Two Black

Two Black, the earth element star, is one of the small number of flying stars treated as inauspicious in essentially every period rather than only outside its own ruling window. Classical and contemporary Xuan Kong practice alike associate it with illness, fatigue and slow health decline, and a bedroom or kitchen falling in a sector Two Black occupies for the year is a standard candidate for remedial treatment in ongoing consultation practice, since these are rooms where extended time is spent.

The standard remedy pairs Two Black's afflicted position with metal objects or colours, following the Five Phase sequence in which metal is produced from earth and, in the remedial reading used here, is understood to drain or exhaust an excess of earth energy rather than reinforcing it. This same logic, using the phase that an afflicted element produces as the corrective, recurs across the system's other inauspicious earth stars and is one of the clearest worked examples of how the productive and controlling cycles of the five phases are applied practically rather than only described in the abstract.

Two Black ruled Period 2 under the standard twenty year period divisions, a period that fell in the nineteenth century under the most commonly used dating and is therefore outside living memory for any contemporary practitioner. Its behaviour in current use is consequently read entirely through its position as a visiting star, flying to a different sector of the Lo Shu grid each year and each month, rather than through any lingering strength from a ruling period long past.

Because it shares the earth element with Five Yellow, the system's most severely inauspicious star, some practitioners treat any year or month in which Two Black and Five Yellow occupy adjoining or the same sectors as calling for heightened remedial attention, on the reasoning that two afflicted earth influences reinforce rather than merely coexist. This combination reading is one of many interaction rules layered onto the base nine star system in later commentary, illustrating how flying star practice has continued to accumulate refinement well past its classical core.

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