Nine Stars 九星 Glossary
The nine numbered stars — 1 White through 9 Purple — that move through the palaces of feng shui charts, each carrying an element, a valence and a set of images.
Jiǔxīng · 九星 (simplified) · 九星 (traditional)
Source credibility (S/A/B/C/X): S Rule computability (A/B/C): A for the star table and annual/monthly cycles; day/hour cycles are unverified and not enabled
What it is
The nine stars are numbered 1–9 and colour-named by the Luoshu scheme: 1 White （一白貪狼）, 2 Black （二黑巨門）, 3 Jade （三碧祿存）, 4 Green （四綠文曲）, 5 Yellow （五黃廉貞）, 6 White （六白武曲）, 7 Red （七赤破軍）, 8 White （八白左輔）, 9 Purple （九紫右弼）. Each carries an element (1 water, 2/5 earth, 3/4 wood, 6/7 metal, 8 earth, 9 fire) and a valence — 1, 4, 6, 8, 9 auspicious in the classical table; 2, 3, 5, 7 inauspicious, with 5 Yellow the most feared and to be left undisturbed. Beyond valence the stars carry images: 1 literature and romance, 2 illness, 3 disputes, 4 study, 6 authority, 8 wealth and property, 9 celebration.
The stars are the moving parts of several systems at once: they people the flying-star chart period by period, and they cycle annually and monthly through the palaces as the "purple-white" （紫白） stars of date selection. In the San He line a different nine-star set is generated by trigram inversion for mountain forms — same word, different machine.
School differences
Star names are notoriously ambiguous across systems: the same names (Tanlang, Wuqu, and their peers) also name the Eight Mansions stars mapped to house trigrams, and the form-school nine stars of mountain shapes — which one Ming source frankly dismissed as having "no basis at all". Context and lineage determine which system a name belongs to; where meanings conflict, the project's knowledge base keeps all candidates rather than silently choosing (see the School Dispute Register for the method). Within the flying-star table itself the definitions are stable and multi-source.
How this engine computes it
- The nine-star property table (number, name, element, valence, images) is kernel data, used by the flying-star module to label every palace.
- Annual and monthly purple-white cycles are implemented as A-grade closed-form rules verified against the original text of Xieji Bianfang Shu (volume 8) — which systematically gives the year-white and month-white only.
- Popular day-white and hour-white cycle formulas circulate in modern secondary sources but could not be confirmed in first-hand literature; they are marked unverified and are not enabled as default output.
- Eight Mansions star mapping is computed by its own separate module and never conflated with the flying-star table.
Related entries
Xuan Kong Flying Star · Yun Period · 64 Hexagrams · San Yuan vs San He
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