Xin · Yin Metal

Meaning

Xin is the eighth Heavenly Stem and the yin side of Metal: metal once it has been worked, the jewel, the needle, the bell, gold leaf and silver thread. Where Geng is ore and blade, Xin is refinement, the precious and the precise. The Han historians read it as renewal, things made new in autumn, and the Di Tian Sui begins its verse: “Xin metal is soft, warm, moist and clear.”

It is read as taste, finesse and a sense of quality: an eye for detail, care for appearances and for words, the wish to do things well and to be valued for it, a sensitivity that notices what is out of place. A jewel catches the light and gives it back, and Xin often brings out what is beautiful in a place or a person. Its difficulty is the jewel’s fragility: it can be hurt by roughness, worry about how it is seen, hold itself and others to an exacting standard, or keep its shine for fear of being scratched.

The classics care for it as for something precious. The Di Tian Sui says that Xin fears being buried under heaps of Earth and delights in plenty of Water, which washes it and makes it shine; that it can support a realm and help living beings; and that in heat it wants its mother, Earth, and in cold the warmth of Ding. The tradition reads in Xin a value that is made, polished by use and by the right company.

In practice

• As the Day Master, Xin finds its resources in Earth, Ji its Indirect Resource and Wu its Direct Resource, and its peers in Metal, Geng being its Rob Wealth. Water is its output, Gui its Eating God and Ren its Hurting Officer, the washing water the classics love; Wood is its wealth, Yi indirect and Jia direct; Fire shapes it, Ding its Seven Killings and Bing its Direct Officer.
• Its roots: Xin is the whole of You, the Rooster, and is hidden in Xu, the Dog, and Chou, the Ox. As a yin stem it runs through the twelve life stages backward: it is born in Zi, prospers in You and stands at its peak in Shen.
• Its partners: Xin combines with Bing, yang Fire, its Direct Officer, a pair that leans towards Water: the sun reflected in the jewel. It clashes with Yi, yin Wood, the pruning knife against the vine.
• In time: the years ending in 1 are Xin years, counted from Lichun: 2021 was the Metal Ox’s, 2031 will be the Metal Pig’s. A Bing or Xin year opens with a Geng-Yin month, and a Bing or Xin day with a Wu-Zi hour.
• In Feng Shui, Xin is a mountain of the luopan, the third of the west, from 277.5° to 292.5°, and a yin one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan 辛 is read kanoto, “younger brother of metal”; in Korea sin, in Vietnam Tân. As the eighth letter of Chinese lists it is the H, and in chemistry eight carbon atoms, 辛烷 xīnwán, octane.
• In everyday Chinese the character also means pungent and hard to bear, as in 辛苦 xīnkǔ, toil, and 辛辣, spicy: the taste the five phases give to Metal is the pungent one, and the stem keeps a little of that sharpness under its polish.
• Western astrology gives Venus, the planet of beauty, taste and things of value, much of what China gives Xin, and Chinese astronomy itself calls Venus the Metal star, 金星 jīnxīng.

Origin and history

On the oracle bones 辛 is a sharp tool, a blade or a chisel, and names the eighth day of the Shang week; the last king of the dynasty, Di Xin, carries it in his name, as do ancestors such as Zu Xin. Sima Qian explained the stem by things newly born in autumn, and Ban Gu wrote that everything is made new in Xin; Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) places it in the autumn, when things are complete and ripe, and links it to the pungent taste.

BaZi’s classics made Xin the precious Metal. The Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty sets out its relations, and the Di Tian Sui’s verse, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary of the Qing dynasty, describes a soft, warm and clear metal that is spoilt by too much earth and brought out by water. Modern teachers picture it as jewellery, fine instruments, the needle and the scalpel, all images of precision and of value.

How Ulune calculates it

Xin is the stem of six of the sixty pillars, Xin-Wei, Xin-Si, Xin-Mao, Xin-Chou, Xin-Hai and Xin-You, each joining it to a yin branch. In BaZi’s balance a visible Xin counts one point of Metal, a hidden one its weight (1 in You, 0.3 in Xu, 0.1 in Chou, twice in the month branch). For a Xin Day Master Ulune counts the life stages backward from Zi, as for every yin stem, and finds its symbolic stars by the classical verses: the Nobleman in Wu and Yin (六辛逢馬虎, the Horse and the Tiger), the Academic star in Zi, the Prosperity star in You; the yin stems’ Sword Edge is disputed and left out. The pages draw Xin in Metal’s white-grey.

Correspondences