Wen Qu: counted forward from Dragon, graded in twelve palaces

The Rat hour on Dragon, counted forward

The rule fits in a sentence: Wen Qu (文曲) uses the same birth hour as Wen Chang, but it starts at the Dragon (辰) palace and counts the other way. The Rat hour goes on Dragon, the Ox hour on Snake, and each hour moves one palace forward.

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Placement sketch: circles read palace ← birth hour, and the twelve branches run around the circle in the usual Rat, Ox, Tiger order, not the real chart layout; both the early and late Rat hours land on Dragon.

Each circle in the picture reads palace ← hour. Dra←Rat means a Rat-hour birth puts Wen Qu on the Dragon palace; Sna←Ox puts an Ox-hour birth on Snake; the run ends at Rab←Pig, where a Pig-hour birth lands on Rabbit. Twelve hours make one lap, and the early and late Rat hours both land on Dragon.

Juan 2's note on the Wen Qu half of that rule counts it so:

Wen Qu starts the Rat hour from the Dragon position: for someone born in the Rat hour, place it in the Dragon palace; for the Ox hour, go forward to the Snake palace, and the rest follow.

Wen Chang starts at Dog and counts back; Wen Qu starts at Dragon and counts forward. The two starting points are six branches apart and the stars walk in opposite directions, the same arithmetic as Zuo Fu and You Bi, except that one pair counts months and this pair counts hours.

Four ways the pair can sit in one hour

Work out both stars for all twelve hours and sort them, and, as with the month pair, only four arrangements appear:

The reason is the one Zuo Fu and You Bi have: two starting points six apart, one stepping forward and one back each hour, so the gap only takes even values and can never be one apart. The derivation is in the twelve-month table in You Bi and is not repeated here. What is worth recording is the result: the pair shares a palace only twice a day, in the Rabbit and Rooster hours.

Wen Qu's grade in each of the twelve palaces

The second matter is grade. The brightness table in juan 2 of the Quan Shu has one row for each of the twelve branches, and Wen Qu appears in every row; the engine's grades match that table row for row. Drawn on the ring, it looks like this:

Wen Qu uses five grades in all: Miao (庙) at three branches, Wang at three, De at three, Ping at one and Xian at two. The grades Li and Bu are never used by it. How this grading vocabulary is read is in brightness grades.

Set it beside Wen Chang and eight of the twelve rows are identical (Rat, Dragon and Monkey De; Ox, Snake and Rooster Miao; Horse and Dog Xian). Only four differ:

That brings back the Rabbit hour from the last section: both stars sit on Goat, Wen Chang graded Li and Wen Qu graded Wang. In the Rooster hour they share Ox and both are Miao. Sharing a palace does not mean sharing a grade, so each star is looked up in its own row.

Three other tables that name Wen Qu

Wen Qu is not only in the brightness table. Juan 2 has three more places, each answering a different question:

The Life Ruler line sits in the section on placing the Life Ruler: "Lu Cun on the Tiger and Dog palaces, Wen Qu on the Rabbit and Rooster palaces", which means that someone whose Life palace falls on Rabbit or Rooster has Wen Qu as Life Ruler. The element list says: "Wen Qu belongs to Water, the Northern Dipper, the star that presides over examinations". In the transformation song, each line's names go front to back through Lu, Quan, Ke and Ji: the Yin Earth line, "Wu Qu, Tan Lang, Tian Liang, Wen Qu", puts Wen Qu last, so it takes Ji; the Yin Metal line, "Ju Men, Tai Yang, Wen Qu, Wen Chang", puts Wen Qu third, so it takes Ke.

The point to keep straight is that "Life on Rabbit" is the Life palace branch, while "Wen Qu on Rabbit" is the hour table's placement. Whether Wen Qu and the Life palace share a palace on one chart is known only by working out both; neither follows from the other. Reading the Life Ruler and Body Ruler together belongs to the Life palace article.

Wen Qu and Zuo Fu share one track

Zuo Fu runs through the months and Wen Qu through the hours, both forward from Dragon. Whenever (month number minus one) equals the hour's place in the day, the pair shares a branch.

So on one person's chart there is a fixed piece of arithmetic: when the month's place in the year equals the hour's place in the day (month five and the Dragon hour, say), You Bi and Wen Chang share a palace and Zuo Fu and Wen Qu share a palace. That sharing comes from two counting rules overlapping; once the stars share a palace, they are read as any shared palace is. Zuo Fu's counting is in Zuo Fu; the partner star is Wen Chang.