Nayin 纳音 · sound element #16 of 30
Metal already hard, already valuable, and still mixed in with everything else.
| Term 纳音 | 沙中金 — Gold in the Sand (sha zhong jin) |
|---|---|
| Element of the image | 金 Metal |
| Pillars it covers | 甲午、乙未 — Jiawu and Yiwei (pair #16 of 30) |
| Spelling in our edition | 砂中金 — the quotations below keep the book's characters rather than ours |
甲午乙未则气已成，物质自坚实，混于沙而别于沙，居于火而炼于火，乃曰沙中金也
Why the name: Jiawu and Yiwei — the qi is complete by then, the substance firm of itself, mingled with the sand yet distinct from the sand, seated in fire and refined by fire; hence Gold in the Sand.
砂中金者，刚形布地，宝质藏砂，直教陶洗为珍，必须因人始贵
Sand-Gold: hard form spread over the ground, treasure-substance hidden in sand; it simply must be washed and refined to become a thing of worth, and must wait on a person to become valuable.
Wu and Wei are midsummer fire — the season that controls metal — and the derivation turns that into the definition rather than a problem: 居于火而炼于火, seated in fire and refined by fire. This metal is finished by the thing that would otherwise destroy it.
必须因人始贵 — it must wait on a person to become valuable — is the sharpest line in the sixty. The gold is real and it is indistinguishable from the riverbed until someone does the work of separating it. Our tables print 沙中金; San Ming Tong Hui's definitional passage writes 砂中金, and the quotation above keeps the book's spelling.
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.
Enter a birth date, time and longitude — the calculator returns the four pillars, the hidden stems, the nayin and the ten gods, with true solar time applied.
Open the chart calculator →海中金 Gold in the Sea · 剑锋金 Sword-Edge Metal · 白蜡金 White Wax Metal · 金箔金 Gold Leaf · 钗钏金 Hairpin Gold · all thirty →