Wei

The oracle glyph of Wei is a tree drawn with an extra tier of foliage — one layer more than the character for "wood," canopy at its fullest, fruit at full flavor. The Shuowen: "Wei means flavor — the tastes of the sixth month." Melons and fruit ripen; Wei is the month with taste.

Wei stands directly opposite Chou: both Earth, one dry and one wet, one high summer and one deep winter. Chou vaults Metal; Wei vaults Wood — the Hai-Mao-Wei frame banks its green here.

Wei hides Ji Earth (main), Ding Fire (middle) and Yi Wood (residual). As dry earth it mirrors Chen exactly — Chen stores water and dims fire; Wei dams water and feeds fire. A flooding chart welcomes Wei like a sandbag wall; a blazing chart finds it kindling.

The Wei month is "long summer" — summer's afterheat on autumn's doorstep, Earth ruling the seam between seasons. Sixth-month soil runs hot and parched, thirsting for Gui Water: for Wei-month charts, the first prescription is usually rain.

Wu-Wei combines; Hai-Mao-Wei forms the Wood frame with Wei as vault. Chou versus Wei throws both vaults open at once — Xin and Gui out of Chou, Ding and Yi out of Wei, four stored assets suddenly on the table. Classical "mixed-qi Wealth-Officer" structures are built precisely on such vault clashes.

Chou-Xu-Wei is the three-Earth punishment ("presumed power"), tangling earthy matters — property, land, digestion — with human friction. Zi harms Wei. Wei's relation map mirrors Chou's almost line for line: master one and you have mastered both.

In the pillars Wei computes as Ji Earth, with footnotes for Ding's root and Yi's vault. To Wood Day Masters it offers homecoming — a weak Yi roots here (the Di Tian Sui's "cleaving the goat"); to Fire it extends the afterglow; to Water it presents a parched Officer star.

Wei is also a decisive weight on the chart's moisture scale: Chen and Wei together keep dryness in check; Xu stacked on Wei doubles the drought. Same element, wrong branch — and the medicine becomes the disease.

The Wei hour (1–3 p.m.) was "sun declining watch," the first lean westward. The Wei month hosts the hottest stretch of the Dog Days — the year's peak heat lands in Wei, true to its parched-earth nature.

As for the animal: English asks "goat or sheep?" — this site follows the goat rendering. The New Year greeting "three yang bring prosperity" puns on yang (goat/sun-Yang), casting Wei's animal as the mascot of every year it rules.