Stem clash

Meaning

Four pairs of Heavenly Stems clash: Jia and Geng, Yi and Xin, Bing and Ren, Ding and Gui. In each, two stems of the same polarity stand six places apart, of opposite phases and from opposite directions: the Wood of the east against the Metal of the west, the Fire of the south against the Water of the north. Wu and Ji, the Earth stems, stand at the centre and clash with none.

The tradition reads a stem clash as two ways of acting that push against each other: a tension that sets things moving, an inner debate. Ulune gives each pair its image. Jia and Geng are the tree and the axe, growth meeting a cut that can also shape it; Yi and Xin the vine and the blade, suppleness meeting precision; Bing and Ren the sun and the river, warmth facing depth; Ding and Gui the candle and the rain, a small flame and a fine water to keep in balance.

Seen from either stem, the other has a name among the Ten Gods: Geng is Jia’s Seven Killings, the same polarity controlling it, and Jia is Geng’s Indirect Wealth, what it controls. A clash is the sharpest form of that bond, between stems that face each other across the compass.

In practice

• In BaZi a stem clash between two pillars is named with its pair’s line, and flagged when the pillars stand side by side, where it is felt most.
• Combinations: a stem clashing either partner of a stem combination keeps it from transforming, one of the four conditions Ulune checks.
• In time: a luck pillar, a year, a month or a day whose stem clashes with one of the chart’s is named among what that time meets.
• Two charts: when two people’s Day Masters clash, BaZi’s comparison names it, two ways of acting that challenge each other and can sharpen each other.

Across traditions

• In Greek physics Aristotle set fire against water, the hot and dry against the cold and wet, as the Chinese stems set Bing against Ren: the same opposition of the two most contrary elements, drawn in two languages.
• On the Feng Shui compass the four stem clashes are four straight lines: the mountains of Jia and Geng, Yi and Xin, Bing and Ren, Ding and Gui face each other across the 24, and a home facing one sits in the other.
• In Western astrology the nearest figure is the opposition between two planets, read as two pulls that ask to be balanced, rather than as a victory of one over the other.

Origin and history

The pairs follow from the stems’ own order. Counting the ten round the five phases, each stem meets its opposite six places on; the two Earth stems, at the centre of the scheme, have no opposite direction, which is why the classics count four clashes and not five. Xiao Ji’s Wuxing Dayi, around 600, already sets the stems in their directions and their oppositions, and the Zi Ping books read the clashes of the stems beside their combinations.

The Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui weigh a stem clash by the season and by the stems’ roots in the branches; the Di Tian Sui, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary, reads it as a struggle whose outcome depends on which side the chart supports. Some books count more pairs among the stems that control one another; Ulune follows the four that most books give.

How Ulune calculates it

Two stems clash when their places, Jia counting 0 and Gui 9, are six apart and the first is one of the four before Wu: Jia and Geng, Yi and Xin, Bing and Ren, Ding and Gui. BaZi names the clash between pillars, between a chart and its times, and between two people’s Day Masters, and counts it as breaking any stem combination one of the two belongs to.

Correspondences