Course 03
Nine Star Ki
Nine Star Ki is a Japanese system built on a Chinese magic square. Nine energies take turns at the centre of the square, one per year and one per month, and the ones in charge when you were born describe your nature.
A square from a river
Chinese legend tells of a turtle rising from the Luo river with a pattern of dots on its shell: the numbers 1 to 9 arranged in a square where every row, column and diagonal adds up to 15. That is the Luoshu, the Luo River Writing. It became a map of space and time, matched with the eight trigrams of the I Ching, the five elements and the eight compass directions around a centre.
Nine Star Ki as it is practised today is Japanese. Kyūsei kigaku, the 'study of the ki of the nine stars', was shaped into its modern form by Sonoda Shinjirō in the Taishō era (the 1910s and 1920s), drawing on older Chinese calendrical lore. It reached the West mainly through Michio Kushi and the macrobiotic movement in the second half of the twentieth century.
The stars move through the square
The square is traditionally drawn with south at the top. In its home position 5 sits in the centre, 1 in the north, 9 in the south, 3 in the east and 7 in the west, with the even numbers in the corners. The 'stars' are not stars in the sky: they are nine qualities of ki, each paired with an element, a colour and a trigram image such as water, thunder or mountain.
Every year a different star takes the centre, counting down: 2008 was 1, 2009 was 9, 2010 was 8. When a star moves into the centre, all the others shift by the same amount along the square's fixed path. The year starts at Risshun, the solar term around 4 February, not on 1 January.
Year star and month star
Your year star, sometimes called the principal number, is the one in the centre during your birth year. It describes your basic nature and how you approach life. Everyone born in the same solar year shares it.
Your month star is found the same way for your birth month, which also starts around the 4th of each Western month. It describes your emotional character, the part people see when they get close. Some practitioners add a third, the energetic number, from where the year star sat in the month's square; SoulFold keeps to the first two.
The nine at a glance
One water star (1, the deep and quiet), three earth stars (2 the receptive field, 5 the powerful centre, 8 the steady mountain), two wood stars (3 the sudden thunder, 4 the patient wind), two metal stars (6 the sky that leads, 7 the lake that delights) and one fire star (9, the bright sun). Each has its own reference page.
What SoulFold leaves out
Much of Nine Star Ki in practice is about timing and direction: which way to move house this year, which months are favourable, daily fortunes, the keisha (a further number used for inner nature), and compatibility charts. Readings leave those out and keep to what the two stars say about temperament.
The nine stars
Each star has a page with its image, element, home on the square, Japanese name, gifts and shadow, and the recent years it ruled.