Kui, the Legs of the White Tiger

Kui, the Legs, is the fifteenth of the twenty-eight xiu and the first mansion of the western palace, the White Tiger, which holds the third group of seven and governs the direction west and the season of autumn. Its name is read as legs or strides, identified with stars in Andromeda and Pisces. In the later astrological tradition its animal totem is the Wolf. As one of the twenty-eight lunar mansions it tracks a segment of the Moon's monthly path. These are the conventions of the Chinese astronomical and calendrical tradition, in which the twenty-eight xiu order the sky into four palaces of seven mansions each, the White Tiger, a fierce white beast, spanning the western quarter of the heavens the almanac ties to autumn.

Kui opening the western palace shares its stretch of sky, in Andromeda and Pisces, with two of the Arabic manazil, Al Fargh al Thani and Batn al Hut, and with the closing stretch of the Vedic nakshatra cycle at Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati, so all three lunar-mansion systems place a transition point, an ending giving way to a beginning, in almost exactly the same corner of sky, even though each counts its own stations in a completely independent sequence that does not otherwise line up degree for degree with the others.