地支 · Yín
Yín寅
the first stir of spring — rising Wood carrying the spark of Fire, sudden initiative
The third Earthly Branch — early spring, rising Wood with a spark of Fire. Its zodiac animal is the Tiger.
01概覽
Yin (寅) is the third Earthly Branch, and the rule still holds: Yin is the branch; the Tiger is the popular Chinese-zodiac animal that corresponds to it. Yin is not 'the Tiger' — it is Yin, a calendrical unit, with the Tiger as its familiar label.
As a branch, Yin is the first real stir of spring — the 1st lunar month, the dark hours just before dawn when the year's growth begins to move. Its element is Wood, but a Wood already warmed by a hidden spark of Fire: the surge of initiative, the new season breaking ground. It is one of the four 'growth-opening' branches that start a season.
02作為時間單位
As time, Yin rules 03:00–05:00 (the 寅時 double-hour), the 1st lunar month at spring's opening, and an east-northeast position. The pillar it sits in fixes which layer of the chart its early-spring surge colours.
03藏干
Yin's hidden stems (藏干) are Yang Wood (甲) as the main qi, with Yang Fire (丙) and Yang Earth (戊). The buried Fire is why Yin is not cold sprouting Wood but warm, rising, kindling Wood — growth with momentum already in it. The hidden stems carry that latent Fire and Earth inside the branch.
04六沖、三合、六合
Yin's clash (六沖) is with Shen (申, the Monkey) — the Wood-against-Metal, spring-against-autumn axis. It opens the Fire trinity (三合) 寅午戌 (Yin–Wu–Xu), and its six-combination (六合) is with Hai (亥, the Pig), the pair combining toward Wood. These are structural relationships between chart positions, not predictions.
05跨系統對照
| 系統 | 最近的原型 | 備註 |
|---|---|---|
| Zi Wei Dou Shu | One of the twelve fixed cells of a Zi Wei chart — the 寅 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 (Self Palace) can land on 寅. Its Bazi clash partner 申 (Monkey) 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 Tiger — the popular animal label for the branch Yin | The Tiger is the everyday zodiac's name for Yin; the branch Yin — its Wood element, hidden Fire, time and interactions — is the technical unit a Bazi chart actually 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. |
生肖動物只是地支的通俗別名、不是地支本身，地支與西方星座之間也沒有對應。跨系統對照只是鬆散參考；地支是帶藏干的曆法單位，這個結構生肖與西方占星都沒有。
06以描述而非預言來讀
常見問題
What is the Yín Earthly Branch (寅) in BaZi?
The third Earthly Branch — early spring, rising Wood with a spark of Fire. Its zodiac animal is the Tiger.
Is the Yín Earthly Branch the same as the zodiac animal?
Yin describes a position in time and its elemental character — early-spring rising Wood — not a personality, not a destiny, and not 'you are a Tiger'. It is read against the rest of the chart, and the same branch plays out very differently across different lives.