Xian Chi: the year branch sets the spot

Four year groups, four landing spots

On the chart page, the position of Xian Chi (咸池) depends on one input only: the branch of the birth year. Sort the twelve year branches into four groups of three, each member four places from the next, and every year inside a group puts the star on the same branch.

Open the full-size diagram

Comparison table: Xian Chi branches follow the iztro 2.6.0 placement rule and were checked by charting all twelve year branches; Growth spots follow the twelve-stage table (Water Monkey, Fire Tiger, Metal Snake, Wood Pig).

In the table, the first column names the group, the second lists its three year branches, the third gives the branch where the twelve-stage table starts that element, and only the fourth column is Xian Chi. Pig, Rabbit and Goat years land on Rat. Snake, Rooster and Ox years land on Horse. Tiger, Horse and Dog years land on Rabbit, and Monkey, Rat and Dragon years on Rooster. All four landing spots are Rat, Horse, Rabbit or Rooster; none falls on a Tiger, Monkey, Snake or Pig branch, and none on a Dragon, Dog, Ox or Goat branch.

The year here changes at the first day of the lunar year, which is the default on this site; the engine also offers a switch to the Start of Spring (Xian Chi follows the horoscope-boundary setting, as Nian Jie does), and which one applies is a chart setting. The landing branch does not depend on birth month, day, hour or gender.

One step after the Growth spot

A three-branch group joins branches that sit four places apart, and each group carries an element: the Monkey, Rat and Dragon group is Water, the Tiger, Horse and Dog group is Fire, Snake, Rooster and Ox make Metal, and Pig, Rabbit and Goat make Wood. The twelve-stage table gives every element a starting branch, called Growth. Water begins on Monkey, Fire on Tiger, Metal on Snake, Wood on Pig. Count one more step forward from each start and you reach Rooster, Rabbit, Horse and Rat.

In the twelve-stage table the step after Growth is called Bath (see the Bath stage). The placement therefore compresses into one line: find which group the year branch belongs to and take that group's Bath spot. That line comes from charting all twelve year branches one by one and comparing; the Zi Wei Quan Shu has no such sentence. The BaZi classic San Ming Tong Hui (三命通会), volume 2, says it outright in its section on Xian Chi: the Bath position of each of the five phases is named Xian Chi. It lists the same four groups and gives Peach Blossom as another name (our paraphrase).

The site's BaZi engine files the same table under Peach Blossom and returns identical branches, except that BaZi looks it up from the day branch while Zi Wei uses the birth-year branch. Both use the same group table. How the BaZi side is read is in the BaZi Peach Blossom star, and nothing from it is borrowed here.

One branch, three charts, three palaces

Xian Chi supplies a branch, yet the chart page shows "a star in a named palace". The Life palace turns the one into the other: starting from the branch that holds Life, the palaces run backwards through the branches as Siblings, Partner, Children, Wealth, Health, Travel, Friends, Career, Property, Wellbeing and Parents (the order is explained in the twelve palaces).

The three sample charts below have year pillars Jia Zi (甲子), Wu Chen (戊辰) and Ren Shen (壬申). All three fall in the Water group, so Xian Chi sits on Rooster each time. Their Life palaces fall on different branches, and so Rooster becomes a different palace.

Counting the first chart: Life is on Tiger, and going backwards the branches read Ox (Siblings), Rat (Partner), Pig (Children), Dog (Wealth) and Rooster (Health), so Rooster is the Health palace. Another group works the same way. A chart born on 9 April 1990 in the Pig hour has year pillar Geng Wu (庚午), falls in the Fire group, puts Xian Chi on Rabbit, and with Life on Snake that Rabbit branch is the Partner palace.

Three steps back each year, a cycle of four

Line up twelve consecutive years, taking 15 July of each year and the Rat hour, and let everything else stay equal. Xian Chi then runs Rooster, Horse, Rabbit, Rat, then Rooster, Horse, Rabbit, Rat again, and a third time. Each year the spot steps back three branches, and after four steps it returns to where it began.

So people whose birth years are four apart share the same branch: those born in 1984, 1988 and 1992 all have Xian Chi on Rooster. The reason is direct. Twelve year branches are cut into four groups, neighboring years always belong to different groups, and each new year therefore jumps to the Bath spot of the next group.

Checking it on the chart page: three steps

1. 1

   Fix the year branch

   Take it with the year boundary the chart uses. Someone born between lunar new year and the Start of Spring can have a different year branch under the two settings.

2. 2

   Find the group, take the Bath spot

   The Water group gives Rooster, Fire gives Rabbit, Metal gives Horse, Wood gives Rat.

3. 3

   Count the palace from Life

   Walk backwards through the branches from the Life branch to the Xian Chi branch; n steps back is the nth palace after Life.

The star that uses the same year groups but lands on each group's Storage spot instead is Hua Gai; for how minor stars are sorted as a whole, read auxiliary, malefic and minor stars.