A metal Day Master born in 寅, the tiger month
The month pillar is the strongest single influence on whether a Day Master is supported. 寅 is the first month of spring; it opens at 立春 Start of Spring, around 4 February, and runs to about 5 March.
- Day Master phase
- 金 Metal
- Month branch
- 寅 Yín
- Opens at
- 立春 Start of Spring
- Roughly
- 4 February – 5 March
- Branch phase
- 木 Wood
What the month does to the Day Master
Born in 寅, the first month of spring, with a metal Day Master. 囚 — the Self restrains the season and is confined by the effort. Metal controls wood, and the first month is wood rising.
寅 holds 甲 wood, 丙 fire and 戊 earth. The wood is what you act on. The 丙 is the complication: fire controls metal, and 寅 is where fire begins its cycle, so the month carries both your work and your pressure. The 戊 earth is the one stem in the branch that serves you, since earth produces metal.
《窮通寶鑑》 reads the first month as cold ground with rising light, and for a metal Day Master the classical requirement is earth to produce you and enough of your own phase to do the work. What it does not ask for is more fire, which the branch is already generating.
The practical reading: support carries weight here, and the wood the month supplies is workable material rather than a threat, provided the Self has enough behind it to work with.
失令 in the specific sense of working against the grain of the season. That fixes method rather than outcome, and the classics are consistent about the difference.
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.