Wu Xu · Yang Earth Dog

Meaning

Wu Xu sets the mountain on the Dog’s late-autumn earth, a stem on its own phase, and Xu also keeps Fire in store. The tradition reads constancy and honesty, a guardian’s strength that others rely on.

Wu over Xu: yang Earth over yang Earth, a stem standing on its own phase.

Wu, Yang Earth, is the mountain: solid, broad, unmoved by passing weather. The Dog is loyal, honest and just.

The zodiac reads a Wu Xu year as the Earth Dog’s. The Earth Dog is the steadiest of the Dogs: sensible, faithful, patient with long work. Others rely on its honesty, and it does well to let go of what it cannot change.

Its Na Yin, shared with Ji Hai, is Wood of the plain (平地木 píngdì mù): a sound of Wood, heard beside the pillar’s Earth.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1838, 1898, 1958, 2018, 2078, 2138 and 2198, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Dog month of every Bing or Xin year, opened by Cold Dew, as in the solar years 2021 and 2026.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 24 January, 25 March, 24 May, 23 July, 21 September and 20 November.
• As an hour: the Dog’s double hour, 19:00–21:00, of Bing and Xin days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Wu, sitting on Xu, the partner palace: Xu holds Wu, Xin and Ding, Wu’s Companion, Hurting Officer and Direct Resource, and Wu stands at its Storehouse 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 tsuchinoe-inu, musul and Mậu Tuất, with each language’s readings of 戊 and 戌.

How Ulune calculates it

Wu Xu is the 35th of the sixty pillars: the 5th of the ten stems over the 11th 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).

Wu Xu belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Wu to Gui Mao, whose stems meet the branches from Wu to Mao and leave out Chen and Si: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 18th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences