Bath stage
In Chinese: 沐浴
The second of the twelve life stages, the young phase washed and exposed, still unsteady: curiosity, charm, a taste for trying things, at times restlessness.
Meaning
The Bath is the second of the twelve life stages, the branch right after a phase’s Birth. The classics call it 沐浴 mùyù, “bathing”: the newborn washed, or, in the Ziping Zhenquan’s image, the shoot whose green husk the rain washes away once the seed has come up. The phase is out in the open for the first time, new to the world and not yet steady on its feet.
The tradition reads curiosity, charm and a taste for trying things, at times restlessness. Being seen belongs to the stage: the classics link the Bath with attraction and with the arts of pleasing, and its branch, for the yang stems, is also the branch of the Peach Blossom. A Day Master at its Bath stage in a pillar’s branch is read as open, lively and impressionable there, eager to explore what that pillar stands for.
Its difficulty is its unsteadiness. A phase that is still finding its footing can scatter itself, follow the last new thing or lean on what others think of it; the tradition values what gives the stage a little form, without taking away its freshness.
In practice
- For each Day Master: Jia is at its Bath stage in Zi, Bing and Wu in Mao, Geng in Wu and Ren in You; Yi in Si, Ding and Ji in Shen, Xin in Hai and Gui in Yin.
- The Peach Blossom: the yang stems bathe in Zi, Mao, Wu and You, the four branches at the heart of the seasons, and each is the Peach Blossom of a trine: the Bath of Wood, Zi, is the Peach Blossom of Hai, Mao and Wei; the Bath of Water, You, that of Shen, Zi and Chen.
- The Golden Carriage: a yin stem’s Bath branch is also its Golden Carriage, two branches on from its Prosperity, as Si is for Yi.
- Before and after: the Bath follows Birth and leads to the Crown; across the wheel, in the clashing branch, stands its Rest, the stage of depth after the stage of display.
- On the board and in time, the stage shows under each pillar whose branch is the Day Master’s Bath branch, and in the full table in the row of a luck pillar or a year that brings it.
Across traditions
- In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the stage is mokuyoku, mogyok and Mộc Dục.
- In Chinese myth the Sun itself bathes: the Huainanzi has it rise from the Yang Valley and bathe in the Xian Pool, 咸池 xiánchí, and Xianchi became an old name of the Peach Blossom star, the Bath’s companion.
- In Western astrology its themes, charm, being seen and the pleasure of trying, are those of Venus and of the fifth house, of play and courtship: the same qualities, read through a planet and a place of the chart rather than through a moment of growth.
Origin and history
The Bath does not appear among the Huainanzi’s three moments of each phase, birth, maturity and end; it belongs to the twelve stages the Song and Ming books of the Zi Ping school set out, the Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui, which fill the course between Birth and Peak. The Ziping Zhenquan, in the 18th century, explains it by the seed: once the shoot is up, the husk it grew in is washed away. The same books associate the stage with the Peach Blossom, whose old name, the Xian Pool, is the Sun’s bath, and many popular almanacs still read a Bath branch as a sign of charm and of romance, which Ulune keeps as charm and an open, curious nature.
How Ulune calculates it
The Bath is stage 1 of the count, one branch after the Birth: forward for a yang stem, so Jia, born in Hai, bathes in Zi; backward for a yin stem, so Yi, born in Wu, bathes in Si. Earth follows Fire, Wu bathing in Mao with Bing and Ji in Shen with Ding. Ulune shows it on the board under each pillar whose branch it is, with its reading, and in the full table; the Peach Blossom and the Golden Carriage are found from their own tables, which Ulune keeps apart, so that each sign says what it is.
Correspondences
| Correspondence | Bath stage |
|---|---|
| Characters, pinyin | 沐浴 mùyù, “bathing” |
| Place | Second of the twelve stages |
| Image | The young shoot washed by the rain |
| For each stem | Jia → Zi, Yi → Si, Bing → Mao, Ding → Shen, Wu → Mao, Ji → Shen, Geng → Wu, Xin → Hai, Ren → You, Gui → Yin |
| Branches | Zi, Mao, Wu, You for the yang stems; Si, Shen, Hai, Yin for the yin |
| Before | Birth |
| After | Crown |
| Opposite | Rest |
| Star of the same branch | Peach Blossom, of the trine; for a yin stem, its Golden Carriage |
| Ulune’s reading | Curiosity, charm, a taste for trying things, at times restlessness |
| Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese | Mokuyoku, mogyok, Mộc Dục |
Related
- Twelve life stagesHow strongly a stem’s phase stands in each of the twelve branches, told as a plant’s year from the seed to the harvest and back to the seed.
- Birth stageThe first of the twelve life stages, where a stem’s phase begins, like a seed breaking ground: a fresh start, promise, and support from where things begin.
- Crown stageThe third of the twelve life stages, where a phase comes of age and puts on its cap and belt: growing confidence, the wish to be seen and to learn the world.
- Rest stageThe eighth of the twelve life stages, where a phase comes to rest like a field after the harvest: depth, focus and a mind that goes to the heart of things.
- Peach Blossom starThe star of charm, found by the trines of the year and day branches: attraction, ease with people, a gift for the arts and for being liked.
- Day MasterThe Heavenly Stem of the day of birth, the self in BaZi: the character every other stem and branch of a chart is read against, as one of the Ten Gods.
Sources
- Liu An (ed.), Huainanzi, “Patterns of Heaven” (Tianwen), 139 BC
- Xu Sheng (ed.), Yuanhai Ziping, Song dynasty
- Wan Minying, San Ming Tong Hui, 16th century
- Shen Xiaozhan, Ziping Zhenquan, 18th century
- Ho Peng Yoke, Chinese Mathematical Astrology, 2003