Di Kong: the star counted back from Pig

Starting at Pig, one palace back per hour

In plain words first: Di Kong (地空) looks only at the hour of birth, never at the year, month or day. Put the Rat hour on the Pig palace; each later hour then steps back one palace, and the twelve hours make exactly one lap.

The rule fits in two lines of verse, found in the second scroll of the Zi Wei Dou Shu Quan Shu (紫微斗数全书). It is titled the "Tian Kong and Di Jie verse" and marked as being about the birth hour:

From the Pig palace begin the Rat hour and place Jie forward; going the other way is the home of Tian Kong.

The first half places Di Jie (地劫), counting forward. The second half places the star of this article, counting the other way. The book's name for it is Tian Kong (天空); the site's chart page says Di Kong, and the next section sorts the names out.

Open the full-size diagram

Ring sketch: the circles are the twelve palace branches and the arc labels are birth hours; the rule follows the "Tian Kong and Di Jie verse" of juan 2, and the landings match iztro 2.6.0.

The circles in the picture are the twelve palace branches, running clockwise from the top: Rat, Ox, and so on to Pig. The brown circle is the start, the Pig palace, and the three arcs carry birth hours: the Rat hour sits on Pig, the Ox hour steps back to Dog, the Tiger hour to Rooster, the Rabbit hour to Monkey, always counter-clockwise. The full list of twelve, with the late Rat hour sharing the Rat hour's spot on Pig:

Two Tian Kongs and one Di Kong

Start with the names. The "Tian Kong" in the juan 2 verse is placed by birth hour with exactly the rule above, and the site's chart page prints that star as Di Kong. A second minor star on the same chart is called Tian Kong too, and it is placed one branch after the branch of the birth year, with no reference to the hour.

Right after the verse the book gives three examples, all about position:

Someone born in the Rat hour has Jie and Kong both in the Pig palace. Born in the Ox hour, Jie goes forward to the Rat palace and Kong goes back to the Dog palace. Born in the Horse hour, Jie and Kong are both set on Snake.

In these three examples the Kong star lands on Pig, Dog and Snake, which agrees with the table above and with charts drawn by the site engine. On attributes, the juan 2 section on assigning stars to the Northern and Southern Dippers and the five phases puts Tian Kong and Di Jie together under Fire, and the engine assigns this star no brightness grade.

Life steps back too: the gap depends on the month

The Life palace is found like this: start at Tiger for the first lunar month, count forward to the birth month, then from that palace start the Rat hour and count backward to the birth hour. Each later hour therefore moves the Life palace back one position, as fast as Di Kong moves.

When two things retreat together, the hour cancels out of the distance between them and only the month remains.

Turned into palace names, counting from the Life palace in palace order, the lunar month of birth tells where Di Kong sits:

This table was checked against 2500 random charts drawn with iztro 2.6.0, and every palace name matched. For someone born in a leap lunar month, the month first has to be converted according to the chart setting; see how leap months and late-night hours are handled.

The square right behind Wen Chang

Di Kong and Wen Chang (文昌) travel the same road. Wen Chang starts the Rat hour on the Dog palace and counts back; Di Kong starts it on the Pig palace and counts back. The starts differ by one position, so in every hour Di Kong sits on the branch just after Wen Chang's.

That is a geometric by-product of the two rules, and the two stars do not share a palace. For Wen Chang's own rule, read Wen Chang.

1. 1

   Turn the clock time into a branch hour

   8 pm is the Dog hour and 10 am is the Snake hour; at a boundary such as 1 pm, the later hour applies.

2. 2

   Start at Pig and count back

   The Dog hour is the eleventh count, which puts Di Kong on Ox; the Snake hour is the sixth, which puts it on Horse.

3. 3

   Then use the lunar month for the palace name

   Born in the third lunar month, Di Kong is in the Health palace in every hour.

Di Kong has a partner star that moves the opposite way, covered in Di Jie. The site's other star by that name, set by birth year, is in Tian Kong, and for palace names and their order see the twelve palaces.