Bi, the Net of the White Tiger

Bi, the Net, is the nineteenth of the twenty-eight xiu and the fifth mansion of the western palace, the White Tiger, one of two mansions romanised Bi, this one meaning a hunting net or fork. It is identified with the Hyades cluster and stars in Taurus, including the bright Aldebaran. In the later astrological tradition its animal totem is the Crow. As one of the twenty-eight lunar mansions it marks a segment of the Moon's monthly path, and it was anciently associated with rain. These are the conventions of the Chinese astronomical and calendrical tradition, in which the twenty-eight xiu order the heavens into four palaces of seven mansions each, the White Tiger of the west spanning the autumn quarter of the sky.

Bi the Net, first of the two mansions sharing that transliterated spelling, take its stars from the Hyades and Aldebaran, the same red giant the Arabic tradition names Al Dabaran, the follower, for its position trailing the Pleiades across the sky; three lunar-mansion systems therefore mark this single bright star from three independent naming traditions within only one or two mansions of each other in their respective sequences, a closer clustering of shared reference points than most other stretches of the ecliptic show.