Stem combination

Meaning

The five stem combinations pair the ten Heavenly Stems five places apart: Jia with Ji, Yi with Geng, Bing with Xin, Ding with Ren, Wu with Gui. In each pair a yang stem meets the yin stem of the phase it controls, Jia’s Wood and Ji’s Earth, Bing’s Fire and Xin’s Metal: the old books compare them to husband and wife, two different natures bound to each other.

Each pair can become a phase of its own: Jia and Ji make Earth, Yi and Geng Metal, Bing and Xin Water, Ding and Ren Wood, Wu and Gui Fire, the five phases in the order of the generating cycle. The tradition reads a combination first as a bond: the two stems are drawn to each other and hold each other, and each is less free to act on its own. Only when the chart allows it do they transform, and the chart is then read as if they were the new phase.

The classics named each pair. Jia and Ji make the combination of the centre, fairness and good faith; Yi and Geng the combination of kindness and justice; Bing and Xin the combination of authority; Ding and Ren one the classics call of feeling; Wu and Gui the one they call without feeling, a bond built on shared aims more than on sentiment.

In practice

• In BaZi a stem combination between two pillars is named with its pair’s line and its conditions: the two pillars side by side, the month supporting the phase it would make, no other stem clashing either partner, and no third stem seeking the same partner. When all four are met, it transforms; otherwise it binds without transforming.
• The Day Master: when the stem of the day is one of the pair, Ulune adds that most schools hold the self binds but seldom turns into another phase.
• In time: a luck pillar, a year, a month or a day whose stem combines with one of the chart’s is named among what that time meets.
• Two charts: when two people’s Day Masters combine, BaZi’s comparison names it, one of the tradition’s classic signs of two people drawn to each other.

Across traditions

• In Chinese medicine the same pairs rule the years: the Suwen’s doctrine of the five movements gives a year of Jia or Ji to Earth, of Yi or Geng to Metal, and so on, the stems of the year setting the character of its climate.
• In Western alchemy the chemical wedding joins two opposites, the king and the queen, sulphur and mercury, into a third substance: the same image of a pair that binds and is transformed.

Origin and history

The combinations, and the phases they make, are explained by the calendar. In a year of Jia or Ji the months begin with Bing-Yin, and counting on to the Dragon month gives Wu-Chen, a stem of Earth; in a year of Yi or Geng the Dragon month is Geng-Chen, Metal; and so for each pair, whence the old saying that a combination transforms when it meets the Dragon. Xiao Ji’s Wuxing Dayi, around 600, already sets out the combinations of the stems, and the Suwen’s chapters on the five movements, in Wang Bing’s edition of 762, give each pair its phase.

The Zi Ping school made them central to reading a chart. The Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui give the five pairs their names and debate when a combination truly transforms; the Di Tian Sui and Ren Tieqiao’s commentary insist that a transformation be true, supported by the season and undisturbed, before it is read as one, and warn against seeing transformations everywhere.

How Ulune calculates it

Two stems combine when their places, Jia counting 0 and Gui 9, are five apart; the phase they would make is fixed by the pair: Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, Fire. In a chart, four conditions are stated one by one: neighbouring pillars; the month branch of that phase or of its season, Earth’s being the four storehouses; no other stem clashing either partner; no third stem combining with either. The combination transforms only when all four are met, and Ulune says which are not.

Correspondences