III. The Cosmos

The 1910 compendium that supplies our Dipper stars makes a larger claim at the head of one of its chapters: that every calendar people use to tell time — the sun and moon, the five planets, the twenty-eight lodges, the ten stems and twelve branches, the sixty-year cycle — derives from a single source, the pole star, differentiating itself into sixty-four “transformation stars.” This chapter follows that claim through five systems, each of which counts the sky in a different number.

Twelve. Talismans in the shapes of the twelve zodiac animals (1910, pp. 358–369). Their instructions contain a surprise: you do not wear your own animal. A person born in the Year of the Rat wears the Horse; each person wears the sign seven places away — the one that faces theirs across the wheel of the year. What appears to be the same set is printed in a woodblock edition of 1773, which prints its talismans white on black.

Thirty-six. A chapter headed Tengang, the name of the Dipper’s handle (1910, from p. 301). Its thirty-six talismans pair appeals for the protection of stars and gods with defenses against the dangers of the Japanese almanac — the Eight Generals, the Metal God, the unlucky directions and hours — and against plague spirits, curses, and lightning.

Fifty-eight. The “Martial Emperor’s Applied Talismans,” fifty-eight in number, from the 1912 manual Chintaku reifu-shin (see Sources). Whom the “Martial Emperor” in the title refers to has not yet been securely identified.

Sixty-four. The sixty-four transformation stars of the Great Emperor of the Purple Tenuity (1910, from p. 423) — the chapter whose opening sets out the whole system.

These books told their readers to copy the talismans and carry them “never leaving the skin.” We print them to be worn, and we do not claim they do anything more than they did on the page: show a system for ordering the sky.