What Is Furnace Fire (Lu Zhong Huo)?
In a Nutshell
The NaYin of the Bing Yin and Ding Mao stem-branches: heaven and earth as the furnace — the fire that smelts the myriad things.
Quick facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Stem-branches | Bing Yin, Ding Mao |
| NaYin element | Fire |
| Signature image | Heaven and earth as the furnace, yin and yang as the charcoal |
What is Furnace Fire?
Furnace Fire is one of the thirty NaYin (Melodic Elements) groups of the sexagenary cycle, covering the two stem-branches Bing Yin and Ding Mao. The sixty stem-branches are taken two at a time, in order, forming thirty NaYin groups; the Bing Yin–Ding Mao group is called "Furnace Fire," with Fire as its NaYin element.
As with Sea Metal, a NaYin's element can differ from the elements of its own stem and branch. Here, the stem Bing is Fire and the branch Yin is Wood, while the NaYin is also Fire — a coincidence in this group, not a rule. Check the chart rather than assuming.
The *San Ming Tong Hui*'s chapter on NaYin images explains Furnace Fire as "heaven and earth as the furnace, yin and yang as the charcoal, raising its radiance through the universe, completing its smelting within heaven and earth": the whole of heaven and earth likened to one great furnace, the yin and yang qi as the charcoal within — firelight blazing across the cosmos, smelting the myriad things within heaven and earth. The image stresses a fire that burns without ceasing and transforms all it touches. (Verified word for word against a published edition of the Ming Wan Minying text.)
How to look it up: match the stem-branch of your Year Pillar or Day Pillar against the NaYin chart. For example, 1986 was a Bing Yin year and 1987 a Ding Mao year, so anyone born in those years carries Furnace Fire as their Year Pillar NaYin; a Bing Yin or Ding Mao Day Pillar works the same way. MoZhu's built-in NaYin lookup tool generates the NaYin of all Four Pillars automatically from a birth time.
Since the Song dynasty, the Zi Ping school centers on the Day Master and treats NaYin as auxiliary reference only. Names like Furnace Fire are essentially the ancients' set of evocative nicknames for stem-branch pairs; understanding the imagery helps you read classical texts, but nothing should be inferred from the name alone. This page is for study and reference only.
Classical sources
"Furnace Fire: heaven and earth as the furnace, yin and yang as the charcoal; raising its radiance through the universe, completing its smelting within heaven and earth."
(Rendered from the classical Chinese original.)
Source: *San Ming Tong Hui* (Comprehensive Treatise on the Three Destinies), *Lun Na Yin Qu Xiang* (On the Images Adopted by NaYin)
Plain-language reading: Furnace Fire takes heaven and earth as the furnace and yin and yang as the charcoal; its light blazes through the universe, smelting the myriad things within heaven and earth. It describes a fire that burns on and transforms without pause.
*For entertainment purposes only.*