Period 4 · 4 Green Xun Wood (1924–1943): The Invisible Outran the Armies
Period 4 carries the 4 Green star (Wen Qu), the trigram Xun, the element Wood, and the southeast. Xun is wind — no body, no barrier it cannot get through, no trace left behind, and yet it can bend a whole forest. Period 3’s thunder detonates; Period 4’s wind spreads. In this cycle Period 4 ran from 1924 to 1943, and humanity learned two things in those twenty years: how to put a voice into every living room, and how to put a bomb into the sky. Both are the same trick — influence that no longer needs the ground.
- Star
- 4 Green · Wen Qu
- Trigram
- Xun ☴
- Element
- Wood
- Direction
- Southeast
- Figure
- Eldest Daughter
- This cycle
- 1924–1943Previous round 1744–1763
What this period is made of: the Xun trigram
Xun is one yin line lying beneath two yang lines — yielding on the surface, pervasive underneath. Wind advances and retreats, takes any shape, so Xun’s strengths are flexibility, transmission and persuasion; its weaknesses are drift, hesitation and shallow roots. The classical phrase is "Xun is advance and retreat, the indecisive" — it reaches everywhere and holds on to nothing.
Xun is the eldest daughter, the plumb line, the command, the breath of growing things, and also travel and trade. The 4 Green star is traditionally linked to writing, examinations and reputation, so a Period 4 era tends to run hot in education, opinion, propaganda and information. Real power in this period does not sit with whoever has the most troops; it sits with whoever can be heard by the most ears.
1924–1943: what actually happened
Radio came into the home, aircraft crossed oceans, and propaganda became a weapon. It was on exactly this technology of wind that the world walked into a second global war.
- 1924The Whampoa Military Academy is founded; the first KMT–CCP united front
One school produces the commanders on both sides of the strait for decades to come. 4 Green governs education; the wind starts at the tip of the reed.
- 1926The Northern Expedition sets out (to 1928)
It was not only a military campaign but a propaganda campaign: slogans, speeches and political officers moved with the columns.
- 1927Lindbergh flies the Atlantic solo and non-stop
Thirty-three and a half hours, one man, one aircraft. Xun is wind — the sky becomes a road.
- 1929The Wall Street Crash; the Great Depression begins
Panic blows across the globe and no country can shut the door on it.
- 1930The Wushe Incident in Taiwan
In the very years the colonial government was advertising success, a wind blew from the mountains saying the opposite.
- 1933Hitler comes to power; the Nazis launch the cheap "People’s Receiver" radio
For the first time in history, a regime systematically puts its voice inside every living room. The defining weapon of Period 4 is not the tank; it is the broadcast.
- 1935The Hsinchu–Taichung earthquake; the Taiwan Exposition opens
In one year the island suffers its deadliest quake and stages a vast showcase of forty years of colonial rule.
- 1937The Marco Polo Bridge Incident begins full-scale war in China; the Nanjing Massacre
The fighting stops being containable to one region.
- 1939The Second World War begins
German blitzkrieg ran on radio coordination — no radio waves, no lightning war.
- 1940The Battle of Britain
The first battle in history decided purely in the air. In this period the sky mattered more than the ground.
- 1941Pearl Harbor; the Pacific War begins
Aircraft launched from carriers stretch the battlefield across an entire ocean’s worth of sky.
- 1943The Cairo Declaration
Period 4 closes on a statement — postwar East Asia is settled first in words.
Pull back one cycle: 1744–1763
The cycle runs 180 years, so the previous Period 4 covered 1744 to 1763. Lined up side by side, the repetition is hard to miss.
The same period one cycle earlier: 1744–1763one 180-year cycle back
- 1755–59 The Qing subdue the Dzungars and take Xinjiang — For the first time the empire’s writ genuinely carries to its northwestern limit.
- 1756–63 The Seven Years’ War — Fought simultaneously in Europe, North America, India and West Africa, and often called the first truly global war — influence crossing oceans.
- 1757 Qianlong restricts foreign trade to Canton alone — Winds from every quarter funnelled into a single mouth. Control and transmission are two faces of one thing.
- 1760s Britain’s industrial revolution gathers pace — Mechanised spinning sends cotton cloth blowing into markets worldwide.
The keyword in both rounds of Period 4 is distance. The Seven Years’ War carried a European quarrel to India and North America; the Second World War carried the battlefield into the sky. Qianlong funnelled all trade through one port; the Nazis funnelled one voice into every home. What Xun wind is good at is cancelling distance — whether the payload is commerce, command or incitement. Which leaves a very blunt lesson: when the cost of transmission collapses, the truth and the lie travel at exactly the same speed.
What Period 4 lifts, and what it leaves behind
The element in force is Wood, so work and methods that suit Wood cost less effort; the ones that cut against it need more to move at all.
Favoured by the period
- Media and communication: broadcasting, publishing, advertising, PR
- Education and credentialling: schools, tutoring, diplomas, certification
- Aviation, courier networks, cross-border trade — anything at a distance
- Persuasion work: sales, negotiation, diplomacy, teaching
- Xun is the plumb line: the people who write the standards and the treaties
Losing ground
- Shallow-rooted businesses chasing the trend; one shift of wind topples them
- Local monopolies protected by geography — wind gets in
- Technically excellent people who cannot communicate get talked over
- Anything that needs to stay put has a hard time in a drifting era
Your BaZi chart against Period 4
Period 4 is also Wood, but a different kind from Period 3: Zhen is hardwood, Xun is pliant wood. Zhen rams; Xun goes around. If Wood is favourable in your chart, Period 4 rewards the route through relationships, reputation and reach rather than brute contest. People with strong Output stars or a well-placed academic star especially tend to open doors here with a pen or a voice.
If Wood is unfavourable, watch Xun’s shadow: never finishing. The trouble with wind is that it is always moving and there is always another option, so you try everything and go deep on nothing. What that needs is Metal (discipline, boundaries, closing decisions) and Earth (turning results into assets). Put simply: Period 4 is never short of opportunities. It is short of the ability to stop.
One honest note: a match is not a cause
The list above was assembled after the fact. Every event on it has its own specific political, economic and technological causes; none of it happened because the calendar had reached Period 4. Any twenty years will produce events that fit some trigram — the difference is only that the fitting ones get remembered.
So why read it at all? Because the system supplies a useful unit: twenty years is roughly how long it takes a way of doing things to emerge, become standard, and stop working. Treat Period 4 as a mirror showing what cost the least effort in that era, and it earns its keep — far more than it would as fortune-telling. This site is for reference and entertainment only.
Does your chart want Wood, or not?
Which period the world is in is a shared background. What decides how smoothly it goes for you is your own favourable element and luck pillar. Cast a chart and start with Day Master strength.
Period 4 — frequently asked
What years is Period 4?
In the current San Yuan Jiu Yun cycle, Period 4 ran from 1924 to 1943, with boundaries on Lichun. One cycle earlier it ran 1744 to 1763. Period 4 opens the Middle Era, sitting between Period 3 (1904–1923) and Period 5 (1944–1963).
How does Period 4 Wood differ from Period 3 Wood?
Same element, opposite temperament. Zhen is thunder, hardwood, the eldest son — force from below, head-on, standing for revolution and sudden rupture. Xun is wind, pliant wood, the eldest daughter — pervasion, persuasion, orders that carry a long way. In plain terms: Period 3 changes the world by collision, Period 4 changes it by influence.
Does the 4 Green star really govern exams?
Traditionally it is linked to writing, examinations and reputation, and Flying Star practice uses it to locate the so-called scholarly direction in a home. At the scale of San Yuan Jiu Yun the same idea has to be read much larger: an era under Period 4 tends to be strong in education, opinion, propaganda and information flow. The current cycle’s Period 4 (1924–1943) was precisely the era radio spread and propaganda became a weapon of state — a striking match, but still a match made after the fact, not a formula for passing an exam.
What does Xun’s "advance and retreat" actually mean?
Xun is wind: it moves by taking the shape of what it meets, so the classics describe it as indecisive — able to reach anywhere, able to hold on to nothing. For a person that shows up as plenty of options and plenty of openings, but a tendency to sample everything and commit to nothing. The correction is Metal and Earth: Metal gives you discipline and edges, Earth lets you settle what you have tested into something that accumulates.