Wu Yin · Yang Earth Tiger

Meaning

Wu Yin is the mountain in the first month of spring, covered by the Tiger’s young forest, which works it as Wood works Earth; Earth, following Fire, is born here too. The tradition reads a steady strength awakened by challenge, reliable and roused at once.

Wu over Yin: yang Earth over yang Wood, a stem its branch controls, as Wood controls Earth.

Wu, Yang Earth, is the mountain: solid, broad, unmoved by passing weather. The Tiger is brave, magnetic and independent.

The zodiac reads a Wu Yin year as the Earth Tiger’s. The Earth Tiger tempers the Tiger’s boldness with good sense: brave but realistic, it weighs a risk before taking it and sees a plan through. Its fairness wins it loyal friends.

Its Na Yin, shared with Ji Mao, is Earth on the city wall (城頭土 chéngtóu tǔ): a sound of Earth, heard beside the pillar’s Earth and Wood.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1818, 1878, 1938, 1998, 2058, 2118 and 2178, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Tiger month of every Yi or Geng year, opened by Start of Spring, as in the solar years 2020 and 2025.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 4 January, 5 March, 4 May, 3 July, 1 September, 31 October and 30 December.
• As an hour: the Tiger’s double hour, 03:00–05:00, of Yi and Geng days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Wu, sitting on Yin, the partner palace: Yin holds Jia, Bing and Wu, Wu’s Seven Killings, Indirect Resource and Companion, and Wu stands at its Birth 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-tora, mu-in and Mậu Dần, with each language’s readings of 戊 and 寅.

How Ulune calculates it

Wu Yin is the 15th of the sixty pillars: the 5th of the ten stems over the 3rd 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 Yin belongs to the ten-day week from Jia Xu to Gui Wei, whose stems meet the branches from Xu to Wei and leave out Shen and You: for a day pillar of this week, those are the empty branches. Its Na Yin is the 8th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences