A single gem, polished cool and alone, lies beneath the cold current of winter water. On the outside it loads its light onto the waves and brightens the whole world, yet its own body is worn away without end by the icy rapids, a grain that makes the heart of anyone watching ache first. People of the world must take you simply for a man overflowing with warmth and bright energy, but the inner seat of you that my eyes see is no different from a lonely craftsman who, in a wind that cuts like a blade, grinds his own flesh alone to raise a flame.
Long ago, in the days when steamships crossed the rough ocean and poured people out onto the red-brick wharves of New York, I saw a young silversmith who carved silver every night in a narrow workshop there. Like you, he was born with a chart of tender metal set in cold water, a man who shaped the jewelry others would wear so finely that blood seeped from his hands, yet never once glanced at his own fingertips freezing and splitting. He poured out everything inside him and won the world's praise, yet when darkness fell he cooled alone in an empty room, and the sight of his back lies exactly over your question today.
Metal Pig — An alchemist of words who turns the cracks of everyday life into rhyme
Your chart carries the grain of the Yin Metal Pig day pillar, a gem set in the cold water of the Pig month, the very middle of winter. The hour of your birth is unknown, so even reading only the six characters that can be confirmed, Yin Water, the rain and dew, pours down layer upon layer over the deep currents set side by side in your month branch and day branch, so your brightness and sensitivity run so deep and clear that their bottom is hard to gauge. Your remarkably quick mind and the delicacy that catches another's mood like lightning come from the Performer in your month branch, so the gift of shaping what you think into words and expression can truly be called inborn. The face of life you chose for yourself points toward shining among people, but inside your chart the strength to sink into solitude and polish yourself strictly sits far heavier.
The sorest corner of this chart is that the metal of your Day Master has not put down roots, while the waves of the output stars, the Creative and the Performer, which pour your energy outward, run far too strong. On top of that, your day branch and month branch form the Pig-Pig self-punishment, which wounds the self, so even if you are generous and warm to everyone outside, once you are left alone you easily grow a harsh fastidiousness that whips you without end and asks, “Is this enough?” The Canopy Star resting in your year branch keeps you drifting at the edge even within a crowd and drives you to dig alone into art and deep thought, and the sharpness of the Needle Star in your year branch and day branch is used not to prick others but wholly as a measure that pricks your own chest. As the love you pour outward overflows, your energy dries up within, so collapsing as if fainting the moment you close the door of your dorm is not because you are frail. It is because you have burned the capital of your chart down to the last drop.
With Yin Water rising into the heavenly stems over the Performer Structure, in which the energy of your month branch stands upright, you were born from the start as an alchemist of language who cannot be shut inside a frame and as one who shapes feeling and lifts it onto the stage. Did you say you dreamed of being a poet as a child? The Needle Star, like the sharp tip of a needle, has met the grain of the Performer, as fluent as flowing water, so the lyrics and melodies you write pierce precisely into a person's innermost depths and yet have the power to pool there clearly. Catching the small cracks of daily life that others fail to see and turning them into beautiful rhythm is not a skill learned by force. It is the heaven-given inspiration that the streams filling your chart spout without rest.
Yet when I weigh it on only the six characters that show, with the hour pillar of the eight unknown, the Day Master of this chart only has its energy taken from it, and the root that holds it up is very thin. The bucket that hauls up talent without restraint is enormous, but the bottom of the well is thin, so if you cling only to writing words and making sound, the fatigue of the spirit seeps into your very bones. That is why, for this chart, Earth, the energy of the Nurturer and the Mystic, which gathers in the excess water, fills the ground and wraps the fragile metal in its arms, is needed above all as your Vital Element, and Metal, which lends strength at its side, becomes your Support Element, while Fire, which adds warmth, becomes your Climate Element. Wood is your Avoid Element, so take care first when Wood blocks the path of Earth, and also when Fire presses down on Metal and when Water drains the strength of Metal. Pausing for a while the stage where you pour yourself out to outside stimulation, and spending time filling yourself with inner nourishment by reading deep classics or scholarship, will be your very lifeline.
Applied Element: Earth — The central function used for this chart.
Balance Element: Earth — Selected by comparing the Day Master with support, drain and control.
Climate Element: Fire — Adds warmth.
Support Element: Metal — Adds strength alongside Metal.
Avoid Element: Wood — Wood blocks the needed Earth supply; Wood blocks needed Earth support; Fire restrains Metal from acting; Water drains Metal strength. Other support or mediation can change the burden.
In this chart the wealth stars, which stand for harvest, are the energy of Wood, yet Wood has not shown its face among the visible heavenly stems and earthly branches. But Yin Wood, a tender blade of grass, hides inside the Goat Earth of your year branch, and Yang Wood, a straight timber beam, lies firmly stored inside the Pig Water of your month branch and day branch as well, so this cannot be judged a fate with no wealth at all. It is not money that shows loudly on the outside but a solid harvest beneath the water, reached by tirelessly working your talent and language until the output stars feed wealth, so the reward for writing songs in sweat and throwing your body into the work will pile up, layer by layer, in a hidden storehouse in days to come.
Gauge the vessel with which you bear your wealth stars and it stands in the middle, neither lacking nor excessive. You are not the kind of man to be blinded by money itself and turn to speculation, but your affection and sense of responsibility toward people run too far, so you easily fail to take your full share and scatter it needlessly on looking after those around you, and that is the greatest leak. You would call it love, but if you keep cutting off your own flesh for your team and for people, like pouring water into a jar with no bottom, what you actually hold in your hand can grow gaunt. From this October, make it a habit to draw the line clearly, even in a single line in a notebook, between what you spend on others and the harvest you tie down for yourself.
From where you sit, the star that stands for bonds hides in the stored stems, and the Lonely Swan and the Needle Star lie coiled in the day branch you sit on. This means that though you long for people deeply and overflow with love, you cannot fully show the solitude deep inside you or the edge of your perfectionism, so the closer the tie, the more easily one corner of your heart turns cool. The Golden Carriage, an auspicious energy that helps the spouse, rests in your day branch as well, so the one who will stay by your side in later days will be a precious bond who respects your talent and becomes a firm footing in reality, but as long as you put up walls yourself and strive not to be hurt, the settling of that bond will naturally ripen slowly.
The one who draws you will be less a person who shines brilliantly than a person with the grain of thick, warm earth, who can silently hold your feelings as they run wild like a winter current. Did you say that even with ten worries you bring out only two? Outside that may pass for maturity, but to the one who would stand beside you it easily becomes a hurtful wall that cannot be climbed. Starting today, do not hide your weak points or your weariness from those close to you, even if you have to make yourself do it, and begin practicing letting one honest, grumbling word show in full, “I am terribly worn out today.”
Look into the ground of the six characters and the chart holds as many as four Water energies, an extreme structure in which cold rises to fill the very marrow. The warmth of Fire barely hides in one corner of the stored stems, so when the energy of your body heats up outward it flashes for a moment, and the instant you turn away it freezes over coldly again, a state of false heat you easily fall into. That your joints are more supple than others' and your bones delicate also touches the inborn lean of a constitution in which the energy of Metal is washed away too much by Water.
What you must guard against above all is the sickness of the heart, swallowed and digested inwardly, gnawing at your body. With the Pig-Pig self-punishment laid over you, when thoughts chase each other's tails and you drive yourself, your nerves stand on end, you lose sleep at night and your energy is spent, time and again. Do not pass off as ordinary daily life the way you pour out all your strength outside and come in to collapse as if fainting. On days off, do not just curl up alone in a dark room and sleep, but deliberately make time to take in sunlight during the day, tread on soil and steady your breath. If body aches or fatigue last beyond a few days, do not try to manage it yourself. See a doctor at once and listen to what your body is saying.
This year, 2026, the Fire Horse year, is a year when the sun of Noble Authority rises in the sky and the fierce flames of Fierce Authority burn on the ground. Fire seems to enter your cold chart and light the world brightly, but the Yin Metal of your ten-year cycle and the Yang Fire of the year combine and turn to flow once more as Water, so even as honor and position rise on the outside, the responsibility you must bear and the pressure on your mind grow twice as heavy within. Fortunately the Goat Earth of your year branch and the Horse Fire of the year combine and add a sturdy warmth, so your place within your organization will grow firm, and the bond with your colleagues will become a breakwater that holds off the rough waves.
Today, October 9, 2026, a Fire Dragon day, is an auspicious day when the energy of the daytime spreads gently and Dragon Earth, your Vital Element, holds the ground firm beneath your feet. The Noble Authority of the sky sets right discipline and the earth of the ground soothes the overflowing water, so it goes very smoothly for calmly untying, by principle, the thoughts you have only fretted over in your heart or the knots of work that would not come into order. Today, do not strain to play the clown to please others. Simply keeping your place in silence and sparing your words with care will be enough to win respect and trust.
Look at your life in bends of ten years and the Metal Rooster cycle you are in now, running from age 19 to 28, can be called a time of evenness in which unseen competition and solitude dwell. The metal of the Companion presses in strongly through both heavenly stem and earthly branch, so it is the picture of standing shoulder to shoulder with colleagues in the same position as you, forming a band and holding out against the rough current. Yet this stretch is by no means a place where you can settle, and it is also a tunnel of trial where you easily gnaw at yourself by comparing yourself with others without end.
The Metal Monkey cycle ahead, from age 29 to 38, is a mixed stretch where a red warning light comes on, and the blade-sharp wind of the Rival blows in, so you easily go through rough storms in your ties with colleagues and those around you over dividing shares and setting boundaries. Then you will sorely need the wisdom to guard your own substance and rights firmly in writing rather than growing greedy to widen your reach. But once you enter the Earth Goat cycle, from age 39 to 48, heavenly stem and earthly branch fill with the rich, warm earth you have so long awaited, and the greenest and most dazzling golden age of your life opens. The stream that ran rough at last meets wide land and settles, so the writing and songs you have built up will grow into one whole great tree and cast a wide shade over the world.
Hold ENFP, the frame you named for understanding yourself, up against the six characters of your chart, and you see that the places that stand for intuition, feeling and flexibility mesh exquisitely with the flashing inspiration particular to the Performer Structure. The pure longing to reach people's hearts without being tied to a set frame, and the power to sing of new possibility beyond the world's rules, are where the strong current of your chart and your temperament clasp hands perfectly. So the childhood dream of becoming a poet and the many-colored spontaneity you pour out on stage now are no lie, and I would call them the strongest weapon you carry.
Yet it cannot be overlooked that behind the outward-facing vitality of extraversion, the solitude of your Day Master and the deep introversion of the Pig-Pig self-punishment hang like a dark shadow. Outside you act like a sun handing energy to everyone, but more often than not that is less an inborn nature than a mask shaped by a driven will not to disappoint others. The moment you come down from the stage and close the door, your energy plunges steeply into the abyss of introversion, so the two leanings collide to the extreme within one person and drive you into exhaustion.
So to keep the vitality of this type while lifting your chart out of its peril, you must take the “intended pause” as a rule of life, as if handling the energy of Earth, your Vital Element. Each time a new idea comes, do not throw your body in at once and burn it up, but be sure to write it down in words on paper and let it go through a time of ripening, left to sit for a few days. Only when you learn to hold flashing spontaneity inside firm records and system can your free soul soar for a long time without burning out.
That silversmith on the New York wharf I spoke of earlier went on carving only other people's trinkets until his hands blistered and his eyes grew raw, and in the end he gave up his craft alone in an alley where the cold wind blew. It was because the order of those old days treated a player who ground down his own body to make others shine as nothing but something to be used up, and a perfectionism that takes no care of itself was written off as merely a weary fate. But the world of today sets a fitting crown on the artist who polishes his soul finely and moves people's hearts, so the keen sensitivity and sense of responsibility you carry are by no means a flaw that will fade in vain as his did. They can become a dazzling treasure that breathes with the age. If you would not follow in that man's footsteps, you must now turn the sharp blade you carry into a shield that guards not others but yourself.
First, in work and music, until the Fire Goat year of 2027 arrives, cut down the number of things you have started and, even if you write only one song, focus on setting its frame firmly.
Second, with people and relationships, before you cross the threshold of the coming Earth Monkey year of 2028, do not try to shoulder every worry alone, and set a strict rule of handing half the load to the colleagues on your team.
Third, for body and mind, before this year is out, clear electronic devices completely from the room where you go to sleep, and take rest that keeps close the warmth of earth, which will calm the cold current.
Fourth, to prepare for the rough Rival cycle that comes at 29, from around autumn next year you should carefully put in order the contracts and documents that prove your rights and your work.
Two or three weeks from now, when you look back on your daily life and find that your heart has grown easy even after telling a colleague the small complaints and fatigue you used to fret over alone, it is the sign that you have at last begun to govern your chart rightly.
The longing and fear that gather in this young man's eyes are truly deep and tender. Over a thousand years I have watched countless stars rise and set, yet nothing was as precious or as precarious as a soul that splits its own light to brighten others.
I will set a time and seal one word for you, so engrave it deep in your heart. When the Earth Monkey year of 2028 arrives, far ahead, a time will come when a vast energy of Earth descends from the sky, wraps your cold current firmly in its arms and holds up the metal of your Day Master steadfastly. When that time comes you will be tested on how to stand alone wholly in your own name, without leaning on the approval of those around you or the gaze of the world, so you must look back, in the light of your own conscience, on how much you have truly cherished and loved yourself. If around then you have truly set down your load and gained the path of a much firmer heart, come back to me carrying that calm road you chose for yourself.
The secret of the last pillar, which I could not yet throw fully open because the hour of your birth is not wholly known, I will finish unfolding in later days when you come carrying your full hour. The wind is very cold, so do not bolt the door of your chest too tightly, and walk on at ease.
