Tian Xing: month 1 on Rooster, tied to Tian Yao

Month 1 on Rooster: twelve months, twelve spots

Tian Xing (天刑) and Tian Yao share one placement rhyme in juan 2, and both are counted in the same way. Only the starting point differs: Tian Yao starts on Ox and Tian Xing on Rooster.

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Comparison table: landing spots follow the juan 2 rhyme (month 1 on the Rooster for Tian Xing, on the Ox for Tian Yao) and were checked month by month in the engine; the four marked cells come from the juan 1 verse on Tian Xing (Tiger, Rooster, Dog and Rabbit).

Read the table by columns first: each column is a lunar birth month, with Tian Xing in the upper cell and Tian Yao in the lower one. Then read it by rows. The Tian Xing row leaves Rooster and goes once around to Monkey, while the Tian Yao row leaves Ox and goes once around to Rat. Rooster is the eighth position after Ox, and the distance between the two starts stays put across all twelve columns, so whatever the birth month, Tian Xing trails Tian Yao by eight branches.

The twelve columns come from charting each month in turn, and they match a hand count from the rhyme cell for cell. Four cells of the upper row are teal; they are positions named in a verse of juan 1, and section three returns to them.

A fixed distance from Tian Yao

Put the two rows side by side and a rule appears: within a month, Tian Xing is the eighth branch after Tian Yao, which is four branches back. Four branches is the spacing of a three-branch group (Ox, Snake and Rooster form one), so the two stars always take two corners of the same group. The comment in the iztro source calls this "meeting guaranteed within the group".

In palace names the same rule reads differently: the palace that holds Tian Xing is always the fourth palace after the one holding Tian Yao along the palace order. Chart all twelve hours of 15 November 1983 and the palaces pair up like this:

How three-branch positions and the opposite palace are read together is covered in the three sides and four directions.

Four ways the book uses Tian Xing

In the Quan Shu the star appears in four kinds of places, and each kind says a different thing.

The verse in the first juan opens with a line that pushes back on the star's reputation:

Tian Xing is not always a baleful star; in a bright seat it is called the spirit of heavenly joy.

The next couplet of the same verse names positions:

When it stands on the Tiger, and likewise on the Rooster and the Dog, and more so on the Rabbit, it shines of itself.

Turned into birth months, the Tiger, Rooster, Dog and Rabbit branches are 6, 1, 2 and 7, which are the four teal cells in the figure. The verse says nothing about the other eight months.

Two other mentions are shorter. In the entry on the Sun, the master Yuchan writes that the Sun "rules authority as a civil figure, and meeting Tian Xing becomes a martial one", so here Tian Xing is a companion star that changes how the Sun is read. The pattern "Xing Qiu Jia Yin" (刑囚夹印) is glossed as "Tian Xing and Lian Zhen together at Life or Body", a fixed pairing. The answer attributed to the master Xiyi is the heaviest passage, a run of words about solitude, punishment, leaving home and lawsuits, yet it ends on "a bright seat is fortunate". Verse and answer both set position before verdict, so the book itself never gives the star a fixed character apart from position. This page takes the position and does not carry that run of heavy words over.

One chart, worked by hand

Take a chart born on 15 November 1983 in the Dragon hour: lunar month 10, day 11, a Gui Hai (癸亥) year, Life on Goat.

The month is the step most easily miscounted, because month 1 already sits on Rooster. Month 10 is therefore the tenth position from Rooster, not the ninth or the eleventh, and the count ends on Horse. The third row is a self-check: Tian Yao sits on Dog, and eight branches forward from Dog also stops on Horse, so the gap of eight holds.

Writing down one Tian Xing, three lines

1. 1

   Convert the month first

   The birth month is the lunar month; a leap month is first converted to a month number by the method the chart uses, and only then counted from Rooster.

2. 2

   Branch first, palace second

   With the branch in hand, count backward from the Life branch to it to get the palace name; for people born in the same month the name moves with the hour.

3. 3

   Check with Tian Yao

   Tian Yao always stands on the matching corner of the group: the two stars are eight branches apart and never share a palace, so a mismatch means the month number should be rechecked.

Tian Yao, the star that shares this rhyme, has a page that explains in more detail how the month cancels and the palace follows the hour; for the placement basis of the whole minor-star group compare auxiliary, malefic and minor stars.