Geng Shen · Yang Metal Monkey

Meaning

Geng Shen sets the ore on the Monkey’s autumn Metal, the stem on the branch of its stipend. The tradition reads skill and self-reliance, a mastery that grows stronger still when it is shared.

Geng over Shen: yang Metal over yang Metal, a stem standing on its own phase.

Geng, Yang Metal, is the raw ore and the axe: strong, decisive, made sharper by the forge. The Monkey is clever, playful and inventive.

The zodiac reads a Geng Shen year as the Metal Monkey’s. The Metal Monkey is sharp and ambitious: skilled, self-assured, it masters whatever it takes on. Its independence is strong, and working with others makes it stronger still.

Its Na Yin, shared with Xin You, is Pomegranate wood (石榴木 shíliú mù): a sound of Wood, heard beside the pillar’s Metal.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1800, 1860, 1920, 1980, 2040, 2100 and 2160, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Monkey month of every Wu or Gui year, opened by Start of Autumn, as in the solar years 2023 and 2028.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 15 February, 16 April, 15 June, 14 August, 13 October and 12 December.
• As an hour: the Monkey’s double hour, 15:00–17:00, of Wu and Gui days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Geng, sitting on Shen, the partner palace: Shen holds Geng, Ren and Wu, Geng’s Companion, Eating God and Indirect Resource, and Geng stands at its Prosperity 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 kanoe-saru, gyeongsin and Canh Thân, with each language’s readings of 庚 and 申.

How Ulune calculates it

Geng Shen is the 57th of the sixty pillars: the 7th of the ten stems over the 9th 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).

Geng Shen 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 29th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences