Annual Flying Stars: The Arithmetic Behind the Chart

Xuan Kong feng shui works with three layers at once. The period star changes every twenty years; the base chart is fixed when a building is completed, from its facing direction and construction period; the annual star changes every year.

The current period is the ninth, which began in 2024 and runs to 2043; the eighth ran from 2004 to 2023. A building completed in 2015 therefore carries an eighth-period base chart for the whole of its life, whatever the annual stars say.

The annual chart is the fastest layer and the least specific. In a given year it is identical for every building on earth. Whatever it tells you, it does not tell you anything about your house in particular. That is not a reason to ignore it; it is a reason to know which layer you are reading.

The annual centre star is computed, not observed. Add the digits of the year until one digit remains, subtract that from eleven, and reduce anything above nine by nine.

For 2026: 2+0+2+6 = 10, then 1+0 = 1. Eleven minus one is ten, which reduces to one. So yi bai takes the centre in 2026.

The neighbouring years confirm the method. 2024 gives 8, so 11 − 8 = 3 and san bi sits in the centre; 2025 gives 9, so 11 − 9 = 2 and er hei does. The centre star steps down by one each year, wrapping from one back to nine.

The constant eleven belongs to the years 2000 to 2099. Earlier centuries use a different constant, which is why two pieces of software can disagree about a chart for 1890 and both be following a rule. If a chart is being used to argue about a building older than the twentieth century, the base chart matters more than the annual one anyway.

From the centre the numbers run in the Luoshu order: centre, north-west, west, north-east, south, north, south-west, east, south-east. Put one in the centre and count up along that path and the whole grid follows.

The five yellow lands in the south in 2026 and the eight white in the east. Both placements are consequences of the arithmetic, not of anything about a particular building.

Two stars carry most of the practical weight. Wu huang is treated as the year’s most disruptive placement and er hei as the illness star. The instruction for both is the same: keep the sector quiet, avoid demolition and drilling, and do not make it the busiest room.

Both are earth stars in the five-element scheme, which is why the traditional remedy is metal rather than fire or water: metal drains earth, and a drain is the mildest intervention the system has. The object recommended is usually something small and heavy — a brass vessel, a coin stack — on the reasoning that it works continuously without being noticed.

At the other end, ba bai is the wealth star of the current period and jiu zi the star of celebration. The instruction is to use those sectors — put the desk there, hold the gathering there.

Notice that the advice is a use-map rather than a list of objects. It says which rooms to leave alone and which to occupy, and both of those are decisions a household was going to make anyway.

Because the annual chart is the same everywhere, it cannot separate two homes on the same street. What separates them is the base chart, which is fixed at construction and never changes.

A reading that uses only the annual chart is therefore a yearly review with a fixed template. That is a legitimate thing to do — a template you actually run once a year beats an analysis you never run at all — as long as nobody mistakes it for a diagnosis of the building.

In 2026 the five yellow sits in the south, which in a northern-hemisphere house is often the brightest and most-used room. That collision is exactly what the tradition asks you to notice: the sector it wants left alone is the one you live in.

The annual chart is worth its keep as a checklist rather than as a prediction. Four steps cover it.