Nayin 纳音 · sound element #3 of 30
Wood at full canopy: growth that has already succeeded and now has scale to manage.
| Term 纳音 | 大林木 — Great Forest Wood (da lin mu) |
|---|---|
| Element of the image | 木 Wood |
| Pillars it covers | 戊辰、己巳 — Wuchen and Jisi (pair #3 of 30) |
戊辰己巳则气不成量，物已及时，枝叶茂盛，郁然成林，取其木之盛也，故曰大林木
Why the name: Wuchen and Jisi — the qi has not yet been measured out, the thing has come into its season, branch and leaf flourish, and it gathers densely into forest; it takes the abundance of wood, hence Great Forest Wood.
大林木者，枝干撼风，柯条撑月，耸壑昂霄之德，凌云蔽日之功
Great Forest Wood: trunk and branch shake the wind, twig and bough prop up the moon; it has the virtue of towering over the ravine and the merit of piercing cloud and blocking the sun.
Chen and Si sit at the end of spring and the start of summer — the point where growth stops being tentative. The image is not a tree, it is a forest: a system large enough to change the weather under it.
Note what the classical line praises and what it quietly warns about in the same breath. 凌云蔽日 — piercing cloud, blocking the sun — is merit in the sentence, but blocking the sun is also what a canopy does to whatever is trying to grow beneath it. The text elsewhere adds that this wood wants 辰巳 for wind, and that too much wind scatters it.
Sources: 《三命通会》 (San Ming Tong Hui, Ming dynasty, 万民英) — chapters 论纳音取象 and 释六十甲子性质吉凶. Both passages above are quoted from a local plain-text edition and checked character by character by a test before this page can ship. Translations are ours.
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