The ten day masters
Your day master is the heavenly stem of your day pillar, one of the ten below, and it is the reference point everything else in your chart is read against. Each one is a different starting material with a different cost attached.
Find yours, freeAll ten, coloured by element
10 of 10 writtenWhere the ten come from
The ten heavenly stems 十天干 are the five elements taken twice, once in a yang form and once in a yin form. Yang Wood and Yin Wood are both wood, and they behave nothing alike: the first is the tree that grows in one direction, the second the vine that finds its way around an obstacle. Polarity is not strength. It is how the element expresses itself.
The stems run in a fixed order that has repeated without a break for as long as the calendar has been kept, which is why the day pillar can be worked out for any date at all. Your own stem is the one standing over the day you were born.
Why no day master is better than another
Each of the ten is a set of tendencies with a matching cost, and a page here says both. What decides how a day master actually reads is not which one it is but the company it keeps: the season it landed in, whether the chart supports it or drains it, and which decade is running now. A Yin Fire born in deep winter and a Yin Fire born at midsummer share a character and very little else.
That is also why a page here stops where it does. It describes a stem in general. Applying it to one chart is what the elements count, the ten gods and the decade cycle are for, and that is the work a reading does.
Have your own day master read
Find yours free →These ten pages describe the stems in general. A reading takes yours: the season it landed in, what stands beside it, and the decade you are in now.