Also known as: Goat Branch · Sheep Branch · Wood Storehouse
Wei is yin earth holding 己 (yin earth), 丁 (yin fire), 乙 (yin wood) — warm dry soil holding the residue of summer fire and the fading vitality of wood. Classically the 木庫 (wood storehouse). Symbolically the goat grazing the late-summer hill: gentle, well-mannered, family-minded, instinctively domestic. Wei Day Masters often value harmony, hospitality, and steady accumulation more than dramatic ascent.
Wei san-he with 亥 and 卯 transforms to wood (亥卯未合化木), and six-unites with 午 (午未合). Conflicted by 丑 (丑未冲), and part of 丑戌未 三刑.
The graph 未 began as a picture of a tree thick with layered branches, and the Shuowen Jiezi reads it through 味 wèi, flavour — the sixth month being when things ripen into taste. The same source adds that wood grows old at Wei, the philological root of the later label wood storehouse. The Records of the Grand Historian glosses Wei as the month when the ten thousand things are complete and have savour. The sovereign hexagram for the month is Dun (遯 Dùn), two yin lines rising beneath four yang: withdrawal has begun, though nothing yet looks like autumn.
In practice the first question about Wei is whether the soil is dry or damp. Chou and Chen count as moist earth that holds water and is said to nourish metal; Wei and Xu are dry earth, warm from stored fire, and traditional readings hold that dry earth smothers water and does little for metal while readily feeding fire. So a Ren or Gui Day Master meeting Wei in the month is not simply meeting earth — it is meeting the hottest, driest weeks of the year. Wei is also the canopy-star seat for charts anchored on Hai, Mao or Wei.
Wei is often mistaken for weak, gentle soil because of its goat imagery, but calendrically it covers the hottest stretch of the year and classical sources treat it as dry earth loaded with fire. A second error is to read storehouse as abundance: a storehouse is where an element is kept, not where it thrives, so wood in Wei is wood at its burial stage. Third, doubled Wei is not a self-punishment — the traditional self-punishing branches are Chen, Wu, You and Hai. And the character is 未, not 末. Fifth, storehouse does not mean heavy earth: earth that commands the month is weighed differently from earth appearing elsewhere.
Beyond the wood frame, the Wu union, the Chou clash and the triple punishment already listed, Wei harms Zi and breaks with Xu. Because the Chou clash sets storehouse against storehouse, wood's against metal's, many texts read it differently from an ordinary clash: what is at stake is whether the stored stems are released or damaged. Whether the wood inside Wei can actually be used is usually made to depend on a Yi stem appearing above.
The storehouse question is where lineages part company. One tradition holds that a storehouse must be clashed to open, so the Chou–Wei clash is welcome when the buried stem is needed; another distinguishes storehouse from grave and warns that clashing damages the root rather than freeing it. There is also no agreement on the day-counts given to Ji, Ding and Yi inside Wei, nor on whether the Hai–Mao–Wei frame still forms when Mao is absent and only two of the three appear. Honest practice names the convention it is using.
The Wei month runs from Xiaoshu (小暑 Xiǎoshǔ) to Liqiu (立秋 Lìqiū) and covers the sanfu, the three hottest periods of the traditional summer. The Record of Rites gives the last month of summer warm winds first arriving, crickets settling in the walls, hawks learning to strike, and rotting grass giving rise to fireflies; the later pentad almanacs split that list, keeping the warm winds and the crickets at Xiaoshu and moving the fireflies to the opening of Dashu. On the twenty-four mountain compass Wei sits in the southwest beside Kun and Shen, and the Wei hour, 13:00 to 15:00, was named for the sun beginning to decline — a period read, in farming and in divination alike, as a slow turn rather than a break.
All four are earth branches and all four are called storehouses, but tradition splits them by moisture and by contents. Chen and Chou are moist earth: they absorb water and are said to help metal. Wei and Xu are dry earth, warmed by the fire stored inside them, and are read as feeding fire, not metal. By contents, Chen stores water, Wei stores wood, Xu stores fire and Chou stores metal. Which distinction matters depends on what the chart needs.
Storehouse describes where an element is put away at the end of its cycle, not where it flourishes. In the twelve-stage scheme Jia wood reaches its burial stage at Wei, so wood there is stored and not active, and a Wei-month birth does not mean strong wood. On whether the storehouse must be clashed open, traditions differ, and this is one of the oldest open arguments in the field. One line of practice holds that a storehouse stays shut until clashed, so the Chou–Wei clash is welcome when the buried stem is wanted. Another distinguishes a storehouse from a grave and holds that a clash damages the root instead of releasing it. Most practitioners look instead at whether a Yi stem appears above, whether the Hai–Mao–Wei frame completes, and what the rest of the chart supports.
Texts differ. The Wu–Wei six-union is commonly listed as producing earth, but because both branches are hot and Wei already stores Ding fire, many readings treat the pair as reinforcing fire instead. A widely used practical rule is that a six-union binds the two branches first and only transforms when the surrounding chart already supports the resulting element. Without that support the pair is read as joined but untransformed.
The saying is a late folk proverb and does not appear in the standard classical manuals such as the Sanming Tonghui (三命通會) or the Yuanhai Ziping (淵海子平), which describe Wei in terms of dry late-summer earth, stored wood and the qualities of the season. Traditional method reads a whole chart of eight characters, never the year branch alone, so within the system itself a single year sign carries no such verdict.