Geng Xu · Yang Metal Dog

Meaning

Geng Xu sets the ore on the Dog’s late-autumn earth, which produces it, though Xu also stores the Fire that forges it. The tradition reads integrity and courage, a strength that becomes a guide once it learns to bend a little.

Geng over Xu: yang Metal over yang Earth, a stem its branch produces, as Earth produces Metal.

Geng, Yang Metal, is the raw ore and the axe: strong, decisive, made sharper by the forge. The Dog is loyal, honest and just.

The zodiac reads a Geng Xu year as the Metal Dog’s. The Metal Dog is principled and unbending: brave, loyal, uncompromising about right and wrong. Its integrity is its strength, and flexibility makes it a better guide.

Its Na Yin, shared with Xin Hai, is Metal of hairpins and bracelets (釵釧金 chāichuàn jīn): a sound of Metal, heard beside the pillar’s Metal and Earth.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1850, 1910, 1970, 2030, 2090 and 2150, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Dog month of every Ding or Ren year, opened by Cold Dew, as in the solar years 2022 and 2027.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 5 February, 6 April, 5 June, 4 August, 3 October and 2 December.
• As an hour: the Dog’s double hour, 19:00–21:00, of Ding and Ren days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Geng, sitting on Xu, the partner palace: Xu holds Wu, Xin and Ding, Geng’s Indirect Resource, Rob Wealth and Direct Officer, and Geng stands at its Decline 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-inu, gyeongsul and Canh Tuất, with each language’s readings of 庚 and 戌.

How Ulune calculates it

Geng Xu is the 47th of the sixty pillars: the 7th of the ten stems over the 11th 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 Xu belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Chen to Gui Chou, whose stems meet the branches from Chen to Chou and leave out Yin and Mao: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 24th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences