Loneliness Star: one past the direction group
Content version · · Sources & references
The Loneliness Star starts from the year branch and takes the branch after its direction group: always Tiger, Snake, Monkey or Pig. A table, two charts, the Sanming Tonghui count and its "mother cut off" reasoning.
The short version7 min read
The basis of the Loneliness Star is the year branch: decide which direction group it belongs to (Pig-Rat-Ox, Tiger-Rabbit-Dragon, Snake-Horse-Goat or Monkey-Rooster-Dog), take the first branch beyond that group, and look for it in the month, day and hour pillars.
- Pig, Rat and Ox give Tiger; Tiger, Rabbit and Dragon give Snake; Snake, Horse and Goat give Monkey; Monkey, Rooster and Dog give Pig. Three year branches share one star, and the four landing spots are the first branches of the four seasons.
- Only the month, day and hour pillars are read and the year pillar itself is skipped. The book explains the star as the place where the "mother" element is cut off, and all four spots are Severance in the stage table (the west via the husband).
- The Sanming Tonghui reads the star through side notes on the Grand Duke year, on yang weight and on a noble wrapped inside; the site line about "high-quality solitude" is a modern summary.
Read first
Symbolic Stars in BaZi: Check the Reference and Rule Before the Meaning ↗
One step past the year branch's direction group
The Symbolic Stars before this one all start from the day pillar; the Loneliness Star (孤辰) switches to the year branch. Whichever direction group the year branch sits in, the star is the branch just beyond that group.
Sketch: the Loneliness Star of each of the four direction groups, from the site engine and checked against the "one past the group" count; the four landing spots are the first branches of spring, summer, autumn and winter.
Each row of the picture is one direction group: Pig, Rat and Ox are north and winter; Tiger, Rabbit and Dragon are east and spring; Snake, Horse and Goat are south and summer; Monkey, Rooster and Dog are west and autumn. The three year branches of a row share one star: Tiger for the north, Snake for the east, Monkey for the south and Pig for the west. To find it, read the branches of the month, day and hour pillars; the year pillar itself is not searched.
How the book counts: "one step forward"
Juan 3 of the Sanming Tonghui (三命通会) has a section "On the Loneliness and Solitude stars" (论孤辰寡宿). It starts with the names: "an old woman without a husband is called solitary (寡), a child without a father is called lonely (孤)". "Chen" is a star and "su" a lodging, and the two words point to these two Symbolic Stars. Then comes the count:
Take the group Pig-Rat-Ox, each three branches by direction: one step forward from it meets Tiger, which is the lonely; one step back meets Dog, which is the solitary. ... The other three directions follow the same way.
"One step forward" means going on one place from the last branch of the group: Pig-Rat-Ox ends at Ox, and the next place is Tiger. The same passage gives a seasonal reading: Tiger opens spring, Snake opens summer, Monkey opens autumn and Pig opens winter. The four branches of the Loneliness Star are the first branches of the four seasons.
The imagery: where the mother's line is cut off
The book quotes the text it calls Sanche (三车) to explain why. What produces me is my mother. Pig-Rat-Ox is the north, which is Water, and Water has Metal as its mother; in the twelve life stages Metal is cut off (the Severance stage) at Tiger, so the mother is severed and Tiger is the Loneliness Star:
Pig, Rat and Ox are the northern place of Water. Water has Metal as its mother, and Metal is cut off at Tiger: this is the mother being cut off.
For the south, Fire has Wood as its mother and Wood is cut off at Monkey; for the east, Wood has Water as its mother and Water is cut off at Snake. Those two groups are also read as the mother being cut off. The west is written another way: "Metal has Fire as its husband, and Fire is cut off at Pig", taking the cut-off place from the husband's side. All four landing spots check against the twelve-stage table: Yang Metal is cut off at Tiger, Yang Water at Snake, Yang Wood at Monkey and Yang Fire at Pig.
Two charts looked up
Enlarge diagram · scroll sideways to read
In chart one the month pillar's Monkey is exactly the south group's star. In chart two the star is Tiger and it falls on the day pillar, while the Snake of the month and the Goat of the hour are not it. Change the year branch to Rat or Ox and chart two still looks for Tiger: the three year branches of one group get the same star.
Three side notes the book attaches
The book hangs a good many conditions on the star. The site's look-up stops at whether it exists and on which pillar, and these three are among the conditions:
Three side notes
The Grand Duke should not land on it
Luo Lu Zi says "the year star must not trespass on the lonely star", and the commentary explains the year star as the Grand Duke, the branch of the passing year. The book names such meetings by the year branch of the person: Gou Jiao, Sang Diao, and the "controlling" and "inviting" sha.
Yang weighs on the lonely one
The same gloss says "for the yang side the lonely star is the heavier, for the yin side the solitary star is the heavier". The book files the Loneliness Star on the yang side and the Solitude Star on the yin side, each with its own weight.
A noble wrapped inside
A text quoted as Guiguzi's Posthumous Writings says that when stems and branches meet and wrap a noble inside, a chart does not count as lonely or solitary even if it has the stars.
All three are conditions for reading, and only the whole chart can settle them. The site's marking does not make that call on the book's behalf.
Where the site wording comes from
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"Bad for kin" comes from a text called the Zhu Shen Jing, quoted in the Sanming Tonghui as a verdict, and its wording is heavy. The site's own line instead describes how someone spends time alone and in company, and adds a reminder that relationships need active care. The two are statements at different levels: one is a look-up fact, one is an old verdict, one is a modern summary.
The previous star is the Red Charm, and the next is its other face, the Solitude Star.
Questions readers ask next
My year branch is Rat. Why is the star Tiger and not some branch near Rat?
The star follows the direction group of the year branch: Rat belongs to Pig-Rat-Ox, and one step beyond that group is Tiger. Pig and Ox get Tiger as well. No year branch has a star of its own; each group of three shares one, and Tiger, Snake, Monkey and Pig answer one group each.
If my chart has a Loneliness Star, does that mean I am withdrawn?
The site says "high-quality solitude, a deep-thinking type, prefers small circles", a modern description of how someone spends time alone. In the book it is a named position with a heavy verdict and many conditions. The look-up settles whether the star is there, and what it means belongs to the whole chart.
Does the year pillar's own branch count as the star?
No. The star always sits one place past the year branch's group, so it can never coincide with the year branch, and the site reads only the month, day and hour pillars. That differs from the Yang Blade and the Red Charm, which start from the day stem and count even the day pillar's own branch.
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Solitude Star (寡宿): One Before the Year Branch's Group, on the Four Storage Branches ↗