Bing Wu · Yang Fire Horse

Meaning

Bing Wu sets the sun over the Horse at midsummer, a stem on its own phase at its peak, the branch of its Sword Edge; the year 2026 bears it. The tradition reads brilliance and independence, a great strength that does best with a clear aim.

Bing over Wu: yang Fire over yang Fire, a stem standing on its own phase.

Bing, Yang Fire, is the sun: warm, generous, shining on everyone alike. The Horse is free, lively and warm.

The zodiac reads a Bing Wu year as the Fire Horse’s. The Fire Horse is the Horse at full gallop: passionate, independent, brilliant, restless. Old folk belief made much of its strength; Ulune reads that strength as a gift to aim well.

Its Na Yin, shared with Ding Wei, is Water of the Milky Way (天河水 tiānhé shuǐ): a sound of Water, heard beside the pillar’s Fire.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1846, 1906, 1966, 2026, 2086 and 2146, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Horse month of every Ding or Ren year, opened by Grain in Ear, as in the solar years 2022 and 2027.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 1 February, 2 April, 1 June, 31 July, 29 September and 28 November.
• As an hour: the Horse’s double hour, 11:00–13:00, of Ding and Ren days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Bing, sitting on Wu, the partner palace: Wu holds Ding and Ji, Bing’s Rob Wealth and Hurting Officer, and Bing stands at its Peak stage there.
• As a luck pillar or a year, it brings each Day Master the god of its stem and the god of its branch’s main qi: the Correspondences below give them for all ten.

Across traditions

• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the same pillar is hinoe-uma, byeong-o and Bính Ngọ, with each language’s readings of 丙 and 午.

How Ulune calculates it

Bing Wu is the 43rd of the sixty pillars: the 3rd of the ten stems over the 7th of the twelve branches, which the cycle moves on one step together, so that a stem only ever meets the branches of its polarity. Ulune counts a year’s pillar from Lichun, 1984 being Jia Zi; a month’s twelve a year through the cycle, from Bing Yin in the Tiger month of 1984 (the rule of the five tigers); a day’s by the count of days, 1 January 2000 being Wu Wu; an hour’s twelve a day (the rule of the five rats).

Bing Wu belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Chen to Gui Chou, whose stems meet the branches from Chen to Chou and leave out Yin and Mao: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 22nd of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences