BaZi basics

What is my day master?

Your day master is the heavenly stem of the day you were born. In BaZi, the Chinese Four Pillars, it is the element that stands for you, and the rest of your chart is read around it. There are ten: the five elements, each in a Yang and a Yin form.

The ten day masters

Day master	Stem	Image	In short
Yang Wood	Jia	The tall tree	stands straight, keeps growing toward what it believes in, and would rather break than bend.
Yin Wood	Yi	The vine	supple, knows what to lean on, and finds its way up by winding around.
Yang Fire	Bing	The sun	warm and open, lights up every room it walks into, and wears its feelings on its face.
Yin Fire	Ding	The lamp	soft on the outside, clear within, and can light up one thing, or one person, all the way through.
Yang Earth	Wu	The mountain	solid, true to its word, carries the weight, and is hard to move.
Yin Earth	Ji	The farmland	takes everything in, keeps a lot to itself, and grows whatever it's given.
Yang Metal	Geng	The blade	tough, decisive, loyal, and cuts clean.
Yin Metal	Xin	The jewel	polished and refined, with high standards and a strong sense of its own worth.
Yang Water	Ren	The ocean	big-minded, quick, always moving, and hard to contain.
Yin Water	Gui	The rain	quiet and sensitive, picking up on what people feel before they say it.

Day master or birth year element?

Most people who ask "what's my Chinese element?" are given the element of their birth year, the one that goes with the zodiac animal (2027 is a Fire Goat year, for example). That element is shared by everyone born in the same year.

The day master comes from the day you were born. BaZi readers treat it as the element that stands for you, and they read the rest of the chart in relation to it. The two often don't match: a person born in a Water year can easily be a Yang Fire day master.

How to find yours

Take your birth date (and time, if you know it).
Convert it to the Chinese solar calendar, where each day has one of ten heavenly stems in turn.
The stem of your birth day is your day master.

The conversion is tricky by hand, and if you were born near midnight the hour can change which day counts. Your free reading does it for you and names your day master on the first page. Fusola calls it your Core.

Yang and Yin

Each element comes in two forms. Yang is the larger, outward form and Yin the smaller, inward one: the tall tree and the vine, the sun and the lamp, the mountain and the farmland, the blade and the jewel, the ocean and the rain. Both are the same element at a different size.

Find your day master

Your free reading works out your day master and shaping force from your birthday and shows the five elements in your chart. It takes about two minutes.

Start my free reading

Questions people ask

What is my Chinese element?

There are two common answers. Your birth year element goes with your zodiac animal and is shared by everyone born that year. Your day master is the element of your birth day, and BaZi treats it as the one that describes you personally.

Do I need my birth time to find my day master?

Usually not. The day master comes from the birth date. The time matters if you were born close to midnight, and it adds the hour pillar to the rest of the chart.

Can my day master change?

No. It is fixed by the day you were born. What changes from year to year and day to day is how the elements of that time meet the ones in your chart.

Is the day master the same as my Western sun sign?

They play a similar role as the part of the chart that stands for you, but they come from different systems. The sun sign follows the sun through the zodiac; the day master follows a cycle of ten stems that comes around every ten days.