Yin mountain

Meaning

Yin, 寅 yín, is the third mountain of the north-east (NE3): the fifteen degrees from 52.5° to 67.5°, centred on 60°. It takes its name from Yin, the third of the twelve Earthly Branches, the Tiger’s, and carries its phase, Wood.

Yin is the Tiger’s branch, Wood, the hour before dawn and the first month of the solar year, when growth is drawn out into the open. On the compass it closes the north-east, up to the line at 67.5° where the east begins. Its phase is Wood though its palace, Gen’s, is Earth: the mountains keep their own phases inside the eight palaces. A home facing Yin looks between north-east and east-north-east and sits in Shen, the Monkey’s mountain: a Kun house.

For the Flying Stars Yin is the north-east’s Man dragon and counts as yang, like Gen, so a home facing Yin has Gen’s main chart: reversed with the parent string and a repeated chart if it was built in Period 8, both of the period’s stars at the front if it was built in Period 9. They part at the edges. Yin’s replacement star is 9 where Gen’s is 7, and its upper edge is the line between the north-east and the east.

In practice

• The facing: a home whose front faces between 52.5° and 67.5° faces Yin, and sits in Shen, SW3: a Kun house of the West group. The Home lens tints Yin on its dial and draws Shen dashed.
• Near its edges: within 3° of 52.5° or 67.5° many schools read a replacement chart, which Ulune shows beside the main one; within 1.5° the facing is on a void line: at 52.5° the line towards Gen, inside the north-east; at 67.5° the line between the north-east and the east, towards Jia.
• The Flying Stars: built in Period 9, a home facing Yin has the formation Double stars at the facing; built in Period 8, the formations Reversed, Parent string and Repeated chart.
• The year: Yin is the Grand Duke’s mountain in a Tiger year, 2022 and 2034, which the classics suggest not facing for the year’s new beginnings, and the Year Breaker’s in 2028 and 2040, a side they suggest leaving undisturbed by works. The year’s 5 Yellow visits its palace, the north-east, in 2025 and 2034.

Across traditions

• The solar terms: on luopan plates that carry a ring of the solar terms, Yin goes with the Rain Water, the Sun at 330°, entering Pisces in the Western zodiac.
• Two tigers: the Tiger of the branches stands at the north-east, while the White Tiger of the Four Symbols, 白虎, guards the west, as the Azure Dragon guards the east: two systems that books sometimes run together.
• On the Western rose: Yin’s upper edge, 67.5°, is the east-north-east of the 16-point compass, where the luopan passes from Gen’s palace to Zhen’s.

Origin and history

Yin opens the solar year’s months: in BaZi the Tiger’s month begins at Lichun. On the luopan, though, Lichun goes with Gen, and Yin takes the Rain Water, the middle term of its own month: the ring of terms spreads each month’s two terms over two mountains, the term that opens it on the mountain before the branch and its middle term on the branch itself. So the middles of the seasons, the solstices and the equinoxes, fall exactly on Zi, Mao, Wu and You.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune finds the mountain a home faces from its magnetic facing, among 24 mountains of 15° counted from Ren at 337.5°: Yin takes every facing from 52.5° up to 67.5°, that edge belonging to the next, and the home sits in the mountain opposite, Shen. For the Flying Stars, Yin is the third mountain of a corner palace, of the group the classics call the Man dragon, and so counts as yang: when the stars look to it for their flight, it sends a star forward. Its replacement star, from the classical verse, is 9, which takes the place of the number going to the centre when, near an edge, it is the mountain that decides.

Correspondences