IU's SajuA Candle That Burns Its Own Wick to Shape Jewels (Fire Rooster)K-POP · 1993-05-16

용신: 木

Here is a flame of Yin Fire, perched upon the dry metal of early summer and burning itself away. The world calls you fierce, or a climber who never holds back, but to my eyes you are only a lonely lamp that uses its own body as oil to melt down jewels, always with its bags packed and ready to move on. The Fire energy has met its own season and runs strong, so hot pride and the hunger to win boil within you, and yet among the six confirmed characters the shade of a single tree, the one that could calmly steady this blaze, stands empty. So you could never rest easy, and you must have driven yourself on as though you were always standing at the edge of a cliff.

In the crowded port of Lisbon in the Age of Discovery, in a workshop where the sea wind blew in, I once saw a goldsmith who melted gold and silver to shape sacred vessels. The eye that could judge purity and the skill of those hands were precise beyond compare, yet among merchants who had crossed rough seas, in a trade that knew no rules, holding on to the trust that was rightly owed was always a perilous walk on a tightrope. Even as the most luminous jewels bloomed at those fingertips, that craftsman lived in constant fear that the whole trade would break apart, and would keep the tools packed away in a chest. How truly alike are the cool fingertips of that craftsman and the look in your eyes.

Fire Rooster — A Candle That Burns Its Own Wick to Shape Jewels

You are a Fire Rooster day pillar carrying on your back the energy of the fourth month of early summer, so though you look neat and quietly graceful on the outside, within you hold a fierce force that could melt metal down in a single stroke. The Snake fire of your month branch, the Rival, becomes a firm root for your Day Master, so your refusal to lose and your power of decision are truly your inborn nature. Yet the Yin Water of Fierce Authority showing in the heavenly stems presses on your flame head-on through the clash of Yin Fire and Yin Water, so though you look at ease to others, inwardly you must always have had to master tension and unease as if walking on thin ice.

With Rooster metal laid side by side in your year branch and day branch, you hold the Heavenly Noble Star and the Literary Star, so your sense for crafting words and sound can rightly be called a gift sent down from heaven. Only, because of the Rooster-Rooster self-punishment, which arises when the same character repeats, a fastidiousness lies in wait in you that wounds you by your own strict yardstick more than by anyone else's judgment. It was not that you endured because you were strong. You cut away the excess of feeling first so as not to collapse, and so in the world's eyes alone you came to look like a hard person.

The Rival's will to win in your month branch and the Dynamic Wealth's knack for reckoning in your day branch lock together, so yours is the structure of a master craftsman who is only satisfied when you build the whole stage with your own hands rather than follow a road someone else has smoothed. The Yang Earth of the Performer among the hidden stems opens the way for your skill, and the Metal energy gathered by the Snake-Rooster half combination binds the finished work firmly together, so whatever you make, you come to hold a polish that draws the eyes of the world. Only, the blaze is fierce while no cushion of Resource stars shows on the surface to receive it calmly, so there is a trap here: once you throw yourself into your work, you drive yourself until body and nerves are burned dry.

Rather than staying in the shade of an organization, the seat of a commander who holds an independent fortress and oversees the whole is the garment that truly fits you. Writing words, handling sound and commanding the gaze of the public are fully upheld by the Literary Star and the General Star, so there is no room for doubt. Only, if you try to shoulder every load alone, the weariness of your nerves will reach its peak, so the wider your stage grows, the more you must learn to hand the threads of the daily work to helpers you can trust.

Your blaze is fierce, and you carry the grain of Dynamic Wealth, which handles Metal energy widely, so the size of the wealth you draw in and the speed at which chances turn over are very great and very fast. Yet when Fire energy soars in a chart, a sign lurks that is called too much fire, too little water, in which wealth that comes in is easily scorched dry by the flames, so if you hold cash, reasons for it to go out are all too apt to keep arising. Having lived through a family's debts, or having had to guard the storehouse with your own hands from early on, is likewise a trace of how you have been taming this dry blaze.

The Metal Monkey luck cycle you are passing through now, from age 27 to 36, is filled through and through with the energy of Steady Wealth, so it is a time when worldly fruit and size pile up to a degree no one need envy. But the more you hold, the more it costs to guard, twice over. Rather than rolling your money about wherever your hand reaches, you must tie it down firmly in documents that hold the energy of Earth or in safe, tangible assets, so that it does not melt away in the flames.

In your chart the energy that signifies a spouse is the Yin Water of Fierce Authority, floating alone and lonely high up in the year stem. It is like a cool drop of dew set upon a sea of fire, so the one you are drawn to is most often intelligent, firm in principle, and carries a lofty reserve that does not easily let others close. Yet your Day Master's Yin Fire and that Yin Water collide head-on, so it was a structure in which, the closer you grew, the more your stubbornness and the weight of your two lives would clash and a cool tension would hang in the air.

With Dynamic Wealth in your day branch and the Rooster-Rooster self-punishment in your keeping, your standard for choosing a partner is very strict, and you have a habit of swallowing even small discords and chewing them over inside. Closing the bond with your partner this year, too, came less from any event on the surface than from a cool reason that worked first, one that wished not to trespass on each other's ground any longer. The time when your luck in love breathes anew comes around 2032, the Year of the Water Rat, when the waters flow calmly in, so now is not the time to strain to fill the empty seat by force.

The Snake fire of your birth month and the Yin Fire of the heavenly stems overlap, so the whole chart is very dry and hot, and the weakest link is an imbalance of rising heat, in which Fire energy soars too high and dries up the cool Water of the body. Discomfort in the ears, nose and throat, the passages through which you make sound and take in the world by ear, is less a sign of an inborn frailty than a signal that arises when your nerves stand on edge, the heat surges upward and the energy is blocked.

While you run on and push your body hard you do not notice, yet the moment you stop, heat is apt to rush to your head and ears, so what you sorely need is a way of living that cools you and draws your energy downward rather than one that warms you. Daily weariness is rightly tended with sleep and water, and when the ringing in your ears and head grows frequent, borrowing a physician's hands without delay is the way to keep your body whole.

2026, the Year of the Fire Horse, is a year in which heavenly stem and earthly branch alike are filled with fierce flame, so in your chart the heat of the Companion and the Rival reaches its peak. Outwardly your drama's success and dazzling numbers may have soared high, yet inwardly you had to share your rice bowl and your energy, so the strength of body and mind could only run dry and your nerves could only overheat. Halting the album and the tour and putting your circle of people in order was not a defeat but a wise pause, the instinct of one stepping out of the flames so as not to be burned up.

Today, October 18, is a Wood Ox day, a day of the Mystic in which the Yin Wood seeping into the heavenly stem opens a breathing hole for your weary flame. It is a smooth day on which clear inspiration sprouts from thoughts that had sunk low, so rather than shutting yourself in a back room alone to reproach yourself, it is a truly auspicious flow for airing your thoughts with a light walk. Among the months that remain, only when you reach November, the Earth Pig month, when water and earth moisten the Fire energy, will the tangled strands of your heart come loose far more gently.

The luck cycles of your early years, Earth Horse (ages 7–16) and Earth Goat (ages 17–26), were years of harsh tempering in which earth and fire mixed, and at a young age you had to take the storms of daily life with your whole body while honing your gifts. After bone-paring endurance you at last stood at the center of the world, yet that was not a blessing handed to you for free but a fruit won by burning your own flesh.

The Metal Monkey luck cycle (ages 27–36) in which you now stand has the shape of a huge rock laid on top of a dry blaze, so your worldly achievements and the fruits of money are solid, yet it is a stretch in which the drain on your nerves and the weight of responsibility press down on your shoulders far more heavily than before. The coming Metal Rooster luck cycle (ages 37–46) is likewise ten years of Dynamic Wealth that polishes sharp jewels, so your outward work and results will still shine, yet as it collides with the character in your day branch you must take particular care that your inner perfectionism does not torment you. Only, from 2027 through 2031 come years of caution, in which energies that contend for rivalry and wealth and energies that press down on your Vital Element arrive one after another each year, so you must put your weight on guarding what you have rather than widening your stage. Passing through the Water Dog luck cycle that follows (ages 47–56), when you reach the Water Pig (ages 57–66) and Wood Rat (ages 67–76) luck cycles after fifty-seven, cold water and green wood will at last blend as one, and a true golden age will open, in which you lay down the flame you have burned all your life and enjoy whole peace and respect.

Your inner self, which you have defined as INTJ, meshes with remarkable precision with the destination your saju points to. The axes of introversion (I), which gathers energy inward, and thinking (T), which shapes every matter with logic and reason, match the cool restraint of Fierce Authority and the firmness of Metal energy in your saju, so they can be called your inborn nature with no need to measure twice. Your unshakable center and a maturity like that of a mountain spirit are a strength that springs from this very frame of cool reason.

In the realms of intuition (N) and judging (J), on the other hand, the two lenses show a rather interesting tension. You say you are the kind who paints the distant future, makes plans and ties things off (J), yet the Dynamic Wealth and Steady Wealth of your saju are very skilled at the practical reckoning right before your eyes and at a sense for immediate action (S). You try to take a loose attitude, saying you will live with an open ending, yet in the work you actually hold you cannot tolerate an error the size of a speck and are only satisfied once you set it right at once, and that contradiction comes from exactly here.

To lay the flexibility of Wood, which you sorely need, on top of the Architect's cool design, you need to practice setting down the illusion of perfect control. Let go of the compulsion to tie off every result with your own hands, and allow yourself the ease of leaving the finishing of the work for a while to the breath of others, the way a sprout swells and grows.

That goldsmith of Lisbon in the Age of Discovery came to understand it in the end. Only when the chisel in hand was set down for a while and the embers of the furnace were let die down did the sacred vessel, whole and unwarped by the flames, show its own light. It is the same for you. You have waved away the word fierce, yet still tried to carry every load alone, and now the time has come to lift that stubbornness into a gentle wisdom that fits the flow of the age.

First, on the road of work and money, knock again at the door of the stage in early spring of the coming 2027, the Year of the Fire Goat. February (the Water Tiger month) and March (the Water Rabbit month) are auspicious times when your strength recovers the way sap rises in a dry tree, so nothing is lacking for releasing an album and staging performances, yet you must beware of hasty expansion and stop at the point of firming up your own core.

Second, in people and relationships, keep at your side those who are like a teacher, supple and rich in empathy, people with the grain of a tree who give warmth without any need for reckoning. Rather than trying to split every matter into black and white, leave open a gap in which you can suddenly confide even a weak word to those who stand by you, for that is the way to keep your bonds.

Third, to tend body and mind, bring green plants or a tidy bookshelf into the east side of the place where you stay, and make a walk in the clear morning sun an iron rule of your daily life. To keep your ears and nerves from overheating, you surely need a still ritual before bed in which you shut out every noise and light and empty your thoughts in the cool air.

Fourth, to meet the sharp blade of the coming Metal Rooster luck cycle, raise firmly within this year a shield of the heart that says 'I am whole even when I am not perfect'. Do not fear what comes after loss, and never neglect the practice of taking fully as your own the stillness that will fill the emptied place.

2032, the Year of the Water Rat, is a precious year when a cool, deep current will come and fully cool your long-held heat, so come to me again then, bringing the fine forest of music you will have grown while making your peace with the world.

You have not come here to shake off a regret knotted in your chest, but to look into the grain of a knot you have already folded away neatly. In those calm words, that you have no regrets, the weight of the silence in which you two once cherished each other shows through just as it was. When I spread out your charts, two flames of Yin Fire stand side by side lighting the dark. You are the firm flame of a forge that melts metal and finishes masterworks, and he is a candle in the snow that quietly guards its wick in a field glazed with thin ice.

In the days when the Tokugawa shogunate was at its height, in the market streets of Osaka where the waterways wound every which way, I once saw a weaver of silk cloth and a tailor who took that cloth and made garments from it. The hands passing over the loom and the breath at the tip of the needle met so uncannily that the two of them turned out masterpieces the whole market coveted. But when the sun set and the workshop door was shut, and they sat facing each other in a cold room without a single stick of firewood to revive the embers, there was no warmth to thaw each other's frozen hands, and they only held their cups of tea in silence. It was not that their skill fell short, nor that their hearts had turned. When the firewood that had been their store ran out, the two folded the cloth neatly and quietly scattered, each down a road of their own.

When you first met, the two of you must have known at once what kind of person the other was, without trading so much as a long sentence. Both of you were born holding Yin Fire, which in the heavens means a candle and a lamp, so even without laying your hearts open in every detail, the grain of your thoughts and the way you looked at things were remarkably alike. You have the insight of the Architect (INTJ), who designs the big picture and reads the moves ahead with care, and he has the fingertips of the Craftsman (ISTP), who shapes the piece in front of him precisely and without excess, so your first scenes together at work must truly have fallen into place like flowing water.

Since fire met fire, no loud smoke rose on the surface, but within, a deep trust must have sprouted in each other's senses and professional sharpness. Yet both of you carry an energy that burns itself to light up those around it, so rather than a fierce temptation blazing up at first sight, what came first must have been a cool and weighty relief, the thought that 'with this person, I need not bother wearing a mask'. It was a meeting in which, from the very start, the place of friend and dependable colleague was laid down firmly first.

Look into the depths of your two charts and it becomes plain why your hands and feet worked so well together. Under your feet sits Rooster metal, the energy of precise metal, and in his seat lies Ox earth, which holds jewels within cold soil. On top of this, the Snake fire set in both your pillars locks in as well, so a great ring of metal, which saju names the Snake-Rooster-Ox Metal frame, was turning perfectly between the two of you.

This is a structure that shows a heavenly sense of timing when two people meet through work to create something. When you set the stage with your sharp standards and outstanding sense, he quietly holds that stage up and completes it in reality without a gap. Yet though this deep harmony may have been a peerless treasure for shaping 'work and results', it was a floor of metal far too cold and hard to cradle a private love of your own. Where feeling should have dwelt, the yardstick of polish and responsibility was set down first, so the closer you grew, the more the playful softness and warmth peculiar to lovers had to hold its breath.

The sorest spot in your two charts is the energy of Wood, the firewood that could keep both flames alive without end, which is entirely absent from the six visible characters on either side. This Wood energy is the Vital Element you both sorely need, yet even holding each other's hands, neither of you could pass the other a single log to fill that dryness. You understood and cherished each other so well, yet when you sat facing each other, each of you burned by eating away at your own wick, so it was a structure in which emotional exhaustion was apt to set in as time went on.

What did keep him bound at your side for a long time was that you held in abundance the Metal energy that is his spouse star. Your gifts and your sharp charm were an irresistible longing and pull for him. Your own spouse star, Water, on the other hand, was set clearly in his month stem as Yin Water, and it became a dependable shade for you. Yet the tension of the clash of Yin Fire and Yin Water, in which water tries to put out fire, lurked at the bottom, so just when he seemed someone to lean on, a cool tension would pass between you, and when you sought rest you would run into a cold wall, and that drain must have repeated again and again.

Weigh the force of your energies and yours is a strong chart, carrying on its back the firm Fire energy of the season you were born in, while his is a weak chart, which looks solid on the outside yet whose roots are scattered so that its energy easily drains away. Seen through the Twelve Stages too, you hold the energy of Birth, which pumps up vitality without cease, and he sits in the seat of the Tomb, which gathers energy inward and buries it away.

So in the energy that stretches outward and the endurance that withstands the storms of the world, you could only be far the stronger. While you crossed back and forth through stormy schedules and fierce waves of creation, he gave his share of love by quietly waiting for you where he stood. Yet when he himself grew weary and hit bottom, he must have shut his mouth and burrowed into a cave, as the nature of the Tomb would have it, and you, unable to reach the bottom of that silence, must have had to swallow your frustration. It was not that you failed to notice out of indifference, but that he was a man who did not know how to share a burden.

Read through the Ten Gods, the two of you were a pair of Companions, standing shoulder to shoulder with each other. Since you were like friends with no above or below who could see straight into each other's hearts, even as lovers, when you were perfectly in tune you must have been like soulmates with no equal in the world. On top of that, the Heavenly Noble Star that settled side by side in both your charts made each of you shine as someone precious in the world's eyes and became a shield guarding each other's honor.

Yet within him, coiled in his day branch, lay the Canopy Star, which is only at ease after brooding things through alone again and again, and the sharp edge of the White Tiger, which no one can touch once it hardens. That is to say, a man who was gentle and quiet on the outside had a nature that chewed over his solitude alone within. You, on the other hand, are someone who holds the strict yardstick of the Rooster-Rooster self-punishment up to yourself and hones yourself without end, so when the two of you simply sat together, a heavy stillness and an air of self-reproach were all too apt to hang in the air. When you joked and laughed it was endlessly joyful, yet once you stepped into the silence of daily life, your solitudes faced each other like mirrors until it became hard to breathe.

This bond came quietly to its close not because of any one person's sharp edges. In the heavens the clash of Yin Fire and Yin Water was tangled three layers deep, so along the borders between feeling and reason and between work and private life, small ripples rose that grated on each other's nerves without your knowing. On the earth, Rooster metal, your most precious spouse palace, was for him a character of the Void that turns hollow and empty.

He cherished you dearly and looked up to you, yet in a corner of his heart he must have felt a helplessness and emptiness, wondering, 'Can I truly bear and hold such a vast and brilliant light?' For your part, though being at his side was comfortable, you could not shake the strange feeling that it was not quite a home of your own, as if a hollow wind were blowing. Between the two of you there was no Resentment and no star of ruin that would drag you into a fight in the mud. So instead of quarreling at the top of your voices, you each noticed that you were slowly drying the other out, and quietly let go of each other's hands. The red blaze of this year was only the natural turning of heaven and earth, which made you tie off this quiet weariness without putting it off any longer.

The two craftsmen of old Osaka, too, returned each to their own workshop after finishing the cloth, and all their lives they never spoke ill of each other's skill but held each other in their hearts as the most precious of colleagues. Looking at the flow of your luck cycles as well, this is a stretch in which each of you is tending your own metal and fire (you in the Metal Monkey luck cycle, he in the Earth Snake luck cycle), so being together adds to the weight, yet later, as you enter the 2040s (your Water Dog luck cycle and his Fire Rabbit luck cycle), your heavenly stems and earthly branches will form gentle harmonies again, and at last the warmth of Wood will be filled generously by your luck. It means that when the years have flowed on a long while and you have crossed all of life's harsh winds, yours is a bond that can then share a truly peaceful cup of tea.

If someday you meet again at work or in passing, keep the following rules and guard the calm of your heart.

First, as for when you meet, a brief encounter in broad daylight at public work or under bright lights is the safest, far better than a night gathering where private news is asked.
Second, as for where you meet, avoid dark drinking places closed in on every side or sealed rooms, and choose open spaces with high ceilings where people come and go (a lobby, or backstage at a broadcast).
Third, as for how often, do not make a point of seeing each other, and know that a fleeting moment once or twice a year, by chance, is enough.
Fourth, when you speak, do not dig into past feelings or private news, but close with a word or two that plainly acknowledges his recent work or the skill of his hands. You must remember that the most beautiful meeting point of INTJ and ISTP has always been 'respect for skill'.
Fifth, if an awkwardness or a sadness you cannot name rises within you when you meet, do not mistake it for lingering regret. Take it as a silent tribute to 'the smith I owe thanks to, who helped shape the fiercest days of my youth', give a light nod, and turn away.

Those four years you have passed through are by no means ash burned to waste. As one hammers cold metal to grind a fine sword, it was a season of learning in which the flame that is you shaped its own grain upon the calm anvil of that man. You have drawn in the blade you raised high so as not to be hurt, and now you calmly turn your back and walk your own road, and how upright and lovely you look from behind.

The wind along the road you came by is cold, so fasten your collar tight lest the embers in your breast be scattered. Around the summer of the coming 2027, the Year of the Fire Goat, when the embers of a wholly new song are kindled again in your heart, come and face me once more with a peaceful look, carrying your fortress grown firmer still.