Nayin 纳音 · sound element #28 of 30
The sun and the moon: light at maximum reach, which is also light that cannot be applied to anything.
| Term 纳音 | 天上火 — Fire in the Sky (tian shang huo) |
|---|---|
| Element of the image | 火 Fire |
| Pillars it covers | 戊午、己未 — Wuwu and Jiwei (pair #28 of 30) |
戊午己未，气过阳宫，重离相会，炳灵交光，发辉炎上，乃曰天上火也
Why the name: Wuwu and Jiwei — the qi passes into the yang palace, the doubled Li meets itself, the shining spirits cross their light and it flares upward; hence Fire in the Sky.
天上火者，温暖山海，辉光宇宙，阳德丽天之照，阴精离海之明，戊午为太阳则刚
Fire in the Sky: it warms mountain and sea and floods the cosmos with light; the yang virtue of what shines fixed in heaven, the yin essence of what brightens leaving the sea; Wuwu being the sun is therefore hard, Jiwei being the moon is therefore soft.
Wu and Wei are midsummer — fire at its own peak, and 重离相会, the doubled Li trigram meeting itself. There is no larger fire in the system.
The passage then does something rare: it names a common reading and rejects it. 或以为夏日则刚，冬日则温，诬也 — some say the summer sun is hard and the winter sun mild; that is false. San Ming Tong Hui's distinction is between Wuwu as sun and Jiwei as moon, not between seasons. It is a useful reminder that these texts argue with each other rather than simply accumulating.
见金且能照耀，不能克济 — meeting metal it can illuminate it but cannot smelt it. The sun does not forge anything. That limitation is the counterweight to the reach.
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 →炉中火 Fire in the Furnace · 山头火 Hilltop Fire · 霹雳火 Thunderbolt Fire · 山下火 Fire at the Foot of the Hill · 覆灯火 Lamp Flame · all thirty →