An earth Day Master born in 子, the rat month
The month pillar is the strongest single influence on whether a Day Master is supported. 子 is the second month of winter; it opens at 大雪 Major Snow, around 7 December, and runs to about 5 January.
- Day Master phase
- 土 Earth
- Month branch
- 子 Zǐ
- Opens at
- 大雪 Major Snow
- Roughly
- 7 December – 5 January
- Branch phase
- 水 Water
What the month does to the Day Master
Born in 子, the second month of winter, with an earth Day Master. 囚 — confined by restraining the season, and 子 is the purest form of it.
子 is a cardinal branch holding only 癸 water. Deep winter, maximum moisture, and nothing else in the month at all. For an earth Self the branch is entirely made of what you are holding back, with no wood to complicate it and no warmth to work with.
《窮通寶鑑》 treats the eleventh month as the extreme of the year's climate problem and asks for warmth for every Day Master without exception. For earth the case is particularly plain: frozen ground is inert, and no quantity of it changes that. Fire is what this chart is read for, and very little else substitutes.
Two consequences. Support here carries structural weight rather than being an optional improvement, and the ordinary reading of water as wealth in this system does not soften the position — there is already more than the ground can absorb.
The month is against you in the specific sense of demanding constant containment. The classics attach no forecast to that, and a great many capable charts in the literature sit exactly here.
Cast the chart this page describes
The four pillars, the Day Master, the five-phase count, the day’s almanac read against the chart and the true solar time working — about 2,700 words — are free and need no account. The chart is computed in the browser; nothing about the birth is sent anywhere.