What the element describes
There are two Fires in astrology and they do not say the same thing. The Fire of Western astrology is one of the four elements that sort the signs of the zodiac, alongside Earth, Air and Water. The Fire this page speaks of is the second of the five elements of the Chinese Wu Xing: it has neither the same neighbours nor the same role, since the Chinese system ignores Air and adds Wood and Metal.
What Fire names here is radiance: what rises, gives light and makes itself seen. Its season is summer, its direction the South, that is to say the moment of the cycle where everything is out, visible, at its widest extension. Fire does not build and does not keep, it shows.
In a chart it brings expression and warmth. Where it is present, something shows: a word that travels, a presence one notices, a capacity to warm up whatever is around. Joy belongs to its own substance, in the sense of an energy that gives itself without counting rather than of a passing mood.
Its reverse side is scattering. A flame lights every direction at once, and that is also its limit: Fire spreads faster than it gathers, spends itself on several fronts and burns out as soon as nothing feeds it any more. What burns well burns fast.
One element does not make a chart. The eight characters of a BaZi mix several elements, and the share of Fire is read inside that balance of power, never on its own.
The two cycles
Fire is only understood from its place inside the two circuits that link the five elements together.
The first is the generating cycle. Fire is generated by Wood: without fuel, no flame. It generates Earth in turn, the ash that falls back and becomes ground again. Generating has a price: a Fire that produces a lot of Earth is a Fire that spends itself.
The second is the controlling cycle. Fire controls Metal, since it is the heat that melts it and gives it a shape. It is itself controlled by Water, which puts it out or tempers it according to the quantity.
Controlling is not destroying. The controlling cycle is a regulation: it stops one element from taking up all the room. Fire without Water burns without measure; Fire drowned under Water no longer heats anything. Here again, the useful question in front of a chart is not which of the two is the stronger, but what each one holds in the other.
Its stems and its branches
Every element appears in a chart under two forms: the heavenly stems, which express it directly, and the earthly branches, which carry it under the name of an animal.
Fire has two stems. Bing is Yang Fire, the one that lights everyone up and keeps nothing for itself. Ding is Yin Fire, the concentrated fire that lights one point and feeds slowly. Same movement, two regimes.
It has two branches. The branch Si is the Snake, the branch Wu is the Horse.
A word on that last name, because it traps readers regularly. The branch Wu is the Horse and belongs to Fire; the heavenly stem Wu belongs to Earth. They are two different Chinese characters that romanise the same way, and one is never deduced from the other.
A chart can carry a great deal of Fire without any year animal signalling it: the share of Fire is counted over the eight characters.
When it dominates, when it is missing
A chart where Fire dominates shows. There is presence, speech, easy contact, a warmth that draws people in. The risk is not a lack of energy but its dispersal: several fires lit at the same time, an intensity that drops all at once, a visibility that costs more than it brings back. Abundant Fire gains from finding Earth to receive what it produces, and a little Water to temper it.
A chart where Fire is missing gives less light. The thing is done but it is not seen, the idea is right but it is not said. This is not coldness: it is a radiance that does not light itself and that needs a setting, or some Wood, in order to catch.
No element is good or bad in itself. Abundant Fire is a balance in one person and an excess in another, according to what the seven other characters make of it.
Keywords
- expression
- warmth
- joy
- scattering
- visibility
