1 and 5 · Earth pressing on water
The 1 White and the 5 Yellow: earth pressing on water, a heavy pairing for plans, a sector the classics ask to keep calm.
Meaning
Kan’s 1 meets the square’s centre: the stream of plans under the strongest star. In Period 9 the 1 is timely and the 5 dormant, so the classics read the 1’s ideas as alive under the weight, and suggest a calm sector with its works left for later.
The 5’s earth presses on the 1’s water: the classics read a heavy pairing for plans and for the people of this sector. In season, which is rare (the 5 is timely only around its own period), weight given to good ideas; out of season, practitioners keep the sector calm and leave works there for later.
In practice
- In a home’s chart: a palace whose mountain star and water star are the 1 and the 5, in either order, holds this pairing; the palace’s reading names it and gives the text above, then how the two phases meet and which face applies.
- The 1 as mountain star, the 5 as water star: the water star checks the mountain star, as earth checks water: what comes in presses on the people of the home.
- The 5 as mountain star, the 1 as water star: the mountain star checks the water star, as earth checks water: the people hold back what flows in, a restraint that can steady or slow.
- In Period 9 (2024–2043), the 1 is in season and the 5 is not: read “in season” for what the 1 speaks for and “out of season” for what the 5 speaks for, the people of the home when a star is the mountain’s, what comes in when it is the water’s.
Correspondences
- The stars: the 1 White (Tan Lang) and the 5 Yellow (Lian Zhen)
- Their phases: Water and Earth
- Their trigrams and homes in the Lo Shu: Kan ☵, in the north; the centre, with no trigram
- The 1 with the other stars: 1 and 1, 1 and 2, 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 6, 1 and 7, 1 and 8, 1 and 9
- The 5 with the other stars: 2 and 5, 3 and 5, 4 and 5, 5 and 5, 5 and 6, 5 and 7, 5 and 8, 5 and 9
Related
- 1 White starThe first of the nine stars, Water and the trigram Kan, at home in the north: study, careers and journeys, and timely again in Period 9.
- 5 Yellow starThe fifth of the nine stars, Earth and the Lo Shu’s own centre, with no trigram or direction: the strongest star, for which the classics ask quiet.
- Pairs of starsThe 45 meetings of a mountain star and a water star in one palace of a Flying Star chart, each with the reading the classics give it, in season and out.
- WaterThe phase of depth, rest and stored strength, of winter and the north: still on the surface, moving underneath, preparing the next spring.
- EarthThe phase of the centre and of every turning point: the ground that steadies, nourishes and gathers the other four together.
- Flying Star chartA home’s chart in the Flying Stars: nine palaces, each with a mountain star, a water star and a period star, cast from the home’s period and facing.
Sources
- Zi Bai Jue (Verse of the Purple and White), Xuan Kong school
- Xuan Kong Mi Zhi (Secret Meaning of the Profound Void), Xuan Kong school
- Fei Xing Fu (Rhapsody of the Flying Stars), Xuan Kong school
- Shen Zhureng, Shen shi Xuankong xue, published after 1906