Geng Wu · Yang Metal Horse

Meaning

Geng Wu sets raw ore over the midsummer fire of the Horse, and that fire tempers the metal above it. The tradition reads a strength refined by pressure, a boldness that becomes a tool once the forge has done its work.

Geng over Wu: yang Metal over yang Fire, a stem its branch controls, as Fire controls Metal.

Geng, Yang Metal, is the raw ore and the axe: strong, decisive, made sharper by the forge. The Horse is free, lively and warm.

The zodiac reads a Geng Wu year as the Metal Horse’s. The Metal Horse is the most determined of the Horses: bold, independent, quick to decide and hard to hold back. Its drive takes it far, and it gains by slowing down for others.

Its Na Yin, shared with Xin Wei, is Earth by the roadside (路旁土 lùpáng tǔ): a sound of Earth, heard beside the pillar’s Metal and Fire.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1810, 1870, 1930, 1990, 2050, 2110 and 2170, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Horse month of every Jia or Ji year, opened by Grain in Ear, as in the solar years 2024 and 2029.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 25 February, 26 April, 25 June, 24 August, 23 October and 22 December.
• As an hour: the Horse’s double hour, 11:00–13:00, of Jia and Ji days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Geng, sitting on Wu, the partner palace: Wu holds Ding and Ji, Geng’s Direct Officer and Direct Resource, and Geng stands at its Bath 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-uma, gyeong-o and Canh Ngọ, with each language’s readings of 庚 and 午.

How Ulune calculates it

Geng Wu is the 7th of the sixty pillars: the 7th of the ten stems over the 7th 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 Wu 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 4th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences