Gui · Yin Water

Meaning

Gui is the tenth and last Heavenly Stem and the yin side of Water: water as rain, dew, mist and the spring that seeps from the ground, small and everywhere at once. It closes the cycle in the depth of winter, when the seed waits underground, and the Han historians read its name as 揆 kuí, to measure: in Gui, things can be weighed and laid out for the spring to come. The Di Tian Sui calls it “the weakest” of the stems, and in the same breath says that it “reaches the ford of heaven”.

It is read as intuition, sensitivity and a quiet wisdom: the person who perceives what is not said, who learns by soaking things in, whose influence is gentle and lasting, like rain that makes a whole field green without anyone seeing it fall. Gui is often imaginative and inward, at home with dreams, study and reflection. Its difficulty is the mist’s: it can lose its outline, take on the mood of a room, worry in silence, or doubt a strength that does not look like strength.

The classics give the small water a great reach. The Di Tian Sui says that with the Dragon it moves and its transformations become wondrous, as rain rises from the clouds; that it does not worry about Fire or Earth and pays no mind to Geng or Xin; and that joined to Wu, with Fire in sight, it truly transforms. The tradition reads Gui as the water that is weak only in volume: it reaches what no river can.

In practice

• As the Day Master, Gui finds its resources in Metal, Xin its Indirect Resource and Geng its Direct Resource, and its peers in Water, Ren being its Rob Wealth. Wood is its output, Yi its Eating God and Jia its Hurting Officer; Fire is its wealth, Ding indirect and Bing direct; Earth shapes it, Ji its Seven Killings and Wu its Direct Officer.
• Its roots: Gui is the whole of Zi, the Rat, and is hidden in Chou, the Ox, and Chen, the Dragon, the storehouse of Water. As a yin stem it runs through the twelve life stages backward: it is born in Mao, prospers in Zi and stands at its peak in Hai.
• Its partners: Gui combines with Wu, yang Earth, its Direct Officer, a pair that leans, against expectation, towards Fire: the rain and the mountain making warmth together. It clashes with Ding, yin Fire, the rain on the lamp.
• In time: the years ending in 3 are Gui years, counted from Lichun: 2023 was the Water Rabbit’s, 2033 will be the Water Ox’s. A Wu or Gui year opens with a Jia-Yin month, and a Wu or Gui day with a Ren-Zi hour.
• In Feng Shui, Gui is a mountain of the luopan, the third of the north, from 7.5° to 22.5°, and a yin one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan 癸 is read mizunoto, “younger brother of water”; in Korea gye, in Vietnam Quý. As the tenth and last letter of Chinese lists it is the J, and in chemistry ten carbon atoms, 癸烷 guǐwán, decane.
• The cycle’s end is also a beginning: Gui-Hai, the sixtieth pillar, is followed by Jia-Zi, the first, as the last day of winter opens on the spring. Western astrology’s Pisces, the last sign, plays the same part before Aries, the water that dissolves the year before it starts again.
• Rain and dew are gifts from the sky in many traditions, from the manna and dew of the Hebrew Bible to the rain-making dragons of East Asia; Gui is that water, small, from above, and life-giving.

Origin and history

On the oracle bones 癸 names the tenth and last day of the Shang week; it was on Gui days that the diviners asked whether the coming ten days would be free of trouble, a question repeated week after week on hundreds of bones. Sima Qian explained the name by 揆, to measure, things that can be measured; Ban Gu wrote that things are laid out and measured in Gui, and Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) speaks of winter, when water and earth lie level and can be measured.

BaZi’s classics made Gui the subtle water. The Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty sets out its relations, and the Di Tian Sui’s verse, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary of the Qing dynasty, describes the weakest of waters that still reaches heaven’s ford and transforms with the Dragon. Modern teachers picture it as rain, dew, mist and the underground spring.

How Ulune calculates it

Gui is the stem of six of the sixty pillars, Gui-You, Gui-Wei, Gui-Si, Gui-Mao, Gui-Chou and Gui-Hai, each joining it to a yin branch; Gui-Hai is the last of the sixty. In BaZi’s balance a visible Gui counts one point of Water, a hidden one its weight (1 in Zi, 0.3 in Chou, 0.1 in Chen, twice in the month branch). For a Gui Day Master Ulune counts the life stages backward from Mao, as for every yin stem, and finds its symbolic stars by the classical verses: the Nobleman in Si and Mao, the Academic star in Mao, the Prosperity star in Zi; the yin stems’ Sword Edge is disputed and left out. The pages draw Gui in Water’s deep blue.

Correspondences