Xu · Dog

Meaning

Xu is the eleventh Earthly Branch: the branch of the Dog, of the west-north-west, of the double hour from seven to nine in the evening, and of the ninth month of the Chinese year, the last of autumn. It is Earth, yang, and the earth of late autumn: dry, bare, the fields cleared after the harvest. The Han historians read the season in it: in the ninth month, Xu Shen wrote, yang is faint, the ten thousand things are complete, and yang goes down into the earth to rest.

It is read as loyalty, a sense of justice and protection, the faithfulness of the Dog, which guards the house when the evening comes, and the steadiness of someone who keeps what has been entrusted to them. Xu stands by its principles and its people. Its difficulty is the guard’s watchfulness: worry for those it loves, a world seen in black and white, and a reluctance to let in what it does not yet trust.

Xu is one of the four storehouse branches, with Chen, Chou and Wei. It holds Wu, its own Earth, Xin, the Metal of the autumn it closes, and Ding, the Fire it keeps in store: Xu is the storehouse of Fire, where Bing is stored in the life stages. With Wei it is called dry earth, warm and holding the year’s heat, as against the wet earth of Chen and Chou.

In practice

• In BaZi, Xu holds Wu as its main qi, with Xin and Ding: an Earth branch with a root for Metal and a spark of Fire. Its harmony with Mao, a pair that leans towards Fire, and its place as the storehouse of the Fire trine make it the branch where a chart’s warmth is kept for winter. A Xu month, from Hanlu, about 8 October, to Lidong, about 7 November, closes the autumn.
• Its relations: Xu is in harmony with Mao; it closes the Fire trine with Yin and Wu, and the autumn trio with Shen and You. It clashes with Chen, the wet storehouse across the circle, harms You, belongs to the punishment of power with Chou and Wei, and forms a destruction with Wei.
• In Chinese astrology, Xu is the Dog: 2018 was an Earth Dog year and 2030 will be a Metal Dog year.
• In Feng Shui, Xu is the first mountain of the north-west, from 292.5° to 307.5°, a yin one for the Flying Stars.

Across traditions

• In Japan the branch is read inu, the dog; in Korea sul; in Vietnam Tuất. The Double Ninth Festival, Chongyang, on the ninth day of the ninth month, falls in or close to the Xu month: people climb hills, drink chrysanthemum wine and honour the old.
• The Yi Jing’s sovereign hexagram for the Xu month is Splitting Apart (Bo, the 23rd): a single whole line above five broken ones, like the last leaves on a bare tree, which are also the seeds of the next growth.
• Western astrology sees the Sun pass from Libra into Scorpio during the Xu month, the sign of what goes underground and is transformed, close to Xu’s yang going down into the earth.

Origin and history

Xu is one of the branch characters of the Shang oracle bones, drawn as a weapon with a broad blade, a halberd, a cousin of the stem 戊. The Lüshi Chunqiu (c. 239 BC) and the Huainanzi (139 BC) put it at the end of autumn, in the north-west; Sima Qian wrote that in Xu the ten thousand things are all brought to an end, Ban Gu that they all go in, and Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) that yang goes down into the earth. Popular books explain the Dog’s place by the hour: Xu is the evening, when the house is shut and the dog keeps watch.

BaZi’s classics read Xu as dry, warm earth, the storehouse of Fire, and the clash of Xu and Chen as two storehouses opening each other. The San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming counts Xu among the four storehouses that a chart may keep closed or opened, and with Chou and Wei among the three branches of the punishment of power.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune numbers Xu 10 among the branches. The Xu month runs from the exact moment of Hanlu, the Sun at 195°, to Lidong, the Sun at 225°; the Xu hour is 19:00 to 21:00 on true solar time at the birthplace by default. In BaZi’s balance its hidden stems count 0.6 for Wu, 0.3 for Xin and 0.1 for Ding, twice in the month branch. For a year or day branch of its own Fire trine, Xu is the Canopy.

Correspondences