each palace’s mountain star and water star and finds their pairing, the smaller number first. It reads how the two phases meet in that palace’s order, the mountain star’s phase against the water star’s: the same phase, the mountain star feeding or checking the water star, or the water star feeding or checking the mountain star. Then it finds each star’s state in the present period, timely for the period’s own star and the two after it, waning for the one before, dormant otherwise, and says which face of the text applies. The pairing of the 2 and the 5 gives its counsel alone, whatever the states.

Correspondences