Cast & Chart

Lunar mansion

Fáng

Room

An almanac describes traditional day-types. It cannot decide health, money, law, marriage or children. Burial, marriage and medical items on these pages are what a book states, never advice.

In the classical sources

密日者乃房虚星昴四宿七政屬日西語曰密

Mi days are the four mansions 房, 虛, 星 and 昴, whose luminary is the sun; the western word is mi.

協紀辨方書 卷三十六

About this entry

房 is the middle mansion of the 卯 palace. 協紀辨方書 卷一 says the central seat takes the palace's own animal, though the character that names it is missing from the copy we read, so the animal goes unnamed here. Together with 虛, 星 and 昴 it forms the sun group, which 星厯考原 卷五 calls 太陽.

These four were called 密 in the foreign day-counting that 卷三十六 discusses, where they marked days for joyful events. The 1741 editors remark that Chinese almanacs nevertheless came to avoid burial and reburial on them, and they find this senseless. In the modern weekday bridge 房 is a Sunday; 氐 comes before it and 心 after.

Where this text comes from

The Chinese follows the Wikisource typed text of the Siku copy, under its CC BY-SA terms. Statements about the calculator describe its own rules, and modern practice is labeled as modern.

The English here is our own plain wording. Lists keep the items of the source.