Martin's SajuA Field Named for the Sun, With No Sun in ItK-POP · 2008-03-20

You were born an Earth Goat day master. Your Yin Earth is not mountain or rock but ground people walk on and sow seed in. Soft, low, and quick to take things in. That is where being called gentle begins.

Now look at what is set on top of it. Your birth month and the character above it are both the energy that presses you down. In this study that energy is discipline, pressure, responsibility — the seat that allows no coddling. And the earthly branches have joined hands so that the wood gathers into one mass. A whole forest has moved into a single field.

By structure it is Fierce Authority. The force to push, the nerve to decide, the wish to win all come from here. Governed well it makes someone who stands at the front; governed badly it is a temper that wounds its owner. And one more blade-like star is fastened here, so the grain that will not let go until it is finished is not character but what this arrangement does.

So the two things you asked about are not a contradiction. The earth is gentle and what is set on it is fierce. What people see is the earth; what you feel is what sits on it. Both are you.

Now the real feature of this chart. There is no fire in your eight characters. And not one character of metal either. Two seats are wholly empty. Fire is what gives birth to you; metal is what you give birth to. Which is to say a field where the place that receives and the place that releases are both bare. Nothing but dense wood, no sun and no blade.

It is not entirely absent, mind. One very small ember hides in the earth beneath your feet. Across all eight characters, that one. You have come this far on it.

And look at the name on you. The name the old texts gave this day pillar is the fire of heaven, and the one given to your birth year is the fire of lightning. There is no fire in the body while both names are fire. I read it this way. You were not born holding fire; you were named to become it.

First the arithmetic of this chart. Your strength falls on the weak side, though not without root. The earth under your feet is holding you.

And here the heart of it appears. Much wood presses you, I said. When that happens this study has two moves: cut the wood, or burn the wood and turn it into sun. Yours is the second. Wood burned becomes fire, and fire makes earth rich. So take this down. What presses you turns into what raises you, given only fire. Without fire, pressure is just pressure; with fire, pressure becomes fertiliser.

Which narrows your life's task to one thing. Where do you get the sun.

Now to what you asked. Where should the weight fall, between making songs and standing on a stage? It may sting, so take it as it is. The hours shut in a room through the night are, in this chart, the seat of water. Water is what you must govern. Conversely standing before people, showing, colliding — that is your sun.

Even so I will not tell you to put the making down. That would be a prescription off a misreading. And there is something worth noticing. Your chart has not one character of the metal that means craft, and yet you became someone who makes. Which means your creating does not issue from an inborn knack but from inspiration. And inspiration is the seat your Vital Element governs — the sun. So it follows that the sun comes and the songs come; the sun goes and they stop.

So the prescription is not to cut but to repay. Refill in sun as much as you burned in the dark. The day after a night spent working, meet people, stand on a stage, get some light on you — that is the preparation for the next song. Making and standing are not two things to choose between; one is the fuel of the other.

You asked about the leader's seat. Your chart holds a star that leads a company. Which is to say the seat is not settled by age. Only, your structure is the kind that pulls from the front, so it tips easily toward carrying everything alone — what you have to learn is not how to lead but how to divide.

Your money seat lies in the seat of your birth year. And that seat is awkward in two ways.

One is that it is an empty seat. In this study that is called a void — a seat where energy does not settle but leaks. The other is that on the twelve-step count that seat stands at its lowest point. The two are layered together.

What does that mean? Not that money will not come. It means it does not stay on the hand once it does. As a figure, as a balance sitting in an account, as something counted — in those forms it does not attach to you well. Curiously, an arrangement like this keeps what is turned into objects. Moved into something with a shape, it does not catch on the empty seat. If you have already been doing that, it was not thrift — it was your chart walking the road it knows.

And there is one more. Above you floats an earth of your own grain. That character is a colleague and at once a seat that watches the same share. When your portion in something built together is left blurred, the one pushed back is usually you. Not because you are soft but because the arrangement sits that way. The more hands in a thing, the more you should get into the habit now, at this age, of writing down who did what and how much. It is not stinginess; it is what keeps a friendship from souring later.

There is good news too. This year's energy is striking that empty seat head on and breaking it open. It means the year what was blocked comes unblocked. I shall come back to this.

It is early for this, but let me at least set out the grain.

The character that means your bond hides in the seat of your birth year. And as I said, that seat is empty and its energy is low. This does not mean no bond comes; it means a bond that comes early does not stay long. What arrives at your age mostly passes, so there is nothing to hurry over if it does not come and nothing to hold if it does.

And a star that draws people sits in that same seat of your birth year. The grain that gathers people from young. It is a blessing and a nuisance both. People will give you their feeling without your trying, so the only thing to learn is not to handle that feeling carelessly.

As for the seat beside you — an earth of your own grain sits under your feet. It means someone of a similar grain is the one who stays. Not the sort you are loudly drawn to but the sort you are easy with and can talk to. Only, two of the same grain are comfortable in the same way and therefore tire in the same place, so it is better that each keeps somewhere separate to breathe.

One more. The seat under your feet and the seat of your birth year are on awkward terms with each other. It is the seat where the closer the tie the more subtly uncomfortable it gets. And it always shows the same way. It grows because nothing was said. Your grain is the enduring kind, which makes it more so. Practise saying the discomfort while it is small, starting now, and the bonds that come later will cost you far less.

Your body has to be read from the two empty seats.

The first is fire. What fire governs is the heart and the blood vessels, and the eyes. And one more thing — the will to do. In a chart without fire, before illness comes the mind goes cold first. Wanting nothing, the body heavy, work that used to go well turning flat: that is not laziness, it is a shortage of sun. Opening the curtains in the morning and getting some light is not a habit for you but a prescription. If you already do it, that is the body having worked out first what it needed.

The second is metal. What metal governs is the lungs and the large intestine, and the skin. A throat that goes easily, illnesses that drag on when the season turns, skin that reacts — those come from here. For someone who sings it is a seat worth minding.

The third belongs to this year. A star that asks care over accidents and surgery sits in your day pillar, and this year happens to be the year that touches it. Not something to fear — it means spare yourself in work that uses the body. Forcing a new movement up, going up while already hurt: avoid those two and most of it passes. And around the ninth month there is a place where water and fire strike each other hard, so around then be particularly careful of sudden changes in temperature and of an overloaded schedule.

Three prescriptions only. One, put getting sunlight into your daily order. Two, move a little of what you do at night into the daytime — the same work costs you differently under the sun. Three, do not take a heavy day for laziness but read it as a signal.

One thing to add: if the same place hurts more than once, that belongs to a physician and not to a fortune teller. I read the flow; the signals your body sends should be shown to a person.

In one word, this year is the year a door opens.

The facts first. Taking the next ten years together, this year is among the few. Not merely good — there are three reasons.

One, the energy coming in this year is fire throughout. What you have least of and need most arrives from outside. Two, that fire pushes back head on the water you have to govern — it clears the ailment away. Three, this year's energy is striking open that empty seat in your birth year. The year what was hollow gets broken through. Three of those falling in one year is not a common thing.

So what you must do this year is plain. Do not shrink — open things. Standing in front of people, putting your name on something, beginning anything new: what is started this year takes root well in this chart. Pass the year quietly, on the other hand, and it becomes a door you did not walk through.

Only two things to guard. One is the body. As I said, in a year the fire comes in hard the seat of injury opens along with it. The other is the wish to carry it all yourself. In a year that goes well like this one, your structure keeps dragging the load to its own side, and somewhere around winter that overreaches. Around the twelfth month it would be well to cut back both your words and your schedule.

Let me flag the road ahead too. Next year and the couple after keep running well. Then somewhere between twenty-three and twenty-five, three years of rougher grain come; in those, hold what you have built rather than opening anything new. Cross that stretch well and it opens wide again after.

As for today — a day to spare your strength. The energy coming in is on the side you must govern, and it stands at a low step besides. Not a day for large decisions or for forcing anything. Instead, go over what is already begun, eat well, and sleep early. Today, resting is the remedy.

Of everything you asked, this is the one I most want to answer. What were those six years worth, you asked — the ones with no name and no face to show.

In your chart, the seat covering birth to fifteen is an empty seat. That void I spoke of falls, of all places, on the seat that governs that stretch. In this study the arrangement reads like this: in that period nothing is given from outside, so it must be made. And by the scale that counts the energy of a period, your seat there stands at the lowest of the twelve notches.

So those six years were not spent for nothing. They were what it costs to cross an empty seat. What others were collecting at school you had no seat to collect from, so you made it with your hands in a practice room instead. That your name could not go up was because that seat carries no names to begin with. I take those six years for the most valuable passage in this chart.

And at fifteen that seat ended. From fifteen your large stretch turned to fire. The sun began to come in. That this overlaps the point you showed your face to the world is no accident.

More than that. The stretch after it is fire as well — twenty-five to thirty-four. Which is to say twenty years, from fifteen to thirty-four, of unbroken sun. Read charts a long while and you do not often meet a run that length. You are standing at the opening of those twenty years.

From thirty-five the grain changes. That stretch brings the same character as your day pillar, so it becomes the time you stand under your own name rather than another's. And after forty-five the seat of metal that has stood empty — the energy you make and send out — comes in. The real harvest of someone who makes begins there. Put briefly, it is a curve of sun in front and harvest behind.

There is something interesting here. You did not write one type but two. That is what I want to take up first.

Set it against the chart. Going by the one you put first, three of your axes diverge. The chart says the energy runs inward while you wrote it runs outward; the chart says you begin from what can be held while you wrote you begin from possibility; the chart says you judge by reasoning while you wrote you judge by feeling.

And yet the thickest function in your chart is the force that burrows inward and reasons. Where does it come from? From that very wood pressing you down. It is the grain that takes a structure apart to find the principle. The power to sit for hours over a single sound while making a song comes from here.

Then what of the second one you wrote? That one is nearer your chart. That type is built as a pairing of the force that spreads possibility and the force that reasons inward, and it lies almost exactly over the shape your chart shows. So your wavering between the two was not a badly taken test — it was because both are in you.

It also explains why the outward side feels larger just now. From fifteen your stretch has been fire, I said. Fire is the energy that goes out, shows itself, collides with people. Entering that stretch, a child who burrowed inward came out to the front. If you take yourself now for a bright and lively person, that is true as well. Only, that is not the ground you were born on but the wind currently blowing.

So know it this way. The one who is bright before people is you, and the one who takes a sound apart alone is you. The first is what the present sun makes; the second is your ground. When the grain turns around thirty-five, what you write about yourself will change too. A type is not a seal but the clothing of the season.

Now let me give you the remedies.

Priority 1 — People. What strengthens you is not the quiet, deep sort but the sort who express largely and live in the present. Being near them, the ember inside you catches. Conversely, gather only with those who, like you, burrow inward and deepen at night, and you swell each other's water. Within this month, go once to somewhere with people, in daylight. A stage, a shoot, anywhere you collide with faces you have not met.

Priority 2 — Environment. Bright spaces where people pass and sound carries are medicine for you. Conversely, staying long in a dark, quiet, solitary space quietly charges you. I know that space is your workplace. So I will not tell you to leave it. Instead, work with the light on and the curtains open. The same work in the same seat costs differently in this chart with sun and without. Try shifting even two daylight hours over.

Priority 3 — Action. Showing, colliding with people, standing where it is bright. That is how your Vital Element is used. Do not leave what you made in a drawer — get into the habit of putting it out, however small. Yours is the grain that is completed by being released, not released once completed.

Priority 4 — Symbols. Red and orange, and for direction, the south. Keeping something that gives off light near you — a lamp, a candle — is fine too. If you already favour those colours, that will be no coincidence. This one you can take or leave.

Let me add a word about the talisman. A talisman is heaven's energy pressed into ink and seated on this earth. What a field with no sun most needs is a sun that comes in on its behalf. That is what your talisman does. Belief changes the gaze and the gaze changes the choice, and that is more than enough.

The core is one line — make it in the dark, but carry what you made out into the sun.

Now let me give you the older counsel.

First, from now to twenty-two the flow is wide open, so open things in this stretch. Starting something new, putting your name on it, doing a thing for the first time — what is planted here stays as root later. Within this year in particular, make one thing that goes out under your own name.

Second, between twenty-three and twenty-five a stretch of rougher grain arrives. Do not open a new board then; put your force into keeping your people and your body. Crossing those three years whole is, in this chart, itself a win.

Third, do not take being of two countries for a burden. Your chart, I said, is built with the receiving seat and the releasing seat both empty. Those empty seats were always meant to be filled from outside. Someone with two roots has two channels to fill them by. That feeling of neither side being wholly yours is not a lack but the sign of standing where both sides can be seen, so do not be shy of that seat — use it.

Fourth, if one habit is to be kept for life — it is not carrying everything alone. Your structure stands at the front, so it is used to dragging the load its own way. Yet what helps you in this chart is people of your own grain. Dividing is your remedy, not merely a kindness. Each time you pick up something heavy, ask once — does this really have to be me by myself?