Wonbin's SajuEmbers in a Frozen Early-Spring Field, Drawing Out Buried Metal to Take the Stage (Earth Snake)K-POP · March 2, 2002

You are someone who is strict first with the lines you draw with your own hand, before the lines others draw for you. In early spring, beneath a field not yet fully thawed, two embers lie spread out and warm the soil from below. That is the seat of your Earth Snake Day Pillar. On the surface two streams of water show, so you look like someone quick with numbers who weighs reality first, but the metal this earth truly has to pour out lies buried deep in your day branch and has not yet been fully brought out.

Around the reign of King Sejong, behind the market shops of Unjongga in Hanyang, a man born with the same Earth Snake Day Pillar as you kept the accounts of other people’s money and promissory notes. He could not bear even a single coin out of place in a ledger, so when he felt that a reckoning set by those above him was wrong, he could not keep his mouth shut even before them. Though the state had minted new coins, the market still reckoned in rice and cotton cloth in those days, so the road his notes could travel did not reach beyond a few houses. What he guarded at the end of that narrow road, I will tell you in full at the close.

Earth Snake — Embers in a Frozen Early-Spring Field, Drawing Out Buried Metal to Take the Stage

The Earth Snake Day Pillar is a seat where fire warms earth, so people gather beside it and talents branch out in many directions. You were born in the Tiger month of early spring, so you lost the strength of the season. Even so, the Horse Fire of your year branch and the Snake Fire of your day branch warm the earth, and roots of the same earth reach down into your year, month and day branches, so this chart has a strong Day Master. It is a firmness that stands not on the season but on roots and the help of fire, so it does not break easily, and once warmed it does not cool quickly either. The heat behind the competitive spirit your team is said to have named first among you also comes from here. The Prosperity Star in your year branch holds up a temperament that is never satisfied until it builds things by its own strength rather than inheriting them.

Yet this chart holds more than firmness. The Tiger Wood of your month branch is this chart’s Noble Authority, the standard and frame you must keep. Inside the Snake Fire of your day branch hides the metal of the Creative, which seeks to go beyond that frame. The two are locked together in the Tiger–Snake Punishment and the Tiger–Snake Harm, so it is a structure in which the standard you set for yourself and the wish to do even better than that standard are always colliding within one body. The root of your habit of rarely being satisfied with your results and turning back to blame yourself lies in exactly this Punishment. As you said in an interview, that after your “Impossible” promotions you realized you do not always have to meet the standard, this Punishment is not something to cut away. Once you learn to adjust the strength of your grip, it becomes instead a device that trains you.

The Peach Blossom Star in your year branch is an energy that draws people’s eyes, and the Disgrace Star in your day branch is a seat where your innermost heart easily shows on the outside. Your grain of having every feeling show on your face and being unable to lie touches this Disgrace Star. You cannot hide, but in exchange you are read as someone without pretense, so on stage it becomes a power by which sincerity reaches people directly. Only, the closer the relationship, the sooner your raw heart goes out first, so when your words grow hurried, slowing down by just one beat lets many misunderstandings pass you by.

You are someone who knows how to work within a frame, yet breathes freely only when you put something of your own on top of it. This chart is a Noble Authority Structure built on the Noble Authority of the Tiger Wood in your month branch, so you know discipline, hierarchy and the responsibility of the seat you hold with your body. But that Noble Authority is locked with the Creative inside your day branch, so you cannot last long in a seat where you only follow other people’s standards. That a body raised as an athlete moved to the center of the stage follows the same logic. The power of the Noble Authority, which once refined your body through discipline, has now found an outlet through which that body shows something to the world.

Your Vital Element is metal. It means that the earth and fire holding you up are plentiful, so what you need first of all is an outlet to draw that strength off into results. Metal does not show as a single character on the surface and hides only as the Yang Metal inside the Snake Fire of your day branch, so your metal is the kind that grows the more you bring it out and use it. So the work that suits you divides into three roads. The performer and center who brings the precision of the body to the stage, the choreographer who designs movement and leaves it behind as a result, and the guitarist whose fingertip accuracy turns straight into sound. The moments when you helped build the choreography for your own songs and took an electric guitar solo on an awards show stage were exactly the times you brought this metal out.

That your Climate Element is fire means that fire is needed for the work of warming the season. So fire is not to be seen as a bad energy as a whole. If I divide between an employee and a business owner, you lean toward standing tallest when you hold an independent seat with your own name on it within an organization. The place where you get stuck comes from the thickness of fire, your Resource stars. When thoughts of preparing and refining overflow, they hold back action, and a paralysis easily sets in where you cannot put anything out until it is perfect. The Earth Rooster year of 2029, when metal gathers in the Snake–Rooster Half Combination, and the Metal Dog year of 2030, when Yang Metal enters the stems, are the times this outlet opens wide, so until then, train your hands toward putting things out more often rather than polishing them further.

Your wealth begins with the two streams of Yang Water showing on your year stem and month stem, that is, the Steady Wealth. Steady Wealth is money that piles up as much as you steadily look after it, and the reckoning behind the word “realistically” that you often use also comes from this star. Only, this water cannot root in the branches and floats on top, so rather than pooling on its own, it becomes yours only when it flows in by way of results made by metal. Yours is a structure in which the Wealth star clings to a strong earth as the Support Element, so you have amply the vessel to carry wealth.

So the road that becomes money is Expression Feeding Wealth, the road in which talent becomes results and those results lead on to reward. Wealth clings when your singing, dancing and playing do not end on the stage but remain as works with your name on them. That flow will be at its thickest between 2029 and 2030, when metal comes in. The year to be careful of is the Earth Monkey year of 2028. The same earth comes in once more and raises an energy of dividing and fighting over shares, and the Tiger–Monkey Clash strikes the Tiger Wood of your month branch, so it is a year when the very seat where you work shakes hard. That year’s contracts and divisions of work must have their boundaries clearly drawn in writing.

There is one thing to do starting this month. For every choreography move, every bar of an arrangement and every idea for a performance you contribute, leave a one-line record of when you added what. Steady Wealth is money that piles up as much as you look after it, so only when your contributions remain on record does the road open for them to return later as your share.

In this chart, the star that stands for a partner is water, the Wealth star, and that water shows on your year stem and month stem as Steady Wealth. Only Steady Wealth stands, with no Dynamic Wealth, so the bond that approaches you will likely be a realistic person whose life is orderly and who knows how to settle accounts together, rather than someone like a flighty spark. The Peach Blossom Star in your year branch draws plenty of eyes, but where your heart actually rests is on the one person among those eyes who stays beside you for a long time.

The Snake Fire of your day branch, the seat of your partner, is the Nurturer, a seat of embracing and caring, so you are the one who sets out to protect your partner rather than lean on them. But this day branch is locked with the Tiger Wood of your month branch in Punishment and Harm, so the closer you grow, the more easily the standards of your work and the place of your heart collide. Setting each other’s time and space first puts this seat at ease. Let me also mark when the luck of your bonds moves. In the Earth Monkey year of 2028, Monkey Metal reaches the Snake Fire of your day branch in the Snake–Monkey Combination and a time to open your heart comes, but in the same year the seat where you work shakes, so it is nothing to rush. Read the Metal Pig year of 2031 as a time when Pig Water forms the Snake–Pig Clash with your day branch, so the daily life of a close relationship must be tuned anew.

There is one thing to do starting today. On a day when hurt feelings arise, do not let your face speak first, and practice handing over in words, before anything else, a single sentence such as “I am feeling this way right now.” With that one line, the rawness of the Disgrace Star reaches the other person as sincerity, not misunderstanding.

This chart has thick fire, and on top of that the Scalding Star sits in your month branch and day branch. The Scalding Star is a grain in which heat rises easily from within, so you are someone whose heart heats up before your body does and who easily misses the time to rest. Your habit, it is said, of skipping massages even on tour so as to hold your tension is a grit that guards the stage. Only, this grain also needs a gap through which to let out the heat that builds up.

What cools the heat is water, your Support Element, and what lightens that load is metal, your Vital Element. An evening that ties off the day, time spent soaking your body in water, and a habit of catching your breath and finishing movements one by one are the ways to bring that energy into daily life. Like the swimming you learned as a child, time spent moving in the water will be a rest that suits this chart well. In years when fire comes in again and again and in midsummer, nail down sleep and rest in your schedule first. If physical discomfort continues, then seeing a doctor comes first.

The Fire Horse year of 2026 is a year when fire comes in doubled. The Fire Horse year is laid over the Wood Snake Decade Luck, so the fire of your Resource stars has grown thick to the full. The power to learn, to build up and to embrace overflows, but it is a year in which the metal outlet that draws that power off into results is easily pressed down. On top of that, Yang Fire stands against the Yang Water on your year and month stems in the Yang Fire–Yang Water Clash, so friction easily arises in the waterway that links talent to achievement and reward. The year’s Horse Fire overlaps the Horse Fire of your year branch and makes you go back over the same things again and again. This year’s one word is “settle.” It means a year for letting things settle in their own steam rather than bringing them to a boil.

Set the Decade Luck and the year side by side where they cross, and both a tailwind and a headwind are clear. The tailwind is the warmth of the climate. Fire that warms early-spring earth is plentiful, so your drive and focus do not go out, and the time you pour into practice and preparation will not be wasted this year. The headwind comes from the outlet being blocked. When incoming fire covers the metal and the water that could loosen it cannot hold it up, your stubbornness about polish holds back putting things out, and small frictions easily pile up in close relationships. So this year is not one whose good and bad are fixed to one side, but one that divides according to where you use the fire.

Let me mark the months that remain. November is a month to guard and sort things out, so rather than starting things, it will serve you better to pick out what you have refined over the year. From around December 7 comes the month when metal and water arrive together, the best month of this year. It is the right time to bring out into the world what you have let settle.

The Water Rabbit Decade Luck from one to ten, your first Decade Luck, was a plain stretch that carried the Wealth star and the Fierce Authority together. The Wood Dragon Decade Luck from eleven to twenty was a time when Yang Wood, the Noble Authority, was bound to your Day Master, Yin Earth, in the Yang Wood–Yin Earth Combination, years of putting yourself into discipline and frames to be refined. Track, taekwondo forms and dormitory life from age thirteen lay on that Decade Luck, and in the latter half of that Decade Luck your time as a trainee began. Because yours was a body trained while bound within a frame, the discipline of the stage did not feel unfamiliar.

The Wood Snake Decade Luck, which began at twenty-one and runs from around March 2023 to around March 2033, carries the pressure of Yin Wood, the Fierce Authority, and the support of Snake Fire, the Nurturer, together, ten years in which help and caution are about even. Your debut fell at the very start of this Decade Luck, so it is a stretch in which sharp-edged judgment and the strength to endure it grow together. Within it, the Fire Goat year of 2027, the Earth Rooster year of 2029, the Metal Dog year of 2030 and the Water Rat year of 2032 are years that hold you up. In 2032 the year’s Rat Water forms the Rat–Horse Clash with the Horse Fire of your year branch, setting fire against water, so that year alone you must keep yourself from overheating. Set the Earth Monkey year of 2028 and the Metal Pig year of 2031 apart as years to be careful of. In the former, the dividing of shares and the seat where you work shake, and in the latter, your day branch takes a clash, so what you gain and what you pay both move greatly together.

The Fire Horse Decade Luck that begins at thirty-one, running from around March 2033 to around March 2043, is a mixed stretch that carries help and caution together. Fire comes in to the full again, so the warmth of the climate overflows, but if that fire blocks the outlet of metal, the condition for it to become a burden is set. So these ten years will be a time of holding on with the frame and the works you have already made. The Fire Goat Decade Luck that begins at forty-one, running from around March 2043 to around March 2053, is also a mixed stretch, and as earth and fire grow thick, the weight will fall on keeping what you have built and handing it on. After that, from fifty-one, Decade Lucks that bring in metal follow one after another, and bringing out and using your metal becomes much easier. So paving the road for bringing out your metal within the present Wood Snake Decade Luck is the capital for crossing the two mixed stretches that follow.

That man of Unjongga never once got his ledger wrong to the end. He lost work several times for sending back the notes of those above him whose reckoning was off, but thanks to that stubbornness a few houses in the market came to trust their money to him alone. Yet it was a world where rice and cotton cloth still stood in for reckoning, so the road his notes could travel never widened beyond those few houses, and he ended his life within that narrow road. Were you not born into an age in which the power of the Creative, which set out its own reckoning before standards set by others, can be spread on a stage that reaches the whole world at once? If I were to name one thing that brings that power to life, it is to put out into the world, starting from the Fire Goat year of 2027, movements and sounds with your name on them, one each year.

First, for work and money, align with 2029 and 2030, when metal comes in strongly. Grow the share of works in which your name stands in front then, but the preparation must begin from 2027.

Second, keep beside you disciplined people who show through actions rather than words. Beside those who work with precision, like stage directors, sound engineers and sports coaches, your metal wakes. Before 2028 arrives, when shares sway, settle within 2027 the boundaries of roles and shares with the people you make things with.

Third, tend body and mind in the evening that closes the day. Evening is the hour of metal, so within this year make it a habit of your body to sum up the day’s practice in three lines and close the book on it before you sleep. If you put your workspace in order with the calm grain of white and metal, a head thick with fire cools considerably. The star necklace always hanging at your neck, that piece of metal made by melting down your parents’ wedding rings, already holds the Vital Element of this chart. What protects you is the heart that holds that star in your hand once each evening and closes the day, and that heart changes your gaze, and your gaze changes your choices.

Fourth, before the Fire Horse Decade Luck arrives in March 2033, gather your works and repertoire in one place within the Water Rat year of 2032. It is the work of storing up in advance the metal you will bring out and use in your thirties, when fire grows thick.

The Fire Goat year of 2027 is coming. It is a supporting flow, but its Yin Fire binds with your Yang Water in the Yin Fire–Yang Water Combination and its Goat Earth forms the Horse–Goat Combination with the Horse Fire of your year branch, so the waterway of wealth may lean elsewhere for a while. In that year, check once whether the shares you set together are flowing as first promised. What you go through that year and which road you choose, the stage will tell first, and then I will open this chart again. May the light of firm metal, rather than self-blame, rest upon that star.