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The Eternal Wheel

Referred to as a nightmare world, a dream world, a demon world, and a world of saints, the Universe of the Four gods, the land where "Fushigi Yuugi" takes place, showcases many different types of people, though all of them appear to come from ancient China. The citizens are all subject to their respective guardian, and, for the most part, act as good or as evil as their cardinal point dictates. So, in Suzaku's Konan there are many decent people, while the overwhelming majority in Seiryuu's Kutou are jerks. Unlike the "real world," the lives of the people there are actually ruled by the stars, rendering a rollicking story out of what used to be myth. The reason so few people know about Seishuku Astronomy is the fact that it is a long-dead science. It ran into a dead end with predicting futures and creating a calendar, so the resources of scientists were turned elsewhere. However, with Fushigi Yuugi, the interest has been reborn, hence many web pages on the subject and few books.
Above, you can see an ancient Chinese drawing, featuring cycles in the Chinese calendar. The innermost ring with the four cosmological animals signifies the four cardinal directions and the four seasons. The next ring of twelve animals represent the twelve year Jupiter cycle. Finally, the outer ring of twenty-eight creatures stands for the twenty-eight "inns" of the moon. Although the book I photocopied it from had it turned incorrectly (Can you believe they had aligned it so Genbu sat in the south west!?!?!?) I managed to scan the photocopy into my computer and turn it, so Genbu sits at the north, Byakko to the West, Suzaku to the South, and Seiryuu to the East. One thing I must note before going further-- I am using the Japanese names for the constellations and the four "gods," so this may be different for Chinese and Indian sources. Here, in the Chinese, the "inns" of the moon are represented by animals, while the Japanese sources make them into objects for the most part (ie ChichiriBoshi is the Well, and NakagoBoshi is the Heart.) Everything runs in a cycle, with the Moon's movements recurring time and again. By determining which station the moon was at when you were born, Japanese astrologers told fortunes and the like. This is still sometimes done today, but more for fun than anything else. I found out, on a great website, that I was born under Hikitsu, one of the Genbu seven. If you are curious as to which you were born under, click here to go to that wonderful page. It only covers 1965 to 1987 dates, however, so if that doesn't catch you, e-mail the creator of the page for an answer. Doh! How was I supposed to know you were born in 1988?!?? *smiles sweetly.*
In Fushigi Yuugi, this cycle seems to evidence itself as never ending. Although I have not seen the entire series, I have been led to believe, through inference and just plain guessing, that whenever one of the empires is in danger, a priestess will show up to collect the seven warriors of that empire's guardian, or "god."Thus, the warriors show up time and again, as people named for each constellation. In the anime, the two empires that are struggling are Konan {Ko-nawn} (the southern empire of Suzaku) and Kutou {Koo-toe} (the eastern empire of Seiryuu). The empires of Hokan {Hoe-kawn} (the northern empire of Genbu) and Sairou {Sai-row} (the western empire of Byakko) are seen, but are not the places for main action. To find out more about the different constellations each empire claims, let us look at the Genbu seven, the Byakko seven, the Suzaku seven, and the Seiryuu seven in detail.

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