Everyone asks for your animal. This is the part that is actually about you.
About you · 7 min read · Updated 28 September 2026
In short
A reading is built from four parts: the year, month, day and hour you were born. The animal everyone knows is the year, and you share it with everyone born that year. The day is the part that stands for you personally, and there are only sixty versions of it, repeating on a fixed cycle. Everything else in a reading is described by how it relates to that one part.
Why this pillar and not the others
A chart has four pillars, one each for the year, month, day and hour of birth. They were not always read this way. Classical practice before the Song dynasty took the year pillar as the subject, and the shift to the day pillar (associated with Xu Ziping, which is why the method is often called Ziping Bazi) is the change that produced Bazi as it is practised today.
The reason the change stuck is that the day is the pillar closest to the person rather than to the cohort. Everyone born between early February 1997 and early February 1998 shares a year pillar. Everyone born in a given two-hour window shares an hour branch. The day pillar narrows to one day in sixty, and the stem above it becomes the reference point against which every other character in the chart is measured: each of the other seven is described by its relationship to the day master, and those relationships are the Ten Gods.
Why sixty and not a hundred and twenty
There are ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Multiplied out that would be a hundred and twenty pairs, but yang stems pair only with yang branches and yin only with yin. Five yang stems across six yang branches gives thirty; five yin stems across six yin branches gives another thirty. Sixty in total: the sexagenary cycle, 六十甲子, which counts days, months, years and two-hour periods alike.
The cycle falls naturally into six groups of ten, each named after the 甲 pillar that opens it. Each group runs through all ten stems but only ten of the twelve branches, so two branches are left out of every group. Those two are the 空亡, the void or empty branches for anyone born in that ten-day span. It is a detail that rarely survives translation into English, and one worth knowing because it softens whatever sits on those branches elsewhere in the chart.
甲子 group: 甲子 to 癸酉 · void branches 戌 and 亥
甲戌 group: 甲戌 to 癸未 · void branches 申 and 酉
甲申 group: 甲申 to 癸巳 · void branches 午 and 未
甲午 group: 甲午 to 癸卯 · void branches 辰 and 巳
甲辰 group: 甲辰 to 癸丑 · void branches 寅 and 卯
甲寅 group: 甲寅 to 癸亥 · void branches 子 and 丑
What the pairing actually says
A day pillar is not two facts side by side. It is one character standing on another, and the question a reader asks first is what the ground is doing to the person standing on it. The branch may hold the same element as the stem, in which case the day master is rooted and self-supporting. It may hold the element that produces the stem, which is support arriving from elsewhere. It may hold what the stem produces, which drains it. Or it may hold what controls the stem: the case that produces the most interesting charts, because the pressure is built into the person rather than arriving from outside.
The traditional shorthand for this is the twelve stages, 十二長生, which run from 長生 through 帝旺 to 墓 and 絕 and describe how strong a stem is on each of the twelve branches, using the metaphor of a life. A stem on its 帝旺 branch is at its peak; the same stem on its 絕 branch has nothing underneath it at all. Neither is good or bad on its own: a day master at full strength in a chart already crowded with its own element is a problem, not an advantage.
The branch also hides stems of its own, which is where a day pillar gets its depth: 丙 standing on 子 carries a Direct Officer concealed in the branch, and 丙 standing on 寅 sits on a root of its own Fire plus a Wood that feeds it. Same day master, entirely different footing.
All sixty
In order, with the pinyin most English sources use. Pages for individual pillars are being added; the ones already written are linked.
1 · 甲子 Jia Zi
2 · 乙丑 Yi Chou
3 · 丙寅 Bing Yin
4 · 丁卯 Ding Mao
5 · 戊辰 Wu Chen
6 · 己巳 Ji Si
7 · 庚午 Geng Wu
8 · 辛未 Xin Wei
9 · 壬申 Ren Shen
10 · 癸酉 Gui You
11 · 甲戌 Jia Xu
12 · 乙亥 Yi Hai
14 · 丁丑 Ding Chou
15 · 戊寅 Wu Yin
16 · 己卯 Ji Mao
17 · 庚辰 Geng Chen
18 · 辛巳 Xin Si
19 · 壬午 Ren Wu
20 · 癸未 Gui Wei
21 · 甲申 Jia Shen
22 · 乙酉 Yi You
23 · 丙戌 Bing Xu
24 · 丁亥 Ding Hai
25 · 戊子 Wu Zi
26 · 己丑 Ji Chou
27 · 庚寅 Geng Yin
28 · 辛卯 Xin Mao
29 · 壬辰 Ren Chen
30 · 癸巳 Gui Si
31 · 甲午 Jia Wu
32 · 乙未 Yi Wei
33 · 丙申 Bing Shen
34 · 丁酉 Ding You
35 · 戊戌 Wu Xu
36 · 己亥 Ji Hai
37 · 庚子 Geng Zi
38 · 辛丑 Xin Chou
39 · 壬寅 Ren Yin
40 · 癸卯 Gui Mao
41 · 甲辰 Jia Chen
42 · 乙巳 Yi Si
43 · 丙午 Bing Wu
44 · 丁未 Ding Wei
45 · 戊申 Wu Shen
46 · 己酉 Ji You
47 · 庚戌 Geng Xu
48 · 辛亥 Xin Hai
49 · 壬子 Ren Zi
50 · 癸丑 Gui Chou
51 · 甲寅 Jia Yin
52 · 乙卯 Yi Mao
53 · 丙辰 Bing Chen
54 · 丁巳 Ding Si
55 · 戊午 Wu Wu
56 · 己未 Ji Wei
57 · 庚申 Geng Shen
58 · 辛酉 Xin You
59 · 壬戌 Ren Xu
60 · 癸亥 Gui Hai
Common questions
How do I find my day pillar?
It comes from your birth date, not your birth time, with one exception. Schools that roll the day over at 23:00 rather than midnight will give a birth in that last hour the next day’s pillar. If you were born between 23:00 and midnight, expect two sources to disagree, and read both.
Is the day pillar the same as my Chinese zodiac animal?
No. The animal everyone knows is the branch of the year pillar. The day pillar has a branch too, and therefore an animal of its own, which is usually a different one. In a reading it says considerably more about you than the year animal does.
What is a day master?
The upper character of the day pillar: one of the ten heavenly stems, so one of the five elements in either its yang or yin form. It represents you, and every other character in the chart is read in relation to it.
Do two people with the same day pillar have the same life?
No, and the arithmetic makes that obvious: the day pillar repeats every sixty days, so a great many people share yours. It is one pillar of four, and the month pillar in particular does much of the work in deciding whether a day master is strong or weak.
Find your day pillar
8 Signs builds all four pillars from your birth date, time and place, and shows the hidden stems inside each branch. Free to start.
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