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?
Friday, October 17, 2008
Applications of the Sexagenary Cycle: #2
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8 comments:
Isn't this like calculating your gua number?
yes, this is the Gua number which most of the western people referring to. 8 Mansions folks are still using it to determine the Life Trigram.
Why do we relate the starting point (Jia Zi) to the start of the recording system (2637BCE)? Doesnt Jia Zi relate to the qi at a particular time?
Thank you for your question, Anonymous. As Jia is the first of the Stems whereas Zi is the first of the Branches, that makes Jia-Zi becomes the first of the Sexagenary Cycle. Ancient Chinese calendar was based upon epoch, a greater cycle of all the related astronomical phenomenon so to speak, Sexagenary Cycle was built to record time and was part of the phenomenon (though not astronomically). Ancient Chinese astronomers imagined Jia-Zi year, Jia-Zi Month, Jia-Zi Day and Jia-Zi hour as the start of the alignment of planets. Winter Solstice is considered to be the moment where Yang starts to grow, and hence was picked to use it as reference point of time in calculating an astronomical calendar. 2637BCE may not be having alignment of planets but was the start of launching the ever first calendar.
Hi Jack. Thanks for the response.
It sounds like JiaZi is conveniently assigned to a 'start date'. Having Winter Solstice as a starting point is reasonably sound.
The question now is the validity of the application using the calendar such as for date selection based on JiaZi interactions. If JiaZi is arbitrarily assigned to a start date, then how well can we convinced ourselves on the particular prevailing qi of a particular day/time used for date selection.
And this leads to the calculation of life trigram. Do you know when is the first 'trigram' assigned? Again based on a convenient date? And how valid is life trigram?
Hope that you could enlighten.
Regards,
Guesto
Guesto, Blogger seems not respond fast enough, saw your feedback/question in the alert email, but could find it on Blogger. Anyway, hope you can read this in time.
To answer you question in short: no, it is not. A bit more details as follow:
It's a yes and no answer to your question of choosing Jia-Zi as the beginning of the the Sexagenary Cycle. Yes, it looks conveniently assigned, but looks, why people called January the first month and so forth in Gregorian Calendar at the first place. No, it's not arbitrary, cause it related to the WuXing and thus the strengths and weakness of Qi's per different seasons. Because the positions of planets at a given time is differnt than the other, and so does the Qi's. The Qi's is nothing but the energies, the fields from the planets on earth.
Hope I didn't open up another can of worms here cause the question can be traced all the way to why the universe. The WuXing properties of Stems and Branches can be found in my blog.
Bazi is only one of the tools of human attempts in fate analysis. Rules we use in analyzing Bazi is just a deduction from thousands of counts. Don't feel surprise when you find discrepancy from time to time. Bazi offers a quick overview in one's fate and sometimes to great details. I would suggest to diagnose together with Natal Chart as in western astrology. And, this is where I am heading.
Life trigram is just one of the application in Acquired BaGua. You need to understand why and how Acquired BaGua is constructed before you can fully understand how to determine the Life Trigram. It is just a straight and simple application of Calenar and Acquire BaGua togehter with Yin-Yang theory.
Hi Jack,
Thanks for the response and sorry for the late response from my side. I might not have enough knowledge to deduce the start of the JiaZi and start of the Life Trigram.
Regards,
Guesto
Dear Guesto,
This is perfectly alright. I didn't understand in my first approach neither. Even though there is complication in calendrical calculation, just consider the sexagenary cycle as January, February, etc. It will be clear as you move further into Chinese Metaphysics.
Regards,
Jack
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