Xīn

Books split over what 辛 (Xīn) looks like. This is yin metal, the eighth stem, and the poem in 淵海子平 opens with pearls and jade, an image that popular modern books keep as jewelry. 滴天髓's commentary flatly denies it with 非珠玉之謂 and says the metal is simply mild, gentle and clean. 三命通會 卷二 looks upward and calls it the essence of the moon.

Earth piled on buries this metal, the commentary explains, and plentiful water shows it off. The grand lines about propping up the state and saving lives are a small political drama: as minister to 丙 it calms 壬 so that water will not put out the fire, and as lord to 甲 it combines 丙 away so that wood will not burn. The close is seasonal. In midsummer it wants its mother, named as 己 earth that can dim the fire, and in deep winter it wants 丁 to stand off the cold.

丁 carries the name Seven Killings for a 辛 day master, and this verse welcomes it in the cold, a fair lesson in looking past a label. 己 here is Indirect Resource and 戊 is Direct Resource. Since the verse changes its preference with the weather, a practitioner looks at the birth month before anything else. The calculator counts 長生, the stage of birth, at 子, where 三命通會 says water rinses the sand from the ore and the metal comes up bright.