Five phases / 金 Jīn
The Metal phase
Metal is one of the five phases — 五行, wu xing — that organise the whole system. A phase is not a substance but a stage of change, which is why 金 is better read as metal contracting than as the material itself.
- Season
- Autumn
- Direction
- West
Two movements · four fixed relations
What Metal gives—and what keeps it in check
Every phase stands in four fixed relations. Neither cycle is a ranking: generating and controlling are both necessary, and a system with only one would run away or seize up.
Where the phase enters a chart
The stems and branches that carry Metal
A phase reaches a chart through the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Each stem takes one phase in a yang and a yin form; the branches distribute the same five phases across the twelve animals.
01 · Two polarities
Heavenly stems
02 · 2 fixed branches
Earthly branches
These branches fall together in the calendar because metal governs autumn.
Twelve appearances in sixty positions
Metal in the sixty-year cycle
Twelve of the sixty stem-branch pairs take a stem of this phase—one for each branch, alternating yang and yin. Read the records across rather than scanning a table.
- Position 71990
- Position 81991
- Position 172000
- Position 182001
- Position 272010
- Position 282011
- Position 372020
- Position 382021
- Position 472030
- Position 482031
- Position 572040
- Position 582041
A separate named association
The Metal sounds
纳音 assigns each pair of pillars one of thirty sounds, each named for an image. Six of them belong to this phase, and a pillar's sound is often a different phase from its stem.