Yang Wood over Metal · Spring water

Jia Shen — pillar 21 of 60

A tree growing beside an axe. Growth with a standing risk beside it — the classic pillar of ability under constant testing.

Reviewed November 2026

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Pillar甲申 — Jia Shen (21 of 60)
StemJia 甲 — Yang Wood
BranchShen 申 — the Monkey, Metal
Hidden stemsGeng 庚, Ren 壬, Wu 戊
StageSevered (10 of 12)
NayinSpring water
RelationBranch 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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