Venus, the General—and the Writing Beside It

If you are used to encountering Venus in the context of love, thinking of it as the soft, beautiful, attractive star, a general might not be your first reaction. So if one day you open the Overview of Taibai and see the opening line "Venus in the west is the image of the Taibai general," you might pause: General? Venus? How do these two words end up on the same line?

Pausing is good. The places where we pause are often where we begin to truly read.

But don't rush to put armor on Venus, and don't rush to take it off and replace it with a tender label. That sentence is not defining Venus, saying it is "essentially a military figure." It is within a larger passage, beginning with an analogy and then moving on—to writing, to appearance, to favorable and unfavorable placements, to "for a man, Venus represents the wife," to the obstacles when it meets with Mars, Saturn, Ji, and Bo. The general is only the entrance to this passage, not its entirety.

If we extract just the Chinese word 将军, "general," and treat it as a new nickname for Venus, then we have merely replaced one single label with another. The original label was "love," the new one is "martial force," and both obscure the more complex things in the same passage.

The passage in the Overview of Taibai seems a bit mixed at first glance. It says that if Venus occupies the body and life palaces, and moreover is in a favorable palace described as miao or wang, it indicates "refined writing, exceptional intelligence, and unmatched martial prowess." Then it adds, "For men, handsome and dignified; for women, light and charming." Literary talent, martial valor, and physical beauty are placed together, without a "but" or an "actually" between them. They are not mutually canceling opposites, but several facets under the same conditional judgment. If you pick out only the words "martial prowess," you will miss "refined writing"; if you pick out only "refined writing," you will treat "unmatched martial prowess" as an incongruous decoration.

When the ancients wrote astrological judgments, they liked to spread out figurative images. The Sun is "the image of a ruler," Jupiter is "the image of a noble man," Mercury is "the image of a Tingwei," and Venus is "the image of a general." These names carry a flavor of official titles and virtues, but they are not a table of occupations for the seven luminaries—not saying that a Sun person must be a leader, a Mercury person must do judicial work, or a Venus person must join the military. They are more like finding an easily associable entrance for each star. The entrance of "general" in the original text does indeed connect to old judgments about military authority; if borrowed for analogy today, it can also evoke a set of qualities: decisiveness, authority, being seen in a crowd, being able to step forward when there is a matter. These qualities can coexist with refined writing, and can also coexist with light and charming beauty. In such modern analogies, we can separate action style, talent, and appearance. It is only when we flatten them onto the same plane that we feel they clash.

Even more interesting is the series in the Taibai Song Judgments. It says Venus "delights in music and studies shang and gong," says "makes friends and remains respectful for long," says "is also skilled at metalwork and smelting," and only then adds, "When it comes to the body, it naturally has the force of a general; when it illuminates the life palace, its military authority is even more heroic." Music, friendship, metalwork, and the force of a general—four things placed together. If we use today's words to differentiate them, a musician, a person who values social interaction, a craftsman, and a military commander already span occupations and ways of relating. But in the syntax of the song judgments, they follow the same star downward without feeling abrupt.

These song lines originally contain old judgments about talent and military authority. Borrowing them for reading today, we can also see a set of images that can reflect one another. Music speaks of rhythm and proportion, friendship speaks of longevity and respect, metalwork speaks of handling materials and controlling the fire, and the general speaks of force and decision. What they share may be a quality of "having skill in hand and clarity in mind." We do not need to read this as psychology, and even less need to use it to certify anyone's occupation or virtue. But at least this group of words does not compress a star into only one face.

This also brings to mind some moments in ordinary reading and doing. A person may speak little in a meeting, but at a critical juncture, he can settle a matter—that is a kind of general's force. The same person, after going home, may spend the evening repairing an old chair, pushing the plane very slowly—that suggests a craftworker's side, echoing the metalwork image. It is hard to say which side is more real. They are not masks put on in turn, but branches and leaves grown from the same person in different situations. The writing, martial valor, music, and friendship in the Venus passage have a bit of this meaning too. It is not that tenderness is hidden under armor, nor that armor is draped over tenderness, but that these words naturally grow on the same branch.

Of course, we cannot read the original text too modernly or too leniently just because we like "complexity" today. In the Overview of Taibai there is also the line, "For a man, Venus represents the wife." This is a very clear old-style attribution and gender judgment, carrying its own historical context. We can put it back into the original text, acknowledge that it is there, and neither defend it nor expand it into the love destiny of everyone today. In the same passage, there are both figurative images that can inspire association and judgments belonging to the old framework of human affairs. When reading, we must see both.

The key is not to pick out which word as the conclusion, but to know which layer each word stands on. When reading today, we can view "the image of a general" on the figurative level, "refined writing" on the talent level, "for a man, Venus represents the wife" on the attribution level, and "when it meets Mars, Saturn, Ji, and Bo, it is said: combined punishment" on the conditional level. They are mixed in the same passage, but they are not the same thing. Once a certain layer is extracted and compressed into "Venus is a general" or "Venus is love," the context is obscured.

So, back to the entrance of the ordinary reader: if you are used to discussing love with Venus, and you open the Overview of Taibai and see "general," you do not need to hurriedly put love away, nor hastily match the general with a tender side. You can first let these two words stay on the same page for a while. See what else is sandwiched between them: refined writing, exceptional intelligence, unmatched martial prowess, for men handsome and dignified, for women light and charming. See that in the song judgments there are also music, friendship, and metalwork. Then see how conditions such as body and life, miao and wang placements, and meeting are interwoven in the original passage, and how weakened or unfavorable placements and obstruction are written in.

After reading this round, you may find that Venus has not been rewritten by the word "general," nor exhausted by the word "love." It is simply that in an old passage, several associations that are not easy to categorize are accommodated at the same time. What we can do is read these words back into the original passage and conditions, rather than lining them up for them and choosing one as the representative.

If in the version you read, the Overview of Taibai has other layers, or if you feel that a certain sentence has been read too narrowly or biasedly by us, please send over counterexamples and corrections. This article is not meant to settle the case for Venus, but only to invite you to look at that page a little longer together.

This article mainly cites Volume Twelve of Zhang Guo's Astrological Compendium, the "Overview of Taibai" and "Taibai Song Judgments," and cross-reads the general treatises on Jupiter and Mercury in the same volume and the general treatise on the Sun in Volume Fourteen. It is based on a fixed digital transcription and has not been collated page by page against a facsimile edition.