One White

One White is the star of the water element and is read in Xuan Kong flying star feng shui as governing career progress, wisdom, communication and, particularly in more recent popular practice, romance and networking. Its reputation is not fixed: like every star in the system it strengthens when it occupies a sector matching its own element or the ruling position of the current period, and weakens or turns troublesome when opposed by earth energy, which controls water in the Five Phase cycle. A practitioner reading a building's chart checks not only which sector One White currently occupies but which physical features, doors, water, mirrors, sit there, since the star's effect is read as activated or muted by what is physically present in its position.

Because One White begins every base Lo Shu chart at the centre before flying outward, it is treated as foundational to the whole nine star grid even in periods where its own influence is not the strongest available, and its movement through a building's eight surrounding sectors over each year and month is one of the more closely tracked annual shifts in ongoing flying star practice.

Every flying star chart layers three numbers into each of the nine grid positions: the period star, the year star and the mountain and facing stars fixed by the building's construction date and orientation, and One White's meaning shifts depending on which of these roles it is filling in a given reading. When One White appears as a visiting star in combination with certain other stars, practitioners read specific combined effects, for instance a favourable reading when it combines with Six White or Eight White, both metal or earth stars whose relationship to water is read as productive rather than draining.

The star's association with career and communication makes its annual position one of the more commonly consulted parts of a yearly flying star forecast, since a sector it occupies in a given year is often recommended as a favourable location for a home office, a desk, or the main entrance used for business purposes, while its combination with more difficult stars in the same year tempers that recommendation considerably.

Sources Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the StarsHo Peng Yoke with The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui: Chinese GeomancyStephen Skinner