A first look at Flying Stars and self-transformation

Where palace stems come from

Besides its fixed branch, each of the twelve cells on the chart is assigned a heavenly stem, called the palace stem. Palace stems are derived from the stem of your birth year and assigned in order starting from the Yin cell, a method the ancients called the "Five Tigers". Volume two of the *Quan Shu* uses it to set the Five Elements Bureau: "in Jia and Ji years, Bing comes first", so for people born in Jia or Ji years, the Yin cell is Bing Yin, the Mao cell is Ding Mao, and so on.

So people born in Jia and Ji years have exactly the same palace stems in all twelve cells; Yi and Geng, Bing and Xin, Ding and Ren, and Wu and Gui each form a pair too. Palace stems have nothing to do with your birthday or hour; what differs is which cell your Life Palace falls in.

Flying Stars aren't in the Quan Shu

The *Quan Shu* uses palace stems to calculate the Five Elements Bureau and locate Zi Wei. Using palace stems to look up transformations and see where they "fly" is a reading developed later by the Flying Star school, which has become especially popular in Taiwan over the past few decades. Xingge puts it in the last lesson of this introduction, as an extra magnifying glass.

Flying Stars: where a cell's thoughts flow

Birth-year transformations come from the stem of your birth year; Flying Stars use each cell's own stem instead. Take a cell's palace stem, look it up in the transformation table to get four stars, then see which cell each of those stars sits in: that cell is said to "fly Hua Lu, Hua Quan, Hua Ke and Hua Ji" into those cells.

The core of the reading: when cell A flies a transformation into cell B, cell A's thoughts, resources and worries flow toward cell B.

• Life Palace flies Hua Lu into the Wealth Palace: your enthusiasm and good luck often flow toward making money.
• Spouse Palace flies Hua Ji into the Career Palace: in love you often worry about your partner's work, or love affects your pace at work.
• Career Palace flies Hua Quan into the Life Palace: work pushes you to grow and gives you more conviction.

Work one out yourself

Say you were born in a Jia year with your Life Palace in Chen. Jia years start from Bing Yin: Yin is Bing, Mao is Ding, Chen is Wu, so your Life Palace's stem is Wu. Look it up: in Wu, it's Tan Lang Hua Lu, Tai Yin Hua Quan, You Bi Hua Ke and Tian Ji Hua Ji.

Then look on the chart: whichever cell Tian Ji sits in, your Life Palace flies Hua Ji into that cell. If Tian Ji is in the Career Palace, read it as: what you can't let go of is often tied up with work. Xingge's "Where your Life Palace's heart flies" card does this step for you.

Self-transformation: circling back on itself

If the star a cell's palace stem transforms sits right in that cell, it's called self-transformation. Practitioners often read it as "comes fast, goes fast":

• Self Hua Lu: gains come fast and go fast. When things go well, set something aside.
• Self Hua Quan: you want to call the shots here, and can easily push too hard all at once.
• Self Hua Ke: appearances and reputation matter here. Recognition comes quickly; make sure you can live up to it.
• Self Hua Ji: you're often at odds with yourself here. When you want to let go, you really can.

This describes a palace's own stem transforming a star in that palace, which some teachers call "outward self-transformation". Another school also looks at "inward self-transformation": the opposite palace's stem transforms a star sitting in this palace, read as outside forces pushing into the cell. Both are in use; Xingge's chart only marks the first kind.

Keeping it in proportion as a beginner

The Flying Star school most often uses flying Lu and flying Ji, with the saying "Lu follows Ji": Lu is where a connection begins, Ji is where it finally settles, where you can't let go. As a beginner, these two are enough.

Flying Star details vary a lot between schools, and it's easy to get more and more tangled the more you read. Xingge suggests this order: first understand the main stars and the birth-year transformations, then use Flying Stars to add one line, "where this cell's thoughts flow".