Day Master日干

The Day Master is the upper character of the Day Pillar, the heavenly stem of the day you were born, and some books simply call it the Day Stem. Chart reading sets this single character up as the owner of the chart and reads the other seven through their ties to it. Early practice centred on the birth year; since the shift to centring on the birth day, most present-day readings follow this reference point. The same character means something different depending on which of the ten stems holds this seat, so it is the first thing to check before the Ten Gods or the Twelve Life Stages.

• 日day, sun (Korean reading: il)
• 干shield; short for heavenly stem (Korean reading: gan)

The stem of the day, pointing to the top seat of the Day Pillar.

Once the Day Pillar is known, its upper character is the Day Master. The Day Pillar comes from turning the date into a day count with no gaps and stepping through the sixty pairs one place per day. Its anchor is 1 January 2000, a yang Earth day over the Horse branch. The date is judged from the time after the true solar time adjustment. For a birth in the 23:00 hour, the Zi hour setting can make the Day Master the next day's character.

Reading outward from the Day Master works better than pinning a personality on it alone. Two people with a yang Fire Day Master can read quite differently depending on whether they were born in a summer or a winter month, and whether Wood stands nearby or Water is plentiful. That is why every Ten Gods and Twelve Life Stages cell in your results is filled in relative to the Day Master. The element count table also marks its element separately.

Someone born on 1 January 2000 has a 戊午 (Wu Wu) Day Pillar, so the Day Master is 戊 (Wu), yang Earth. The next day, 2 January, sits one step further along the cycle as a 己未 (Ji Wei) day, and the Day Master changes to yin Earth, 己 (Ji).

• A common idea

  People who share a Day Master share a personality.

  How we read it

  There are only ten Day Masters, so each is shared by a great many people. This service uses it as the starting point of a reading and explains that an individual picture emerges only with the other seven characters and the Luck Pillars.

• A common idea

  Your zodiac animal is the self in your chart.

  How we read it

  The zodiac animal is the branch of your birth year and belongs to the Year Pillar. In this service the self at the centre of a reading is the stem of your birth day, a different character altogether.