Seonghyeon's SajuA boy with lava under frozen ground who colors outside the lines (Earth Horse)K-POP · 2009-01-13

용신: 火

This is the picture of a red blaze flowing with held breath beneath a parched plain glazed with the thin ice of midwinter. The landscape that shows on the surface is winter earth, neat and cool without one thing out of place, and yet in the very spot where you stand, seething lava has coiled itself and settled. People of the world, looking at you, will easily take you for a gentle soul, placid and unbothered, who does not even know how to get angry. But that is because the fire you hold beneath the cold sheet of ice is so hot that you do not carelessly breathe out the sharp-edged energy within you, and instead swallow it and melt it down inside. Unlike the stillness that shows, there hides within you a fearsome stubbornness that could melt the world in a single breath and an intuition like flame, so how could others easily guess at what lies inside?

Long ago, in the courtyard of an inn in Yanjing under the Yuan dynasty, I saw a man painting a mural alone, brush in hand, on a snow-covered winter night. That man too, like you, had a chart in the shape of cold ground with a fearsome blade and fire held in his chest. By day he washed bowls and cut meat in the kitchen as he was told, without a word of complaint, so people thought him simply an easygoing worker, but when the night deepened and he lit the lamp, his eyes flashed fiercely and he carved onto the wall, without hesitation, bold pictures no one could imitate. That man's unhesitating brushwork at last caught the eye of the imperial court and he received a great summons, yet because he could not bend his own nature he would suffer alone in his heart night after night. As that man's life was, so it is that a fire lodged in frozen ground, if it is not given a way out in good time, burns its own inside first.

Earth Horse — A boy with lava under frozen ground who colors outside the lines

Your inborn ground is Yang Earth, a broad, thick mountain range and a wide land, and since you happened to be born in the Ox month of deep winter when the bitter north wind blows, what settles on your surface first is a reticence that hardly ever shows a tremor of feeling. Yet beneath your own feet flashes the hottest of fires, the energy of the Emperor's Throne, which is to say the edge of the Sheep Blade. This is exactly why you look cool and languid when your face is blank, and then sparks of an entirely different kind fly when you burst out laughing or sink into your own thoughts. The outside is an earthen wall frozen hard while the inside is hot as a brazier, so strangers hesitate at the coldness and those close to you are charmed by that quirky, hot liveliness.

You yourself may think you take on no stress and simply shake it all off after a night's sleep, but when I look into your chart the truth is quite different. The hot fire of your day branch and the frozen, damp earth of your month branch collide and raise together the shadow of the Ghost Gate and the ember of the Scalding Fire star, so rather than fighting out loud, you are closer to pushing your tangled worries down into the depths of the unconscious and sealing them there. Each time too many thoughts crowd your head, you have protected yourself by cutting thought off altogether. When you toss out an idea all at once without calculation while working on a song, that too is never thoughtlessness, for the intuition of the Sheep Blade, shooting up through the sheet of ice, works like lightning, so you have no need at all to doubt your own sense.

The energy of Noble Authority, risen upright on your month stem, supports you in firmly keeping social discipline and courtesy, so even when a rebel's convention-breaking flame boils over inside, outwardly you carry yourself as a flawlessly polished and considerate person. Had this Noble Authority not served as your reins, your overflowing fire would have ended as nothing more than impulsive defiance. The thoughtfulness with which, even in bone-grinding training, you do your part without rough edges and look after others is a blessing that springs from this upright energy of Earth and Wood.

Your workplace must, without exception, be somewhere the grain of Wood stands, discipline and learning that keep your overflowing Earth in good order, and somewhere heat and light pour in to thaw your frozen chart. Because the season of your birth is so cold and damp, rather than research dug into alone in the dark, the finest way forward for you is the stage, where you show yourself brightly and take the gaze and heat of countless people with your whole body. Holding the Sheep Blade, an inborn edge, you soon feel smothered in work where you move passively at another's direction, and only when you stand in the lead seat of creation, laying out the board with your own hands and carving the sound yourself, do you finally breathe easy.

Among your six characters no Metal shows on the surface, which is to say none of the characters of the Creative and the Performer that express by moving hand and foot, and yet within the cold mound of earth a Yin Metal like a sharp needle lies hidden, holding its breath. Because these stars of expression are not loudly on display, you do not compete with common technique or little tricks as others do, and instead come to a weighty way of writing in which you ripen a thought for a long time and then deliver one refined line in a single breath, as if biting it clean off. You may think you are tossing things out on the spur of the moment, but these are sounds already worked tens of thousands of times in the furnace of your mind, leaping out in an instant, so do hold that heaven-given sense of rhythm and that intuition dear and trust them.

The ten-year cycle you are passing through now is likewise one in which Fire and Wood join, burning the forest of Authority to raise a flame of honor, so standing on stage at an early age and drawing the world's attention was no accident at all. Until around age 20, melting your own color into the team, within its solid walls, is the way to protect your energy, but the closer you come to 30, the more you will long for a world of your own that bears wholly your own name.

In your chart you sit of your own accord on the Emperor's Throne above strong, solid ground, so you have the capacity, when wealth comes, to keep it beneath your feet and govern it rather than be chased or swayed by it. The Steady Wealth in your year branch, like a cold sea, joins in combination with the earth of your month branch and seeks to form a great territory, so you have caught a current in which, never constrained over a lifetime's livelihood, you fill your granary early through your own talent. Your own grip of control is strong, so you are by no means the sort to squander wealth on empty show just because it has come in.

However, the flow of wealth comes to you as Water, and that Water is a welcome energy that wets your Wood, yet it also meets the fire of your spouse palace head-on in the Rat-Horse clash. This means that if you become absorbed in the mere act of holding and multiplying money, hot anguish rises within and your health or your relationships may be scratched. Rather than chasing the flow of cash and hoping for luck, it serves you a hundred times better to tie your capital down in the form of intellectual assets and solid documents, such as the copyrights to the music you make and the value of your name. Only when you have built an engine of income that fills by itself, and arranged things so that you yourself can be absorbed in creating alone, will great wealth be kept whole.

If I am to point out one thing to do starting this month, at 17 you will not yet be managing your assets entirely alone, but do form the habit of making your eyes familiar, step by step, with the detailed clauses of the rights and contract documents that come in under your name. For grasping the logic of what channels and contracts money passes through before it reaches your hand, more than the amount itself, will be the shield with which you one day take hold of a far larger board.

For you, the star of the person who becomes your match comes in as cold Water and has taken its place deep in your year branch. This means your heart leans naturally not toward someone who is showy on the surface and makes a fuss, but toward someone deep within, who quietly keeps to their own place and gives calm stability. Yet that stream of water which holds you takes the form of the Rat-Horse clash, striking roughly against your day branch, the hot fire beneath your feet, so the closer you become, the more easily you will meet rough passages in which each one's stubbornness and way of living pull tautly against the other's.

Ordinarily you go along with the other person meekly, as if indifferent, but once you feel your territory or your principles have been trespassed on, a resolve like the edge of the Sheep Blade can spring out and freeze them sharply. From the other person's side, it is all too easy to be bewildered when the man who was endlessly tender when he laughed suddenly puts up a wall so cool it feels unfamiliar. Therefore, rather than being bound under one roof and interfering in every small detail of daily life, it must be a relationship in which each deeply respects the other's own professional world and keeps a certain physical distance, and only then will it stay untroubled for a long time.

Right now the waves of your ten-year cycle and the year's energy are leaning wholly toward achievement in the world and the heat of the stage, so fixation on romance or forming a bond in haste would only turn to poison. Only when you are well past your mid-20s and nearing 30 will the outline of a partner who can truly warm your cold depths and tend your fire grow clear. If I am to name one thing to do starting today, when you talk with those close to you or with your members, do not abruptly cut off, with silence, the weariness you have been quietly digesting inside, and practice gently offering first the words “Right now I need some time alone to recharge.”

The point in this chart that reads as most precarious is that Water and Fire face each other head-on without yielding, and that no Metal has risen among the six visible places. The hot fire of your day branch, which governs the heart and blood vessels, collides fiercely with the cold water of your year branch, which is in charge of the kidneys and bladder, so you are prone to an imbalance of circulation in which your body temperature does not regulate smoothly, or heat surges into your chest and then your hands and feet turn cold. When heat fills up inside, even if on the surface you pass it off as though you were insensitive to it, within the body blood pressure and the flow of blood are bound to be the first to churn.

What is more, the Metal that is shut inside cold earth and cannot breathe warns of weakness in the respiratory tract and lungs, the large intestine and the skin. Symptoms such as allergic rhinitis blocking your airways, or inflammation breaking out on skin that turns dry, are a plain sign arising because the cool wind in your chart is not circulating as it should. Rather than gulping down water you should warm your insides with warm tea, and the habit of forcing up inner heat with spicy food only feeds the damp heat of the stomach and pulls at the ember of the Scalding Fire star, so it is something to guard against with the greatest care.

That your complexion pales easily, or that tiredness does not lift even after sleep, will be your body's signal that energy and blood are knotted in one place and not circulating freely. What the reading of a chart discerns is, after all, only the direction in which energy leans and runs dry, so if there is even a slight tightness in your chest, or any sign that the rhinitis and respiratory symptoms are deepening, do not pass it off as nothing and be sure to see a doctor and be examined.

This year, the Fire Horse year, is for you a year in which a vast pillar of fire shoots up, the kind that comes only a few times in a lifetime. The land that had been frozen cold meets the fire pouring down from heaven and rising from earth and thaws all at once, so this is beyond doubt a phase of soaring in which your talent and the worth of your name shine brilliantly over all the world. Yet where light is strong the shadow too is deep. Onto the fire your day branch already held, the fire of the year's energy is laid once more, forming self-punishment twice over, and the Scalding Fire star of the Ox and the Horse blazes up, so alongside the glory stands the danger that swings of feeling and restlessness may reach their peak. On the outside you go from victory to victory, while inside you are sweating to hold down burnout and impulsive outbursts.

Today's pillar, for the evening of October 3, 2026, is the Metal Dog day, and for you it carries the energy of the Creative, which draws talent outward, but the strength of that energy sits in the Tomb stage and is very much sunken. It is the evening hour when the day's tiredness crowds in, so this is a day when trouble comes if you try to wring out a new idea by force or make a sharp-edged decision. Today you should simply set down heavy thoughts, lay your body down and concentrate on guarding the energy you have spent.

In particular, among the months left in this year, December, the Metal Rat month, is a month in which cold Water comes in and easily strikes against the fire beneath your feet, so it is a time to keep your words and conduct weighty so that no friction arises in your health or your relationships.

The curve of your life is one that leaves the frozen shade of the early years and, across youth and the prime of life, meets a vast energy of Fire and Wood and climbs steeply. Your inborn ground is full of cold water and ice, so you had to lay your foundations while suffering quietly alone, but from the first ten-year cycle, which began at age 7, you entered the season of your Vital Element and an unobstructed road of growth opened.

The ten-year cycle you now stand on is the Fire Rabbit cycle, running from age 17 to 26 (January 2026 to January 2036), in which a Nurturer like a warm lamp rises on the heavenly stem and a green forest takes root in the earthly branch and feeds the flame without end, a rising period as clear as can be. It is a time when your standing and recognition in the world grow higher by the day. Yet even within this dazzling decade, the five years from age 19 to 23, from 2028 through 2032, are a ridge in which thick Earth, sharp Metal and cold Water come in one after another and press and shake the Wood that feeds your Fire, so in that time you should stop any expansion decided alone and any strained transformation, and firmly guard your inner substance.

The Earth Dragon cycle you will meet next, from age 27 to 36 (January 2036 to January 2046), is a time of level plains where broad land is laid layer upon layer, a transitional stretch in which, on the basis of the honor built up before, you form a great following, but must clearly divide shares and rights with colleagues or partners in work.

The Earth Snake cycle that follows, from age 37 to 46 (January 2046 to January 2056), is likewise a level road on which one more layer of Earth is laid, so although fire comes into the earthly branch and warms the frozen ground, guarding the weight of the name you have built suits it better than venturing out. Although, not knowing the hour of your birth, I cannot examine every particular seat of your late years, the Metal Horse and Metal Goat cycles that run from 47 and the waters after them are a flow in which Metal and Earth press down on the Wood that feeds your Fire, so around then you must draw in the widening step and change toward keeping what you have guarded.

The grain of INTP, which you have named as the frame through which you understand yourself, runs on exactly the same track as the uprightness of Noble Authority on your month stem and the keen insight held by the Sheep Blade in your day branch. In your chart too the energy that points to logical thinking stands out, so the power to step back one pace in any tangled situation and see coolly through to the essence and structure of the matter, rather than be swept up in feeling and spoil things, is an inborn nature and the sturdiest weapon you have, one you may trust and use.

Yet even if you define yourself as an inward person who flows along flexibly, on the other side of your chart there breathe together a fearsome drive to sit on the Emperor's Throne and direct the board as you will, and the weight of Noble Authority, which prizes organized discipline. On the surface you seem to toss things out and drift as they come, but in truth you have set up within the unconscious a perfectly calculated order and a frame for finishing, and you swim inside it. That you find yourself minding the standards around you and driving yourself with a strict measure is precisely because the firm bones of this chart and your own free leaning are locked in a taut tug-of-war.

For a young man with the grain of this type, the wisest way to use the energy of Fire within him lies in not turning a thought over until it is perfectly assembled in his head, and in throwing raw inspiration out into the world with speed, rough though it may be. When a word you toss out without thinking shakes the whole board, that is never lightness but the power of the Sheep Blade's flame bursting at the end of cool thought, so leave that outlet of intuition wide open.

That man who long ago painted murals through the night in the courtyard in Yanjing likewise kept the blade in his hand hidden behind gentle eyes by day, and when night came would pour out pictures to shake the world. The stubborn rules of the old world would look on a person who held an emperor's blade within cold ground like this, call him a dangerous rebel who might burst at any moment, bar his way to the high offices of his clan, and leave him to command soldiers and horses on a far frontier or to drift as a common painter of the marketplace. It was an age when institutions and formality treated a person's sharp individuality as a sin, and so there was no stage that could fully receive that seething fire. But what of the world now? Is this not an age that gives its warmest praise and its wealth not to the model student walking meekly down the set road, but to the creator who boldly lays color outside the world's lines and sets off the flame that is his alone? So your Sheep Blade and your fire, which the old order feared, have now become the most brilliant treasure, one that will lift you to the top of the world.

I will divide the road ahead of you into four paths and tell you each one firmly.

First, on the road of work and money, do not hurry forward the time for insisting on a color wholly your own. The great forest and warmth that is your team is thawing your cold chart in the safest way, so until the heavy wind that begins in 2028, when you turn 19, has passed, refrain from any strained move on your own and concentrate, as the team's central pillar, on steadily building up your own works and rights. It will not be late at all to bring your full, independent color out into the world in 2034, the Wood Tiger year, when you turn 25 and the energy of Wood comes in strong, so do not rush.

Second, in the garden of people and bonds, be wary of relationships that burrow in too deeply and secretly. A chart like yours, with much inner heat, is one whose soul grows healthy when you mix with people who are outwardly lively and rich in artistic expression and share the heat of the stage and of music. With anyone whose inner mind is gloomy or who tries to load you with too heavy an emotional burden, keep a certain distance through next year, the Fire Sheep year, and it is only right to fill the air of the studio with those who give off a bright and cheerful light.

Third, in tending body and mind, be sure to break the habit of enjoying cold drinks and spicy late-night food before this year is out. If you force greasy, spicy fire onto frozen earth, the poison of the Scalding Fire star boils up inside, heat spreads to your face and your sleep easily turns uneasy. Change the lighting of the room where you stay to a warm orange glow, and before this winter comes you should set in place a quiet evening routine of calmly enjoying a warm bath and loosening what is knotted inside.

Fourth, as a way of preparing for the wind and rain to come, keep in mind the heavy five-year stretch you will meet from age 19 and build up your inner store of knowledge and experience ahead of time. From 2028 to 2032 outside interference and gossip can easily arise, so at that time do not try to open a new board and fight, and make it instead a time of holding your ground while you study something deep or the musical bones of a wider world, and then no harm will come.

When two or three weeks have passed, if the restless weariness that used to surge up suddenly in your chest subsides, and when you open your eyes in the morning the stuffiness at the tip of your nose and the stiffness at the back of your neck ease away far more gently, that will be a sure sign that your chart is at last finding its balance.

The promised time when you will carve your own color firmly into the world is 2034, the Wood Tiger year, when the flame of glory burns once more in the earthly branch and a steadfast tree props up the pillar. When that time comes, heaven and earth alike will have finished preparing to receive the art that is yours alone and that you have carried within, so look deeply then at whether the sounds shaped by your own hands wear a color that is wholly yours. Around that time, come back to this place holding in your arms the solid music and the path you chose for yourself as you made your way through the world's rough waves. Because the door of your birth hour is still closed, I could not fully uncover the deepest twilight of your life or the final seat of your vessel, but if one day, when the time is right, you come carrying the lost hour with you, I will open and show you even the hidden card that remains, leaving nothing out. Do not fear the fierce flame you hold in your chest, and walk on quietly at your own stride.