Yang Metal over Metal · Pomegranate wood

Geng Shen — pillar 57 of 60

An axe struck against iron. Force meeting force: skill, contest, and a pillar that sharpens under resistance.

Reviewed November 2026

← All sixty pillars

Pillar庚申 — Geng Shen (57 of 60)
StemGeng 庚 — Yang Metal
BranchShen 申 — the Monkey, Metal
Hidden stemsGeng 庚, Ren 壬, Wu 戊
StageOffice (4 of 12)
NayinPomegranate wood
RelationSame element

What the pair is doing

Stem and branch share an element — the peer relation. Doubling: what the pillar does, it does twice.

The stem is yang metal and the branch is metal, so this is the peer relation. Inside the branch sit the hidden stems Geng, Ren, Wu — which is why a Shen branch is never only metal. Those hidden stems are what a reader checks when the surface element does not explain what the chart is doing.

The stage: Office

On the twelve-stage cycle, Geng meets Shen at Office — stage 4 of twelve. The stages run from Birth at the element's own season through Peak at its strongest, then down through Decline, Illness, Death, Tomb and Severed before Conception and Nurture bring it back. Office is a qualitative marker, not a score: it says how freely the stem can act at this branch, not how strong the person is.

The nayin layer

The classical sound-element for this pair is pomegranate wood. Nayin is a separate sixty-item list that predates the stem-and-branch reading most charts use today; it is quoted for its image rather than its arithmetic. Treat it as a second description of the same object, not as a fifth element to be balanced.

Years with this pillar

Every sixty years the year pillar returns to Geng Shen. In the current window that means 1920, 1980, 2040, 2100. If you were born in one of those years, this is your year pillar — but not necessarily your Day Master, which comes from the day, not the year.

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