Di Jie: the supporting star that walks forward

One starting point, two directions

In plain words first: Di Jie (地劫) and Di Kong (地空) leave the same palace and both look only at the hour of birth. Di Kong goes back and Di Jie goes forward. At the Rat hour the two stars share the Pig palace, and from there each hour takes each of them one step, so they drift further apart.

In the two-line verse of juan 2, the first line is the one that places Di Jie:

Begin the Rat hour at the Pig palace and set Jie going forward.

One word in that line, "forward", is where the two stars part company.

The Rat hour stands on Pig, the Ox hour advances to Rat, the Tiger hour to Ox and the Rabbit hour to Tiger, so the twelve hours make one lap.

Open the full-size diagram

Line sketch: the vertical axis counts steps forward from Di Kong to Di Jie without wrapping the lap; the rule follows the "Tian Kong and Di Jie verse" of juan 2, and the landings match iztro 2.6.0.

The horizontal axis of the chart is the twelve hours (numbered Rat 0, Ox 1, up to Pig 11) and the vertical axis counts how many steps forward it takes to get from Di Kong to Di Jie, without wrapping the lap: 0 at the Rat hour, when they share a palace, then 2 more every hour until it reaches 12 at the Horse hour, a full lap, and the two stars are in one palace again. Listing Di Jie's twelve landings one by one (the late Rat hour counts as Rat and also lands on Pig):

A mirror pair that meets at only two hours

One steps back and the other steps forward, one palace each per hour, so the two stars sit symmetrically on either side of the line joining the Pig and Snake palaces. They can coincide only on that line: at the Rat hour on Pig and at the Horse hour on Snake.

Symmetry has a second face. In the hours numbered t and 12 minus t, the two stars exchange positions. Ox and Pig, Tiger and Dog, Rabbit and Rooster, Dragon and Monkey, Snake and Goat each form such a pair.

Right after the verse the book works its own examples, for the Rat, Ox and Horse hours: Kong and Jie share a palace at Rat and Horse, while at Ox, Jie falls on the Rat palace and Kong on the Dog palace. Each one agrees with the landings above.

Distance to the Life palace: two palaces per hour

The Life palace slides back one position for each later hour (how it is set is in the Life and Body palaces), while Di Jie steps forward one. With one going back and one going forward, their relative position changes by two every hour. Di Kong slides back together with Life, so its distance holds still, but Di Jie must carry the hour into the result.

The consequence is this: with the month fixed, across the twelve hours Di Jie jumps two palaces forward in palace order each time, and so reaches only six palaces, every other one.

Concretely, for births in the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th lunar months Di Jie lands only in Siblings, Children, Health, Friends, Property or Parents; for the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th months it lands only in Life, Partner, Wealth, Travel, Career or Wellbeing. Taking the first lunar month as an example, the palaces for the twelve hours are below, each palace appearing exactly twice:

Both the odd and even split and this table held on every one of the 2500 charts we drew at random with iztro 2.6.0. The palace order follows the twelve palaces.

Three layers of text about Di Jie in the book

The text about Di Jie in juan 2 falls into three layers, and this article takes only the first.

The first layer is about position alone, and it is covered above. The second opens with "Di Jie, Fire", which gives its phase as Fire, and goes on to describe the star's nature; that is the layer of verdicts and is not paraphrased here. The engine also records no brightness grade for Di Jie, so the chart page only tells you which palace it sits in.

1. 1

   Settle the direction first

   Di Jie counts in the order Rat, Ox, Tiger, the opposite of Di Kong.

2. 2

   Then count the landing

   The Rat hour is on Pig and each later hour adds a step; Horse lands on Snake and Pig lands on Dog.

3. 3

   Finally check the palace name

   Once the branch is known, find the palace name from where Life sits; an odd lunar month can only land on Siblings, Children, Health, Friends, Property or Parents.

The star that shares Di Jie's starting point but walks backward is Di Kong; to read the pair against opposite and trine palaces, see the three sides and four directions.