West · Autumn · Clarity and focus
金 Metal
Metal is what contracts and clarifies: the harvest, the edit, the decision, the cut that leaves only what matters.
Colour white, grey, gold, silver, brass · Shape round, oval, arched · Stems 庚 Geng (yang, the axe and the raw ore), 辛 Xin (yin, the jewel and the finished blade) · Branches 申 Monkey, 酉 Rooster
In your home
Metal is the element of precision. It is literally metal: a brass bowl, a bronze handle, a steel lamp, the luopan itself. It is also white and the pale greys and metallics around white. It is round things: a circular mirror, a bowl, an arch, a round table where everyone can see everyone. And it is emptiness, the cleared surface, the single object on a shelf.
In the bagua, Metal governs the west, the area of children and creativity, and the northwest, the area of helpful people and travel. A round mirror in the west, a brass object in the northwest: these are among the oldest cures, and they work because they bring focus to the parts of a home that tend to fill up with everything else.
Metal rooms are rooms for thinking and deciding: a study, a desk by a window, a bathroom that is actually calm. Metal is also the element of letting go. A house that cannot throw anything away has too little Metal, whatever its colour scheme.
In your chart
庚 Geng is yang Metal, the axe and the ore: decisive, just, loyal, blunt to the point of bruising, and at its best when there is Fire to forge it. 辛 Xin is yin Metal, the jewel: refined, exact, sensitive to how things look and how things are said, and at its best when there is Water to polish it. The branches 申 Monkey and 酉 Rooster carry Metal in early and mid autumn and in the hours of late afternoon.
If your Day Master is Metal, the reading asks what is shaping you. Metal needs Earth to come from and Fire to be made useful; too much Water and it rusts, too much Wood and it is blunted on the work. Geng with support is a leader whose word holds. Xin with support is the craftsman, the editor, the one who notices.
Relative to other Day Masters: for Water, Metal is the Resource, the spring the river comes from. For Wood, Metal is Power, the pruning that shapes the tree. For Fire, Metal is Wealth, the thing to be worked. For Earth, Metal is Output, what the ground gives up.
The cycle
- Fed by Earth. Ore is found in the ground.
- Feeds Water. The spring rises from the rock.
- Controls Wood. The axe fells the tree.
- Controlled by Fire. Heat melts and reshapes.
Too much, too little
Too much Metal reads as a showroom: white, hard, echoing, every surface clear, nothing soft. People in it sit straight and leave early. The classics pair Metal with the lungs and with grief, and a Metal-heavy room does have a loneliness. Warm it with Fire (lamplight, a red object, a candle) or soften it with Water (a curve, a deep blue, something that moves).
Too little Metal reads as a room where nothing is ever finished: piles, textures, colours, a collection of everything. The remedy is subtraction first, then one round, white or metallic object placed deliberately.
In a chart, strong Metal gives clarity and resolve and can tip into rigidity and harsh judgement. Weak Metal gives openness and can tip into an inability to decide or to say no. A reading says which, and what to add.
All five elements · 木 Wood · 火 Fire · 土 Earth · 水 Water
Read your own chart
Is Metal your Day Master?
A BaZi reading tells you which element you are, what feeds it, and what is in its way.