Jǐ

Everything about 己 (Jǐ) in the old books is low, moist and hospitable. It is yin earth, the sixth stem, and the commentary in 滴天髓 calls it garden and field land, an offshoot of the heights of 戊. 淵海子平 agrees on the fields. 三命通會 卷二 gives it a stranger job, a matchmaker between heaven and earth without whom yin and yang could not pair.

Each clause of the verse has a plain mechanism behind it in the commentary. Soft earth grows wood, so wood cannot overcome it, and deep earth takes water in, so water cannot wash it away. Rootless fire cannot feed wet ground and goes dim, while damp soil moistens metal until it gleams. The commentary calls this doing much by doing nothing, and it reads the last line as saying that for things to thrive this earth should be helped.

A practitioner reading 己 names 甲 Direct Officer, 乙 Seven Killings, 丙 Direct Resource and 丁 Indirect Resource, so the wood the verse shrugs off is exactly the pair that control it. 三命通會 adds its own liking, 丁 fire as a source, and its own fear of yang fire that dries the soil out. The plea to help the earth is a general line about things thriving, and the verse gives no measure by which a particular chart would count as needing it. Anything about caring, patient 己 people comes from modern popular books.