Yeonjun's Four PillarsAn Autumn Mountain That Whets Its Blade by Carving Its Own FleshK-POP · 1999-09-13

용신: 土

Yours is the image of a cool blade held within autumn earth, standing face to face with a waterway. The Yang Earth that shows on the surface seeks to keep its place with the composure of a broad land, yet within it a keen blade of metal lies coiled, ceaselessly paring away its own body to shape its form. That fastidiousness with which you drive yourself so harshly is by no means because you fall short. Is it not because of the seat you were born to in your chart, where the whetted iron hidden in an autumn mountain scrapes at itself without rest to raise its own edge?

I am reminded of a young musician I saw long ago in the western market of Chang'an under the Tang dynasty. That man too was born, like you, holding an edge of hard earth, and when the clear metal energy of autumn reached his fingertips and he played the pipa, everyone in the market gazed at him spellbound. Yet if so much as a hair's breadth of a flaw brushed past his fingertips, he would blame his own fingers all night long and tear at the strings until his knuckles never had a day to heal. He set before the world a flawless, perfect sound, yet within himself he could not wholly enjoy that sound and kept himself in fetters, and that face of his I see today laid over the question you bring.

Earth Dragon — The Autumn Mountain That Whets Its Blade by Carving Its Own Flesh

You are a man born with the grain of the Earth Dragon day pillar, the hard earth of an autumn field. On the surface you have the weight of a broad mountain where a dragon dwells, and beneath it all lies the dependable energy of the Companion, which gathers the people around you into its arms. Yet in the seat of your birth month the Performer, Rooster metal, lies in wait like a cold, gleaming blade, so your thought and your senses are quick as lightning and your standard stands high enough to touch the sky. This blade of the Performer cuts its own flesh before it cuts another, so even when others praise you with full marks, you cannot abide a single speck that has caught your own eye and you drive yourself to the cliff's edge.

Moreover, the Day Pillar White Tiger and Red Romance rest together on your day branch, and between your month branch and day branch lies the grain of the Dragon-Rooster Ghost Gate, which burrows keenly into the depths of the heart. This is why, though on the outside you carry yourself like a general who shakes the field with boldness and good cheer, once you come down behind the stage your heart heaves like a wave at the smallest hurt or lack and the tears pour out. Looking within the three pillars and six characters that are known, the hour of your birth being unknown, your Day Master, Yang Earth, is fully rooted in the Yang Earth within the Dragon earth of your day branch, so your basic ground holds the strength of the balanced middle range and does not easily break. Your resolve to stand on your own without leaning on others is firm, so even if you swallow your weeping in secret, on stage you will without fail bring the most splendid flower into bloom.

The Performer, the Rooster metal of your month branch, is the source of keen expression and of movement sharp as a knife, so the talent that seizes every eye on stage is no stroke of luck come for nothing. It is the sharpest outlet through which this chart meets the world. The Noble Authority of Rabbit wood in your year branch and the Performer of Rooster metal in your month branch collide head-on in the Rabbit-Rooster clash, so your true radiance comes not when you follow a set frame or a hackneyed rule as given, but when you twist and shatter it in your own way and create a new line of dance. The strength by which, each time you ran up against a superior's criticism or a hidebound limit, you did not sink down but answered with a fiercer piece of creative work and proved your place, wells up from the very tension of this clash.

Your talent comes into full bloom in a workplace where the blade flashes and the dust of the earth is raised, so the work of weaving choreography, carving rhyme and rhythm, and shaking the field with daring dress that others have not ventured touches your true calling. Only, the gift of the Performer is so sharp that it easily becomes a blade that gnaws at yourself, so that light will last long only if you do not bury yourself in solitary achievement and take up a way of working in which you stand shoulder to shoulder with like-minded colleagues and share the weight of the earth.

Steady Wealth, Yin Water, emerges in your month stem and forms the Earth-Water stem harmony with your Day Master, Yang Earth, so rather than coveting riches and chasing drifting clouds, you have a realistic eye that faithfully gathers the reward you have earned by the sweat of your own hands. Yet the Rival, the Yin Earth of your year stem, stands guard beside that wealth, so the structure is one in which the money you earn does not stay wholly in your own hands and is apt to scatter of itself through your ties with those around you and the occasions on which you look after colleagues. Steady Wealth, Yin Water, also lies hidden within the Dragon earth of your day branch, so beyond the share that shows on the surface there is surely real substance that you build up unseen.

This chart's capacity to carry the Wealth stars is judged to be at a middle level, so you have the strength to seize an opportunity when it comes in, yet no small wearing of the mind follows in the course of guarding its fruit. Rather than being dazzled by splendid income and falling for a hollow investment or the coaxing of those around you, it will be safer to bind it up layer by layer within the fence of the name you have taken pains to keep, your own works, and tangible assets. In particular, from this month, the Earth Dog month (around October by the solar calendar), do not show off what comes in to those around you, and begin one practice: look over for yourself a ledger that draws a clear boundary around the expenses that go out regularly each month.

In a man's chart the Wealth stars signify the spouse, and in yours they are plainly seated as Steady Wealth, the Yin Water of your month stem, and the Yin Water within the Dragon earth of your day branch. The bond your heart settles on is not a person like a flame that leaps about in splendor, but a firm and steady match who stands quietly in place like the earth and wordlessly holds your changeable feelings and your sharp-edged fastidiousness. Yet the Dragon earth of your day branch, the seat of the spouse, forms the Rabbit-Dragon harm with the Rabbit wood of your year branch, and with the Rooster metal of your month branch it weaves the Dragon-Rooster harmony and the Dragon-Rooster Ghost Gate in a double layer, so keeping the right distance from a close bond is by no means easy.

Draw too close and at a single trifling glance the suspicion and hurt of the Ghost Gate sprout and torment your own heart, yet draw away and you writhe in loneliness, so you sorely need the wisdom to leave a fitting margin of time and space. Do not sulk or store up hurt inside because the other person fails to meet your expectations perfectly. You must learn to confide the grain of your heart calmly, just as it is. Starting today, when hurt feelings surge up, do not shut your mouth at once and stew alone, but form one habit: give it a day, let it settle quietly, and then work it out in words.

The cool metal energy of autumn pares away at your Day Master without rest, yet within the three pillars and six characters that are confirmed, the energy of fire that would warm the cold does not show on the surface. Moreover, the Rabbit wood of your year branch and the Rooster metal of your month branch collide in the Rabbit-Rooster clash, a collision of royal branches, so the structure is one in which tension and release cross abruptly and fatigue of the bones and joints, or of the nervous system, is apt to rush in all at once. If you ignore the signals your body sends for the sake of perfection and drive yourself day and night, one day your whole body may suddenly be spent and sink down.

Do not try to force down the heat and impatience that rise in your heart. After fierce dancing you must without fail fit into your daily round a still rest in which you stay wholly in silence. When your chest feels tight, thought chases thought and your sleep grows troubled, do not blame your chart, and for any real discomfort of the body be sure to be examined by a physician and have the state of your body checked objectively. Just as earth is given a fitting measure of water so that it does not dry out, settling the rhythm of your days into a steady rule is the finest pause of all.

This year, the Fire Horse year (2026), is a fortune in which the fire energy you have lacked surges in from heaven and earth alike and feeds Earth, your Vital Element. Energy that had shrunk grows thick, and your presence and honor rise tall before the world, so your public activity and your command of the stage will shine more brilliantly than ever before. Yet the Horse fire of the Metal Horse luck cycle in which you now dwell and the Horse fire of this year's Fire Horse yearly luck strike side by side and lay down the thin ice of self-punishment, so you must guard to the utmost against the headwind in which the greed and impatience boiling up within turn on your own body and mind.

Today, October 9, 2026, a Fire Dragon day, the day pillar this evening carries a very auspicious flow, in which the inspiration of the Mystic meshes with the strength of Dragon earth that holds up your Day Master. It is a day when, at the end of deep anguish, you may catch the flashing first thread of a creation, or when a knot that would not come loose may be undone in talk with others, so do not crouch alone in your room blaming yourself, but go out and share warmth with people you can trust. This year the outward expansion is dazzling, yet if you fail to govern the seething fire within, you may wear yourself out and fall away, so the wisdom to set down excessive greed and to measure your pace is essential.

Your life rides a flow that passes through the cool blade of the early years and turns by degrees toward warm earth, so it is a shape in which, the further you go, the more you find your own weight and grow steady.
Current luck cycle: the Metal Horse luck cycle, ages 22 to 31 (September 2021 to September 2031)
The gift of the Creative rises in the heavens and the learning and credentials of the Nurturer hold up the ground, so it is a time when you prove your talent to the world and make a place without peer your own, yet it is also a stretch in which the heat of Horse fire now and then fires the heart with impatience.
Next luck cycle: the Earth Snake luck cycle, ages 32 to 41 (September 2031 to September 2041)
The Rival and the Mystic come in hand in hand and pack your earth firm, a stretch of good fortune, and it will be a golden age in which the unease within dies down and you widen the range of your activity, leading a following of your own and dependable people who are yours.
The luck cycle after that: the Earth Dragon luck cycle, ages 42 to 51 (September 2041 to September 2051)
The same Earth Dragon as your day pillar comes in doubled and forms a vast mountain range, an auspicious flow, so you will at last lay down your doubt of yourself completely and meet a season of full ripeness, in which you lead your juniors or stand tall as the center that holds a great organization together.

Looking also at the flow after 52, beyond the three confirmed pillars, in the Fire Rabbit, Fire Tiger and Wood Ox luck cycles that run from 52 to 81 the restraint of the Authority stars and the care of the Resource stars will cross, and you will walk a level forest path that leans to neither side. The fierce edge of your younger days, when you struggled so hard to prove yourself, will change of itself into a weighty charisma as you pass your mid-thirties, so you need not fret, trying too hastily to pull the finish line toward you.

That you see yourself as ENFP, the campaigner type, is your honest stance toward life, one that reaches a cheerful hand out to the world, mingles with people and seeks to share flashes of inspiration. Yet your ground as seen through the lens of your chart is ruled by the meticulous reckoning of Steady Wealth, Yin Water, the weighty inwardness of the Companion, Dragon earth, and the perfectionist sense of the Performer, Rooster metal, so the chart itself leans strongly, rather, toward an inner grain that is realistic and prizes discipline. The contradiction by which, on the outside, you wish to flit about like a lively, free-spirited butterfly, while on the inside you rehearse in your head countless times a perfect stage without a hair's breadth of error and shut your body within a frame, arises from the very gap between these two lenses.

This mismatch is not because you are false. It is because a free spirit that holds high ideals (N/P) and a craftsman's mind that is not satisfied until it has realized them, without fail, in a perfect physical form (S/J) are fighting fiercely within one body. That curious diligence of yours, which is not satisfied unless even the stage manner of free enjoyment has been thoroughly practiced before you go up, is it not the very proof that the meticulous earth and metal of your chart have wrought the flashing sense of ENFP into real ability? So if you would use the energy of Earth, your Vital Element, while drawing on the strengths of this type, do not try to cut everything to the measure of imagination and perfection in your head, but practice trusting, just as it is, "the feel of this ground I stand on today" and leaving things to the instinct of your own body.

That musician who blamed his own fingers in the market of Chang'an was in later days bound by the strict musical codes of the court, could not fully unfold his will, and in the end was scattered as a nameless singer of the marketplace. For under the closed discipline of the old world, the energy of the Performer, which swings its blade in its own way without minding the mood of superiors, and the fastidiousness that drives the self to the very limit were dismissed as nothing more than the scar of a rebel. But on the stage of today, to which all people look up, is not that relentless craftsman's mind, which pares its own flesh to shape perfection, the most precious treasure of all, one that sends a thrill through tens of millions in the audience? So that relentless temperament with which you drive yourself is no curse but a tool heaven bestowed on you at birth, and now it is enough to swing that blade not at your own heart but at the empty air above the stage.

First, on the road of work and money, never try to choose only one of the two, the sturdy earthen fence that is the team and the keen blade that is solo work. Yours is a chart of the balanced middle range in which the drain of metal and water is too great for the strength of the Day Master to bear alone, so only when you flash the sharp spear of solo work while firmly rooted in the vast land of the team can you shine the longest without burning out.

Second, in your dealings with people, do not be ashamed of the hurt and unease hidden behind the playfulness that shows on the outside, and before this November, the Earth Pig month (around November by the solar calendar), has passed, try confiding your vulnerability raw and as it is to your most trusted colleague or to someone at your side: "The truth is, I am this tense and trying this hard."

Third, for your body and the place where you stay, bring into your workspace warm lighting that will warm the cool metal energy of autumn and the calm energy of ochre and brown, and until the spring of 2027 arrives, make it your routine, after dance practice, to keep without fail a ritual of ten minutes in which you steady your breath in silence as though treading on bare earth.

Fourth, in readiness for the flow of luck to come, around the Earth Rooster year of 2029 (2029 by the solar calendar) the blade of the Performer, Rooster metal, overlaps once more and gossip or a self-destructive fatigue may crowd in, so before you turn 30 you ought to learn in advance how to firm up what is within and store your strength rather than expand beyond your means.

Three or four weeks from now, when you come down from the stage, if instead of the self-reproach of "It should have been more perfect," a calm relief is the first thing to break from your lips, "My body held up splendidly again today," then you have at last entered upon the right road, the one that keeps you alive and well.

Listen, around the Earth Monkey year of 2028 the vast land of Yang Earth will come again from the heavens and hold your shoulders up firmly, so whatever the results you then hold in your own hands, come to me again carrying in your heart the fierce footprints of the road you have walked. With only the three pillars, the hour unknown, the image of whetted iron already shows itself this brilliantly, so if a day ever comes when we sit face to face with the hour of your birth held whole as well, I will be able to unfold the rest of heaven's hidden will. Even without being perfect you already shine brightly enough, so I pray you, put away the harsh whip you turn on yourself and walk your own road with your head high.

It is the image of a massive rocky mountain of late autumn, come back breathing hard after shaking the stage, sitting face to face with a winter flower that quietly keeps its place on frozen ground where the cold wind drives in. Your vast energy, which longs to burn hot with the eyes of the world upon it, and the cool silence of that woman, who seeks to take that clamor wordlessly into her arms, form a truly curious contrast.

Long ago, in an inn on a bustling market street of Yanjing under the Yuan dynasty, there were likewise two people just like you. One was a gifted musician, a man of the Earth Dragon day pillar, who made the whole inn ring and stole people's very souls away with a superb instrument, and the other was a woman of the Wood Ox day pillar, who steeped tea in a corner of that inn and listened to that sound in silence, taking it to heart. The man could not bear the emptiness that came after the splendid applause, so he would clasp the woman's small hand and pour out his hurt without cease, and the woman took the man's rough wind upon her own frozen breast and never let a single fold of her own sorrow show. The two were entwined so deeply that neither could breathe without the other, yet because of the weight of a silence never confided to the end, each would hold the other's sleeve and weep alone.

When you of the Earth Dragon, a high and majestic rocky mountain, and the woman of the Wood Ox, a tender flower waiting for spring in hard-frozen soil, first faced each other, the air between you must have been far-off and yet firm indeed. You are a man who holds a flame-like intuition that would rush outward and make his voice reach the whole world, and that woman is one who lets her feelings settle in the deep well within her and contemplates the world. Like the bond between a singer who pours out his soul beneath splendid lights and a listener in the audience who grasped at once the depth of that resonance and stayed quietly at his side for a long time, the beginning of you two arose from each looking upon the other's empty place.

It is the image of control, in which wood digs into earth, so on the surface the woman's quiet energy may seem to press subtly down on your vast rocky mountain. In truth, however, it is the shape of a single green life taking root on a dry and rugged rocky mountain, so that the mountain at last draws breath as a mountain should. You have a temperament that raises a wall before strangers and then, the moment you feel someone is your own, pours out your whole heart like a child, so before that woman's calm and quiet gaze you must have thrown off your stage armor in a single breath.

Look into the day branch, the most private seat, and your Dragon earth and the woman's Ox earth mesh and create a fine gap called the Dragon-Ox Break. To the eye both are earth and would seem to wrap each other snugly, yet damp soil that holds the spring strikes against mud frozen hard in midwinter, so small cracks are all too apt to form in the way you share what is in your hearts. When hurt arises, you want to show it on the spot with your whole body and be reassured, whereas the woman hides her feelings deep in the cold frozen ground within her and only after settling them alone lets her frozen face thaw, and that mismatch shows itself as the working of the Break.

Yet probe deeper into the bedrock beneath, and the Rooster metal seated in your month branch and the Ox earth set in the woman's day branch form the Rooster-Ox half harmony and clasp hands closely within. This means that even while on the surface you sulk and feel slighted, in the deep layers of the unconscious your artistic tastes and your compassion for each other are firmly woven together. Moreover, in your breast the energy of the Earth-Water stem harmony, in which the Yin Water of your month stem and the Yang Earth of your Day Master join, is vivid, so a longing to cling with endless tenderness to one to whom you have once given your affection, and to make sure of that warmth, has been deeply rooted in you from the first.

Reckon up the arithmetic of energy and what the two of you give and receive is plain indeed. For you, whose strength needs adding to when read by Balance, Earth is the Vital Element that lifts your energy, and that woman's chart carries a generous three clods of earth, counting Ox earth and Yin Earth together, so to you she serves as truly dependable ground and a noble helper. This is the very reason your hasty, uneasy heart strangely settles and finds relief when you stay at her side. On the other hand, the woman holds as many as two of the Wood energies that burden you, so there will surely be times when her silence or her quiet stubbornness comes to you as a heavy load pressing on your chest.

Seen from the woman's side, meanwhile, her chart is very cold and tender, so she is in sore need of warmth to thaw her frozen body, that is, of Fire as her Climate. Yet within your six known characters no flame shows on the surface, so your touch may feel somewhat cool for giving her at once the warmth she hopes for. The Yin Water risen in your month stem can also act on the woman as a cold frost, so you should know that the words of hurt you pour out when you grow sensitive can make the frozen flower shrink back all the more.

Look at the native ground of you both, and each carries the grain of a weak chart, in which the energy leans to one side and one is kept busy guarding oneself. Yet within that, the speed and the gap in how each of you spends strength are quite different. You have put down your own root in the Dragon earth of your day branch and wear the unhindered energy called Crown among the Twelve Stages, so, fearful as you are, the force with which you let your feelings burst out is fierce, like a boy leaping up onto a stage. Your face reddens at once when you are hurt, and you fret like a child, yet when you are held tenderly you break into a wide smile as though nothing had happened, and that transparency is your strength and at the same time your peril.

That woman, by contrast, has an extremely weak shape that barely keeps a thin breath alive in the Rabbit wood of her year branch, and she sits in the seat of Decline among the Twelve Stages, quietly drawn back. She is a woman for whom even looking after herself is a strain, and so she is deeply afraid of the very act of raising her voice or laying a burden on you. Fearing that if she showed she was upset, you, whose nerves are already on edge with preparing for the stage, might break down, she puts her heart in order alone in a cold room and only then appears wearing the mask that says she is fine. You must understand that the woman does not lean on you not because she cannot trust you, but out of a tender care that holds its breath for fear that even her small weight might leave a scratch on the rocky mountain that is you.

Look at the relationship through the framework of the Ten Gods, and to you the woman has the look of Noble Authority, which sets you upright and keeps you in check, while to the woman you take the form of Steady Wealth, a broad ground for her activity and one that holds her. It is a shape in which you, before the woman's ordered silence, look back on yourself and gain the lesson of growing up, and the woman, within your unhindered care, gains a stage for her own parched life. Moreover, in your day branch Red Romance, which draws people's eyes, and the White Tiger, which summons intense absorption, lie coiled side by side, so even off the stage your whole feeling will often race to extremes and torment you.

On top of that keen sensitivity, the Ghost Gate laid across your month branch and day branch makes you an expresser of genius, yet between close lovers it also becomes a blade that adds tens of thousands of imaginings to a silence that means nothing and makes the wound grow. In the woman's seat, by contrast, the Fortune Noble, which quietly builds up blessings, dwells gracefully, so she takes upon herself the part of a breakwater, silently receiving those changeable, sharp-edged waves of yours and shielding you from the clamor of the outside world. The moisture of Steady Wealth hidden in your breast meets the seeds secretly stored in the woman's breast, so a private refuge for the two of you alone, unseen by others, stands in this very place.

Yet even in this quiet refuge there lies a hidden reef that you must be sure to guard against. Set the month pillars of the two of you side by side, and your Yin Water and the woman's Yin Fire face off in the stem clash between Yin Fire and Yin Water, while in the earthly branches the cutting wind of the Rabbit-Rooster clash strikes, so sharp friction can arise wherever you each express what you value. You may feel a wall when you see the woman's way of not confiding her hurt at once, and the woman may in secret pile up a deep weariness at your childlike fretting, when you fail to notice the care in her silence and take offense as though pressing her.

Look at the flow to come as well, and a point for caution shows plainly. Next year, the Fire Goat year of 2027, the woman's day branch is shaken hard by the Ox-Goat clash, so a great burden and trial may come to her daily life or her heart, and the strength she has left to look after you may fall away sharply. If at that time you neglect her on the grounds that you are busy with work, or fret at her, asking why she does not take you in as she did before, the fine gap of the Dragon-Ox Break that has opened between you will widen beyond all checking. Yet there is no reason at all to see the working of this clash and this Break only as an omen of ruin. Just as metal that is never struck takes no edge, if you make it a course of tempering in which you acknowledge that your grains differ and smooth them together, this crisis will instead set the two of you firm as a pair that nothing can replace.

Looking far along the flow, the luck of the two of you holds each other up in a truly curious way. The Metal Horse luck cycle you are passing through now holds the warmth of Fire that the woman so sorely needs, and the woman's Earth Rabbit luck cycle holds the refuge of Earth that you need, so until January of 2029 it is beyond doubt a precious time in which each of you brings the other's luck to life. Only, from early 2029 the woman enters the Metal Dragon luck cycle and meets a comparatively hard time of trial, so from then on you must become a full-grown adult and be her sturdy windbreak.

I tell you five ways to leave the woman less lonely when you are lost in your work and to tend each other's place firmly, so engrave them on your heart.

First, as to the timing of talk, take special care in the summer of 2027, when the woman's day branch is shaken, and as to months, avoid emotionally charged showdowns when the energies collide hotly, as in sweltering June, the Fire Horse month, or July, the Fire Goat month. It is wise to bring out the important things in your heart quietly around late autumn, when the energy of earth settles calmly.

Second, as to the place of meeting, avoid showy spaces that are crowded and draw every eye, and choose a still space that holds warmth, such as a quiet teahouse steeped in the weighty energy of earth and stone or a lakeside where few people pass. There the woman's frozen tongue will at last be loosed.

Third, as to how often you meet, even if it is uneven because of your schedule, when contact will be cut off for days at a time while you prepare for the stage, tell her that span clearly beforehand so that the woman can gauge where the waiting ends. A vague silence only plants a cold sense of isolation in her breast.

Fourth, you must change your way of speaking. Stop pressing her with "Why won't you tell me? It hurts that you don't lean on me," and offer words that first acknowledge the woman's silence: "Only now do I see how heavy it must have been, all that you swallowed out of care for me. You do not have to hold it in for fear of being a burden to me."

Fifth, the situation to check is when you have finished something great and emptiness comes flooding in. Do not force immediate comfort and response from the woman to fill that hunger, but learn to bear the temperature of silence, simply holding her hand quietly and steadying your breath side by side.

That musician and that woman I met long ago in the inn of Yanjing also ended their long wandering and completed one whole melody only when, in the end, he lowered his own sound and took the other's silence into his arms. Two to four weeks from now, when you reach out to her after several days of preparing for the stage, if the woman first confides one small, honest word, "I was a little lonely," instead of saying "I'm fine," then you may take it that the road of you two has at last fully embraced each other's grain.

Listen, you who stand tall as a mountain and receive the cheers of the world, yet are ever chilled in one corner of the heart and quick to feel hurt.

I leave in your keeping one word that I seal deep in my heart for the two of you: wait quietly for the autumn of the coming Earth Rooster year of 2029. In that year the energy of the Dragon dwelling in your day branch and the Rooster of the yearly luck will meet and form a firm harmony, and a precious season will come in which the frozen seat of the woman's heart also loosens gently within your arms and the long misunderstandings between you die away like melting snow. When that time comes, will you not come to me again, bringing the traces of hearts grown deeper, and tell me what choice each of you made in your own place and what love you drew up out of that silence?

Even when you stand on stage shaking the world, do not forget the warmth of that cool silence that quietly holds you up, and walk your own road with your head high, in that full-hearted stride of yours.