Ding Si · Yin Fire Snake
In Chinese: 丁巳
Ding Si, the Yin Fire Snake: a lamp in the early summer sun, Fire twice over, intense, magnetic and persuasive.
Meaning
Ding Si sets the lamp in the Snake’s early summer fire, a stem on its own phase at its peak. The tradition reads intensity and quiet influence, a light that leads from the side rather than from the front.
Ding over Si: yin Fire over yin Fire, a stem standing on its own phase.
Ding, Yin Fire, is the candle and the lamp: a focused light that shows the way in the dark. The Snake is wise, discreet and intuitive.
The zodiac reads a Ding Si year as the Fire Snake’s. The Fire Snake is the most magnetic of the Snakes: intense, confident, persuasive, with a gift for leading from behind the scenes. Its passion is strong, and trust softens its guard.
Its Na Yin, shared with Bing Chen, is Earth in the sand (沙中土 shāzhōng tǔ): a sound of Earth, heard beside the pillar’s Fire.
In practice
- As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1857, 1917, 1977, 2037, 2097 and 2157, in the 1800–2200 table.
- As a month: the Snake month of every Wu or Gui year, opened by Start of Summer, as in the solar years 2023 and 2028.
- As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 12 February, 13 April, 12 June, 11 August, 10 October and 9 December.
- As an hour: the Snake’s double hour, 09:00–11:00, of Wu and Gui days.
- As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Ding, sitting on Si, the partner palace: Si holds Bing, Wu and Geng, Ding’s Rob Wealth, Hurting Officer and Direct Wealth, and Ding 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 hinoto-mi, jeongsa and Đinh Tỵ, with each language’s readings of 丁 and 巳.
How Ulune calculates it
Ding Si is the 54th of the sixty pillars: the 4th of the ten stems over the 6th 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 Si belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Yin to Gui Hai, whose stems meet the branches from Yin to Hai and leave out Zi and Chou: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 27th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.
Correspondences
| Correspondence | Ding Si |
|---|---|
| Characters, pinyin | 丁巳 dīngsì |
| Place in the cycle | 54 of 60 |
| Stem | Ding, yin Fire |
| Branch | Si, the Snake, yin Fire |
| Hidden in the branch | Bing 60, Wu 30, Geng 10 |
| Stem and branch | Fire over Fire, one phase |
| Na Yin | Earth in the sand, with Bing Chen |
| Its stem’s stage in its branch | Peak |
| Ten-day week | Jia Yin to Gui Hai; empty branches Zi and Chou |
| 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 → Eating God, Yi → Hurting Officer, Bing → Companion, Ding → Rob Wealth, Wu → Indirect Resource, Ji → Direct Resource, Geng → Seven Killings, Xin → Direct Officer, Ren → Indirect Wealth, Gui → Direct Wealth |
| Years, 1800–2200 | 1857, 1917, 1977, 2037, 2097, 2157 |
| Month | Snake month of Wu and Gui years |
| Hour | Snake hour, 09:00–11:00, of Wu and Gui days |
| Before and after | Bing Chen, Wu Wu |
| Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese | Hinoto-mi, jeongsa, Đinh Tỵ |
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.
- Si · SnakeThe sixth Earthly Branch, yin Fire: the Snake, the first month of summer and the late morning, when yang has fully come out and warmth gathers.
- SnakeThe sixth of the twelve animals, the Snake of the branch Si: wise, discreet and intuitive, it thinks before it moves, then moves precisely.
- Earth in the sandEarth in the sand, the Na Yin of Bing Chen and Ding Si: light, sandy ground, shifting yet fertile where water reaches it.
- Bing Chen · Yang Fire DragonBing Chen, the Yang Fire Dragon: the sun warming the moist spring earth, ardent, ambitious and generous.
- Wu Wu · Yang Earth HorseWu Wu, the Yang Earth Horse: the mountain in the midsummer heat, solid earth at its strongest, steady and kind.
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