The 10 Day Masters

What is a Day Master?

A saju chart holds eight characters, a stem and a branch for each of the year, month, day and hour of birth. The Day Master (일간 ilgan, 日干, also 日主 or 日元) is one of them, the stem on top of the day pillar, and the whole reading turns around it. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says saju is judged from the day stem, which it calls 기신 (己身), literally “one’s own body” (사주, E0025957).

The classical handbooks already worked this way. 淵海子平 walks through the ten gods with 甲 as its example day stem: meeting 乙 is Rob Wealth, meeting 丙 is Eating God, and so on through 癸 (淵海子平). Change the Day Master and every one of those names changes, which is why two people born in the same year can read so differently.

Day Master, day pillar and zodiac animal: what’s the difference?

English-language guides mix up three things. The short version: your Day Master is half of your day pillar, and your zodiac animal isn’t part of either.

The day pillar goes one step further than this page: each of the 60 day pillars pairs a Day Master with the branch it sits on, which the tradition reads as the closest, most private layer of the chart. This page stays with the stem alone.

The 10 Day Masters

The ten stems are the five elements, each in a yang and a yin form, always in the same order. The table gives the names you will meet in Chinese, Korean and Japanese books. The list links each Day Master to its own page, with Horan’s one-line picture of it.

• 甲 Jia, yang wood: the tree that grows straight for the sky
• 乙 Yi, yin wood: the vine that always finds a way up
• 丙 Bing, yang fire: the sun that shines on everyone at once
• 丁 Ding, yin fire: the lamp that burns steady through the night
• 戊 Wu, yang earth: the mountain that holds its ground
• 己 Ji, yin earth: the field that takes things in and grows them
• 庚 Geng, yang metal: the raw iron that fire turns into a tool
• 辛 Xin, yin metal: the fine metal that shines once it is washed clean
• 壬 Ren, yang water: the river that keeps moving
• 癸 Gui, yin water: the rain and dew that seep in quietly

The ten stems in the classics

Modern guides give each stem one picture. The old handbooks gave several. 三命通會, the Ming-dynasty compendium, matches each stem to weather in the sky and to something on the ground (三命通會, vol. 2). 滴天髓 opens its chapter on the stems with a short verse for each, and its first four characters are the quickest summary of the stem there is (滴天髓, 天干論).

The books don’t always agree. 三命通會 likens 戊 to a city wall; the commentary printed with 滴天髓 says 戊 is the earth of mountain ridges, “not a city wall.” The yang earth page takes that disagreement apart. What the images share is that they describe behavior in a season, not a verdict on a person.

How to find your Day Master

You need only your birth date. Enter it in the free chart or the saju calculator and read the top character of the day column. Your birth time isn’t needed: the hour adds a fourth pillar, not a different Day Master.

By hand, it is counting. The day stems run in an unbroken ten-day loop, so each Day Master comes around every ten days: in January 2027, the 甲 days fell on January 5, 15 and 25. January 7, 2000, was a 甲子 day, the first of the sixty, so any date a multiple of ten days later is a 甲 day too. Counting by hand is tedious, which is why the Korean encyclopedia notes that people usually look the day up in an almanac, the 만세력 (manseryeok), instead (사주, E0025957).

Two cautions. First, our chart starts the new day at midnight, but some schools start it at 11 PM. Born at 11:30 PM on June 15, 1990, in New York, you are a 辛 Xin Day Master by the midnight rule and a 壬 Ren by the 11 PM rule. Second, use the date where you were born. Saju reads local time, so a late-evening birth in Los Angeles keeps its own date even though it is already the next day in Seoul.

Strong or weak Day Master, explained honestly

Once the Day Master is found, traditional readers judge how much support it has. The Korean encyclopedia describes the method: weigh the day stem against the month pillar, the branch it sits on and the rest of the chart, judge its strength and the chart’s structure (격국), and from that choose the helping element, the 용신 (“useful god”) (사주, E0025957). The month comes first in that list. It is the season, and a wood Day Master born in spring stands in its own season in a way one born in autumn doesn’t.

The same article works one chart through. Its Day Master is 己 earth, backed by three earth branches, warmed by the fire hidden in one of them and helped by more earth in the hour pillar, so it is judged strong (신왕, 身旺), and the helping element chosen is the 甲 wood in the month pillar, the stem that is 己’s Direct Officer and keeps all that earth in check (사주, E0025957). In that example, the strong Day Master is balanced by the stem that works on it, not by more support. 三命通會 sketches the weak case from the other side: a stem out of season, with no support and its strength constantly drained, loses even the hardness of a yang stem (三命通會, vol. 2).

Two honest caveats. Schools weigh the same chart differently: how much a hidden stem counts, whether a combination changes an element, which months help which stems. A chart one site calls strong, another can call weak. And strength is not a grade. 三命通會 itself says that the birth, death, strength and weakness of the elements are in the end “borrowed names” (假名), and that what matters is balance, 中和 (三命通會, vol. 2). A strong Day Master isn’t a better one, and our readings don’t score strength (how we calculate).

Can your Day Master change?

No. It is fixed by the day you were born and stays the same for life. What the tradition says changes is the weather around it: each year, and each ten-year luck pillar, brings stems that stand in a new ten-god relation to the same Day Master (luck pillars). Our charts, free or paid, leave luck pillars out.

The only way a Day Master “changes” is a correction: a wrong birth date, a birth near midnight read under the other day rule, or a birth abroad converted into the wrong time zone.

2027 (丁未) by Day Master

Each Day Master meets the year 丁未 differently, because 丁 and the stems hidden in 未 are a different ten god to each. The table is the arithmetic. Each Day Master’s page reads its own row in a short section, and the 2027 guide looks at the year as a whole. None of it is a forecast.

• 甲 Jia: 2027 for yang wood
• 乙 Yi: 2027 for yin wood
• 丙 Bing: 2027 for yang fire
• 丁 Ding: 2027 for yin fire
• 戊 Wu: 2027 for yang earth
• 己 Ji: 2027 for yin earth
• 庚 Geng: 2027 for yang metal
• 辛 Xin: 2027 for yin metal
• 壬 Ren: 2027 for yang water
• 癸 Gui: 2027 for yin water

Which Day Masters pair up?

Five pairs of stems combine (천간합, 天干合), each a yang stem with the stem five places after it: 甲–己 (Jia with Ji), 乙–庚 (Yi with Geng), 丙–辛 (Bing with Xin), 丁–壬 (Ding with Ren) and 戊–癸 (Wu with Gui). When two people’s Day Masters form one of these pairs, the tradition reads it as a pull toward each other. It is one layer of a compatibility reading, never the whole of it.

Comparing two charts is an old Korean practice. The Korean encyclopedia describes 궁합 (gunghap) as examining the saju of a bride and groom before a marriage (궁합, E0006817).

About this page

Written with AI (Claude) from the sources listed and our calculation engine. Horan and Kachi are fictional characters, and nothing here predicts events. The rules behind every chart: how we calculate.