The Yang Fire Day Master (丙): The Sun in Your Chart

One day in ten is a 丙 day, and anyone born on one has 丙, yang Fire, as their day master. The tradition pictures it as the sun. The stem table in that post calls it "the sun at noon — generous, radiant, witnessed", and the post's worked example is a 丙 chart.

The sun sounds like the strongest thing in the sky. In a chart it often isn't. This post is about how 丙 charts actually fall, what they tend to need, what one of the classics says about them, and the six days a 丙 can be born on.

The sun and the lamp

Fire has two stems. 丙 is the yang one: the sun, outward and visible, warming whatever it shines on whether or not anyone asked. 丁, the yin one, is pictured as the lamp, a light you carry and tend. The two share an element and read as different temperaments.

On this site the full reading carries the picture through. Depending on its strength, a 丙 day master is the standing sun, the tempered sun or the unrooted sun.

Weak more often than strong

To see how 丙 charts really fall, I ran the site's engine over every 丙 day from 1950 to 2009, with a birth in Seoul every two hours from two in the morning to ten at night. Midnight is left out: once Seoul's clock is corrected for its longitude, a midnight birth belongs to the day before, which isn't a 丙 day. That's 24,112 charts.

The sun reads as weak more often than strong: 47.6 per cent weak, 32.1 per cent strong and 20.3 per cent balanced. Without a birth hour, the split tips a little further, to exactly half weak.

Nearly all of that is the month, which carries more weight in the strength verdict than anything else in a chart:

The rest of each month reads as balanced.

Summer is the sun's season. In the 巳 and 午 months, four 丙 charts in five read as strong. Autumn and winter turn that round, with close to four in five weak in 申, 酉, 子 and 丑. Spring is mostly strong too, because spring is Wood, and Wood feeds Fire.

Except 辰. The last month of spring is Earth, and Earth is what Fire produces, so a 丙 born in it spends more than it gathers: 61.2 per cent weak, between two months where most are strong. 未, the Earth month at the end of summer, does the same more gently.

What a 丙 chart needs

Every chart has an element it needs most, its 用神, and for most charts it follows from the strength verdict. Across the 24,112 charts, half the time it's Wood: 50.8 per cent. Earth comes next, at nearly one in five, then Water at 12.6 per cent, Metal at 12.3 and Fire at 5.6.

Wood is 丙's Resource, its fuel, and a sun that reads as weak needs feeding. In autumn and winter, Wood is the need in nearly three charts in four.

Summer is another kind of chart. Its commonest need is Water, at 31.1 per cent: Water is 丙's Officer, what presses on it, and a strong sun needs something to hold it in check. Wood, Earth and Metal each come to just over a fifth. Fire itself is the answer for only 5.6 per cent of 丙 charts. More sun is rarely what the sun needs.

One more thing showed up in the numbers. The site picks a chart's need mainly by strength, but it lets the season overrule that when a chart is missing the element its season calls for: Water in a summer chart, Fire in a winter one. For 丙 that happens only in summer, in 14.8 per cent of summer charts, and never in winter. It can't. A winter chart is only overruled when it has no Fire at all, and a 丙 chart always has Fire. The day master is Fire.

The eight lines

The 滴天髓, the classic this blog quoted on clashes, gives each of the ten stems a few lines. 丙 gets eight:

丙火猛烈，欺霜侮雪。能煅庚金，逢辛反怯。土眾成慈，水猖顯節。虎馬犬鄉，甲來焚滅。

丙 Fire is fierce. It scorns the frost and defies the snow. It can forge 庚 metal; meeting 辛, it turns timid. Among plenty of Earth it grows kind; when Water runs wild, it shows its backbone. In the land of the Tiger, the Horse and the Dog, let 甲 come and it burns out.

Editions differ a little over the last line, but every version ends with the fire burnt out. Read against the engine, the lines hold up better than you might expect of a text centuries older than the code.

It scorns the frost and defies the snow. The commentary printed with the verse says 丙 fears neither autumn nor winter. The table says a winter 丙 is usually weak, so the line isn't about strength. It's about warmth, and there the code agrees in its own way: it never treats a 丙 chart as short of warmth, because a 丙 chart is never without Fire.

It can forge 庚; meeting 辛, it turns timid. 庚 and 辛 are both 丙's Wealth, what it works on. What the verse sees in 辛 is a combination: 丙 and 辛 make one of the five stem combinations, and the commentary says that in combining, 丙 is weakened. This site doesn't read stem combinations, so here 辛 is simply 丙's Direct Wealth.

Among plenty of Earth it grows kind. Earth is what Fire produces, and the commentary calls it 丙's child. That's the 辰 month in the table: a sun surrounded by Earth gives itself away.

When Water runs wild, it shows its backbone. Water presses on Fire, and pressure is when a strong 丙 shows what it's made of. It's also what a summer 丙 needs most often.

In the land of the Tiger, Horse and Dog, let 甲 come and it burns out. 寅, 午 and 戌 are the three branches of the Fire combination. A 丙 that already sits among them has more Fire than it can use, and 甲, more Wood, only feeds the blaze. The engine puts it in numbers: Wood is the need for nearly three 丙 charts in four in autumn and winter, and for fewer than one in four in summer.

Six 丙 days

丙 sits on six branches, one for each 丙 day in the cycle of sixty, and the branch it sits on changes it. Each has its own page:

• Bing Zi 丙子 sits on 子, Water, its Direct Officer: the sun over the water that checks it. Life Stage: Conception.
• Bing Yin 丙寅 sits on 寅, whose 甲 is its Indirect Resource, so there's fuel underneath. Life Stage: Growth.
• Bing Chen 丙辰 sits on 辰, Earth, its Eating God, spending itself as it does in the 辰 month. Life Stage: Coming of Age.
• Bing Wu 丙午 sits on 午, its own Fire, as Rob Wealth: the strongest seat a 丙 can have. Life Stage: Peak.
• Bing Shen 丙申 sits on 申, Metal, its Indirect Wealth, with something to forge. Life Stage: Illness.
• Bing Xu 丙戌 sits on 戌, Earth, its Eating God again, where Fire's heat is banked. Life Stage: Tomb.

Where this site stands

The free reading here names a 丙 chart's element, Fire, which it shares with 丁. The full reading names the stem and the sun, and reads the chart's strength, its need, its luck pillars and its years from the same engine as the figures above.

The verse and the engine agree on more than they disagree. Both say a sun doesn't run short of warmth, that a strong one wants something to check it or something to spend itself on, and that more fuel is the last thing a blazing one needs. Where they part, it's mostly over relations this site leaves out. The sun is one stem in ten, and which of these suns a chart holds is mostly a question of its month.