Jay's SajuA Blade in the Fire, Seeking Water to Temper ItK-POP · 2002-04-20

You walked in saying you do not believe in a heaven you cannot see, child, and yet your eyes carry the look of someone who cannot put out the fire eating him from inside and has come hunting for an answer. I see a huge rock mountain rising in the middle of a desert, red lava boiling over beneath it, and on that hot ridge you stand alone, breathing in a dry wind. From outside you hold firm like a great peak that nothing moves. Inside, you are desperately looking for the chisel and the blade that could carve away the heat that never stops surging up. On dry ground where hardly a drop of water reaches, you have lived swallowing your own flames, and the fierce breath of that life reaches me even here.

Earth Horse — A Blade in the Fire, Seeking Water to Temper It

You are wide earth holding the midday sun, a man of the Earth Horse day who hides hot lava beneath the ridge. Your Yang Earth self draws strength from the season it was born in, and under your feet and in the seat of your birth year you sit on the Yang Blade, a blade of fire, laid down twice over. Your force could shake heaven and earth. A Yang Blade chart is like the bared, shining sword in a general's hand. Such a man cannot rest until he holds the banner himself and rides at the front, rather than standing under another. You keep your eyes on the top of the world and look where others dare not, because the vessel you were born with is a steep mountain range that could never be content as a flat field. The nerve to step forward and shoulder the risk in a game others call reckless also rises from this blade-like spirit.

Even so, there is a grain inside you that people do not easily guess. On the outside you are as sharp as a general gripping his sword hilt, and you never let the end of a sentence trail off. Yet at the root of your energy the Nurturer, warm as a mother's embrace, has settled deep. This is what makes you want to rule over others while you feed your own people with a spoon, chill spoons so their faces will not swell, and quietly shed tears behind them. A will to win that hates losing more than death, and a pride that would rather carve its own flesh than become a burden, are your bones. The flesh wrapped around those bones is shaped from affection softer and warmer than anyone's.

Why you insist you are no coward is written in the seats of this chart too. Yang Earth is ground you can hold in your hand, the sense of what is real, so you stubbornly refuse to take a single step unless the reason has been seen and tested. Put you in front of vague phantoms and cloud talk that cannot be seen or explained by logic, and you back away on instinct. But when an enemy appears in front of you, or a clear battle is laid out, you do not retreat at all. You throw your body forward to meet it, and that is the Yang Blade. You are weak only in the unknown that has no logic. On the real battlefield you are a bolder man than anyone.

You were not born to stand on a stage and simply dance to someone else's rhythm like a clown. Look closely at the six characters of your chart and you will find that the output stars, the Metal energy that would pour out and shape the overflowing heat of your fire and earth, do not show on the surface. The output stars are the gift of speech that lets the inside out, the craft at the fingertips, the precise tool that handles an instrument and carves sound. Because this tool is not visible, you are not a man who makes things with easy talents handed to him at birth. Where others pluck a string ten times, you have the stubbornness to strike it a hundred, two hundred times until blood seeps out, forging your own flesh into the tool.

How could I not know why you have been wrestling with your guitar lately, torn over whether to put it away or keep going? Let me give you the answer first. Taking up an instrument and building the bones of music is the one breathing hole that keeps your fate alive. Your chart is a great fire burning the earth dry, and unless you use Metal to draw the heat out and pull a channel of water in, you will burn yourself to nothing. Plucking guitar strings, pressing keys, fitting the frame of a song together, these acts are the most perfect way to turn your luck, drawing the magma locked inside you out as cool steel. Your hands were not born light as feathers, so you will have to pour in many times the effort of others. But the sound that comes out at the end of that painful training will carry a heavy strength no one else can imitate.

The sharp performance you pour out on stage is the banner that announces you to the world, and the producing and playing you forge backstage is the land that will carry your lifeline onward. The Fierce Authority standing tall on your month stem is a stage that commands the world and also a strict discipline. That is why you show such fine command when you take on directing or divide up parts efficiently. A pale scholar locked alone in a back room writing songs is not your road. You must be a two-edged swordsman who burns his energy on stage, catching the crowd's gaze on the tip of his blade, and then carries the leftover heat back to the instrument and the studio to cool it.

From long memory, a weapon-smith in the markets of Baghdad comes to mind. He had a rare gift for commanding fire and could handle hot iron no one else could touch, yet he had no water to cool his blades, and he broke sword after sword. Then at last he dug a deep well and drew up cold spring water to temper them, and he poured out famous swords until he stood as master of the forge. You are no different. Never let go of the instrument in your hand. It will be the strongest steel staff you lean on as you climb toward the top of the world.

Your chart is never a thin vessel that gasps because it cannot handle money. Even reading it with only six characters, since your birth hour is unknown, your day master is so full of strength that it can seize the great water of Dynamic Wealth floating on your year stem and make it your own ground. What is more, inside the Dragon earth of your month branch, Steady Wealth lies hidden like a spring that never runs dry. So even if you look like a bold man who moves large sums and spends freely, a careful habit of securing real gain is already built inside you. You know how to value money earned with your own hands, and even when you give, your eye instinctively guards against it leaking through empty holes.

Your wealth has the grain of talent turning into income. It pours in when the expertise you forge in sweat, your stage, and your name become a brand that sells. For a chart like a great furnace, money is cool water that brings the heat down, so the more wealth comes in, the more your thirst eases and the more room your heart finds. But what you must guard most in your chart is not money itself. It is the excess fire laid under your feet. When fire runs too strong, earth dries to dust, and water turns to steam the moment it lands. When your pride is hurt, when your will to win flares too high, or when you open a game beyond your means for the sake of your people, your wealth can evaporate in an instant.

In partnerships and joint investments you will rarely be stabbed in the back for being too kind, child. But remember that you can bring on losses through your own willfulness, drunk on your mood and letting the game grow past all control. The more money lands in your hand, the less you should leave it swaying as cash. You need the wisdom to bind it in documents or pack it into hard things that are not easily broken. As strong as the incoming stream is, how cold and solid you build the reservoir to hold it decides the size of your fortune.

What you must do starting this month is split off a fixed share of your income and have it move automatically into safe overseas holdings or a locked account your hands cannot reach. When the pull to invest or expand raises its head, drunk on the will to win, set up today the device that ties your hands and feet by force.

For you, the seat of a partner is like an oasis met in the middle of the desert, the most precious and urgent presence, the one who can wash away your burning thirst. In your chart the energy of the person who will walk beside you comes in with the nature of cool, clear water, so she should be a woman who can hold your fiery temper and become your place of rest. Rather than surface glamour, your heart is bound to lean toward a calm person who thinks deeply, whose feelings do not swing wildly, and who knows how to hand you a warm cup of tea without a word when you come home from swinging your sword outside.

Yet look into the seat of your spouse and another Yang Blade is crouching there, and in the lanes of romance it warns of no small friction. You speak straight and know no compromise, and you cut right from wrong as if with a knife. When something about the other person does not sit well, you easily start to remodel them to fit your own standard without meaning to. Outside you are a kind man who looks after others down to the smallest thing, yet in front of the lover closest to you, you will not bend your stubbornness and you leave wounds. That is the contradiction. The fire inside you should warm the other person, child. It would be a shame for it to become a drought that dries them to death.

On top of this, the Red Flame Star, which draws people's eyes, drifts softly through your chart, so admirers gather and gossip follows even when you stay still. You may think you are drawing a clean line, yet the other person can fall deep into your curious way of caring and your cool charm, and that can breed tangled triangles and misunderstandings. The bond with a steady partner for life will ripen only once you are well past thirty, when the fire inside you slowly settles and flows toward Metal. For now it is luckier not to fret over settling down with someone too soon.

There is one thing to carve into your heart starting today. When you clash with someone close or feel hurt rising, do not strike back at once in your usual blunt way. Set yourself a rule of silence and let the words rest for at least half a day.

Your body is like a great volcanic field, built so that trouble breaks out whenever the overflowing heat fails to circulate and knots up in one place. Among the six confirmed characters, Metal does not show on the surface, so the lungs, the airways, the large intestine, and the skin, all ruled by Metal, are your thinnest and driest ground from birth. Allergies, breathing troubles, the small cough that visits whenever the seasons change, these are all signals that the hot fire inside you is melting your Metal. Do not wave them away lightly.

Worse, the Horse fire sitting in your day branch and year branch forms a self-punishment, each stabbing the other, and this seat ties straight into the heart, the blood vessels, and mental pressure. When anger flares or stress over a matter of pride peaks, blood rushes to your head, your chest tightens, and a feverish sleeplessness comes easily. The habit of gulping honey straight from the jar to press stress down with sweetness also comes from dry earth craving sweet things. But watch that it does not become the spark that feeds blood sugar and inflammation.

A chart like yours, heavy with Yang Blades and dry heat, should not try to release heat only through fierce workouts that pour sweat like rain. Your body is already full of fire. If you cling only to cardio and saunas that make more heat, your vital fluids dry up, your nerves stand on end, and burnout arrives fast. Bring your body temperature down through swimming, loosening your body gently in cool water, or through slow walks that let you breathe cold air.

This is only the flow of energy I read from the lean of your chart. When your heart races or your breathing feels tight, do not be stubborn. Go to a doctor and get a clear diagnosis without fail.

This year, 2026, the Fire Horse year, is the hottest and most dangerous pass of your life. The luck cycle you stand in now is also a Fire Horse cycle, and the yearly luck has brought the very same Fire Horse down on top of it. When stem and branch overlap entirely like this, it is called an echo between cycle and year. On top of that, the Horse fire coiled in your day branch, this year's Horse, and the cycle's Horse stack three deep into a triple self-punishment, no different from lava boiling until a volcano erupts. It means the pressure and stress you must carry reach their peak, a high-risk road where your own blade can cut your own flesh.

Yet this year does not simply knock you down. It is also the door to a great change that burns away the old shell of your life completely. As the trapped fire bursts out, a force of release also comes in, one that smashes the shackles of the Void that have long bound you. If you can tame the extreme impulses, the burnout, and the sudden bursts of feeling yourself, this crisis will instead become the springboard for an explosive leap that stamps your presence on the world. Success and failure part by the width of a blade this year, so do not force your territory wider. Train what is inside you and hold a defensive stance.

Today, September 11, 2026, the morning flows under an Earth Rat day. The earth of the heavenly stem presses heavily on your shoulders, but the Rat water coming in on the branch is a welcome stream of your Vital Element, soaking your dry ground, a precious sweet dew that tempers the emperor's blaze. It carries the energy of Conception, so it is not overflowing with strength, but it is a smooth and useful day for gently cooling an overheated engine.

Rather than raising your voice to argue or trying to direct others, it is lucky today to sit quietly and sink into calm work, sorting sheet music or writing down the melody that has been circling in your head. Do not collide with your colleagues. Drink cold water often and let the heat in your heart settle.

Look over the great current of your life and the first half is the tempering of trials, training your body inside the fire. The second half follows the path of a late bloomer who bites into the world with that tempered steel and sails out to the great sea. You are never destined to settle for luck handed over for free in your early years. You are drawing a life curve in which you take harsh wind, rain, and scorching heat on your whole body and grow into a great tree.

The stretch where you stand now is the tail end of the Fire Horse luck cycle, running from age 15 to 24. These ten years were covered entirely in red flame, whipping you without rest and driving you to the limit without a moment to breathe, the harsh years of a furnace. And the coming Fire Sheep cycle, from 25 to 34 (2027 to 2036), is also made entirely of fire and dry earth in both stem and branch, so it is a stretch where you can never let the tension go.

Here there is a stern warning I must give you plainly, through the eyes of the Great Priestess. From 2026 to 2030, the next five years from age 24 to 28, Avoid Elements that attack the Water and Metal your chart needs most will come in one after another, a stretch of continuous warnings. You asked whether your late twenties matter? They do, child, decisively. But that importance does not mean charging at the top of the world swinging your sword blindly. It means a time of defense, when you block the rain of fire arrows with your shield and carve your skill into your bones.

Even inside this dry Fire Sheep cycle, when 2031, the Metal Pig year, and 2032, the Water Rat year, arrive, cold Metal and Water will at last pour in from heaven and earth like a waterfall, washing away your long thirst and drawing out a great blessing. Yet right after, from 2033 to 2035 (ages 31 to 33), an ambush of fire flaring up three years in a row lies in wait. So from your late twenties to your early thirties, do not run wild drunk on victory. Stake your life on defense and on what is inside.

Your true prime will open wide from the Earth Monkey luck cycle, from 35 to 44 (2037 to 2046). The solid Metal of the output stars comes in on the branch, drawing your burning fire cleanly out, and that Metal begins to turn a great wheel of mutual birth that gives rise to water. Your life after forty, looking toward fifty, will be a brilliant golden age in which the music and art you have polished return as great power and wealth. There is not a single reason to be impatient.

Set the mirror of your temperament called ENTJ beside your birth chart, and a fascinating mix of contradiction and agreement comes into view at a glance. The bold commander who charges fiercely toward goals and lays out the game with logic and efficiency matches exactly the spirit given off by the Fierce Authority standing on your month stem and the Yang Blade in your day branch. The coolness of judging only by essence and efficiency, never swayed by personal feelings when you start something, agrees with the way Fierce Authority joins introverted thinking (Ti) in a Saju chart to forge a sharp, calculating intuition.

Yet dig into the deeper layers and a clear misalignment catches the eye. The original sense read in your chart is marked by extraverted sensing (Se) and sensing (S), which trust only what is felt underfoot and confirmed by the eye. But the you of today wears the robe of intuition (N) tightly, chasing long-range vision and conceptual possibility. Your original temperament is also closer to perceiving (P), responding flexibly and quickly to situations that change moment by moment. On the outside, though, you wear the mask of judging (J) completely, trying to keep everything under control and under a perfect plan.

The cause of this split and fixation is the harsh pressure of the Fire Horse luck cycle that began at 15 (2017). You stood alone before the cold judging table of a survival show and had to survive inside rules that allowed not a hair of error. That setting pulled up the extraverted thinking (Te) of Noble Authority lying dormant inside you and made you wear it as armor. To survive you had to become a flawless commander yourself, and the result is the ENTJ snapshot of today, a strict system of control laid over your natural sense of reality and your flexibility.

But as the years pass and you cross into the Earth Monkey cycle at 35, when the Metal of the output stars enters on the branch, this tightly buckled armor will finally let you breathe. The play of the senses and the flexibility you held down will burst out as musical originality, and you will throw off the frame of the strict commander to become a creator who shakes the game far more freely and boldly.

Priority 1 — People: The ones who will hand you the most precious living water are counselors whose feelings are never loud on the surface, who are deep as the sea, and who think about philosophy and art beyond logic. Build a deep bond with those who give off a cool air just by standing beside you and calm your hot impatience. Within this month, find a gathering or a place devoted to the humanities, classical art, or quiet tea, things you do not usually touch, and spend time watching how they breathe from close by.

Priority 2 — Place: The spaces that can drink up your flames and wash your heart clean are a riverside or seashore where the water ripples, or a calm studio where the stillness of night has settled deep. After pouring out your energy on a stage full of glaring lights and noise, slip without delay into a dark space tinged with blue and enjoy a silence that is yours alone. Start today by changing your studio lights from red to cool white or a soft blue, and your computer wallpaper to a view of the deep sea.

Priority 3 — Action: The finest act for cooling your overflowing heat is to pour your thoughts neatly onto paper every night, and to forge sound by pressing cold metal guitar strings with your fingertips. Add a routine of staying fully alone in silence for even 30 minutes a day, keeping a diary or sketching a song. Take away the hasty habit of dumping sweets or harsh food into your stomach when anger flares or unease rises.

Priority 4 — Symbol: Every morning when you open your eyes, let black or deep navy sit at the end of the first thing you see. Match the band of the precious watch that guards your wrist to cold metal or a deep sea color, and before you go out, drink a glass of cold water as a signal that says, "I will master the fire inside me and forge the hardest blade." These small signals will pile up, press down your haste, and become the sweet rain that soaks the great rock mountain.

If in two or three weeks the tight tension pressing on your neck and shoulders loosens, and your fingertips feel softer when you pick up your instrument, that is proof the waterway of your luck is being set right.

In the days of the old dynasties, the face readers who saw a chart like yours, with Yang Blades stacked and fire leaping high, might have clicked their tongues and pointed at you as a rebel of troubled times or a warrior who hastens his own death. By the measure of an age that forced strict rites and one's station on everyone, there was no vessel wide enough to hold a man who carries overflowing ambition and an uncompromising blade in his chest. But on today's stage, where the whole world's gaze crosses in real time and an original style and nerve carved from one's own bones can set hundreds of millions cheering, is this blade not a national treasure that no fortune could buy? Do not lock yourself inside the measure of the old order. Plant your sharp spirit proudly on the stage of this age.

First, in work and music, throw away impatience and make the years up to 2030 a season of learning, when your composing and playing put down roots. Do not force out half-cooked work to win the world's approval right away. Endure the rough waves of next year and the year after, and store up songs.

Second, in your relationships, do not force your standards on others. Sheathe the blade that splits right from wrong. Next year especially, 2027, the Fire Sheep year, feelings of betrayal and misunderstandings can deepen through people, so until the Beginning of Spring next year, strictly hold back words that use your honesty as a weapon to stab where others hurt.

Third, in body and mind, focus on learning to relax rather than on extreme training. Between this year and next, strain comes easily to the heart, the vessels, and the lungs. Instead of workouts that pour sweat like rain, make stretching and meditation that slowly cool your body into your nightly sleep ritual before this year's winter solstice passes.

Fourth, to prepare for the road of your late twenties, never attempt any reckless expansion, personal independence, or large investment for the three years from 2026 to 2028. Inside the pouring fire, holding your shield high and keeping your place is the only condition for the great victory that will unfold after 35. Keep that in mind.

You carry the spirit to command the whole world, child, yet for now you are a young general still wandering in search of the cold water to temper that blade. Your ambition racing toward the summit is no empty mirage. I truly hope you will not rush in your thirst and make the mistake of cutting your own foot.

One story remains that I could not bring myself to unfold for you today. It is the secret of what shape your children and the ground of your later years take behind the curtain of the hour pillar, the ones who will help you hold up that heavy crown when you stand at the top of the world, and of what face the great stream will wear when it pours in to shake your fate to its roots in 2031, the Metal Pig year.

When that time draws near and the blade in your hand has grown a little cooler, come back, and I will open the rest of that closed door. Go now. Your road has only just begun to break through the fire and rise.