Xin Si · Yin Metal Snake

Meaning

Xin Si sets the jewel in the Snake’s fire, which tests the metal above it, though Si also holds the Earth that bears it and the Metal it comes from. The tradition reads refinement under pressure, a discerning mind that keeps its brilliance through the heat.

Xin over Si: yin Metal over yin Fire, a stem its branch controls, as Fire controls Metal.

Xin, Yin Metal, is the jewel and the fine blade: refined, precise, shining when it is washed clean. The Snake is wise, discreet and intuitive.

The zodiac reads a Xin Si year as the Metal Snake’s. The Metal Snake is clear-minded and self-reliant: discerning, determined, it sets its aim and reaches it alone if need be. It gains by letting others help.

Its Na Yin, shared with Geng Chen, is Metal of white wax (白蠟金 báilà jīn): a sound of Metal, heard beside the pillar’s Metal and Fire.

In practice

• As a year, from Lichun, around 4 February: 1821, 1881, 1941, 2001, 2061, 2121 and 2181, in the 1800–2200 table.
• As a month: the Snake month of every Yi or Geng year, opened by Start of Summer, as in the solar years 2020 and 2025.
• As a day, every sixty days: in 2026, on 7 January, 8 March, 7 May, 6 July, 4 September and 3 November.
• As an hour: the Snake’s double hour, 09:00–11:00, of Yi and Geng days.
• As a day pillar, its stem is the Day Master, Xin, sitting on Si, the partner palace: Si holds Bing, Wu and Geng, Xin’s Direct Officer, Direct Resource and Rob Wealth, and Xin stands at its Rest 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 kanoto-mi, sinsa and Tân Tỵ, with each language’s readings of 辛 and 巳.

How Ulune calculates it

Xin Si is the 18th of the sixty pillars: the 8th of the ten stems over the 6th 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).

Xin Si 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 9th of the thirty, one for each two pillars.

Correspondences