Yan Nian · Harmony

Meaning

Yan Nian, 延年 yánnián, the lasting years, is the third of the eight mansions: for each Kua, the direction of relationships, family and steady bonds. The tradition suggests it for a place where people meet, talk or share a meal, a dining table, a sofa, a corner where friends sit, and, after Tian Yi, for the head of a bed.

Its name means to lengthen the years, and the tradition reads in it what makes time with others last: patience, warmth, the ease of a long friendship. Ulune calls it Harmony. Its gift is the meeting of different people; its difficulty is only that harmony asks for both sides, and a table set in the right direction does the inviting, not the talking.

Of the four supportive mansions, Yan Nian is the one whose trigram differs from the person’s in all three lines: it is the trigram’s complement, its every yang line yin and every yin line yang. Kan ☵ and Li ☲, Kun ☷ and Qian ☰, Zhen ☳ and Xun ☴, Gen ☶ and Dui ☱ are such pairs, and so Kua 1 and 9, 2 and 6, 3 and 4, 7 and 8 are each other’s Harmony. The same couples face each other across the circle in the Early Heaven arrangement of the trigrams.

In practice

• A shared table: the tradition suggests Yan Nian for where you meet, talk or share a meal; a Kua 1 might sit facing the south, a Kua 2 the north-west.
• For sleep: the head of the bed towards Yan Nian, your Harmony, is the tradition’s other suggestion beside Tian Yi.
• Two people: two Kua that are each other’s Harmony, such as 1 and 9, find the other’s trigram in their Yan Nian; the Relationship lens shows such directions supportive for both.
• The home: the Home lens says when a home’s front faces your Harmony direction, as a home facing south does for a Kua 1, whose back then sits in its Stability.
• The years: the Cycles lens shows the year’s stars over your Harmony, and when an affliction asks that side to rest for a while.

Across traditions

• In the Flying Stars Wu Qu, the star the Ba Zhai Ming Jing gives Yan Nian, is the classical name of the 6 White, the star of authority and support from above; the same name, a different role.
• In Western astrology partners and lasting bonds belong to the seventh house and to Venus; they are read in the sky at birth, Yan Nian in the compass of the rooms one lives in.
• In the Book of Changes the complementary trigrams that Yan Nian joins make, set one above the other, some of its most balanced hexagrams: water over fire is Ji Ji, “after completion”, thunder over wind Heng, constancy.

Origin and history

The Ba Zhai Ming Jing, the Qing-dynasty manual of the Eight Mansions, sets Yan Nian third in its table and gives it the star Wu Qu. In the classical method that finds the mansions by changing the trigram’s lines one at a time, Yan Nian comes on the third change, once the top, the middle and the bottom lines have all turned: the trigram turned inside out.

That the complementary trigrams should be each other’s harmony echoes the Early Heaven arrangement, which Shao Yong and the Song scholars traced to Fu Xi, where each trigram faces its complement across the circle, heaven facing earth, fire facing water. The Eight Mansions read the same pairs on the Later Heaven compass, where they stand elsewhere.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads Yan Nian from the classical table of the Eight Mansions, the third of each Kua’s eight directions. The table follows the line rule exactly: Yan Nian is the direction whose trigram differs from the Kua’s own in all three lines, and Ulune’s tests check that the table reads the same both ways and keeps each Kua’s four supportive directions in its own group.

Correspondences