Jia Zi · Yang Wood Rat

Meaning

Jia Zi opens the cycle: the first stem on the first branch, so every count of sixty, of days, years or lives, starts here. Its tree stands over the deep water of midwinter that feeds it, and the tradition reads a beginning nourished from below, growth gathering before it shows.

Jia over Zi: yang Wood over yang Water, a stem its branch produces, as Water produces Wood.

Jia, Yang Wood, is the tall tree: upright, growing towards the light, steady in its roots. The Rat is quick, alert and resourceful.

The zodiac reads a Jia Zi year as the Wood Rat’s. The Wood Rat puts its quick mind to building: curious and sociable, it gathers people and ideas and makes them grow. Its generosity is real, and so is its need to feel secure.

Its Na Yin, shared with Yi Chou, is Metal in the sea (海中金 hǎizhōng jīn): a sound of Metal, heard beside the pillar’s Wood and Water.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1804, 1864, 1924, 1984, 2044, 2104 and 2164, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Rat month of every Wu or Gui year, opened by Major Snow, as in the solar years 2023 and 2028.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 19 February, 20 April, 19 June, 18 August, 17 October and 16 December.
• As an hour: the Rat’s double hour, 23:00–01:00, of Jia and Ji 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, Jia, sitting on Zi, the partner palace: Zi holds Gui, Jia’s Direct Resource, and Jia 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 kinoe-ne, gapja and Giáp Tý, with each language’s readings of 甲 and 子.

How Ulune calculates it

Jia Zi is the 1st of the sixty pillars: the 1st 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).

Jia Zi opens 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 1st of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences