Growth: the first of the twelve life stages

Ten stems, eight positions

In plain words first: the twelve life stages are a look-up table. Give it a stem, and it tells you what stage that stem is in when it reaches a given branch. Growth (长生) is the first cell, followed by Bath (沐浴), Coming of Age (冠带), Establishment (临官), Peak (帝旺), Decline (衰), Weakening, Death, Storage, Severance, Conception and Nurture.

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Position sketch: the positions come from the site engine's twelve-stage table; the arcs link each Yang Growth to its Death, which is the Growth of the Yin stem of the same element.

The ring shows where each Day Master has its Growth. The five Yang stems land on Pig (Yang Wood), Tiger (Yang Fire and Yang Earth), Snake (Yang Metal) and Monkey (Yang Water); the five Yin stems land on Horse (Yin Wood), Rooster (Yin Fire and Yin Earth), Rat (Yin Metal) and Rabbit (Yin Water). Tiger and Rooster each hold two stems, so ten stems use only eight branches.

The name "Growth" is the book's chosen image. Juan 2 of the Sanming Tonghui (三命通会), a Ming-dynasty compendium, quotes the Sanming Tiyao (三命提要), which pairs each of the twelve stages with a picture from nature and from a human life. The entry for Growth reads:

Everything is sprouting and heading for flourishing, like a person just born and growing upward.

Things have just sprouted and are leaning toward bloom, as a person grows after birth. So the image behind this cell is "just started, heading up", and that is all the name carries.

Yang runs forward, Yin runs back: one at Pig, one at Horse

Each element has two stems, one Yang and one Yin, and their Growth positions are not in the same place. The same chapter of the book sums the rule up with a line from a fu (rhapsody):

Yang is born where Yin dies, Yang dies where Yin is born; round and round they go, backward and forward, and the changes show.

The way to read it is simple. A Yang stem starts at its own Growth branch and counts forward along the branch order; a Yin stem starts at its own Growth branch and counts back. Put one Yang and one Yin stem from each element side by side and a tidy correspondence appears:

Take Yang Wood. Growth is the first cell at Pig; Rat is Bath, Ox is Coming of Age, Tiger is Establishment, Rabbit is Peak, Dragon is Decline, Snake is Weakening, and counting on to Horse gives the eighth cell, Death. Yin Wood has its Growth exactly on Horse. The other four pairs work the same way: from a Yang stem's Growth to its Death is always seven steps forward.

The book also says where this split came from. The ancients had only four "great Growths", and the examples given in the same passage are Wood at Pig, Fire at Tiger, Metal at Snake and Water at Monkey, which is the Yang column of the table above. Counting Yin and Yang separately adds the four Yin positions, and that is where the Yang-born-Yin-dead contrast comes from.

Juan 2, stem by stem: "born here, dead there"

The section on the Yin and Yang, birth and death of the Heavenly Stems takes them one at a time, giving each its Growth and Death positions and closing with an old saying. Yang Metal and Yin Metal show the offset best:

Read down the whole list and the birth positions agree with the site's table: Yang Wood at Pig, Yin Wood at Horse, Yang Fire at Tiger, Yin Fire at Rooster, Yin Earth at Rooster, Yang Metal at Snake, Yin Metal at Rat, Yang Water at Monkey, Yin Water at Rabbit, and Yang Earth at Tiger too. Each entry carries an image: Yang Wood is born at Pig, which the book likens to pond water; Yang Fire is born at Tiger, wood's territory, with the fire hidden inside the wood; Yang Metal is born at Snake, a furnace fire. These are traditional descriptions that help you remember the positions.

Earth: the book records two answers

Earth differs from the other four elements. Juan 2 first gives the placing the site uses: Yang Earth is born at Tiger, where there is fire inside; fire and earth are like mother and child, so Yang Earth follows Yang Fire and Yin Earth follows Yin Fire, one at Tiger and one at Rooster. The book next rejects a later verse that puts Yang Earth at Monkey, saying it leaves Yin and Yang "out of step"; then, under "some say", it gives the other school's case: Earth can follow Water, so both are born at Monkey, a view it calls "reasonable too". It sums up:

Earth has no fixed seat; it gives birth in many directions.

The site engine uses the Fire-and-Earth placing, so Yang Earth sits on Tiger and Yin Earth on Rooster. When you compare with another tool, first check whether its Yang Earth lands on Tiger or Monkey, and only then talk about the difference between the two tables.

The book's other name for the Growth position: the Academy Star

Juan 3 of the book, in its section on the Academy Star (学堂) and the Hall of Letters, gives the Growth position a second name. Quoting Ziping, it calls the Academy Star "the Growth spirit of the five elements", such as "Yang Wood meeting Pig, Yin Wood meeting Horse"; it is enough for one of the month branch or hour branch to show it, so the four pillars need not all agree, and "a Yin Fire day with a Rooster hour" is given as an Academy Star that carries the Heavenly Nobleman as well. An old verse puts it as "where the elements are born is the school".

Taken from the Day Stem, this is a name derived from the same Growth table, not a second table.

But the book's Academy Star has more than one reading. The section opens with a Na Yin example, "a Metal life meeting Yin Metal Snake (辛巳)": Metal has Growth at Snake, and the Na Yin of Yin Metal Snake is Metal too. The same passage says the name means "vital energy going to school" and that one "need not go by the Day Stem alone": any Tiger, Monkey, Snake or Pig in the pillars counts as learning, because those four gather the "purest qi", while Rat, Horse, Rabbit and Rooster are the "four decays" and Dragon, Dog, Ox and Goat the "four storehouses". So when another source speaks of the Academy Star, first ask whether it goes by the Day Stem, by Na Yin, or by those four branches alone.

The Academy Star is itself one of the Symbolic Stars (神煞), and how such stars sit in a chart is covered in where Symbolic Stars sit in a BaZi chart.

The next cell is Bath; for how the whole table is read and how void branches differ from it, see the twelve life stages and void branches.