Wen Chang: Rat hour on Dog, one palace back per hour

From Dog at the Rat hour, stepping back by the hour

Wen Chang (文昌) is placed by the hour of birth, and the rule fits in one sentence. The Rat hour goes on the Dog (戌) palace, and each later hour moves one branch back.

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Hour table: clock times use the usual two-hour split, and each Wen Chang position was checked row by row against the engine; the late Rat hour has its own row because the engine treats it separately from the early Rat hour after midnight.

Each row of the table is a stretch of the clock: on the left the clock time and hour name, on the right the branch holding Wen Chang. After midnight comes the early Rat hour, with Wen Chang on Dog; the Ox hour puts it on Rooster, the Tiger hour on Monkey, and so on until the Pig hour lands on Pig. Twelve hours make one lap of the chart. The last row is the late Rat hour from 23:00, which is back on Dog, and the next section is about it.

The song for placing Wen Chang and Wen Qu in juan 2 opens with one line, which says the Rat hour starts Wen Chang from Dog, and the note under it spells the rule out: the Rat hour goes in the Dog palace, the Ox hour counts one step back to the Rooster palace, and the rest follow. "Back" means counting in the order Pig, Dog, Rooster.

The late Rat hour: clock says today, the count says tomorrow

Of the twelve hours only the Rat hour crosses midnight, running from 23:00 to 01:00 the next day. The engine splits it in two: 0:00 to 1:00 is the early Rat hour, and 23:00 to 24:00 is the late Rat hour. For Wen Chang the two halves are the same, both placed on Dog as the Rat hour. What differs is the day: the site default counts the late Rat hour as the next day, so the lunar day used for placing stars is tomorrow's.

Check it against three clock times around May 20, 2024. Wen Chang is on Dog all three times; what moves is a star placed by lunar day, here Zi Wei:

So someone born at 23:30 shares Wen Chang with a person born at 0:30, but shares Zi Wei with a person born the next morning. The settings also offer "late Rat hour counts as the same day", and with it 23:30 takes the same calendar day as 0:30.

Two places the book gives Wen Chang

The Quan Shu mentions Wen Chang more than once. In juan 2 the section sorting stars by Dipper and element gives it one line:

Wen Chang belongs to Metal, to the Northern and Southern Dippers, and governs the examinations, the head of the literary stars.

The line says three things: Metal as its element, a place in both Dippers, and a domain, the examination-and-scholarship side of life, which the book assigns to it. Earlier in the same juan, the Body Ruler section gives it a second role. It is looked up by the birth-year branch: for Dragon and Dog years the Body Ruler is Wen Chang, which the book writes as "Dragon and Dog people, the Wen Chang star".

The Body Ruler looks at the year and Wen Chang's placement looks at the hour, so the two clues are worked out separately. Someone born in a Dragon year has Wen Chang as Body Ruler whatever the hour, and where that Wen Chang sits on the chart is still set by the hour. How the Life Ruler and Body Ruler are read together is in what the Life palace discusses.

Ke in a Yang Fire year, Ji in a Yin Metal year

Few supporting stars can carry a transformation mark, and Wen Chang is one of them, twice over:

The Quan Shu's transformation song writes each stem as one line, with four star names in the order Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji. For Yang Fire the line names Tian Tong, Tian Ji, Wen Chang and Lian Zhen; for Yin Metal, Ju Men, Tai Yang, Wen Qu and Wen Chang. The reading is fixed: the third name in the Yang Fire line is Wen Chang, so Wen Chang takes Ke in that year; the last name in the Yin Metal line is Wen Chang, so it takes Ji in that year. The two song lines and the engine's table do not disagree. Ji is a mark, not a particular piece of bad news; see Hua Ji.

Wen Chang and You Bi share one track

Wen Chang and You Bi start at the same place, both counting backward from Dog; one counts hours and the other counts months. So when the lunar month number minus one equals the hour number, the two stars land on the same branch.

The same holds the other way round: Zuo Fu counts forward from Dragon and so does Wen Qu, so the two stars share a palace when the month number minus one equals the hour number. One track for months and one for hours overlay the same twelve branches. What this means on a given chart depends on whether that chart's month and hour really line up, and it is not a general rule. For You Bi's counting see You Bi; the partner of Wen Chang is Wen Qu.

1. 1

   Pin down the clock time

   Fix the birth time, fold it into an hour, and for 23:00 to 24:00 check whether the setting counts the next day or the same day.

2. 2

   Count back from Dog

   The Rat hour sits on Dog, each hour steps one palace back; write the branch and hold off naming the palace.

3. 3

   Then check the two year-based roles

   Whether the year stem is Yang Fire or Yin Metal, and whether the year branch is Dragon or Dog for the Body Ruler, are recorded as separate clues.