Yin Metal 辛

The jewel. In Korean, 신금 singeum, the same Yin Metal. The day master that notices the flaw everyone else walked past.

Element 金 Metal · Polarity Yin

What Yin Metal is

Your day master is the single character your whole chart is measured against. Yin Metal is the eighth of the ten heavenly stems, and the classical image is worked metal, jewellery or a fine instrument: metal that has already been refined, and whose value is in the finish.

Here is the part a trait list will not tell you. Yin Metal’s precision runs in both directions. The eye that catches the flaw in a piece of work catches it in the person doing the work, including when that person is you, and it does not have an off position. Standards are the asset and the tax at once. The skill is deciding which things are worth finishing to that standard, because not everything is.

How it reads in context

A day master on its own is one character out of eight. What changes the reading is the season it was born into, what else is sitting in the chart, and which decade the luck cycle has reached. Yin Metal in a supported chart and Yin Metal in a chart that fights it behave differently enough that the same advice would be wrong for one of them.

Table 01 · Yin Metal against the other stems 9 relations

Stem Ten god Everyday role

Yang Wood 甲 Steady Wealth 正财 Return that arrives on a schedule

Yin Wood 乙 Open Wealth 偏财 Opportunity you have to go and get

Yang Fire 丙 Officer 正官 Structure you answer to

Yin Fire 丁 Pressure 七杀 Pressure that sharpens or overwhelms

Yang Earth 戊 Support 正印 Support you can count on

Yin Earth 己 Insight 偏印 Support that arrives unasked

Yang Metal 庚 Rival 劫财 Someone after the same thing by a different route

Yang Water 壬 Performer 伤官 Output that wants an audience

Yin Water 癸 Output 食神 Output you enjoy making

Common questions

Notes

Is Yin Metal the same as being a perfectionist?

Perfectionism is one way the precision can show up, not the stem's definition. What the classical image describes is discrimination, the capacity to tell a good version from a nearly good one. Whether that becomes a standard or a burden is a matter of what the chart does with it.

How is Yin Metal different from Yang Metal?

Yang Metal cuts; Yin Metal refines. Same element and opposite polarity, so they meet the other stems as opposites too, which is why the ten-god table below differs between them.

Have your Yin Metal chart read

Draw your four pillars free →

This page describes Yin Metal in general. A reading takes your own chart: which season your Yin Metal landed in, what stands beside it, and which decade you are in now.

BaZi Reading 八字 The four pillars read in full, with the ten gods translated into everyday roles and the luck pillars drawn as a timeline. Read the page → Korean Saju Reading 사주팔자 Your ilgan 일간, the element balance holding it up, your daeun 대운 cycles, and the sinsal worth knowing about. Every hanja translated where it sits. Read the page → Chart Legend A single sheet that decodes any BaZi chart: the stems, the branches, the five elements and the ten gods, each translated once and properly. Made to sit beside a reading. Read the page →

Still working out which system answers your question? Start with what a day master is

Method and sources

The ten god relations on this page are computed from the stems themselves, and their plain-English names follow the classical texts listed below. Day pillars are computed with a deterministic astronomical library, never estimated.

Read against the classical commentaries on stem strength and chart structure:

滴天髓 Ditian Sui Drops of Heavenly Marrow
子平真詮 Ziping Zhenquan The True Interpretation of Ziping
淵海子平 Yuanhai Ziping The Deep Sea of Ziping
三命通會 Sanming Tonghui A Comprehensive Treatise on the Three Fates
窮通寶鑑 Qiongtong Baojian The Precious Mirror of Seasons