Milly Alcock's Four PillarsA Blade of Cold Steel Hidden in Soft EarthHollywood · 2000-04-11

You were born to Yin Earth — moist, fertile ground for a day master. Seen from outside you look quiet and pliant, able to fit yourself into any jagged setting; but look at the base of your chart and you find two hard Dragon branches of the Rival seated under you, in the month and the year alike. Earth layered over earth, so your day master meets its own season and puts down a firm, well-rooted strength. A nerve that hates to bend to anyone and a will to win are lodged in your very bones, so however you toss out silly jokes and play yourself down, inside you hold a stubbornness no one can break.

In the stems of your chart two Performers of Yang Metal rise side by side. The Performer is the gift that drives what is coiled inside you out into the open, and the blade that shatters any rule laid down in a frame. That odd drop between making a fool of yourself and turning cold the moment you face a camera comes precisely from this — the Rival's will to win locked together with the Performer's unhindered expression. Layered over that are Canopy Stars in both the year and the month branch, so even standing at the center of a bright marketplace, a corner of your mind always keeps the solitude and deep reflection of an artist who wants to shut herself in a quiet room.

Only, within the six characters of your chart the Wood that would govern you does not surface, and the Fire that would kindle warmth is likewise hidden and wanting. You move by instinct and intuition rather than by rules, so kicking down the fence of school was, for your temperament, an entirely natural choice. You are someone who moves only once convinced, not someone who fits herself to another's gaze.

Your chart has Earth gathered in it too thickly, so you live only when that gathered force is cut clean and driven outward — the Metal of Expression is your Vital Element, and breathing comes through it. Think of ore buried in a mine, chiselled out into a bright blade or a mirror. The act itself of turning the energy packed inside you into gesture, expression and voice, and hurling it at the world, is how the thread of your life is carried on.

The way you work rests on the Performer's pure destructive force and its making. To walk into a board someone else laid out and mimic obediently what you are told is death to you. When you twist the board, refuse the customary reading and project raw instinct as it is, that is when an audience feels a cold thrill come off you. Work that demands high concentration inside a precisely built structure — acting, making, or any art that breaks a frame — is the stage that suits you best.

But the nurturing side of your chart is dry, so the craft of calculating in theory how others see you and defending yourself with it is weak in you. Showing raw feeling unfiltered, you take a wound from a single word the world says, while outwardly slipping into the Performer's contrarian coolness. Ten years back, in a harbour marketplace in that far southern country, I once saw a young player who had boarded a ship early, trusting nothing but her own gift. Her art was the finest under heaven, yet she could not close her ears to the muttering of the market and swallowed tears every night. The keener the gift, the thicker the world's envy and noise — so that blade must be spent only on forging your roles, never on other people's gossip.

Yours is a strong chart with Steady Wealth rooted deep and clear in the day branch, and with Metal — your Vital Element — feeding that water without pause as Expression flows into Wealth. That is: you were born with a vessel that carries incoming wealth and has room to spare. Not money that sits waiting on another's favour or hopes for luck through paper, but solid money you take by throwing your body and your gift straight into the market, coming in without running dry your whole life.

Your wealth is what sprays off the blade-edge you sharpened yourself. So there is no need to take fright and defend only, for fear of losing it. The pipeline from Expression into Wealth is sound, so you should invest boldly in growing the engine that is your own worth and name. Only — a Resentment Tie and a Ghost Gate sit across the branches of your chart, so when large sums move or contracts are signed, a sudden unease or a rush of feeling can cloud your judgement.

The channel your money comes through is clear, but that inner rawness can breed needless strain in the handling of it, so it serves you to hand asset management to a professional system and structure it thoroughly.

Starting this month: to shut out impulsive spending and emotional outlay, rebuild your finances so that a fixed share of fees and steady income moves automatically into a safe managed account and is locked there.

Spread out the six characters of your chart and the Wood that stands for a man does not appear in the open stems. But look deep into the branches and a Fierce Authority of Yin Wood is hidden inside the Dragons of the year and month, while a Noble Authority of Yang Wood has taken root and settled inside the Pig of your day branch. This is what we call concealment, and it means yours is a fate that binds deeply with a solid, unshowy partner who braces your daily life out of sight, rather than a relationship paraded loudly before the world.

Steady Wealth sits in your day branch, the seat of a partner, so the one who becomes a resting place for your heart is not a person of glittering talk but a practical one with a strong hand for living, someone who quietly shapes things with his own hands. That you settled across the sea in a strange city for the sake of one person also comes from the longing for stability that your day branch carries.

But do not forget that the Dragons of your chart and the Pig of your day branch face each other in a Resentment Tie and a Ghost Gate. This means a structure in which, even loving deeply, a grievance sprouts for no reason, or the fatigue and rawness picked up outside get poured onto the nearest person like a blade. Rather than growing anxious when days away from home open a distance between you, what you need is a rule that respects each other's ground and does not drag the dregs of feeling in through the door.

Starting today: when you come back from a shoot with your fatigue at its peak, do not try to talk at once — set a rule of taking at least half an hour of complete silence to yourself before you face him.

Earth and Metal hold power in your chart, but in the places that show, Wood and Fire are sorely short. When force tilts to one side and loses its balance, the body is the first to send word.

With Fire wanting, the warmth of the whole body cools and circulation stalls easily, so you must watch the heart and blood vessels, the small intestine, and swings in blood pressure. In particular, if you cannot take proper sunlight or stay shut for long stretches inside a set, drive drops sharply and a chill together with a deep low mood comes easily. And since the force of Wood is pressed down, hidden only in the concealed stems, yours is a constitution in which the liver and gallbladder that break down fatigue, tired eyes, and nervous tension from strain all run to their limit.

With a self-punishing tie between the two Dragons and a Ghost Gate laid over it, once your thoughts start chaining one to the next the nerves overheat and it turns readily into insomnia or migraine. This comes from the tilt of your native force, so when a signal from the body goes on for a while, do not lean on the reading alone — go to a physician and take regular care.

The year 2026 is a year of nurturing forces in which heaven and earth alike burn with a vast fire. It melts without mercy the Metal you most need, and bakes dry the earth that is already thick — a year of the element you must govern. The Grand Cycle you are now passing through, from twenty-two to thirty-one, also mixes earth and fire, so this year the cycle and the year press down on you together.

All the argument that gathers around you this year, and the noisy talk off screen, is the crack and hiss of that fire heating your blade. That judgement of you as a person circles wider than the work you actually did, and that unjust gossip follows, is the pressure of this harsh force. This is not the time to widen the board or fight the world, but a time of defence — to raise a shield and quietly hold the skill inside you.

Today, the fifteenth of August 2026, is a day of pure Metal above and below, the finest day of your Vital Element. It sits in a place of birth where strength brims over, so the breath that the world's noise had pressed flat opens wide for today at least. Today the force is full for pushing your own intuition and your urge to make as boldly as you like, without minding anyone's eyes.

Your life passes through the rough gravel of its early years and draws the curve of one who ripens late, flowing into a wider and wider sea as the years go on.

You are now in the middle of the Grand Cycle that runs from twenty-two to thirty-one. It is a somewhat stifling stretch, one that stirs up muddy water and complicates your thinking. In particular 2026 and 2027 form a run of consecutive warning years in which a fierce fire attacks your Vital Element two years straight, so through these two years you must not rise and fall with the world's judgement but take them as a time of endurance, tempering the frame within.

But once the Grand Cycle from thirty-two to forty-one opens, the Pig of your day branch meets the Rat of that cycle and they form a great current of water that begins to rinse your gift out in full brilliance. Around 2032 and 2033 especially, the sweat you have poured out comes to fruit, and you settle into a standing as an actor that will not be shaken.

The Grand Cycle that follows, from forty-two to fifty-one, is the time when the forged blade at last meets a green forest and finds its use completely; as you cross into middle age, the weight of your presence will be plainly marked on the world.

The ESTP temperament you carry fits perfectly the keen sense of the real and the drive that the Performer and the Rival make together in your chart. The outward turn (E) and the sensing (S) drawn from the elements and the ten gods agree with your native temperament, proving exactly that high adaptability with which you throw yourself into things on screen and off.

But look deep inside and a real mismatch hides beneath the outer skin of thinking (T) and perceiving (P). Because the Performer is so developed in your chart, a very thick layer of outward feeling lies in you, reading a crowd's response as if by second sight — and over it you wear the mask of the cool, unmoved thinker to defend yourself. When the Grand Cycle began at twenty-two in 2022, a nurturing force came in and set your isolation and your defences working, and from that the ESTP shape hardened: making a fool of yourself so as not to be wounded, hiding what you feel.

When you cross at thirty-two into the next Grand Cycle and the water of Wealth comes pressing in properly, the exchange of feeling and human warmth you had held down will return, and your own sense of yourself will change into something far more supple, holding a deeper insight.

[Part A — Prescriptions for Turning Luck]

First — People: keep beside you the designer sort and the strategist sort, who are not swayed by feeling, who quietly keep their own discipline and let results speak. Instead of the showy ones who lead with talk, it is a great strength to set foot regularly in gatherings or classes of the cool-headed who turn systems and carry work through.

Second — Environment: avoid places of overheated socialising and heavy noise, and stay where the structure is clear and precise discipline is at work. It serves you to set your studio or study with clean metal furniture and cool lighting, ordered to face west.

Third — Action: do not scatter the unease that rises in your head into talk; keep to a routine at least three times a week of precise exercise that trains the body's senses, or writing, or handwork that demands high concentration.

Fourth — Symbols: carry white, silver and gold about you to help the force you need, and wearing a plain metal watch with no ornament will help you hold a cool focus.

[Part B — Counsel of a Thousand Years]

First, through 2026 and 2027 the noise pouring in from the outside world is only the dust of a season, unrelated to the substance of your acting; within these two years, learn to close your mouth and answer no provocation, no argument.

Second, do not let the old choice of leaving school hold your ankle. Until the current Grand Cycle ends at thirty-one, the intuition and experience you build by colliding with real sets are a great asset no ivory tower could have given you, so do not doubt yourself.

Third, even as the time away from home stretches long, do not doubt the trust of the one who keeps the London home; within this year, set one clear private rule for how the two of you speak, and stop the drain of feeling.

Fourth, set down the impatience in that question of what age you stop wavering. Only when you cross the threshold of the Grand Cycle at thirty-two will the ground under your feet turn solid, so until you meet your thirties, endure quietly the dance of a blade-edge that flowers while it shakes.

Yong Hae-in's Compatibility Reading — with David Corenswet

Family Compatibility — read as older brother and younger sister

A compatibility reading between two actors who play cousins on screen. They are not real siblings nor a couple; with seven years between them, this is read as family (older brother and younger sister). Neither birth time is public, so both charts are read on six characters.

The two of you met in roles bound as family by one bloodline, but open the charts and something familiar was in the air from the first time you passed each other. You are the Earth Pig day master, holding the force of wide, moist ground; he is the Metal Tiger day master, the force of a roughly forged blade and an honest rock. The principle by which earth bears and shelters metal runs beneath, so even with seven years and the weight of those years laid between you, at the base neither pushes the other away — the shape is one of taking each other in naturally.

But the colour that came across at the first meeting will not have been soft throughout. The Rival's grit and the Canopy's deep shade in your month pillar met the keen metal set in his year branch, and each will have known at a glance that the other had not lived an easy life. There was the wariness and the hardness particular to those who endured a dark tunnel alone behind a bright stage.

Moreover, you (ESTP), who catch the feel of the real sharply and go at it with your body, and he (ENFP), who turns countless ideals and values over in his head and builds a warm story — the two of you start thinking from quite different places. He steadies himself like a thick rock and tries to open a path like an axe in a wood, while you neither flinch before him nor bend, holding your own place like a riverbank. So the picture of a steady older brother and a spirited younger sister forms of itself.

Look into the seat of what you each keep to yourselves and a strange, deep knot is tied there. Your day branch, the Pig, meets his day branch, the Tiger, and they form one of the six harmonies of the branches, so however you keep to form and talk only of work, the door to the inner room already stands wide open. That you sense, without being told, whether he is worn out on set today or where his breath is running short comes from this thread between your inner selves.

Split it further and the Yang Wood hidden inside your Pig is bound by an unseen thread to your own Yin Earth day master, and the Yang Wood hidden inside his Tiger carries the same grain. This means that even as strangers who share no blood, a heavy trust lies at the floor between you, like siblings who jostled long under one roof. That the weighty advice he hands you settles calmly in your chest, however much it sounds like nagging on the surface, is for this reason.

Only, do not forget that a fine gap and a scraping hide inside this harmony as well. As water labours to raise a tree yet the tree's roots at times churn up the earth and the water, a subtle misalignment from the way each of you has lived, and from the years between you, will lift its head now and then. In everyday talk you do not clash much, but when you speak of the deep substance of the work or the order of what matters in a life, that flash of strangeness — this point is nothing like mine — is only natural.

The most dazzling passage in your two charts is the sharing of the very force that opens breathing for the other. Your chart has earth so thick that the metal which drives your gift and light outward is the Vital Element you desperately need — and look at his chart. Is his year branch and his day master not full of hard, clear metal? To you he is not merely an older colleague but a firm helper and a noble presence who cuts and files the raw ore of your own substance so it shows in the world.

Turn it around and look at his chart: he guards a rock mountain alone amid parched earth and hot air, his insides burning, so cold clear water is his one lifeline and Vital Element. Yet that precious water is a single Yin Water in his year stem, always precarious and quick to dry — and you came to him carrying a deep, abundant Pig water in your day branch, so to him your presence is a cool spring that wets a parched throat.

In a busy trading port of that old southern dynasty I once saw two merchants cut just like this. One held a heavy piece of jade and floundered, not knowing how to carve it; the other held a keen carving knife and paced about with no stone to cut. The moment they joined hands they made a treasure the whole world knew. Your fitting together is just so — when you are at a loss the guidance he tosses off becomes your answer, and when he is worn down by the weight of the set, the plain sense of the real that you hand him opens his breath again.

Weigh the strength of the two forces and this is by no means a relationship in which one side is dragged along or pressed down. Your roots in the earth are sound, so yours is a strong chart with far more grit and stubbornness within than shows; he too was born with a balanced force that knows how to hold its own centre. So although it looks as if the elder leads the set and you quietly follow, inwardly you hold a hardness that is not easily swayed by anyone.

There is no cause at all to fret over how long you must stay in this arrangement merely because you are now asking to learn from him and taking his help. While he blocks the wind in front and opens the way, you are laying foundations behind — this is not submission but the shrewdest manner of growing. You are not by nature someone who stays passive under another, and when the time comes you already hold in your chart the strength to keep your own ground independently.

Nor does he wield a wish to rule you as he pleases, and you do not trespass on his ground to threaten him, so there is little opening for a fight over who leads. A healthy tension flows here, the balance of strength taut yet each acknowledging the other's part, which makes it an excellent arrangement to use as ground for growth — a younger sister finishing her preparations to stand on her own feet inside an older brother's shelter.

Look at how each of you gives out the energy of a life and you sit in the seat of conception, like a seed taking form, while he stands in the seat of severance, emptied of everything and waiting for the new. Neither of you is the type to show off force loudly before people or put on airs; you share a quiet, careful wavelength that sinks deep inward and waits for its time.

If you hold a life force that is only now budding out into the world, searching and shaking at every moment over how it will grow, he has already been through one bottom and one severing, and so has come to a stage where he takes the weight and the passing of things calmly. To your eyes the figure of a man who has already made a home and found stability may look far off, but deep within he too is emptying himself without pause and wrestling with solitude.

This difference in energy does at times breed a mismatch in the pace of talk. You want an immediate, living answer to the problems of the real that face you now, while he steps back a beat and hands you an answer slowly, as if surveying a whole life. It is easy to feel then that the words do not reach, but know that it is not a cutting off — it is his own way of slowing you down and settling you.

Look at how the ten gods entwine in a frame of family-like bond, and his characters come to you as the seat of the Performer, pouring out expression and gift. This means that in his presence the potential and the sense for acting that slept in you take a spur and come leaping out strongly. Looking at him, a healthy will to win and a spur rise in you — I want to express like that, or, before this person I want to show my true measure.

Turned round, what he sees in you resembles the Nurturer, warmly bracing and holding him. Out in the world he carries a heavy responsibility alone and is always tensed, bearing the weight of a household and of a lead role, and the mere fact of you standing beside him doing your own part quietly lightens the load on his mind a good deal.

The authority that leads and controls others does not surface in your chart, and in him too the nurturing force that keeps his own values is strong rather than any urge to control. So neither binds the other in rank nor moves to lecture; a comradely family feeling forms, each doing their own part quietly with backs set together. When the older brother takes the arrows flying in from outside, the younger sister keeps the board steady within — an ideal division of the work.

Look at the stars set in your two charts and a scent of high artistry comes off them. Canopy Stars lie layered in your chart, standing for deep reflection and solitude, while in his chart a Heavenly Noble Star that lights a precious bond even in darkness and a strong General Star are plainly set. The two of you are not people who play lightly at charm to draw the world's eye, but people who forge deep inner wounds and solitude into an aura with weight to it.

Your Canopy Star gives off a cool mystery that does not easily grant closeness when people approach, and his Ghost Gate star lets him see through the depths of a character that others miss, working as a raw intuition. That odd bond and the close sibling air the two of you give off when you face each other before a camera is not made by technique — it is because the cool feeling of Canopy and Ghost Gate lying at the floor of both souls rings together.

Such a combination of stars can leave you rather awkward with each other at a light social gathering, but on a stage that demands deep immersion and truth it exerts an enormous pull. That you can read the other's weariness in a single glance, without spelling out the tunnel of obscurity and the weight of solitude you each came through, is because these quiet stars recognise one another and commune.

However good the harmony and however much you are a noble presence to each other, reefs that must be marked exist in the years that flow. Within your chart lie a self-punishing tie that drives you against yourself and a Resentment Tie that settles like fog, and within his chart too a Resentment Tie and a Ghost Gate hide as keen blades. Both of you must guard against the temper that, when thought runs deep, swallows it inwardly and ails alone rather than letting it out.

Looking at his flow in particular, 2026 and 2027 are a turning stretch in which an empty seat is filled, but in 2028, when he turns thirty-five, a clash comes that strikes his day branch head-on. In that time he may grow extremely raw and unsteady through his private life, his health, or psychological pressure, and even in work talk with you a sharpness unlike him may leap out.

If your own Resentment Tie answers then — is he ignoring me, or am I a burden — and you burrow alone into a cave of misreading, a fine crack can widen beyond stopping. Know clearly that his unease is not because of you but because his own fortune is shaking, and the wisdom of keeping a set distance in feeling is sorely needed.

Yet there is no need to fear the working of this clash too much. It can rather become a chance to shed a hardened shell and see each other again as one whole person and colleague; so if each time feeling runs high you avoid answering at once and face each other only after three days of cooling, the crisis will instead be a stepping stone that firms the bond.

Look long at how your Grand Cycles cross and the present, from 2026 to 2031, where your cycle and his interlock, is a calm stretch of feeling one's way, each firming their own place and matching step. But from 2032, when you are thirty-two and he is looking at forty, your cycle takes in the force of cold water and comes into a fortunate phase that slakes his burning thirst completely. The time when you do your own part fully and can lead him instead opens wide from about then.

So set down the thought that you are in his debt now, and the impatience of standing in a different place so the words do not reach. As the years pass you will grow into wider ground, and the bond with him will ripen past a season's roles into a true sibling-like friendship in which you ask after each other and watch over each other for life.

Let me give you five rules for tending this relationship wisely.

First, the best timing for talk is autumn and early winter, when metal and water run clear, so the great directions of the work and the deep things of the heart pass most freely in that season.

Second, when you talk, avoid the busy and glittering places and choose a quiet park where trees and water meet, or a calm and formal room, so that the keen nerves of both settle.

Third, as for how often to meet, keep a firm interval outside the set and hold a set distance, respecting each other's private life and household — that is the secret to keeping the mystery and the fondness long.

Fourth, in talking you must not throw only blunt conclusions but first listen to his values and ideals, while he in turn must wait quietly, without moving to teach, until you find your own sense.

Fifth, around the autumn of 2028 when his day branch is shaken, absolutely refrain from important decisions or from voicing a grievance, and keep beside him in silence.

What must never be done is to swallow a grievance alone and then throw up a cold wall at some unrelated moment; what must be kept is to take in the guidance he offers whole, while never losing your own sense and walking your own step quietly.

The birth times of you both are still behind a curtain, so how high the standing of the two of you will rise in the middle years past forty I have not opened fully. Yet even from the six characters now shown, your meeting is plainly a precious providence, fitted together by heaven to straighten each other's bent road.