When a Chart Fits a Pattern

These six sentences are a grading table, and the first grade has three layers of conditions: first the chart must 'fit a pattern', its combination matching a named one; then the Life Palace's main star must be Miao or Wang and gather lucky stars; finally Hua Ke, Hua Quan or Hua Lu must guard it. Only with all three layers is it the highest grade. Essentials of Reading the Stars uses the same framework to sort highest, next, middle and lowest, except that it does not mention patterns; here 'fitting a pattern' comes first. On a Xingge chart, the pattern names appear in the chart reading, and each star's brightness and transformations are shown with it. Reading all three together is exactly what the lesson on patterns keeps saying: a pattern's name is only the starting point.

The second grade: the chart fits a pattern but the star is not in its temple, and lucky stars and Ke, Quan and Lu hold it up. This line shows how the Quan Shu weighs things: transformations and lucky stars can make up for weak brightness, so 'not in the temple, with lucky stars and good transformations' still ranks in the upper grade, one step down. A common example in practice: the pattern forms, the main star's brightness is only Ping or De, but the Life Palace or its three palaces hold Zuo Fu and You Bi, Wen Chang and Wen Qu, or Tian Kui and Tian Yue, or the birth year's transformations land in the San Fang Si Zheng.

The third grade: the chart fits a pattern, the star is not in its temple, and there are no lucky stars; it is merely ordinary. Set beside the previous line, the only difference is whether lucky stars are added, and the result drops from the upper grade to ordinary. That tells the reader outright that the name of a pattern adds very little: without brightness and without lucky stars, fitting a pattern is much the same as not fitting one. The familiar online claim 'I have such-and-such pattern, so my chart is good' is corrected by this one line.

The fourth grade: the star is in its temple but has no lucky stars, rated 「平等」, middling, roughly the same level as the 'ordinary chart' of the previous line. What is worth noticing is that even in the temple without lucky stars, the chart is only middling: good brightness means the star's own nature can come through, but for great things the ancients still required lucky stars to assist it. This follows the same thinking as the Tai Wei Fu's 「紫微天府全依輔弼之功」, Zi Wei and Tian Fu rely wholly on the work of Zuo Fu and You Bi (see the original): however strong the main star, it needs helpers.

This is the most useful line in the chapter: a star in a Xian position with malefic stars and Hua Ji is the lowest grade, 「不以入格而論」, and the pattern is simply void. There are three conditions: the brightness is Xian; malefic stars such as Qing Yang, Tuo Luo, Huo Xing or Ling Xing are present; and there is Hua Ji. On a Xingge chart, when the Life Palace shows a Xian star together with malefic stars and Hua Ji, all at once, that is the case this line describes. Volume two's Stars in Fallen Positions: Broken Patterns lists, star by star, how a fallen star breaks a pattern, and is the next place to look.

The last line adds an exception: the chart fits a pattern, but its transformations are bad rather than good, that is, the Life Palace's main star carries Hua Ji. Then the pattern does not count, and one goes back to 「本命吉凶多寡」, in effect counting up the good and bad stars of the whole chart. The point is that Hua Ji can cancel a pattern. A common example is a pattern like Yang Liang Chang Lu (Sun, Beam, Literary and Wealth), which needs Wen Chang and a Lu: if Wen Chang takes Hua Ji on that chart, the pattern's name remains but its effect is already discounted.