Ren Zi · Yang Water Rat

Meaning

Ren Zi sets the river over the Rat’s midwinter water, a stem on its own phase at its peak, the branch of its Sword Edge. The tradition reads depth and intuition, a broad mind that does well to keep a few firm banks.

Ren over Zi: yang Water over yang Water, a stem standing on its own phase.

Ren, Yang Water, is the river and the sea: wide, moving, carrying everything along. The Rat is quick, alert and resourceful.

The zodiac reads a Ren Zi year as the Water Rat’s. The Water Rat is the Rat at its most intuitive: perceptive, diplomatic, a gifted talker who reads a room at once. It adapts easily, and does well to keep a few firm convictions.

Its Na Yin, shared with Gui Chou, is Mulberry wood (桑柘木 sāngzhè mù): a sound of Wood, heard beside the pillar’s Water.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1852, 1912, 1972, 2032, 2092 and 2152, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Rat month of every Ding or Ren year, opened by Major Snow, as in the solar years 2022 and 2027.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 7 February, 8 April, 7 June, 6 August, 5 October and 4 December.
• As an hour: the Rat’s double hour, 23:00–01:00, of Wu and Gui 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, Ren, sitting on Zi, the partner palace: Zi holds Gui, Ren’s Rob Wealth, and Ren stands at its Peak 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 mizunoe-ne, imja and Nhâm Tý, with each language’s readings of 壬 and 子.

How Ulune calculates it

Ren Zi is the 49th of the sixty pillars: the 9th 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).

Ren Zi 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 25th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences