Prosperous at sitting and facing

Meaning

“Prosperous at sitting and facing”, 旺山旺向 wàng shān wàng xiàng, is one of the Flying Stars’ formations that Ulune names, a pattern that runs through the whole of a home’s chart: the period’s own number stands as the mountain star in the sitting palace, at the back of the home, and as the water star in the facing palace, at its front.

The classics read it as the most balanced chart a period offers. The period’s mountain star stands where a mountain belongs, behind the home, and its water star where water belongs, before it: the people of the home are supported, and what comes in has room to arrive.

Of the 216 main charts, the twenty-four facings of each of the nine periods, 48 carry this formation, in Periods 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. No main chart of Periods 1 and 9 carries it: in the present Period 9 the period’s stars always meet there in one palace, at the front or at the back.

In practice

• What practitioners suggest: little more than keeping things as the chart wants them, a steady, quiet back and an open front, with the door and the lively rooms on the facing side.
• In the Home lens: the chart’s reading names its formations. No home built in Period 9 carries this one; built in Period 8, a home facing Chou, Xun, Si, Wei, Qian or Hai.
• Near an edge: the replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one for a facing close to the edge of its mountain, has formations of its own, named the same way; it may keep this one or not.

Across traditions

• The Form School’s ideal: the same arrangement in the landscape, a mountain behind and water before, is the classical site of the Book of Burial’s tradition, the Black Tortoise at the back and the Vermilion Bird in front; the prosperous chart is its image in time.
• An armchair: modern books often compare that site to an armchair, a back to lean on and an open seat before it, the picture this chart draws with its stars.

Origin and history

旺山旺向, wàng shān wàng xiàng, the mountain prosperous and the facing prosperous, is the classical phrase. The Xuan Kong school took the Form School’s oldest picture of a good site and made it a matter of time: the same facing gives it in some periods and not in others, which is why a home’s period counts as much as its direction. The school’s manuals set out the charts of every period and facing, and readers look for this one first.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune casts each home’s chart, then checks it against every formation it knows. For this one the rule is: the period’s own number stands as the mountain star in the sitting palace, at the back of the home, and as the water star in the facing palace, at its front. It is read on the main chart and on the replacement chart alike, each on its own. Ulune’s tests check its formations against charts worked by hand.

An example: a home facing Chou, built in Period 8. The period chart sets 8 in the centre; the mountain star goes to the centre as a 5 and flies backward, the water star as a 2 and flies backward. At the back, in the palace of the south-west, stand mountain star 8 and water star 5; at the front, in the palace of the north-east, mountain star 2 and water star 8.

Correspondences