Earthly Branch · Yǒu
Yǒu (酉)
pure refined Metal — the harvest blade, exact, finished, unmixed
- Zodiac correspondence:
- Rooster
- Element:
- Metal
- Season:
- mid autumn
- Hours:
- 17:00–19:00
- Lunar month:
- the 8th lunar month
- Hidden stems:
- Yin Metal (辛)
The tenth Earthly Branch — mid autumn, pure refined Metal. Its zodiac animal is the Rooster.
Overview
You (酉) is the tenth Earthly Branch, and the rule holds: You is the branch; the Rooster is the popular Chinese-zodiac animal that corresponds to it. You is not 'the Rooster' — it is You, a calendrical unit, with the Rooster as its familiar label.
As a branch, You is the peak of autumn — the 8th lunar month, dusk, the harvest complete. Its element is pure refined Metal: not the raw rising Metal of early autumn but finished, exact, unmixed. Like Zi and Mao, it is a 'cardinal' branch that holds an element at its purest.
As a unit of time
As time, You rules 17:00–19:00 (the 酉時 double-hour), the 8th lunar month at autumn's height, and due west. Its pillar placement fixes which layer of the chart this pure Metal colours.
Hidden stems (藏干)
You hides a single stem (藏干): Yin Metal (辛), the refined jewel. Like Zi and Mao, it is one of the pure branches — one unmixed hidden stem — which is why You reads as concentrated, finished, precise Metal with nothing else buried to dilute it.
Clashes, trinities, combinations
You's clash (六沖) is with Mao (卯, the Rabbit) — the Metal-against-Wood, autumn-against-spring axis. It is the centre and strongest member of the Metal trinity (三合) 巳酉丑 (Si–You–Chou), and its six-combination (六合) is with Chen (辰, the Dragon), combining toward Metal. These are structural ties between chart positions, not event forecasts.
Cross-system reference
| System | Closest archetype | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Zi Wei Dou Shu | One of the twelve fixed cells of a Zi Wei chart — the 酉 position a palace sits on | In Zi Wei the twelve Earthly Branches are the chart's twelve fixed cells: every palace occupies a branch, and a chart's 命宮 (Life Palace) can land on 酉. Its Bazi clash partner 卯 (Rabbit) sits in the cell directly opposite — what Zi Wei reads as the 對宮 (opposite palace) on the same axis. Same twelve branches, used as the spatial frame for the palaces, not as a Bazi pillar. |
| Chinese zodiac (生肖) | The Rooster — the popular animal label for the branch You | The Rooster is the everyday zodiac's name for You; the branch You — its pure Metal, time and interactions — is the technical unit a Bazi chart reads. |
| Western astrology | A loose structural parallel only — twelve divisions of a cycle | No sign maps to a branch; the branches are calendrical, not personality signs. The only parallel is the shared twelve-fold division. |
The Chinese zodiac animal is a popular label for the branch, not the branch itself, and there is no branch-to-Western-sign mapping. Cross-system anchors are a loose heuristic; an Earthly Branch is a calendrical unit with hidden stems, which neither the zodiac nor Western astrology shares.
Reading this descriptively
You describes a position in time and its elemental character — mid-autumn pure Metal — not a personality, not a destiny, and not 'you are a Rooster'. It is read against the rest of the chart, and the same branch plays out very differently across different lives.
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