Geng Zi · Yang Metal Rat

Meaning

Geng Zi sets the ore over the Rat’s deep winter water, Metal producing the phase below it. The tradition reads a sharp, determined mind that gives freely of its strength, and does well to keep some for itself.

Geng over Zi: yang Metal over yang Water, a stem that produces its branch, as Metal produces Water.

Geng, Yang Metal, is the raw ore and the axe: strong, decisive, made sharper by the forge. The Rat is quick, alert and resourceful.

The zodiac reads a Geng Zi year as the Metal Rat’s. The Metal Rat is sharp and determined: it knows what it wants, judges quickly and holds its course. Ambitious and loyal to its own, it softens its edges by trusting others a little more.

Its Na Yin, shared with Xin Chou, is Earth on the wall (壁上土 bìshàng tǔ): a sound of Earth, heard beside the pillar’s Metal and Water.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1840, 1900, 1960, 2020, 2080, 2140 and 2200, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Rat month of every Bing or Xin year, opened by Major Snow, as in the solar years 2021 and 2026.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 26 January, 27 March, 26 May, 25 July, 23 September and 22 November.
• As an hour: the Rat’s double hour, 23:00–01:00, of Ding and Ren days, whose first hour it is: by default Ulune’s day begins at 23:00.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Geng, sitting on Zi, the partner palace: Zi holds Gui, Geng’s Hurting Officer, and Geng stands at its Rest 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-ne, gyeongja and Canh Tý, with each language’s readings of 庚 and 子.

How Ulune calculates it

Geng Zi is the 37th of the sixty pillars: the 7th of the ten stems over the 1st 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 Zi belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Wu to Gui Mao, whose stems meet the branches from Wu to Mao and leave out Chen and Si: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 19th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences