Geng · Yang Metal

Meaning

Geng is the seventh Heavenly Stem and the yang side of Metal: metal as it comes out of the mountain, raw and heavy, and metal as a tool, the axe, the plough, the blade. Its season is the autumn, when the harvest is cut and the year turns from growth to gathering, and the Han historians read it as change itself: in Geng, yin begins to transform the ten thousand things. The Di Tian Sui calls it “the hardest and strongest” of the stems.

It is read as decisiveness, courage and a sense of justice: the person who says what must be said, cuts through hesitation, stands up for others and keeps faith with a cause. Geng likes things clear, and it is at its best when its strength is put to use, as ore becomes a tool. Its difficulty is the edge itself: it can be blunt, impatient with nuance, quick to cut when a softer way would do, and slow to admit that it, too, can be shaped.

The classics show how Geng becomes its best. The Di Tian Sui says that with Water it becomes clear and with Fire sharp, as a blade is quenched and forged; that moist earth lets it grow and dry earth makes it brittle; and that it can overcome its elder brother Jia but yields to its younger sister Yi, the soft Wood it combines with. The tradition reads Geng as a force that needs refining, not taming: forged, it serves everyone.

In practice

• As the Day Master, Geng finds its resources in Earth, Wu its Indirect Resource and Ji its Direct Resource, and its peers in Metal, Xin being its Rob Wealth. Water is its output, Ren its Eating God and Gui its Hurting Officer; Wood is its wealth, Jia indirect and Yi direct; Fire shapes it, Bing its Seven Killings and Ding its Direct Officer.
• Its roots: Geng is the main qi of Shen, the Monkey, and is hidden in Si, the Snake, where it begins. In the twelve life stages it is born in Si, prospers in Shen and stands at its peak in You, the Rooster, the heart of autumn.
• Its partners: Geng combines with Yi, yin Wood, its Direct Wealth, a pair that leans towards Metal: hardness won over by suppleness. It clashes with Jia, yang Wood, the blade against the trunk (stem clash).
• In time: the years ending in 0 are Geng years, counted from Lichun: 2020 was the Metal Rat’s, 2030 will be the Metal Dog’s, and 1990 was the Metal Horse’s. A Yi or Geng year opens with a Wu-Yin month, and a Yi or Geng day with a Bing-Zi hour.
• In Feng Shui, Geng is a mountain of the luopan, the first of the west, from 247.5° to 262.5°, and a yang one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan 庚 is read kanoe, “elder brother of metal”; in Korea gyeong, in Vietnam Canh. As the seventh letter of Chinese lists it is the G, and in chemistry seven carbon atoms, 庚烷 gēngwán, heptane.
• Japanese folk religion keeps a night named after the stem’s pairing with the Monkey: kōshin (庚申), every sixtieth day, when people once stayed awake together, after a Daoist custom brought from China, so that the spirits within them could not slip away to report their faults to heaven.
• Western astrology gives a like edge to Mars, the planet of the blade and of courage, though Chinese astronomy calls Mars the Fire star and gives Metal to Venus.

Origin and history

On the oracle bones 庚 names the seventh day of the Shang week, and kings such as Pan Geng, who moved the Shang capital to Yin, near today’s Anyang, carry it in their names. Sima Qian explained the stem by change, yin transforming the ten thousand things, and Ban Gu wrote that in Geng things are gathered in and changed; Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) places it in the west and in the autumn, when things grow firm with their fruit.

BaZi’s classics made Geng the hard Metal. The Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty and the San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming read it as the strongest of the stems, and the Di Tian Sui’s verse, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary of the Qing dynasty, describes a metal that carries an edge and needs both Water and Fire, quenching and forging, to come into its own. Modern teachers picture it as the sword, the axe, the ore in the rock.

How Ulune calculates it

Geng is the stem of six of the sixty pillars, Geng-Wu, Geng-Chen, Geng-Yin, Geng-Zi, Geng-Xu and Geng-Shen, each joining it to a yang branch. In BaZi’s balance a visible Geng counts one point of Metal, a hidden one its weight (0.6 in Shen, 0.1 in Si, twice in the month branch). For a Geng Day Master Ulune counts the life stages forward from Si, as for every yang stem, and finds its symbolic stars by the classical verses: the Nobleman in Chou and Wei, the Academic star in Hai, the Prosperity star in Shen and the Sword Edge in You. The clash between Geng and Jia is one of the four stem clashes Ulune names, all between stems six places apart. The pages draw Geng in Metal’s white-grey.

Correspondences