Shen · Monkey

Meaning

Shen is the ninth Earthly Branch: the branch of the Monkey, of the west-south-west, of the double hour from three to five in the afternoon, and of the seventh month of the Chinese year, which opens the autumn. It is Metal, yang: the year turns from growth to harvest, the grain hardens, the air sharpens. Ban Gu wrote that things grow firm in Shen, and Xu Shen’s dictionary read the character through 神 shén, the spirit, and through the stretching and binding of the body as yin comes to its strength.

It is read as cleverness, adaptability and skill, the Monkey’s quick intelligence, a talent for solving problems and for learning anything, and the energy of a beginning in a season of endings. Shen likes to move, to try, to find another way. Its difficulty is the restlessness of the clever: shortcuts that cost more later, a taste for playing with rules, and a mind that moves on before others have caught up.

As one of the four branches that begin the seasons, with Yin, Si and Hai, Shen is where a phase is born: Water is born here, as Ren is in the life stages, while Metal takes its strength. It holds three stems, Geng its main qi, Ren and Wu: the blade of the harvest, the water that will come with winter, and the ground.

In practice

• In BaZi, Shen holds Geng as its main qi, with Ren and Wu. It is the Prosperity of Geng and the Peak of Xin, the Birth of Ren, the Nobleman of Yi and Ji, and the Academic star of Bing and Wu. A Shen month, from Liqiu, about 8 August, to Bailu, about 8 September, opens the autumn, when Metal takes the lead.
• Its relations: Shen is in harmony with Si, a pair that leans towards Water, though the same two also form a punishment and a destruction; it begins the Water trine with Zi and Chen, and the autumn trio with You and Xu. It clashes with Yin, across the circle, harms Hai, and belongs to the “ungrateful” punishment with Yin and Si.
• In Chinese astrology, Shen is the Monkey: 2016 was a Fire Monkey year and 2028 will be an Earth Monkey year.
• In Feng Shui, Shen is the last mountain of the south-west, from 232.5° to 247.5°, a yang one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan the branch is read saru, the monkey; in Korea sin; in Vietnam Thân. In Japanese folk religion the Kōshin night, Geng-Shen, came back every sixty days, and the Three Wise Monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil are linked to it, the monkey being Shen’s animal.
• The Yi Jing’s sovereign hexagram for the Shen month is Standstill (Pi, the 12th): three broken lines beneath three whole ones, heaven and earth drawing apart as the year leans towards winter.
• Western astrology sees the Sun pass from Leo into Virgo during the Shen month, the sign of the harvest and of skilled work, which shares Shen’s sense of useful cleverness.

Origin and history

Shen is one of the branch characters of the Shang oracle bones, where it is drawn as a flash of lightning, the first form of 電 diàn, lightning, and of 神 shén, spirit, as the Shuowen Jiezi’s gloss remembers. The Huainanzi (139 BC) sets it at the start of autumn; Sima Qian wrote that in Shen yin takes up its work and begins to cut back the ten thousand things, as the harvest does, and Ban Gu that they grow firm. The everyday senses of the word, to state, to extend, to stretch, as in 申請 shēnqǐng, to apply, come from the same root.

BaZi’s classics count Shen among the four places of birth, where Water begins, and read the Water trine, Shen, Zi and Chen, as Water’s birth, height and storehouse. The Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty and the San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming give it the Travelling Horse for a year or day branch of the Yin, Wu and Xu trine, the star of journeys and changes of place.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune numbers Shen 8 among the branches. The Shen month runs from the exact moment of Liqiu, the Sun at 135°, to Bailu, the Sun at 165°; the Shen hour is 15:00 to 17:00 on true solar time at the birthplace by default. In BaZi’s balance its hidden stems count 0.6 for Geng, 0.3 for Ren and 0.1 for Wu, twice in the month branch. Ulune names every relation two branches hold: Shen with Si gives a harmony, a punishment and a destruction, in that order; Shen with Yin a clash and a punishment.

Correspondences