Jiwoo's SajuThe Dyke Waiting for Its Last Piece — Earth Pig Day PillarK-POP · September 7, 2006

You were born a Yin Earth day master seated by the water in early autumn, carrying beneath you a cold, wide water: the Earth Pig day pillar. Not earth risen like a mountain or a rampart but the low earth that becomes a field, becomes a dyke. It takes in whatever comes and raises it, which is why people beside you say you are easy to be with and why you were told you have no sharp edges even on first meeting. You called yourself an ISTJ. Where the procedure-keeping half of that came from is the first knot of this chart.

The frame of your chart is held by the metal of your birth month, which makes this a chart framed by the Performer. The Performer is the energy that twists what is inside into its own shape and pushes it out. Not a thing that returns what it learned obediently, but one that must remake the form with its own hands before it can rest. That your portion alone looks different inside choreography set for everyone comes from here.

But look at your heavenly stems. Two Nurturers in Yang Fire float side by side, pressing that Performer down from above. This is exactly what the classics call keeping a Performer chart clear: the Nurturer pressing the Performer. It is also a chart thick with the favour of elders. Set in a place of learning you would have soaked it up like a sponge, and the strength to go in at twelve and endure six years without breaking came from here.

So when you called yourself diligent, careful, realistic, that was no lie. But to take that for your whole foundation is to see only half. With two Nurturers pressing from above, keeping the rules became second nature, and underneath the Performer is pushing at the frame without pause. Saying you are comfortable doing things as set and yet staying in this work, being called a rule-keeper and yet being freer than anyone on stage, both faces are you.

In the year branch the Canopy sits as well, a seat leaning toward art and the life of the spirit. Somewhere in your family there will have been an elder who built or painted or believed in something for a long while.

Your Vital Element and Balance Element are Metal, and your Support Element is Water. Metal is the channel for bringing out your craft, and Water connects that craft to wealth. The two Yang Fires in the stems signify learning and help from elders, but the central task is keeping excess Fire from suppressing Metal. Expression and craft and the stage are still your field, and from here your worth will be measured by how fully you filled yourself before you brought it out to show.

Here is the sore point of this chart. The two Nurturers did set the frame clear, that is true, but fire overcomes metal, so that fire presses on your Vital Metal, the channel of your craft. Learning energy, when excessive, can also tighten your livelihood. Learning and study are welcome as much as you like, but do not let study take the place of expression. Keep only filling inward and this chart grows airless at once.

Now let me answer what you asked. You were not born to Authority. You were born to the energy that strikes at Authority. Authority is what disciplines a person and seats them in a place, and not one wood shows in your six characters, while the Performer holds the season instead. With no force outside to fit a frame on you, the rules must be ones you set yourself, and the hand that pushes those rules away is also inside you. Of course you are confused each time, and it is not that you are lacking.

Then must you stop leading? No. There is one way a person whose season is held by the Performer lives inside an organisation: not the seat that hands down rules from the front, but the seat that shows it first. Taking photographs for the members and choosing their clothes is the same grain. Leading with hands, not with orders. Stages and choreography, concepts and film, everything on the making side is your field, and moving later into planning or directing under your own name will suit you very well.

The character that means wealth for you is water, and it sits as the Steady Wealth in the water you stand on. Not the grain of one great strike but the seat of money counted exactly and stacked steadily. And that seat is where the metal of your birth month flows down and arrives, so the line by which your Performer bears wealth stands intact. It means you were born with a frame in which talent becomes worth.

This same line connects your Vital Metal and Support Water. Open the channel from craft to wealth. Your money does not simply sit in an account and grow. It arrives when people buy what you have learned and brought out to show.

Only, there is a crack in that line. The metal of your birth month and the water you stand on scrape against each other in a harm pairing. Harm is the grain that leaves you untouched with people at a distance and grazes the skin over small things with whoever sits closest, which means noise arises easily right at the crossing where talent turns into worth. On top of that a robbery star is in this chart, so the place where you are stolen from, deceived, or lend your name to someone because they seem good-natured and lose it all must be watched as well. Never stand surety, never lend your name, your whole life long.

I once watched a woman in a Joseon market who worked brassware. Her hand was good enough that people queued at the sound of her hammering, and then the shopkeeper beside her said it was urgent and asked to borrow her name, and she lent it to him once. With that one time, everything she had hammered together over a lifetime went to pay another's debt in a single night. She did not come to that for want of skill. She came to it for never having learned to refuse.

Let me name where you grow, too. Worth attaches less to work handed you than to what you made yourself, so the portion you receive may be fixed for now, but once past your middle twenties, when work opens under your own name, the arithmetic changes entirely.

▸ Starting this month: separate the account money gathers in from the account you spend from entirely, and set a fixed share to move over by itself the moment anything arrives. Having it tied up without passing through your hands is the surest defence for a chart carrying a robbery star.

The seat of your bond does not show on the surface. Nowhere in the heavenly stems is there a wood to mean a partner. Only inside the water you stand on does a Yang Wood Noble Authority lie quietly hidden. The classics call this concealment. A grain like this does not begin with a loud introduction. You said you take time with strangers, all the more so then, and what opens for you is not someone close from the start but someone ripened by long keeping.

There are two noble stars in this chart. One is the Heavenly Noble Star, the finest of the auspicious signs, by which someone appears at every dangerous turn and lifts you out. The other is the Golden Carriage, the star of meeting a good match. Charts holding both are not common, so on this count you may set your mind at ease.

One thing must be watched alongside. That same harm pairing named in the wealth section catches here as well. The place you stand on is the palace where whoever stays beside you sits, which means it is easy to fall out over small things with the person who has been near you longest. That grazing grain sits right on the nearest seat, so what needs care is not the far side but the very nearest.

Note also that the twelve-stage cycle at that seat rests at conception. It is the seat before a shape has formed, which does not mean no bond but that it ripens late and settles slowly. The more you hurry to have it confirmed, the more it slips.

▸ Starting today: when a word wounds you, neither swallow it on the spot nor shoot back at once. Sleep one night on it and practise handing it over in a single sentence. Your speech carries the Performer, quick and exact, so a line thrown without thought strikes the other person in the bone.

Look at your six characters: two fires above and several earths below, so however solid the outside looks, the inside dries easily. Fire baking earth too long cracks it. A throat often dry, skin turning rough, sleep shallow enough to wake often, that is where the signals show up first.

Read by climate your chart is neither cold nor hot but evenly tempered. So this is not a body that collapses because of a season. If it collapses, it will be when what you stored inside overflows. With two fires pressing the metal of your birth month, the place in the body that answers to metal, the lungs and airways and the cords that make your voice, is both your capital and your weakest link. On days you use your voice a great deal, swallow water diligently and spare your words to rest the throat. That is the prescription. You love ice so much, they say, which means the body already knows its own dryness and is looking for water. Only, gulping cold all at once startles the stomach, so lukewarm water taken often in small amounts will serve you better.

Let me note too that not one wood shows in your six characters. The places in the body that answer to wood are the liver, the eyes, the tendons, where strain piles up without showing and then gives way all at once. Someone who has used the body long in ballet from childhood is especially so. The knees and ankles, the waist and hips, the places that have repeated the same motion thousands of times, look them over once every year without fail.

This year it is better not to put the body through anything major. With the self-punishment spoken of later laid over it, this is a year the mind tires first, so if a procedure can wait, set it past this season.

2026 is the year a whole chapter of your life turns over. The Wood Goat luck cycle that ran from age ten is setting, and the Wood Horse luck cycle is opening at this threshold. If until now was time for learning and holding on, from here it is time to take on a position and carry its weight. If leading has felt unusually heavy lately, you have not weakened. The fortune has turned.

This Fire Horse year brings Fire from both sky and ground. As learning and responsibility increase, guard against that Fire pressing too hard on Vital Metal. Divide your time between learning and showing your craft. That is this year's task.

Only, one thing lies over it. This year's current and the ten-year current now arriving lock together into a self-punishment, a formation in which the blow comes not from outside but from yourself upon yourself. In a year like this you are hurt less by colliding with others than by wearing yourself down alone until the mind gives first. So carry through what is already rolling but put off launching anything big and new, moving house, or putting a blade to the body. You said you often repeat to yourself that this too shall pass. You chose, on your own, the words that fit this year exactly.

Today, the fourteenth of August 2026, is a Metal Monkey day, with metal in both sky and ground. It is one of the rare days this year when the channel of your craft opens. It is also a day your Performer goes straight out, so spend today on making, showing, putting things out. Only, the same Performer goes out through speech as well, so keep today's force to the making side alone.

The curve of your life goes out into the world at a young age, builds its name through the ten years of your twenties, and after that moves by holding and firming up. Your birth hour is unknown, so I leave the last pillar empty and read only by the movement of fortune.

The Wood Goat luck cycle, from ten to nineteen, was time spent enduring under pressure. While others your age were in a classroom you were in a practice room, and much had to be carried by your own hands at a young age. That the time was not wasted is because this stretch is built to make roots out of what is endured.

The Wood Horse luck cycle, the ten years from 2026, the year you turn twenty, through 2035, is the stretch that builds your name. The wood above fits you with a seat and a responsibility, so it is when you will be called largest as a person on stage and also when the weight moves fully onto your shoulders. I will not call it a stretch that is only good. The Fire below adds learning and responsibility, but it may also press your Vital Metal, so the years that call for care are gathered in the middle of it. 2031, 2032 and 2033, when you are twenty-five through twenty-seven, run heavy three in a row. Cold Water swells in those years, so distinguish the help of Support Water from the burden of excessive cold. I will not paper over those three years on the grounds that the current builds your name.

The opening that comes before them is clear as well. In 2029, the Earth Rooster year, the Rooster missing from your six characters comes in and meets the Monkey and the Dog already there, and the western metal gathering is completed at last. It is the year the channel of your craft opens whole, so make the time from now until then a preparation, and in that year put out one thing under your own name. The year the energy opens widest in this stretch is 2027, when you turn twenty-one.

The Water Snake luck cycle that follows runs from thirty to thirty-nine, from 2036 to 2045. It is when what you set going in your twenties takes shape and is priced, yet cold water above and fire below come in together, so the hand that guards grows as heavy as the hand that ventures. The late years past forty-six only open once the birth hour is known, so today I have read only half.

You called yourself an ISTJ. That type keeps to procedure and principle, trusts proven methods, and shakes hardest in front of sudden change. What you said about being comfortable doing things as set while this work keeps changing suddenly is the very centre of that type.

And yet the frame of your chart stands on the opposite side. The Performer of your birth month is the energy that strikes at frames, the grain that cannot rest until it has changed a set procedure with its own hands. Personality type says keep the rules and inborn frame says shake them, and this misalignment is likely what your daily tiredness really is.

But where that misalignment came from is the real point of this chart. It is the Nurturer pressing the Performer, spoken of earlier. The two Nurturers floating above press the Performer below into place, so the diligent, procedure-keeping face you wear was made for you by the Nurturers, and the hand pushing beneath it is the Performer. It is not that your personality type is at odds with your chart. Inside your chart two forces were already locked together, one above the other.

And here is the most valuable part of this chart. Someone with only the Performer and no sense of procedure has flashing talent but cannot keep the whole thing running. Someone with only procedure and no Performer does the given task perfectly but makes nothing new. You have both. You can express yourself freely on stage and still keep the paths and the order exactly, and hold a stage of many moving people in your head while still showing your own colour inside it. Only, in seasons when the Nurturers grow heavy it pools inward, so fix the habit of taking what you learned back out and showing it.

[Part A — Fortune-Opening Prescriptions]

First, people. Those who add the Metal and Water you need refine their craft carefully and share ideas flexibly. Someone who stands on a stage, someone who draws the picture of what is ahead first, someone who links one person to another, that is the grain. Around you there will already be plenty of such people, so pick out the ones who are dependable and keep their word, and hold them close. The colleagues who build a stage with you, seniors and teachers who have kept one seat for a long time, groups that move their bodies in the bright of day, put a foot into those rooms. Since you take time with strangers, small circles of two or three meeting regularly will suit you better than large gatherings.

Second, environment. Keep your room and resting place orderly and well ventilated, with light and temperature comfortable for your body. Even when using Support Water, do not remain in excessive cold or stay awake late every night. Stages and lights and rooms crowded with people are the ground you earn your bread on and also where your energy fills. Leave one corner as a bare white wall and make a seat in front of it for sitting with no thought at all.

Third, action. Make a habit of putting something from inside you out into the world once a day. Ten lines each night, only what caught at you that day, is enough. A person whose season is held by the Performer will, if it piles up inside, leak it as speech, and that speech cuts whoever is nearest. Drawing it out in writing first is the way to protect people. Since you value procedure, this too will last longer done at a set hour, so fix it to just before sleep.

Fourth, symbols. White, silver, and west symbolize Vital Metal. Black, deep blue, and north symbolize Support Water. Keep a simple metal object or a writing tool near you as a reminder of craft and flow. Symbols need not be followed to the point of physical discomfort.

Let me add a word about the talisman. A talisman is the sky's warm energy cut into ink and settled onto this ground. For you it is drawing a line in advance to open the channel of your craft and connect its waterway. It does not manufacture a fortune that was never there. That one stroke keeps turning your eyes that way until, in the end, it leads your steps down that road.

[Part B — Counsel of a Thousand Years, on the Grand and Annual Cycles]

First, this year 2026 and next year 2027 are two years when Fire comes in back to back, so use its learning energy while making room for expression and rest to protect your Vital Metal. Only, a self-punishment is laid over this year, so carry through what is already rolling, but set moving house, putting a blade to the body, or enlarging the board with a new contract past the turn of the year, into 2027 or later.

Second, hold 2029, the Earth Rooster year, in mind. That is the year the Rooster missing from your six characters comes in, meets the Monkey and the Dog, and completes the western metal gathering. It is the year the channel of your craft opens whole, so make the three years from now until then a preparation and in that year put out one thing under your own name. That year, at twenty-three, is the first door of this chart.

Third, 2027, when you turn twenty-one, is the year the energy opens widest in this stretch. In exchange 2031, 2032 and 2033, at twenty-five through twenty-seven, run heavy three in a row, so whatever you begin before then must be given its shape before those three years arrive. Begin it and push the finishing into those three years and you will pay double for it then.

Fourth, in the Water Snake luck cycle that opens from thirty, Support Water rises above while Fire enters below, requiring attention to their balance, so what you set going in your twenties will take shape then and be priced. When will I be the shape I want to be, you asked. The first door opens at twenty-three and the shape completes in your middle thirties. Until then, count it preparation rather than completion, and do not be in a hurry.