What Does Huo Xing Govern?

The answer to this question is one sentence: Huo Xing is a floating star of the Southern Dipper. All the real content is in Master Xiyi's verse that follows. 'Floating star' is in contrast to the main stars: it has no fixed charge, and what it does depends on which stars it is with.

Huo Xing is placed by the birth-year branch and the birth hour, so people born in the same year and hour have it in the same place. The Quan Shu's Star Combinations chapter gives its brightness: 「火星 廟寅午戌 地巳酉丑 陷申子辰」 (Star Combinations: Huo Xing and Ling Xing). The brightness on a Xingge chart agrees: Miao in Yin, Wu and Xu, Xian in Shen, Zi and Chen, De in Si, You and Chou, and Li in Hai, Mao and Wei.

This segment only introduces the verse below and has no content of its own. It is worth noting that the Huo Xing and Ling Xing chapters both pass straight to 「希夷先生歌曰」, unlike the main-star chapters with their three voices (the answer, Master Xiyi and Master Yuchan), which shows how much less ink the Quan Shu spends on malefic stars than on main stars.

While reading the verse, compare The Nature of Huo Xing, which gives the same content in prose and adds a good many conditions.

「火星大殺將，南斗號殺神」: Huo Xing's essence is killing. Like Qi Sha it is called a general, but Qi Sha is a main star and Huo Xing a floating star. 「若主身命位，諸宮不可臨」 is an extreme statement, amounting to saying that Huo Xing is bad wherever it falls.

「性氣亦沉毒，剛強出眾人」: Huo Xing's character is hard and hasty, and 'dark and venomous' says the temper is vicious when it flares. Huo Xing is best understood today as explosive, quick to act and short-tempered: used in the right place it is efficiency and drive, used wrongly it is impulse that hurts people.

「毛髮多異類，唇齒有傷痕」: Huo Xing's physical marks; The Nature of Huo Xing also says 「唇齒四肢有傷，毛髮有異」. 「更與羊陀會，襁褓必災迍」: Huo Xing meeting Qing Yang and Tuo Luo means much trouble in infancy.

「過房出外養，二姓可延生」, like the Tuo Luo chapter's 「二姓延生」, is the old remedy for a child with a hard fate: adoption, fostering, taking godparents. The Nature of Huo Xing says 「只宜過房由外家寄養，或重拜父母方可」, with the condition that Huo Xing shares a palace with Qing Yang. Today it can be read as a frail childhood, or being looked after by grandparents or relatives while growing up.

「此星東南利，不利西北生」: Huo Xing belongs to fire; the southeast is wood and fire, and wood feeds fire, like helping like, while the northwest is metal and water, and water puts out fire. This is the exact opposite of the Wu Qu chapter's preference for people born in the northwest, with people from the southeast ordinary, because Wu Qu belongs to metal.

「若得貪狼會，旺地貴無倫」 is the Huo Tan pattern, the only combination of Huo Xing that the Quan Shu praises highly. The Gu Sui Fu says 「貪狼火星居廟旺名鎮諸邦」. The condition is a strong place: both Huo Xing and Tan Lang in Miao or Wang positions. Huo Xing's explosive power plus Tan Lang's desire and skill made, in old times, a pattern for a general made marquis; today it reads as a sudden rise and making a name in a fiercely competitive field.

「三方無殺破，中年後始興」: the Huo Tan pattern needs a San Fang without malefic stars or breaking, and even then it pays off only after middle age. This resembles Wu Qu with Tan Lang 'not making a young man rich'; the Quan Shu often places explosive patterns in middle age.

The second half is about monks and women: monks and priests drift and break their vows; women are chaste in strong places and lewd in fallen ones. Huo Xing's nature is motion and haste, so even a monk who meets it cannot keep the rules. A woman's chastity is judged by brightness, good in strong places and bad in fallen ones, just as the Qing Yang chapter splits women's charts into upper and lower patterns.

This line continues the last segment's woman with Huo Xing fallen: harm to husband and children, base and toiling. The Nature of Huo Xing's verdict on women is heavier still: 「心毒內狠外虛狡詐，凌夫剋子，不守婦道」.

These are old value judgments about women and are given as written. For a woman's chart with Huo Xing fallen, a closer reading today is a strong personality and quick temper, easily in conflict within family relationships, and a busier, harder life. Whether it holds still depends on the main star in the Life Palace and the lucky stars in the San Fang; Huo Xing is only one floating star among them.