Tian-Qin

The odd one of the nine, by position. Its home is the Center Palace (中宫), the middle square of the chart, and that square has neither a trigram nor a gate — which is why this star holds no direction of its own: the eight trigrams have already taken all eight directions and there is no ninth one left over for the middle. So on a chart the star shows up twice over: once in the middle square where it lives, unmarked, and once alongside Tian-Rui (天芮) marked as lodged — whichever palace Tian-Rui lands in, that second copy lands in, and it is the copy the reading is taken from, at the Kun Palace (坤宫), palace two. Flying together is not the same as being one star, though — what the two of them carry in Three Wonders and Six Instruments differs, and so does what each of them stands in for. (Why the middle of the chart is empty is set out on the Center Palace page.)

• Travelling together is not being the same star: Tian-Qin and Tian-Rui fly palace for palace, but the Three Wonders and Six Instruments each carries are different, and so is the symbol each stands in for. The two cannot be read as one.
• One end of what it stands for: loyal and plain-dealing, carrying weight the way the ground carries it, sitting at the centre with the whole arrangement in hand. The sovereign and the senior leader are at this end — the middle of the chart was always the place orders were given from.
• The other end: on the same list of correspondences the people are the killer, the criminal, the escaped convict and the thief. Both ends belong to it, and neither one is spare.
• Stillness, and lying low: the first impression it gives is of being still and of being hidden — a position that takes some thinking to get out of, with a certain amount of luck mixed into it.
• Body and objects: the brain, the blood, the middle of the abdomen; a gun, handcuffs, a bomb.

A sovereign at the centre of things at one end and a fugitive at the other — the two do not cancel each other out. They are the two ends of a single star, and what is being asked is what decides which end applies. "Greatly auspicious" is only its default reading in exactly the same way.

Nature

The habit is to pull back and look at the whole board first: how the arrangement sits matters more than winning any one square of it. The person involved is in no rush to declare a position and does not take up the extreme end of one. Calm on the outside, and still weighing both sides on the inside.

Style

Before anything is done, every factor gets laid out side by side. The one in the middle who joins one half of a conversation to the other is very often this one. Neither first to charge nor quick to withdraw — what is being held here is the tempo.

Strength

Gathering what is scattered into a single set. Loose people, loose money and loose resources get brought into one system and made to run, and the short move and the long structure are both kept in hand. The nearer the centre the seat, the more it does.

Impression

Steady and measured, and careful not to speak for one side against another. No visible edge on show — and yet the few things that actually matter are the ones in these hands. It takes a while in their company before the scale of them shows.

Pitfall

Everything gets taken into account and the call that has to be made keeps not being made. Balance carried too far blurs the direction, and an unwillingness to offend anyone leaves the person involved wedged in the middle, unable to go up or to come back down.

At the feng shui layer Tian-Qin takes the dead-centre kind of position, together with the objects that hold a situation down.

• Character: control from the middle, coordination and balance; it governs management, reconciliation and central authority.
• Places: the central hall, the central building, a landmark, the seat of an authority, a palace, an altar, a military base — and cliffs, loess ground, and the place where rivers and streams meet.
• Objects: handcuffs and bombs, and the fowl and bird class of thing.

Tian-Qin holds no direction of its own, so what it answers for in feng shui is the quality of being central. Which room of a house goes to what is still settled by the gates and the stems, not by the stars.