Romance
Friend
Business
FamilyIt is the image of hot earth that, each time it ran short of breath amid the world's dazzling lights and clamorous noise, wandered in search of the cool shade of a rock, and has at last come face to face with a solid uncut stone that will reflect its inner heart whole. Though the colors that show on the surface look utterly different, the warmth of earth that has come through rough sandstorms and the silence of cool metal tempered deep underground sit facing each other, steadying each other's breathing.
Long ago, in a caravan on the Silk Road bound for Samarkand, I once saw two people who were the very likeness of you two. One had the temperament of earth, holding heat through the whole body, taking the rough desert wind with nothing for a shield and going ahead to open the road, and the other had the temperament of cold metal, minding the wagon's load at that one's side without a hair's error and straining muddy water clear. In the rough wilderness the earth held the jewel-like uncut stone and wrapped it so that it would not break, and the stone calmly brought the earth's hurried steps to a halt, yet there was a season when, unable to govern the difference in the temperature each carried, they had to endure a sharp-edged silence night after night.
Yin Earth Snake x Yin Metal Ox — Hot Earth and a Cool Jewel, Each Leading Water to the Other
You are the earth of the Earth Snake day pillar, holding the blazing flames of early summer and striving to raise all living things, and she is the jewel of the Metal Ox day pillar, polishing her light alone in the cool air of early autumn. You were born into the generating grain in which earth bears and raises metal, so it is only natural that when you first saw her, your heart leaned first toward that calm, firm bearing and you wished to give her all your nourishment. Amid the storms of a noisy world, your passion, so transparent and hot that your whole heart showed through, must have reached her as a fresh warmth.
Look into her chart and two Yang Fires rise side by side in the year stem and the month stem, shining on Yin Metal, her Day Master, so the grain of a woman who from early on has composed herself under the world's high standards and strict gaze is plain. On the outside she has guarded herself with a flawless manner and a restrained silence, yet within there must always have run a cool tension. What melted that tension in a single breath was the unadorned roughness of earth that you carry and your frank playfulness, so each of you recognized in the other, at first sight, a place to rest.
From the moment you noticed the weariness hidden behind her neat stillness and tried to hold it, the bond between the two of you had already begun. Because, behind the splendor of outward appearance, the grain of the lack each of you had lived through was alike, the two of you could skip long explanations and still be bound quickly in deep trust.
Look into the inner hearts and the social seats of the two of you and the link of the Snake-Monkey harmony is fastened firmly between a day branch and a month branch. The Snake fire set in your day branch and the Monkey metal set in her month branch interlock in secret, so this is a bond in which the private warmth shared in one house and the public stage you face while working together in the outside world turn entwined as one body. That you have done the same work for nearly ten years and kept in step was no mere chance but thanks to this harmony of the branches, in which work and daily life do not push each other away and naturally enfold each other.
Yet you must not forget that the Snake-Monkey harmony, even as it holds out the hand of concord, carries with it the sharp tension of Break and punishment. Though on the surface every cogwheel of daily life seems to turn smoothly, the hasty flame hidden in your Snake fire and the cool-headed energy of metal lodged in her Monkey metal are apt to collide over the small standards of everyday life. The moments when a word offered out of care for the other becomes a blade that pierces the other's most tender spot, or when each of you digs in over your own way of working and then swallows the hurt inside, arise from this very gap.
Fortunately the Yang Metal held within the Snake fire of your day branch and the Yin Metal held within the Ox earth of her day branch are secretly in touch as the same kin of metal, so the emotional solidarity laid at the very bottom does not break easily. For both of you the hour of birth is unknown, so there is the limit of reading by three pillars and six characters alone, yet even from the confirmed characters, a tenacious strength able to embrace from within the collisions on the surface is amply in place.
Look at how the Vital Element is put to use and it shows clearly why this relationship became a salvation for each of you. Your chart is the parched, hot earth of early summer, so water, which will cool the heat of the birth chart and quench its thirst, is your sorely needed Applied Element and also your Climate Element. Her chart too is the cold metal of early autumn, so water, which will wash off the dust of earth and show the jewel's clear light to the world, is her Applied Element and also her Balance Element. It is the image of both of you anxiously seeking the same energy of water.
In this place you are being the most precious of benefactors to her. Rat water sits in your year branch and Yin Water rises plainly in your month stem and puts down its root, so you are amply supplying the clear stream she so longs for. Here lies the very reason that, when at your side, she could at last loosen her parched tension and unfold her talent at ease. In turn, with the cold Yin Water she keeps hidden in her Ox earth and with her cool metal energy, she cools your parched ground, and so she became a solid breakwater for your heart, which had been beset by nightmares and unease.
Only, the point to heed is the fact that for both of you earth acts as the Avoid Element to be wary of. When each one's pride or stubborn private defenses raise their head, that dust of earth can cloud the clear stream each of you sorely needs and block the passage of feeling between you. So that the calm she gives is not felt at times as a stifling stubbornness, and your tenderness does not sour into a meddling that leaves her breathless, you must always wash the boundaries of the heart clean.
Weigh the strength and weakness of the energies and yours is a strong chart, with Snake fire in both the month branch and the day branch and a plain force pushing the earth upward, whereas she puts down her root in the Monkey metal that commands her month and receives the nourishing support of the Ox earth in her day branch, yet the Authority stars in her heavenly stems press down on her, so hers is a balanced chart. You tend to overflow with the energy to shoulder things yourself and push ahead, and she is skilled at steadying her weight inward and reading the situation.
Add to this the flow of the Twelve Stages and the difference in pace grows plainer still. You sit upon the vigorous energy of Peak in your day branch, the seat of the spouse, so your feelings and actions burst outward at once, whereas she rests in the seat of Nurturing and has the bearing of one who calmly holds and raises and seeks stability. This is why, when you pour out your feelings like a storm and mean to reach a conclusion straight away, she steps back a pace, turns the situation over in her mind, and goes into silence.
Such a gap in pace is all too apt to breed misunderstanding. You are prone to take her silence for coldness or distance and grow uneasy, and she may feel your unrestrained expression as excessive pressure and as noise. The size of your strength in itself does not tilt one-sidedly toward either of you, so acknowledging that your strides differ is the only way to prevent a needless contest of strength.
Fit together the pattern of the Ten Gods and you and she stand in a truly curious position of completing each other. To you, a man, she is the fruit you bring forth and the seat of your Expression stars, to be cherished and answered for, and to her, a woman, you become the wide earth on which she can lay down her weary body and the embrace of the Resource stars. It is an arrangement in which each of you knows by instinct what must be given to the other for there to be ease.
The passage to mark especially is the two Noble Authority stars risen above her head. In her life, in which from childhood she had early to shoulder an adult's responsibilities and bear the strict yardstick of the public, these two flames must have been an honor and at the same time a heavy shackle. Yet Yin Earth, your Day Master, silently takes in those hot flames and absorbs them into its own soil, so before you at least she can cast off every mask of the world and rest like a child, whole.
The keen energy of the Needle Star lodged in her chart made her an artist who is minute and strives for perfection, yet it also became a sensitivity that ceaselessly censors herself. That tension, sharp as a needle's point, is gently enfolded by the blessing of the Heavenly Noble seated in your year branch and by the rounded energy of earth, so I would call you a truly beautiful pair who fill in each other's rough places.
The place where the two of you are apt to collide appears when work comes crashing in all at once and the strength of body and mind has run dry. The unfinished tension of the Snake-Monkey part of the three-way punishment that lies between you, and the working of the Break, are apt to give off a sharp cracking sound when fatigue has piled up. That is because when you are uneasy or worn out you will lay your whole heart bare and set about noisy joking or pouring out your troubles, whereas hers is a temperament that, the more tired she is, hides deep inside her own shell and demands utter stillness. When your impatience tries to shake her silence awake, the spark of a quarrel will be struck.
Also, among the Nayin Sound Elements your Forest Wood and her Wall Earth collide, and the energy of the Void brushes past at your side, so gaps where you oddly miss each other are apt to open in small ways of living or in the rules of keeping house. If, in the small ways of caring for the dogs or in the daily rhythm of taking rest, each of you presses your own way on the other, small hurts can pile up like dust and carve a rift of feeling.
Looking ahead along the flow, in the coming Fire Goat year of 2027 the Goat earth of the yearly luck touches the Ox earth of her day branch and stirs the wave of the Ox-Goat clash, so it is a time when your wife's stress and inner sensitivity may reach their height. Then your patience as a husband will be greatly tested, but in the Earth Monkey year of 2028 that follows, your day branch and the yearly luck form a harmony and the tangled skein will come undone of itself, so do not be too impatient. That the total score of this match came to 68 points, with the verdict that there is much room to grow into each other, is meant to tell you that this is not a union that fits perfectly and rolls along by itself but a relationship that becomes a jewel only when cut and polished with care by the hands of you both.
To mark the great flow of time first, from the present, 2026, until the middle of 2027 is a period in which you are settling the rough tail end of the 10-year luck cycle you have come through, while she stands upon a favorable current, the Water Snake luck cycle. Now is the time not for you to step forward and make great decisions but to lend weight to your wife's steady intuition and discernment. Past this hard pass, after June 2027 you enter a new luck cycle, and later, from 2034, you come to a stretch of great fortune in which the luck cycles of the two of you form harmony side by side in both the heavenly stems and the earthly branches, so as the years go by and you grow older, the tie between you will deepen all the more.
If the two of you are to keep your peace as husband and wife under one roof, you must tune the rhythm of daily life wisely.
First, as to the season for deep talk, rather than summer, when fire energy soars and feelings easily grow hasty, late autumn or winter (around November or December by the solar calendar), when the water energy that is the Vital Element of you both flows clear, is good, and within the day too, rather than the late hours of night when fatigue has piled up, the morning, when you can enjoy a walk with a clear mind, is fitting.
Second, as to the place for talk, avoid a room full of showy lights or the noise of electronic devices, and choose a place where a calm, cool air lingers, such as the countryside outside the city where the sound of water is softly heard, or a study with quiet lighting.
Third, as to distance in daily life, you must know how to keep a thorough separation. When work crowds in and both of you are worn out, to grant each other in full a half day of silence, in which each can catch breath alone in a room of one's own or a separate space, is the secret that lets a married couple breathe.
Fourth, when you speak to her as a husband, slow your playful, blunt way of talking by one beat, first make plain the premise, "I am a little impatient at heart just now, so you need not keep to my pace," and then gently say what you have to say.
Fifth, when she has closed her mouth and is sunk in fine work or in thought, do not try to break that silence by force, and practice the waiting that sets a cup of warm tea at her side without a word and steps back.
If, over the next two to four weeks, the scene in which your wife falls silent from fatigue and you do not press her impatiently but wait for her wholly takes its place in your daily life, it will be a clear sign that the harmony between the two of you is finding its proper place without going astray. Just as those two of old who crossed the Silk Road desert reached the oasis safely at last because the earth shielded the wagon from its rough jolting with the whole body and the metal never lost the North Star in the night sky, so only when you two acknowledge and embrace each other's difference will you become a firm pair to share a lifetime.
I have gauged the time and hand you one sealed word to keep, so engrave upon your heart the coming Earth Monkey year of 2028, or thereabouts. On an autumn day of that year, the firm energy of metal that arrives in the yearly luck will meet the Snake fire of your day branch, the seat of the spouse, and bring about the deep concord of the Snake-Monkey harmony, and then you will know what it is for the old fatigue in the lives of you both to be washed away and for work and daily life to settle into a steadiness one step higher. When that time comes, look back for yourself on how generously you two embraced each other's differences, and on how you set down your impatience and held your wife's hand, and come to me again bearing the story of that season.
Only, for both of you the hour of birth is unknown and I have read your fate by the six confirmed characters alone, so the bond with children and the shape of the secluded haven where you will drop anchor in the latter half of life are still veiled in mist. In days to come, once you know for certain the hour of birth of you both, come to me bearing that hidden pillar and I will then throw wide the remaining door of secrets. Do not be blinded by the world's loud praise and the flash of cameras, and, holding tight the cool, firm hand of the woman standing beside you, go on quietly tilling your warm earth.