Geng庚

The oracle glyph of Geng may depict a handled rattle or a threshing tool, later borrowed for the seventh stem. The Shuowen: "Geng — positioned West, the image of autumn when all things turn geng-geng with fruit." Geng-geng means fruit grown hard — autumn arrives, the harvest stiffens, and with it comes the season's killing edge.

Its element image is Yang Metal: ore, axe, halberd. Unworked iron — coarse, hard, edged. The tradition calls Geng "stubborn metal," and stubborn means one thing: useless until forged.

Geng's Lu is in Shen, peaking through autumn. Yang Metal is hard and stern: washed by Water it turns clear (Ren's rinse bares the edge), forged by Fire it turns sharp (Ding's furnace makes the tool), and its one dread is burial under thick Earth.

The Di Tian Sui: "Geng Metal carries the killing air, hardest of the hard; Water makes it clear, Fire makes it keen." For sheer rigidity Geng heads the ten. But the ancients appended a warning — "moist Earth grows it, dry Earth embrittles it": even the hardest metal depends on whether the soil around it nourishes or smothers.

Yi combines with Geng into Metal — the "combination of benevolence and righteousness." For Geng this means a sheathed blade: the axe tangled in the soft vine, its killing air bound. A combined Geng loses some decisiveness and gains some warmth.

Jia versus Geng is the most famous duel of the stems: axe against tree. Its verdict is pure arithmetic of strength — strong Geng carves weak Jia into timber; strong Jia rolls the edge of a weak axe. Weigh both sides before judging any chart where the two stand exposed.

On the day stem Geng is the Geng Metal Day Master — the blade personality, read fully on that page. Elsewhere by Ten God: to Jia Wood, Seven Killings (the axe overhead — and the chisel that makes the beam); to Ren Water, Indirect Resource (the spring behind "clear metal, clear water"); to Bing Fire, Indirect Wealth.

Geng's two classic in-chart jobs: pruning — an overgrown Jia needs Geng's shears to take shape; and feeding the spring — when Ren or Gui runs weak, Metal generates Water, and "white metal, clear water" is the classical image of lucid intelligence.

Seventh in order, Geng became the folk word for age itself: "same Geng" means born the same year, and "your honorable Geng?" is the polite way to ask someone's age — both from stem-branch year counting.

The most famous Geng days are the Dog Days: the third Geng day after the summer solstice opens the fu period — fu meaning Metal qi in hiding, for in Fire's peak season the Metal stem must lie low. The old betrothal card exchanging birth data was called the "Geng card": the seventh stem has witnessed countless marriages.