Xun mountain

Meaning

Xun, 巽 xùn, is the middle mountain of the south-east (SE2): the fifteen degrees from 127.5° to 142.5°, centred on 135°, the exact south-east. It takes its name from the trigram Xun ☴, the Wind, which holds the whole south-east in the Later Heaven order: these are its middle fifteen degrees, the corner itself.

Xun is the south-east itself, 135°, the middle of the corner, named after the trigram of the wind, gentle and penetrating, which enters everywhere a little at a time. Its trigram holds the whole south-east in the Later Heaven order, and the mountain is its heart, between the Dragon’s Chen and the Snake’s Si. A home facing Xun looks due south-east and sits in Qian, the north-west: a Qian house, heaven at its back and the wind ahead.

For the Flying Stars Xun is the south-east’s Heaven dragon and counts as yang, like Si beside it, so the two share their main chart. Built in Period 8, a home facing Xun had the prosperous chart, the period’s stars where the classics want them; built in Period 9, it has both of the period’s stars at the back, with the Combination of Ten for the mountain stars. The prosperous chart comes to it in Periods 2 and 8, and the reversed one, softened by the pearl string, in Periods 3, 5 and 7.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 127.5° and 142.5° faces Xun, and sits in Qian, NW2: a Qian house of the West group. The Home lens tints Xun on its dial and draws Qian dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 127.5° or 142.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 127.5° the line towards Chen, inside the south-east; at 142.5° the line towards Si, inside the south-east.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Xun has the formations Double stars at the sitting and Combination of Ten, mountain; built in Period 8, the formation Prosperous at sitting and facing.
• The year: Xun is never the Grand Duke’s mountain nor the Year Breaker’s, which are branches, nor one of the Three Killings, which fall in the four cardinal directions. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the south-east, in 2030 and 2039.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Xun goes with the Start of Summer, the Sun at 45°, halfway through Taurus in the Western zodiac.
• The door of earth: Chinese cosmology calls the south-east the door of earth, 地戶, and the north-west the gate of heaven, 天門; the luopan sets Xun and Qian at the two ends of that axis.
• Winds of two traditions: on the Mediterranean rose the south-east is the scirocco, the warm wind from the deserts; in Vastu Shastra it belongs to Agni, fire, and holds the kitchen, where Feng Shui sets Wood and the wind.

Origin and history

The Shuo Gua sets Xun at the south-east and says that there all things are made even and complete, 齊乎巽. China’s seasons give the words a physical sense: the summer monsoon, warm and wet, comes from the south-east, and the dry winter monsoon from the north-west, the two ends of the Xun–Qian axis, and the traditional houses of northern China opened to the south and south-east and closed their backs to the north-west. On the ring of terms Xun carries the start of summer.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the mountain a home faces from its magnetic facing, among 24 mountains of 15° counted from Ren at 337.5°: Xun takes every facing from 127.5° up to 142.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Qian. For the Flying Stars, Xun is the middle mountain of a corner palace, of the group the classics call the Heaven dragon, and so counts as yang: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star forward. Its replacement star, from the classical verse, is 6, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences