Ju Men: the entry audit and the Dragon-Dog clash

Six entry lines, and five of them match

Ju Men (巨门) is the fourth of the eight Tian Fu-group stars, three cells after Tian Fu. The engine's star table records it as Earth and Yin; the book writes Water, and the juan 1 reply adds "Water and Metal". The last passage of the juan 2 Ju Men entry splits the twelve branches into six lines, each giving a grade and sometimes a co-resident star:

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Audit table: the entry is the closing passage of the juan 2 Ju Men section, grades come from the juan 2 grade table, and co-resident stars follow from the placement verse and were checked on iztro charts.

Put those six lines beside the grade table and the engine's co-resident stars and check them one by one. Rat and Horse say Wang, and the table has Rat and Horse both Wang. Rabbit and Rooster say Miao and "sharing with Tian Ji", and the table has both Miao, while on the chart those two cells do put Ju Men with Tian Ji. Tiger and Monkey say Miao and "sharing with Tai Yang", which also checks out. Snake and Pig say "Wang palace, guarding alone", and the table has both Wang with Ju Men alone on the chart. Ox and Goat say Bu, the same as the table. Five of six lines agree, and the only one that does not is Dragon and Dog.

The partners the entry leaves unwritten are still there on the chart. On the three pairs Rat-Horse, Dragon-Dog and Snake-Pig Ju Men sits alone with its partner in the opposite palace (Tian Ji opposite Rat and Horse, Tian Tong opposite Dragon and Dog, Tai Yang opposite Snake and Pig), and on Ox and Goat it shares with Tian Tong. The book leaves that half unwritten; it comes from counting positions and holds on every chart. How the grade table as a whole is read is in brightness levels.

Dragon and Dog: the entry says Ping, the table and two verses say Xian

The Dragon-Dog line of the entry reads:

Dragon and Dog palaces: even and calm.

Yet the grade table has Dragon and Dog as Xian, and the Gu Sui Fu (斗數骨髓賦) in juan 1 touches these two cells in two lines:

Ju Men on Dragon and Dog is sunken ground; for a Xin-year person the lucky change makes its stipend shine.

The other line, "Dragon and Dog should dislike the sunken Ju Men", is in the same ode. Counting the engine's star table as well, the record for Dragon and Dog stands like this:

The first line carries a second condition: "a Xin-year person", someone born in a Xin year, whose birth-year transformation turns Ju Men into the Lu one (iztro's Xin transformations are Ju Men Lu, Tai Yang Quan, Wen Qu Ke and Wen Chang Ji). The Xian cell in the table does not carry that condition, so the two wordings for one cell are an unconditional cell and a line with a birth-year stem attached. Neither overturns the other; when you give the grade, say which one you are citing. How the birth-year transformations are looked up is in birth-year transformations.

Stone hiding jade: turning the pattern name into one chart

Juan 1 names "the Life palace at Rat or Horse meeting Ju Men" as stone hiding jade:

On the pattern stone hiding jade: the Life palace on Rat or Horse, meeting Ju Men.

That is a positional condition and can be converted into a chart. Ju Men sits three cells after Tian Fu, so it lands on Rat when Zi Wei is on Goat and on Horse when Zi Wei is on Ox. Ask also that the Life palace share Ju Men's branch and Life falls on Rat or Horse. Cast the twelve palaces for both cases and the layout is identical, with only the branches differing:

The verse adds half a line, "and still gets the lucky stars shining from the three sides". That is a second layer: whether the Ke and Lu transformations land in the Life palace's four-way set has to be worked out again from the birth-year transformations and is not part of this layout of main stars. The one thing that can be said first is that any chart meeting the positional condition has a single layout of main stars.

The twelve-palace list: indexed by palace

The juan 1 reply on Ju Men opens with the star's nature and then turns into a list, one item per palace, in exactly the order of the twelve palaces:

Each item ends in a judgment on that palace, and those judgments are not quoted here. What is worth keeping is the way the list is indexed: the grade table is indexed by branch, the entry by pairs of branches, and this list by palace. To use it, you first need to know which palace Ju Men lands in on the chart.

1. 1

   Find the branch of Ju Men first

   Zi Wei gives Tian Fu, and three cells after Tian Fu is Ju Men; for example Zi Wei on Rat puts Tian Fu on Dragon and Ju Men on Goat.

2. 2

   Then count back from Life to Ju Men

   Palaces are counted from Life against the branch order; with Life on Tiger and Ju Men on Goat, Goat is the eighth palace, Friends, which the book calls "servants".

3. 3

   Take that item from the list and check the grade table separately

   The list item answers "in this palace", the grade table answers "on this branch"; they are two questions and are looked up separately.

Named partners: can they meet Ju Men on a chart?

On Ju Men the book names several partners: Master Xiyi writes "meeting Tai Yang, good and bad even" and "meeting Qi Sha, injury", the Gu Sui Fu writes "Ju Men and Tian Ji sharing a palace", and a line in the juan 1 list of sunken-star patterns reads "Dragon palace, Ju Men with Zi Wei". Using the placement verse, cast the twelve Zi Wei landings and count how often Ju Men shares a palace with, faces, or forms a trine with each of these stars:

Tai Yang and Tian Ji can both share a palace with Ju Men: Tian Ji on Rabbit and Rooster, Tai Yang on Tiger and Monkey. Zi Wei and Qi Sha never do. The closest Zi Wei gets is a neighboring cell, in four of the landings (two on each side), and Qi Sha always stands three cells away from it. What "sharing" and "meeting" mean in the book is not spelled out, so only the positions that can be checked are listed here: by this verse there is no chart with "Dragon palace, Ju Men with Zi Wei" sharing a palace.

Before Ju Men comes Tan Lang, and after it comes Tian Xiang.