Chen · Dragon

Meaning

Chen is the fifth Earthly Branch: the branch of the Dragon, of the east-south-east, of the double hour from seven to nine in the morning, and of the third month of the Chinese year, the last of spring. It is Earth, yang, and the earth of late spring: moist, warm, turned by the plough and shaken by the first thunder. The Han historians read it as 震 zhèn, to shake: in the third month, Xu Shen wrote, yang stirs, thunder and lightning break out, and it is the people’s time to work the fields.

It is read as energy, ambition and transformation, the vitality and the reach of the Dragon, the only creature of legend among the twelve, and the strength of a ground that holds a great deal. Chen gathers resources and people and turns them into something larger. Its difficulty is the thunder’s: a force that wants to move everything at once, a self-confidence that can forget how much others carry, and a storehouse so full that it forgets to open.

Chen is one of the four storehouse branches, with Xu, Chou and Wei. It holds Wu, its own Earth, Yi, the Wood of the spring it closes, and Gui, the Water it keeps in store: Chen is the storehouse of Water, where Ren is stored in the life stages. With Chou it is called wet earth, rich and fertile, as against the dry earth of Wei and Xu.

In practice

• In BaZi, Chen holds Wu as its main qi, with Yi and Gui: an Earth branch with roots for Wood and for Water. That is why a Gui Day Master is said to come alive with the Dragon, and why a Water chart reads Chen as a reserve. A Chen month, from Qingming, about 5 April, to Lixia, about 6 May, is the turn from spring to summer.
• Its relations: Chen is in harmony with You, a pair that leans towards Metal; it closes the Water trine with Shen and Zi, and the spring trio with Yin and Mao. It clashes with Xu, the other storehouse across the circle, harms Mao, forms a destruction with Chou, and punishes itself when it meets itself: two Chen in one chart, or a person’s Chen with another’s.
• In Chinese astrology, Chen is the Dragon: 2024 was a Wood Dragon year and 2036 will be a Fire Dragon year.
• In Feng Shui, Chen is the first mountain of the south-east, from 112.5° to 127.5°, a yin one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan the branch is read tatsu, the dragon; in Korea jin; in Vietnam Thìn. The character 辰 also names time and the heavens in Chinese: a double hour is a 時辰 shíchen, the stars are 星辰 xīngchén, and a birthday is a 生辰 shēngchén.
• The Yi Jing’s sovereign hexagram for the Chen month is Breakthrough (Guai, the 43rd), five whole lines under one broken: yang about to be complete as summer comes.
• Dragons in Europe are the guardians of hoards and the enemies of saints; in China they bring the rain and stand for vitality and good fortune. The Chen branch, a storehouse of Water, keeps the Chinese sense: the dragon is the force of the spring rains, not a monster.

Origin and history

Chen is one of the branch characters of the Shang oracle bones, where its form is often read as a clam shell or a stone tool for clearing the fields, which ties it to the farming season. The Huainanzi (139 BC) puts it at the end of spring; Ban Gu wrote that things are shaken into beauty in Chen, and Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) that in the third month thunder sounds and the farmers go out. The word came to mean the celestial bodies and the times they mark: the sun, the moon and the stars are the “three chen” of the old texts.

BaZi’s classics read the storehouse branches as reserves that can stay closed or be opened: the clash of Chen and Xu, two storehouses face to face, is read in the Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty and the San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming as much as an opening of what they hold as a shock between them.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune numbers Chen 4 among the branches. The Chen month runs from the exact moment of Qingming, the Sun at 15°, to Lixia, the Sun at 45°; the Chen hour is 07:00 to 09:00 on true solar time at the birthplace by default. In BaZi’s balance its hidden stems count 0.6 for Wu, 0.3 for Yi and 0.1 for Gui, twice in the month branch. Chen is one of the four branches Ulune reads as punishing themselves, with Wu, You and Hai, when it stands twice among a chart’s pillars or a person’s animals; and for a year or day branch of its own Water trine it is the Canopy.

Correspondences