Chinese Xiu (Mansions)
Wei (Tail)
Also Known As Wei
Azure Dragon of the East
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Origin 433 BCE
The sixth mansion forms the tail of the dragon in Scorpius. It is broadly auspicious, associated with abundance, offspring and loyal relationships, and is counted favourable for family matters. Because the lodges are defined against the celestial equator rather than the ecliptic, they suit a tradition whose instruments were equatorial and whose interest lay in what crossed the meridian. This is the clearest structural difference between the Chinese mansions and the Indian ones, which are ecliptic divisions tied to the path of the moon.
Facts
Identity
Equatorial Extent (Du)18 du (about 17.7 degrees of equatorial arc) 2Tradition: Han-era Shi Shen tradition (Kaiyuan Zhanjing) Du: the arc-degree unit of the classical Chinese calendar, where a full circle equalled 365 and a quarter du (about 0.9856 modern degrees per du). This width is the Han-era figure standardized under the Taichu calendar and preserved in the Tang-dynasty Kaiyuan Zhanjing's Shi Shen star table; later dynasties recorded small revisions as precession shifted the determinative stars, so this is one epoch's figure, not a timeless constant. It measures the mansion's extent along the celestial equator (right ascension), the coordinate system Chinese astronomy actually used, not a position on the ecliptic (tropical zodiac); the atlas has no sourced mapping from this equatorial system onto a start point in ecliptic longitude, so this figure alone cannot be substituted into a start-end boundary range the way the equal Arabic-mansion spans are. Determinative StarMu-1 Scorpii 2Tradition: Han-era Shi Shen tradition (Kaiyuan Zhanjing) Origins
Origin Period433 BCE 1Tradition: Chinese equatorial astronomy Origin PeriodThe full set of twenty-eight lunar mansions is attested together for the first time on the lacquer box from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, sealed in 433 BCE, the earliest surviving object to record the complete list of names. 1 Origin of the NameThe English "lunar mansion" is borrowed from the Indian nakshatras and the Arabic manazil and misdescribes the xiu. A xiu is a lodge marked by a determinative star and measured in right ascension along the celestial EQUATOR; it is not a division of the Moon's ecliptic path, and the three systems are not variants of one scheme. 2 Attributions
PalaceAzure Dragon of the East 1 Learn More
The Lunar Mansion Wei (Tail)
Wei (Tail) is the sixth of the twenty-eight xiu, the lunar mansions of traditional Chinese astronomy. Each xiu is a segment of the sky marked by a group of stars near the celestial equator, and together they divide the heavens into the belt through which the sun, moon and planets appear to move.
Palace, animal and place in the sky
This mansion belongs to the Azure Dragon of the East, the quadrant of the sky lying toward the east, one of the four symbolic creatures among which the twenty-eight are shared out seven to each. In the later scheme that pairs every mansion with a creature, Wei is assigned the Tiger.
The twenty-eight mansions are among the oldest elements of Chinese sky-lore, attested well before the common era and used to track the nightly progress of the moon and to fix the calendar. The system is described here as that documented astronomical and calendrical tradition, from which its astrological uses later grew.
Wei, the Tail of the Azure Dragon
Wei, the Tail, is the sixth of the twenty-eight xiu and the sixth mansion of the eastern palace, the Azure Dragon, one of two mansions romanised Wei, this one meaning tail. It marks the tail of the celestial dragon, identified with the curving line of stars in Scorpius. In the later astrological tradition its animal totem is the Tiger. As one of the twenty-eight lunar mansions it tracks a portion of the sky along the Moon's monthly circuit. These are the conventions of the Chinese astronomical and calendrical tradition, in which the twenty-eight xiu, grouped into four palaces of seven, divide the heavens; the Azure Dragon of the east, from Horn to Winnowing Basket, coils across the sector of sky the almanac assigns to spring.
Wei's curving line of tail-stars in Scorpius was read in later Chinese court astrology as marking the boundary of the imperial domain, the dragon's tail region traditionally correlated with frontier and border affairs in the field-allocation system, fenye, that assigned each of the twenty-eight mansions to a corresponding terrestrial region of China; a comet or unusual event observed near a given mansion was read as a portent specifically for the province assigned to it, a technique with no real counterpart in the Indian or Arabic lunar-mansion traditions.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Named as the emblem animal of the lunar mansion Wei (Tail) in the twenty-eight xiu list.
Contained In
One of the seven lunar lodges of this palace.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven
David W. Pankenier, Cambridge University Press, 2013On the twenty-eight lodges and the Zeng Hou Yi lacquer chest
2. Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth
Joseph Needham, Cambridge University Press, 1959Vol. 3, the section on astronomy: the hsiu (lunar mansions), the equatorial system and the du measureQuote, Vol. 3, the section on astronomy: the hsiu (lunar mansions), the equatorial system and the du measure
The twenty-eight lodges are equatorial divisions bounded by determinative stars and so of unequal width, measured in du on a circle of 365.25 parts; their relation to the Indian and Arabic lunar mansion systems is unresolved.
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