Applications of the Sexagenary Cycle: #2

Flying Stars are mostly used to determine the “Qi” (氣). Qi literally means air or airflow in Chinese, but that’s not the true meaning of Qi. The true meaning of Qi is the influences that the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) may have on earth. In scientific terms, it could be electromagnetic field, gravitational field, or other undiscovered matters. However, Qi and the Flying Stars are not equal. We will talk about it in due course.


China metaphysics describes properties of things on Earth in five major categories as it is believed that they are the direct influences of the different Qi’s mentioned above. They are, in English terms, Water (水), Fire (火), Wood (木), Metal (金), Earth (土), but are referred as Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Earth respectively. In general, they are called “Wu-xing” (五行).


It occurs to me that most people translate the word “Wu-xing” as Five Elements in English. It is perhaps due to the fact that there are similar terms in Western metaphysics, like Water, Fire, Air and Earth, which are knows as Four Elements. However, those are the things which every creatures in the Earth depends upon, things that you can feel, and things that are tangible. As such, I disagree to use Five Elements to represent “Wu-xing”. I’d rather just called them “Wu-xing”.


Application #2: Finding Life Trigram of the Birth Year


Other than the adoption of Sexagenary Cycle into “Luo-shu”, the integration of Acquired Ba-gua (as differs from the Congenital Ba-gua) and “Luo-shu” is equally fascinating. According to the description in “Shuo-gua” of “Zhou-yi” (《周易．說卦》) , we can derive the following chart and consider “Kan” (坎☵) in grid #1 as North and Winter, then we will have “Zhen” (震☳) in grid #3 as East and Spring, “Li” (離☲) in grid #9 as South and Summer, and “Dui” (兌☱) in grid #7 as West and Autumn.


Now that we have both charts, we can easily find out where the year is and hence which trigram it belongs to. We will be using the year of 2008 as an example to demonstrate.


Since 2637BCE is the first year of launching the recording system, then it must be the first year of Jia-zi. For every 180 years (Least Common Multiplication of both 9 and 60), the Jia-zi will be returning to the original grid, which is grid #1 for “Kan”, and be starting all over again. Among this 180 years, the Sexagenary Cycle will repeat 3 times. We defined as First Cycle (上元), Second Cycle (中元), and the Third Cycle (下元), or people generally refer as “San-yuan” (三元, or The Great Cycle).


To find out which Cycle the year 2008 belongs to, we need to first find out the number of years (both year inclusive) since the first Jia-zi.


NY = Y – N0 where Y is the current year and N0 = -2637
N2008 = 2008 – (-2637) = 4645


Then divided N2008 by 180, take the next integer, resulting as 26, which mean the year 2008 is in the 26th Great Cycle, or 145 years after the 25th Great Cycle, or 25 years after the first two Cycles in the 26th Great Cycle. Since the Third Cycle must be started with Jia-zi in “Dui” of grid #7, then the 25th year must be Wu-zi (戊子) in “Kan” of grid #1. Thus, the dominating Flying Star for the year 2008 is also 1. For male born in the year 2008, their Life Trigram is referred as “Kan”.


You may say, “Wow, that’s fascinating, but is there any easier way to find out the Life Trigram?” Oh yes, I almost forgot, always the easy way. Tend not to think, aren’t you?


In fact, there is. People use to add all the digits in a number till it gives out only single digit, then subtracted from 11 and further divided by 9, take the remainder. The result of which will then give you the grid number and hence the Life Trigram. For male born in 2008 as an example, the remainder is 1, and therefore the Life Trigram is “Kan”.


2 + 0 + 0 + 8 = 10
1 + 0 =1
11 – 1 = 10
10 ≡ 1 (mod 9)


Most of the people know how it works, but do not know why it works. Only the mathematician will know why, because it is based upon Chinese Remainder Theorem.


1000x + 100y + 10z + w ≡ x + y + z + w (mod9)


Or, we can modify the above equation with the consideration of both (1) 4CE is also Jia-zi and (2) to satisfy each of the Cycle in the Great Cycle as follow:


X + y + z + w – 4 ≡ 7 – p (mod9)


Hence, 11 – (x + y + z + w) ≡ p (mod9)


Question: how about for female?