The Quarrelsome Star

Three Jade, sometimes rendered Three Green or Jade Green depending on the translation followed, shares the wood element with Four Green but carries an almost entirely opposite reputation. Where Four Green is read as the literary and scholarly star, Three Jade is read as the quarrelsome star, associated with disputes, gossip, litigation, and sudden bursts of temper, and its afflicted position in a given year is a standard caution against beginning legal proceedings or contract negotiations there.

The two wood stars are frequently discussed together precisely because they share an element yet diverge so sharply in character, illustrating a point basic to the whole system: a star's element sets its general family of correspondences, but its individual number carries a distinct, specific reputation that the shared element alone does not predict, a distinction a reader has to hold onto rather than reasoning purely from element to element.