Hua Gai: the star on the storage spots

On the four storage spots, one for each year group

Hua Gai (华盖) lands only on the Dragon, Dog, Ox or Goat branch and never on any other. It uses the same year groups as Xian Chi, with the landing moved from the Bath spot to the Storage spot:

Open the full-size diagram

Ring: Hua Gai spots follow the iztro 2.6.0 placement rule and were checked by charting all twelve year branches; the four teal spots are where the twelve-stage table stores Water, Fire, Metal and Wood.

The four teal spots in the ring are where Hua Gai can go; it never lands on the other eight branches. Only the year branch matters, and birth month, day, hour and gender take no part. How the year branch itself shifts with the year boundary is the subject of section four.

From Growth to Storage: the eighth step

The twelve-stage table walks along the branches one stage per step, and Storage is its ninth stage, which makes it the eighth step after the Growth spot. Count it for the Water, Fire and Metal groups, noting Bath and Peak on the way:

So inside one group, Xian Chi and Hua Gai are two stops on the same chain: Xian Chi at Bath, Hua Gai at Storage, and counting forward from Hua Gai, five steps reach Xian Chi. That rule comes from comparing chart results, and no book states it; what the Storage stage itself covers is in the Storage stage.

Incidentally, the BaZi look-up for the Canopy Star (华盖) agrees with this one branch for branch; how it is read there is on the BaZi Canopy Star.

The "two layers of Hua Gai" in the book

Anyone searching the Quan Shu for Hua Gai finds one place only, a pattern name in juan 1:

Two layers of Hua Gai: this means Lu Cun and a Lu transformation sit in Life and meet the Void and Robbery stars.

The make-up of that definition is plain to see:

The pattern name borrows the two words, yet no star called Hua Gai appears in the definition. The chart-page star has no placement rhyme to compare with either: the rhymes in juan 2 do not include it. What can be set out clearly is the arithmetic of placement; no sentence of the book can be borrowed to describe the star.

One day at the year boundary moves Hua Gai

Neighboring years always sit in different year groups, so on the day the year changes, Hua Gai must move. Try the 1990 changeover: lunar new year fell on 27 January and the Start of Spring on 4 February, and between those dates the two year boundaries disagree.

Four year-based stars in one table

Xian Chi, Hua Gai, Gu Chen and Gua Su all depend on the birth-year branch alone. Put the twelve years side by side and each star turns out to keep to its own class of branches:

Hua Gai and Gua Su both land on the storehouses and are easily mixed up, yet within one year they always take two different storehouses: in a Rat year Hua Gai is on Dragon and Gua Su on Dog, in an Ox year Hua Gai is on Ox and Gua Su on Dog. Gu Chen has its own four spots, Tiger, Snake, Monkey and Pig, the four branches where a season begins. Three classes of branch, each with its own star; once the year branch is known, they separate at a glance.

The sibling star that stops one step after Growth instead is Xian Chi.