Ding Mao · Yin Fire Rabbit
In Chinese: 丁卯
Ding Mao, the Yin Fire Rabbit: a lamp lit from spring wood, a small, steady flame kept by a gentle hand.
Meaning
Ding Mao puts the lamp beside the Rabbit’s green wood of mid-spring, a flame its branch keeps fed. The tradition reads a warmth that is quiet rather than loud: care, taste and a light that lasts because it is tended.
Ding over Mao: yin Fire over yin Wood, a stem its branch produces, as Wood produces Fire.
Ding, Yin Fire, is the candle and the lamp: a focused light that shows the way in the dark. The Rabbit is gentle, refined and tactful.
The zodiac reads a Ding Mao year as the Fire Rabbit’s. The Fire Rabbit is the warmest and most expressive of the Rabbits: charming, lively, a natural host. It feels deeply and shows it, and gains by keeping its calm when tempers rise.
Its Na Yin, shared with Bing Yin, is Fire in the furnace (爐中火 lúzhōng huǒ): a sound of Fire, heard beside the pillar’s Fire and Wood.
In practice
- As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1807, 1867, 1927, 1987, 2047, 2107 and 2167, in the 1800–2200 table.
- As a month: the Rabbit month of every Jia or Ji year, opened by Awakening of Insects, as in the solar years 2024 and 2029.
- As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 22 February, 23 April, 22 June, 21 August, 20 October and 19 December.
- As an hour: the Rabbit’s double hour, 05:00–07:00, of Jia and Ji days.
- As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Ding, sitting on Mao, the partner palace: Mao holds Yi, Ding’s Indirect Resource, and Ding stands at its Retreat 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 hinoto-u, jeongmyo and Đinh Mão, with each language’s readings of 丁 and 卯.
How Ulune calculates it
Ding Mao is the 4th of the sixty pillars: the 4th of the ten stems over the 4th 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).
Ding Mao belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Zi to Gui You, whose stems meet the branches from Zi to You and leave out Xu and Hai: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 2nd of the thirty, one for each two pillars.
Correspondences
| Correspondence | Ding Mao |
|---|---|
| Characters, pinyin | 丁卯 dīngmǎo |
| Place in the cycle | 4 of 60 |
| Stem | Ding, yin Fire |
| Branch | Mao, the Rabbit, yin Wood |
| Hidden in the branch | Yi 100 |
| Stem and branch | Wood produces Fire |
| Na Yin | Fire in the furnace, with Bing Yin |
| Its stem’s stage in its branch | Retreat |
| Ten-day week | Jia Zi to Gui You; empty branches Xu and Hai |
| Its stem, for each Day Master | Jia → Hurting Officer, Yi → Eating God, Bing → Rob Wealth, Ding → Companion, Wu → Direct Resource, Ji → Indirect Resource, Geng → Direct Officer, Xin → Seven Killings, Ren → Direct Wealth, Gui → Indirect Wealth |
| Its branch’s main qi, for each Day Master | Jia → Rob Wealth, Yi → Companion, Bing → Direct Resource, Ding → Indirect Resource, Wu → Direct Officer, Ji → Seven Killings, Geng → Direct Wealth, Xin → Indirect Wealth, Ren → Hurting Officer, Gui → Eating God |
| Years, 1800–2200 | 1807, 1867, 1927, 1987, 2047, 2107, 2167 |
| Month | Rabbit month of Jia and Ji years |
| Hour | Rabbit hour, 05:00–07:00, of Jia and Ji days |
| Before and after | Bing Yin, Wu Chen |
| Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese | Hinoto-u, jeongmyo, Đinh Mão |
Related
- Ding · Yin FireThe fourth Heavenly Stem, yin Fire: the lamp, the candle and the star, a light that is small and steady and shows the way in the dark.
- Mao · RabbitThe fourth Earthly Branch, yin Wood: the Rabbit, the east, sunrise and the heart of spring, when growth breaks through the soil as through an open gate.
- RabbitThe fourth of the twelve animals, the Rabbit of the branch Mao: gentle, refined and tactful, it prefers persuasion to force and peace to quarrels.
- Fire in the furnaceFire in the furnace, the Na Yin of Bing Yin and Ding Mao: fire at work within walls, heat that forges and transforms.
- Bing Yin · Yang Fire TigerBing Yin, the Yang Fire Tiger: the sun rising over the first wood of spring, fire at its birth, warm, bold and fed by what it stands on.
- Wu Chen · Yang Earth DragonWu Chen, the Yang Earth Dragon: the mountain over the damp earth of late spring, a stem on its own phase, solid and patient.
Sources
- Sima Qian, Shiji, c. 94 BC
- Ban Gu, Hanshu, 1st century
- Xu Sheng (ed.), Yuanhai Ziping, Song dynasty
- Wan Minying, San Ming Tong Hui, 16th century
- Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3, 1959