What Is Hilltop Fire (Shan Tou Huo)?
In a Nutshell
The NaYin of the Jia Xu and Yi Hai stem-branches: blazing into a great flame, a beacon of light — fire burning on the hilltop.
Quick facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Stem-branches | Jia Xu, Yi Hai |
| NaYin element | Fire |
| Signature image | Blazing into a great flame, a beacon of light |
What is Hilltop Fire?
Hilltop Fire is one of the thirty NaYin (Melodic Elements) groups of the sexagenary cycle, covering the two stem-branches Jia Xu and Yi Hai. The sixty stem-branches are taken two at a time, in order, forming thirty groups; each group has its own NaYin name, and the Jia Xu–Yi Hai group is called "Hilltop Fire."
A stem-branch's own elements often differ from its NaYin. Jia is a Wood stem and Xu an Earth branch, yet the NaYin here is Fire — check the chart rather than assuming.
"On the hilltop" fixes the image: flames burning on a hill's crest. The *San Ming Tong Hui* (Book 1, "On the Images Adopted by NaYin") says Hilltop Fire is "bright within and dark without", and pictures it as a ninth-month grass fire "like the sun setting on the hills": light cast far, like an evening glow. The original passages are quoted below.
How to look it up: match the stem-branch of your Year Pillar or Day Pillar against the NaYin chart. For example, 1994 was a Jia Xu year and 1995 an Yi Hai year, so anyone born in those years carries Hilltop Fire as their Year Pillar NaYin; a Jia Xu or Yi Hai 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.
Early practitioners gave the Year Pillar NaYin great weight; since the Song dynasty, the Zi Ping school centers on the Day Master, and NaYin has mostly receded to auxiliary reference. Names like Hilltop Fire are the ancients' evocative nicknames for stem-branch pairs; the imagery helps you read the classics, but nothing should be inferred from the name alone. This page is for study and reference only.
Classical sources
"Jia Xu and Yi Hai are called Hilltop Fire: the hill hides the form, the top casts the light; bright within and dark without, hidden rather than displayed, its light flies up and then returns to rest — hence Hilltop Fire."
Plain words: Hilltop Fire is light cast from a hill that hides its source: bright inside, dim outside, flaring and then settling.
Source: *San Ming Tong Hui*, Book 1, "On the Images Adopted by NaYin" — original: 甲戌乙亥谓之山头火者，山乃藏形，头乃投光，内明外暗，隐而不显，飞光投干，归于休息之中，故曰山头火也。
"Hilltop Fire is wildfire across the plain, burning as far as the eye can see, like the slanting glow on the horizon or the sun setting on the hills: the fire of the ninth month that clears the fields of dead grass."
Plain words: Like an autumn grass fire on the hills, glowing like a sunset.
Source: *San Ming Tong Hui*, Book 1, "On the Images Adopted by NaYin" (individual NaYin) — original: 山头火者，野焚燎原，延烧极目，依稀天际斜晖，仿佛山头落日，此乃九月烧荒，衰草尽烬之火也。
*For entertainment purposes only.*