| Pillar | 甲申 — Jia Shen (21 of 60) |
|---|---|
| Stem | Jia 甲 — Yang Wood |
| Branch | Shen 申 — the Monkey, Metal |
| Hidden stems | Geng 庚, Ren 壬, Wu 戊 |
| Stage | Severed (10 of 12) |
| Nayin | Spring water |
| Relation | Branch controls the stem |
What the pair is doing
The branch restrains the stem's element — the authority relation. Pressure that comes from circumstance, rules or other people.
The stem is yang wood and the branch is metal, so this is the authority 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: Severed
On the twelve-stage cycle, Jia meets Shen at Severed — stage 10 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. Severed 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 spring water. 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 Jia Shen. In the current window that means 1944, 2004, 2064. 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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