Geng Yin · Yang Metal Tiger

Meaning

Geng Yin brings the axe into the Tiger’s young forest, Metal over the Wood it controls, in a season that belongs to the trees. The tradition reads confidence and drive, a force that does best when it chooses what to shape rather than cutting everything.

Geng over Yin: yang Metal over yang Wood, a stem that controls its branch, as Metal controls Wood.

Geng, Yang Metal, is the raw ore and the axe: strong, decisive, made sharper by the forge. The Tiger is brave, magnetic and independent.

The zodiac reads a Geng Yin year as the Metal Tiger’s. The Metal Tiger is confident and strong-willed: it sets high goals and goes straight at them. Competitive and direct, it gains by listening before it charges.

Its Na Yin, shared with Xin Mao, is Pine and cypress wood (松柏木 sōngbǎi mù): a sound of Wood, heard beside the pillar’s Metal and Wood.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1830, 1890, 1950, 2010, 2070, 2130 and 2190, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Tiger month of every Bing or Xin year, opened by Start of Spring, as in the solar years 2021 and 2026.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 16 January, 17 March, 16 May, 15 July, 13 September and 12 November.
• As an hour: the Tiger’s double hour, 03:00–05:00, of Bing and Xin days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Geng, sitting on Yin, the partner palace: Yin holds Jia, Bing and Wu, Geng’s Indirect Wealth, Seven Killings and Indirect Resource, and Geng stands at its Pause 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-tora, gyeong-in and Canh Dần, with each language’s readings of 庚 and 寅.

How Ulune calculates it

Geng Yin is the 27th of the sixty pillars: the 7th of the ten stems over the 3rd 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 Yin belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Shen to Gui Si, whose stems meet the branches from Shen to Si and leave out Wu and Wei: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 14th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences