4 and 7 · Speech and letters
The 4 Green and the 7 Red: metal checking wood, two daughters of the home, speech against letters, charm with an edge.
Meaning
Xun and Dui, the eldest and the youngest daughters, wind and the lake: wind over the lake is the hexagram Zhong Fu, inner truth, a sincerity that carries. Both stars are dormant in Period 9, so kind words are the counsel.
The 7’s metal checks the 4’s wood: two daughters of the home, speech against letters. The classics read charm with an edge. In season, persuasion and gains from writing and speaking; out of season, sharp words, and romance caught up in gossip.
In practice
- In a home’s chart: a palace whose mountain star and water star are the 4 and the 7, 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 4 as mountain star, the 7 as water star: the water star checks the mountain star, as metal checks wood: what comes in presses on the people of the home.
- The 7 as mountain star, the 4 as water star: the mountain star checks the water star, as metal checks wood: the people hold back what flows in, a restraint that can steady or slow.
- In Period 9 (2024–2043), neither star is in season: read “out of season”, whichever is the mountain star.
Correspondences
- The stars: the 4 Green (Wen Qu) and the 7 Red (Po Jun)
- Their phases: Wood and Metal
- Their trigrams and homes in the Lo Shu: Xun ☴, in the south-east; Dui ☱, in the west
- The 4 with the other stars: 1 and 4, 2 and 4, 3 and 4, 4 and 4, 4 and 5, 4 and 6, 4 and 8, 4 and 9
- The 7 with the other stars: 1 and 7, 2 and 7, 3 and 7, 5 and 7, 6 and 7, 7 and 7, 7 and 8, 7 and 9
Related
- 4 Green starThe fourth of the nine stars, Wood and the trigram Xun, the wind, at home in the south-east: letters, study and the arts.
- 7 Red starThe seventh of the nine stars, Metal and the trigram Dui, the lake, at home in the west: speech, charm and pleasure, read with care out of season.
- 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.
- MetalThe phase of gathering in and giving form, of autumn and the west: the harvest, the clear line, the edge that decides.
- 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