Direction
West
Everything the wheel opens, one animal at the center
The Eastern wheel, your birth year's animal
The Western wheel, the sky on your birthday
The craft your Zodi Animal practices
Where to sleep, work, and rest, mapped to your animal. Free with a Zodi account.
Create free account +1,000 ZK on arrivalTwo skies, read together
The Moon overhead, its phases, and the path they light.
Phase 4 of 5 · Wu Xing 五行
jīn · West · Autumn
Contraction, refining, clarity, and structure, 'that which can be molded and changed' (從革). The turn inward, the quality of autumn, harvest, and gathering in.
Where it sits on the wheel
No phase stands alone. Metal is fed by one neighbour and pours into the next, while it restrains a third and is restrained by a fourth. Follow any thread.
The correspondences
As a temperament
Driven by meaning, quality. Disciplined, clear, principled. This is Metal in balance: the meaning felt as a gift, not a demand.
Rigid, cold, grief-stuck. The classical counterweight is Fire 火, the phase that steadies Metal on the controlling cycle.
In the body & in your space
In classical Chinese medicine, Metal is traditionally linked to the Lung and Large Intestine, the sense of nose, the tissue of skin / body hair, the pungent / acrid flavour, and the emotion of grief / sadness.
Classical system, not medicine. This describes a traditional correspondence, not diagnosis or treatment.
Your animal
These Chinese zodiac animals carry Metal as their fixed branch element. If one is yours, Metal is woven into your Primal Animal.