3 and 5 · Wood against the 5
The 3 Jade and the 5 Yellow: wood against the 5’s earth, strain on money and plans, a sector to keep calm and decisions weighed twice.
Meaning
Zhen’s thunder beside the square’s centre: the eldest son’s drive against the strongest star. Both are dormant in Period 9, and the classics’ counsel is the quiet one: a calm sector, and big decisions weighed twice.
The 3’s wood against the 5’s earth: the classics read strain on money and plans, and disputes over them. In season, effort that shapes something large; out of season, a sector to keep calm, with big decisions weighed twice.
In practice
- In a home’s chart: a palace whose mountain star and water star are the 3 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 3 as mountain star, the 5 as water star: the mountain star checks the water star, as wood checks earth: the people hold back what flows in, a restraint that can steady or slow.
- The 5 as mountain star, the 3 as water star: the water star checks the mountain star, as wood checks earth: what comes in presses on the people of the home.
- In Period 9 (2024–2043), neither star is in season: read “out of season”, whichever is the mountain star.
Correspondences
- The stars: the 3 Jade (Lu Cun) and the 5 Yellow (Lian Zhen)
- Their phases: Wood and Earth
- Their trigrams and homes in the Lo Shu: Zhen ☳, in the east; the centre, with no trigram
- The 3 with the other stars: 1 and 3, 2 and 3, 3 and 3, 3 and 4, 3 and 6, 3 and 7, 3 and 8, 3 and 9
- The 5 with the other stars: 1 and 5, 2 and 5, 4 and 5, 5 and 5, 5 and 6, 5 and 7, 5 and 8, 5 and 9
Related
- 3 Jade starThe third of the nine stars, Wood and the trigram Zhen, thunder, at home in the east: drive and initiative, read with patience out of season.
- 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.
- WoodThe phase of growth and beginnings, of spring and the east: what pushes upwards and outwards towards the light.
- 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