What is the Xun Kong star?

The ancients counted years with Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. Pair ten stems with twelve branches and, in each round, two branches are always left over with no stem to match. Those two "left out" branches are Xun Kong (Void of the Cycle), also called Xun Zhong Kong Wang. In the palace Xun Kong lands in, things often look present but feel hollow when you pick them up, and need one more step before they count. You can see which palace your Xun Kong is in once you draw your chart.

What kind of star is Xun Kong

Xun Kong is one of the void stars and belongs to the minor stars. Xingge reads it as: that palace's affairs are less solid and need one more step to make them real. It doesn't announce anything bad; it's more like a sticky note that says "remember to confirm."

How Xun Kong is placed: which cycle your birth year falls in

The sixty stem-branch pairs are grouped in tens, each group called a "xun" and each starting with a Jia year. The verse for placing Xun Zhong Kong Wang in volume two of the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu (The Complete Book of Zi Wei Dou Shu):

In the Jia Zi cycle, Xu and Hai are void; in the Jia Yin cycle, Zi and Chou; in the Jia Chen cycle, Yin and Mao; in the Jia Wu cycle, Chen and Si; in the Jia Shen cycle, Wu and Wei; in the Jia Xu cycle, Shen and You.

To find yours, count back from your birth year to the nearest year starting with "Jia." That is your cycle. For a Geng Wu year, for example, count back through Ji Si, Wu Chen and on to Jia Zi: it belongs to the Jia Zi cycle, and Xun Kong is in Xu and Hai.

Why the chart marks only one cell

The verse gives two palaces, but Xingge's chart marks "Xun Kong" in only one of them: the one with the same yin or yang as your birth-year branch. Zi, Yin, Chen, Wu, Shen and Xu are yang; the rest are yin. In a Geng Wu year, Wu is yang, so it's marked in Xu. Wang Tingzhi of the Zhongzhou school divides the two palaces into the "true void" and the "side void," with the true void counting most and the side void having very little force; Ling Donglai also holds that only the true void should be read. Some teachers, though, count both palaces, so check which approach another chart uses before reading it.

What the classics say, and how to read it today

The opening line of the chapter on the essentials of the stars in volume three of the Quan Shu:

In reading the Body and Life Palaces, it matters most that Lu and Ma do not fall into a void: Tian Kong and Jie Kong are the most pressing, Xun Kong next.

When the ancients read a chart, they first checked whether Lu Cun and Tian Ma had fallen into a void; among the kinds of void, Jie Kong weighs more than Xun Kong. The "Tian Kong" in this line is the hour-based one, today's Di Kong. Volume two, discussing Hua Ke, also says "it dislikes only Jie Lu Kong Wang and Xun Kong, and fears Tian Kong too": a good name in study and exams also fears meeting these kinds of void.

Read for today, Xun Kong is more like "a discount": things aren't unachievable, but they take one more round of paperwork, or the result comes out a little smaller than expected.

Xun Kong in key palaces

• Life Palace: you take many things lightly, and your ideas sometimes don't match reality. Set yourself concrete goals rather than only a direction.
• Spouse Palace: relationships can have gaps where you "thought it was agreed." Spell out important agreements, and say them twice; that's more reliable than unspoken understanding.
• Wealth Palace: income can be a little hollow at times, so confirm that agreed payments actually arrive. Save a portion first, then talk about spending.
• Career Palace: plans tend to change at short notice, so leave buffer in projects. Keep a record of what you deliver, not just word of mouth.
• Fortune Palace: your mind leans toward the spiritual and tends to think a lot and grasp less; regular habits help it settle.

Reading Xun Kong with Lu and Ma, transformations and luck periods

• Lu Cun or Hua Lu falling into Xun Kong: the ancients called it Lu meeting Xun Kong. Benefits take one more step to land in your pocket; the Lu Feng Xun Kong page has the full conditions.
• Tian Ma falling into Xun Kong: running around sometimes comes to nothing, so confirm once before setting out. See Ma Feng Xun Kong.
• Challenging stars falling into Xun Kong: the Xing Xing Fu in volume one of the Quan Shu says "a killing star fallen into a void has no power at all." When a challenging star meets a void, its drive shrinks too, which isn't all bad.
• Sharing a palace with Jie Kong: when Xingge judges chart patterns, Jie Kong takes precedence, because the ancients considered it the heavier of the two.

When the Decade Luck or Annual Luck enters the Xun Kong palace, practitioners often read it as a time to put commitments in writing.

Xun Kong is not the void of Bazi

Bazi also has a void, usually reckoned from the cycle of the day pillar (the San Ming Tong Hui, a Ming-dynasty classic of Bazi, says "the void in the cycle of the birth day is most pressing," and some charts also list one for the year pillar); what falls void there is a branch in the natal pillars. Zi Wei Dou Shu's Xun Kong goes by the birth year, and what falls void is a palace on the chart. The two share a name but work differently, so don't mix them up when reading. To see the Bazi version, try the Bazi chart tool.

Also on the chart are Jie Lu, Kong Wang (together they make Jie Kong), Tian Kong, and Di Kong among the Six Malefic Stars. All of these are different stars.