Fire

Meaning

Fire is the phase of growth at its height: the long days of summer, the noon sun, the flame that warms and lights and draws people round it. “The Great Plan” says that fire blazes upwards, and the tradition reads in it whatever rises, shines and shows itself: enthusiasm, expression, joy, the moment a thing is most fully what it is and most visible to everyone.

It is the greatest yang, the top of the cycle before it turns. Wood feeds it, as fuel feeds a flame; it feeds Earth, leaving ash that becomes soil; it checks Metal, softening and melting it in the forge; and Water checks it, as water puts out a fire or cools a hot day.

Its gifts, as the tradition gives them, are warmth, generosity of spirit, clarity and the ability to inspire, and its virtue in the Confucian scheme is propriety (禮 lǐ), the right form that lets people meet with grace. Much of it is read as haste and spending too much of oneself; little of it as warmth and expression waiting to be kindled. The tradition answers with balance: rest and calm for a strong fire, light and company for a faint one.

In practice

• In BaZi, two stems are Fire: Bing, yang Fire, the sun shining on everyone alike, and Ding, yin Fire, the candle and the lamp that light the way for those close by. Two branches are Fire, Si and Wu, the Snake and the Horse, the months of summer. A Fire Day Master finds its resource in Wood, its peers in Fire, its output in Earth, its wealth in Metal and the power that shapes it in Water.
• In Chinese astrology, the Snake and the Horse are Fire animals by their branch. The years 2026 and 2027 are Fire years, the Fire Horse’s and the Fire Goat’s; the next pair is 2036 and 2037, the Fire Dragon’s and the Fire Snake’s.
• In Feng Shui, the south is Fire, the palace of the trigram Li, and so is the star 9 Purple, the star of celebration, recognition and joy. Period 9, which runs from 2024 to 2043, is its period: the Flying Stars of these twenty years are read with Fire in its season.
• With little Fire, the tradition suggests light, company and sharing what one feels; with much of it, rest, calm and room to cool down.

Across traditions

• Western astrology has an element of fire, hot and dry, shared by Aries, Leo and Sagittarius: a temperament of spirit and initiative. The Chinese Fire is less a quality than a moment, the summit of the yearly cycle.
• Chinese astronomy calls Mars the Fire star, 火星 huǒxīng, for its red light, as the West gave the red planet to its god of war.
• Heraclitus, around 500 BC, called the world an ever-living fire, kindling and going out in measure: like the Chinese phases, an image of change rather than of a substance.

Origin and history

The character 火 shows flames rising, and is written so on the oracle bones of the Shang dynasty. The monthly ordinances of the Lüshi Chunqiu (c. 239 BC) and the Huainanzi (139 BC) give Fire the summer and the south, red as its colour (赤 chì) and the Vermilion Bird of the southern sky as its emblem. Dynasties claimed the phases as their own: the Eastern Han (25–220) chose Fire, and red, in the year 26, as the History of the Later Han records, and is still sometimes called the Fiery Han, 炎漢 Yán Hàn. BaZi’s classics give the Fire stems their images: in the Di Tian Sui, Bing is fierce and bright as the sun, and Ding, gentle within, warms and lights what is near.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reads Fire in the stems Bing and Ding and the branches Si and Wu, in a pillar or hidden in another branch: Yin holds Bing among its hidden stems, Wei and Xu hold Ding. In BaZi’s balance Fire is read as much of it from about 2.5 of the nine points, little under half a point. In Feng Shui the south palace and the star 9 are Fire, and the period chart of a home of Period 9 has 9 at its centre. Ulune draws Fire in red.

Correspondences