A water 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
- 水 Water
- 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 a water Day Master. 得令, at maximum. 子 is deep winter and a cardinal branch, and no seasonal position for water anywhere in the year is stronger.
子 contains only 癸 water. Undiluted, unopposed, and with no outlet inside the branch at all. Your phase at full volume with nothing to run into.
That is precisely what 《窮通寶鑑》 raises. The eleventh month is the extreme of the year's climate problem, and the instruction across every Day Master is warmth first with no substitute. For a water Self at peak strength the classics add the structural version of the same point: 「剛中之德，周流不滯」 — the virtue is circulating and not stagnating. Water in surplus with nowhere to go is the specific failure the phrase is guarding against.
What follows: fire is load-bearing here despite being what your phase controls, wood is the outlet the branch does not provide, and support is surplus.
The mandate is fully held and the chart is read for what moves it rather than for what adds to it. That is the shape, and it is the clearest case in the year of a maximum count needing something the count cannot supply.
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.