5 and 6 · Authority with weight
The 5 Yellow and the 6 White: earth feeding metal, authority with weight behind it, command in season and rigidity out of it.
Meaning
The centre’s 5 beside Qian’s 6, the emperor’s star and the father’s: two kinds of authority in one palace. Both are dormant in Period 9; the classics read the pairing as a weight that wants a light hand, and ambition kept in proportion.
The 5’s earth feeds the 6’s metal: the classics read authority with weight behind it. In season, command and position; out of season, ambition that overreaches, and authority grown rigid.
In practice
- In a home’s chart: a palace whose mountain star and water star are the 5 and the 6, 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 5 as mountain star, the 6 as water star: the mountain star feeds the water star, as earth feeds metal: the people’s effort goes into what comes in.
- The 6 as mountain star, the 5 as water star: the water star feeds the mountain star, as earth feeds metal: what comes in supports 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 5 Yellow (Lian Zhen) and the 6 White (Wu Qu)
- Their phases: Earth and Metal
- Their trigrams and homes in the Lo Shu: the centre, with no trigram; Qian ☰, in the north-west
- The 5 with the other stars: 1 and 5, 2 and 5, 3 and 5, 4 and 5, 5 and 5, 5 and 7, 5 and 8, 5 and 9
- The 6 with the other stars: 1 and 6, 2 and 6, 3 and 6, 4 and 6, 6 and 6, 6 and 7, 6 and 8, 6 and 9
Related
- 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.
- 6 White starThe sixth of the nine stars, Metal and the trigram Qian, heaven, the father, at home in the north-west: authority, leadership and support from above.
- 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.
- EarthThe phase of the centre and of every turning point: the ground that steadies, nourishes and gathers the other four together.
- 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