Yi mountain

Meaning

Yi, 乙 yǐ, is the third mountain of the east (E3): the fifteen degrees from 97.5° to 112.5°, centred on 105°. It takes its name from Yi, the second of the ten Heavenly Stems, yin Wood: one of the eight stems that stand round the compass, while Wu and Ji, the stems of Earth, keep the centre.

Yi carries the image of its stem, the vine, the grass and the flower, growth that bends and finds its way round obstacles. On the compass it closes the east, a little south of due east, up to the line at 112.5° where the south-east begins. A home facing Yi sits in Xin, a little north of west: a Dui house, like every home that faces the east.

For the Flying Stars Yi is the east’s Man dragon and counts as yin, like Mao, so a home facing Yi has Mao’s main chart: both of the period’s stars at the back if it was built in Period 8, at the front if it was built in Period 9. Even its replacement star, 2, is Mao’s; the two part only at the edges, Yi’s upper edge being the line between the east and the south-east.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 97.5° and 112.5° faces Yi, and sits in Xin, W3: a Dui house of the West group. The Home lens tints Yi on its dial and draws Xin dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 97.5° or 112.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 97.5° the line towards Mao, inside the east; at 112.5° the line between the east and the south-east, towards Chen.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Yi has the formation Double stars at the facing; built in Period 8, the formation Double stars at the sitting.
• The year: with its two neighbours Yi holds the Three Killings in some years, such as 2025, 2029 and 2033, which the classics suggest facing rather than having at one’s back. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the east, in 2029 and 2038.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Yi goes with the Clear and Bright, the Sun at 15°, halfway through Aries in the Western zodiac.
• On the Western rose: Yi’s upper edge, 112.5°, is the east-south-east of the 16-point compass, where the luopan passes from Zhen’s palace to Xun’s, from thunder to wind.

Origin and history

Many luopans carry the ring of the twenty-four mountains three times. The Earth plate’s, read by the ‘correct needle’, 正針, is the one the Flying Stars and Ulune use. Tradition gives the other two to famous masters, the Heaven plate, turned half a mountain one way, to Yang Yunsong in the 9th century, and the Man plate, turned half a mountain the other way, to Lai Wenjun in the Song, and the schools read the land’s forms and its waters on them; Joseph Needham saw in their offsets a record of the needle’s declination as it changed over the centuries.

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°: Yi takes every facing from 97.5° up to 112.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Xin. For the Flying Stars, Yi is the third mountain of a cardinal palace, of the group the classics call the Man dragon, and so counts as yin: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star backward. Its replacement star, from the classical verse, is 2, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences