Storehouse stage

Meaning

The Storehouse is the ninth of the twelve life stages, after the Rest. The phase is gathered in here like grain in a granary: no longer at work in the field, but kept, whole, for later. The classics call the stage 墓 mù, “Tomb”, after the human life their names follow, and also 庫 kù, the storehouse; the Ziping Zhenquan explains it as nature’s gathering-in of what it has made. The name tells how strong the phase is in this branch, never an event: Ulune calls the stage the Storehouse.

The tradition reads reserve, thrift and a gift for keeping what matters. A Day Master at its Storehouse stage in a pillar’s branch holds its strength in reserve there rather than spending it: careful with resources, loyal to what it values, able to keep a secret and to save for a purpose. What is stored is not lost; it waits to be used.

Its difficulty is a granary that never opens: holding on for its own sake, a reserve that becomes closedness. The tradition values the moment the store is put to use, and many teachers read a clash with the storehouse branch as just that, the doors opened.

In practice

• For each Day Master: Jia is stored in Wei, Bing and Wu in Xu, Geng in Chou and Ren in Chen; Yi in Xu, Ding and Ji in Chou, Xin in Chen and Gui in Wei.
• The four storehouses: every Storehouse is an Earth branch, the month that closes a season. For the yang stems each holds its phase as a residual qi: Wei keeps a little Wood (Yi), Xu a little Fire (Ding), Chou a little Metal (Xin) and Chen a little Water (Gui), which is why the tradition calls them the storehouses of Wood, Fire, Metal and Water.
• The trine and the Canopy: a yang stem’s Storehouse is the last branch of its phase’s three harmonies, Wei for Wood, and the Canopy of that trine, the star of solitude and the spirit.
• Clashes: Chen and Xu clash, and so do Chou and Wei; Ulune’s readings call such a clash two storehouses opened, Earth meeting Earth.
• Before and after: the Storehouse follows the Rest and leads to the Pause; across the wheel, in the clashing branch, stands its Crown.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the stage keeps its classical name, bo, myo and Mộ, read as a phase’s strength.
• In Western astrology the nearest idea is the second house, of what a person owns and keeps; but it is a place of the chart, not a moment of a cycle, and the two are best read side by side.

Origin and history

The Huainanzi, in 139 BC, already ends each phase’s course in an Earth branch: Wood in Wei, Fire in Xu, Metal in Chou and Water in Chen, the third branch of each trine. The Zi Ping school’s books of the Song and Ming dynasties, the Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui, call that end the tomb and the storehouse, and read the four Earth branches as the storehouses of the other four phases. The Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, explains the name as nature gathering in, and gives a chapter to a popular saying, that what is stored must be clashed open before it can serve, which it examines and qualifies. Ulune’s readings first described the stage as grain in the granary; part 20 of its languages plan made Storehouse its name and kept 墓 mù with its meaning in the stage’s reading and on this page.

How Ulune calculates it

The Storehouse is stage 8 of the count, eight branches from the Birth: forward for a yang stem, so Jia, born in Hai, is stored in Wei; backward for a yin stem, so Yi, born in Wu, is stored in Xu. Earth follows Fire, Wu stored in Xu with Bing and Ji in Chou with Ding; schools that count the yin stems otherwise give them their yang twin’s storehouse instead. The board shows the stage under each pillar whose branch it is, and the full table in the luck pillar and the year too; the Canopy is found from its own table, by the trine of the year and day branches.

Correspondences