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Five phases / 木 Mù

Wood Phase 木 in Bazi: Stems, Branches & Relations

Wood 木 generates Fire and controls Earth; Water produces it and Metal controls it. Its stems are Jia 甲 and Yi 乙, and its branches are Tiger 寅, Rabbit 卯.

Season
Spring
Direction
East
Two stems
甲 · 乙
A spring garden of pine, bamboo, flowers, water and distant mountains
木Spring · East

Two movements · four fixed relations

What Wood 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.

01

Wood generates

Fire

相生 — it feeds and produces the next phase

02

Generated by

Water

相生 — the phase that produces it in turn

03

Wood controls

Earth

相克 — it restrains and keeps the other in check

04

Controlled by

Metal

相克 — the phase that restrains it

Where the phase enters a chart

The stems and branches that carry Wood

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 wood governs spring.

Twelve appearances in sixty positions

Wood 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.

  1. Position 11984

    甲子

    Yang Wood Rat

  2. Position 21985

    乙丑

    Yin Wood Ox

  3. Position 111994

    甲戌

    Yang Wood Dog

  4. Position 121995

    乙亥

    Yin Wood Pig

  5. Position 212004

    甲申

    Yang Wood Monkey

  6. Position 222005

    乙酉

    Yin Wood Rooster

  7. Position 312014

    甲午

    Yang Wood Horse

  8. Position 322015

    乙未

    Yin Wood Goat

  9. Position 412024

    甲辰

    Yang Wood Dragon

  10. Position 422025

    乙巳

    Yin Wood Snake

  11. Position 512034

    甲寅

    Yang Wood Tiger

  12. Position 522035

    乙卯

    Yin Wood Rabbit

A separate named association

The Wood 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.