The Yin Earth Day Master (己): The Field in Your Chart

Anyone born on a 己 day has 己, yin Earth, as their day master. The tradition pictures it as a field, and the stem table in that post gives the phrase: "the tended field — fertile, patient, worked". Ground that is looked after, and that gives back what is put into it.

A field sounds like something that holds still, and in the figures it mostly does. Below: where 己 charts land between strong and weak, which element they lean on, how an old verse describes the stem, and the six days it can fall on.

The field and the mountain

Earth has two stems. 己 is the yin one: low, soft, cultivated ground, the kind that takes a seed. 戊, the yang one, is the mountain, big and fixed where the field is open. Both are Earth, and the stems post tells them apart from the other eight, while the post on the five elements explains why Earth is a phase and not a substance.

The full reading here keeps that picture. Strength sorts a 己 day master into one of three: the standing field when strong, the tempered field when balanced, the unrooted field when weak.

Strong more often than weak

I ran the site's engine over every 己 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 lands on the day before, which isn't a 己 day. That gives 24,112 charts.

The field reads as strong in 64.4 per cent of them, weak in 18.6 and balanced in 17.0. Without a birth hour, across 2,192 charts, the split moves toward the other two: 55.0 per cent strong, 24.5 weak and 20.4 balanced.

Much of that is the month. It decides the strength verdict more than any other part of a chart:

The rest of each month reads as balanced.

The four Earth months, 辰 未 戌 丑, stand apart. Each is between 94.9 and 95.6 per cent strong, because the month's own branch is Earth, the field's own element, and the branch brings 己 or 戊 with it. A weak 己 born in one of them is a rarity.

The other months follow the relations. Fire feeds Earth, so 巳 and 午 are strong in 87.6 and 89.3 per cent of charts. Wood controls Earth, and 卯 is weak in 49.3 per cent. Metal is what Earth feeds, and a month of Metal drains it: 酉 is weak in 49.7 per cent. Water is what Earth controls, which costs effort, and 子 is weak in 48.8.

A few months soften the pattern. 寅 is a Wood month, yet 58.8 per cent of its charts are strong, because 寅 holds 戊 and 丙 beside its Wood, a Peer and a Resource. 申 and 亥 hold 戊 too, which is why they sit nearer the middle, at 44.7 and 45.6 per cent strong. And 辰 breaks its season. Spring is Wood, but 辰 is Earth, its main hidden stem is 戊, and 94.9 per cent of its charts are strong, with the 卯 month beside it at 21.3.

What a 己 chart needs

Each chart leans on one element above the rest, its 用神. Across the 24,112 charts the commonest is Metal, at 37.9 per cent. That is the field's Output, what it produces and spends. Fire follows at 28.0 per cent, the field's Resource. Water, its Wealth, is 21.6, Wood, its Officer, is 11.0, and Earth itself is 1.5. A field that is strong more often than not has little use for more field.

The season shifts it. In spring the need is Metal at 45.9 per cent and Fire at 27.6. In summer Metal is 41.7 and Water 36.9, with Fire at only 4.1, since Fire is already everywhere. In autumn Fire leads at 38.4, ahead of Metal at 25.7. In winter Fire leads again, at 42.7, with Metal at 38.4.

The engine also lets the season overrule its usual method, but only when the element the season calls for is missing from the chart altogether: Water in the 巳午未 months, Fire in the 亥子丑 ones. That is why spring and autumn have no overrides at all: the rule never applies in them. In summer it happens in 10.4 per cent of charts, and in winter in 12.5 per cent.

The eight lines

The 滴天髓, the classic this blog quoted on the claim that a clash means bad luck, speaks of every stem in a few lines. For 己 there are eight:

己土卑濕，中正蓄藏。不愁木盛，不畏水狂。火少火晦，金多金光。若要物旺，宜助宜幫。

己 Earth is low and damp, central and upright, a store for what it holds. It doesn't fret at abundant Wood or fear wild Water. Where Fire is scarce, it dims the Fire; where Metal is plentiful, it makes the Metal shine. To make things flourish, it needs help and support.

Read against the engine, the verse matches the figures in some places and not in others.

己 Earth is low and damp, central and upright, a store for what it holds. The opening names the stem as yin Earth, the field. Low, central and storing is a fair picture of ground that collects things, and the figures don't speak to it.

It doesn't fret at abundant Wood or fear wild Water. Wood is 己's Officer and Water its Wealth. I read it as soft ground letting Wood root instead of breaking it, and damp Earth taking Water in. The table is less sure. A Wood month, 卯, leaves about half of 己 charts weak, and a Water month, 子, does the same. Many fields do shrug it off, but plenty don't.

Where Fire is scarce, it dims the Fire; where Metal is plentiful, it makes the Metal shine. Fire is 己's Resource, and in the verse a little Fire is dimmed by damp ground. The engine treats Fire as a feeder, not a victim: it is the need in 38.4 per cent of autumn charts and 42.7 of winter ones. So here the two part. Metal is the Output, and the field gives itself to it. The table agrees that Metal months cost the field something, and Metal is also the most common need overall.

To make things flourish, it needs help and support. The help is Resource, which is Fire, and support is peers, which is Earth. Fire is the need in 28.0 per cent of charts. Earth is the need in only 1.5, which fits a stem that so often arrives strong already.

Six 己 days

The sixty-day cycle holds six 己 days, each with 己 on a different branch, and the branch changes how the stem stands. Each has its own page:

• Ji Chou 己丑 sits on 丑, Earth, with 己 itself as the main hidden stem, its Friend: a field beside another field. Life Stage: Tomb.
• Ji Mao 己卯 sits on 卯, Wood, whose main stem 乙 is its Seven Killings: tall growth pressing on soft ground. Life Stage: Illness.
• Ji Si 己巳 sits on 巳, whose main stem 丙 is its Direct Resource: the sun on an open field. Life Stage: Peak.
• Ji Wei 己未 sits on 未, Earth, with 己 as the main hidden stem, its Friend: the field at the height of summer. Life Stage: Coming of Age.
• Ji You 己酉 sits on 酉, Metal, its Eating God: the harvest taken off the field. Life Stage: Growth.
• Ji Hai 己亥 sits on 亥, Water, whose main stem 壬 is its Direct Wealth: ground with a river beside it. Life Stage: Conception.

Where this site stands

The free reading here names a 己 chart's element, Earth, which it shares with 戊. The full reading names the stem and the field, 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 that the field is not easily overturned and that Metal, the Output, matters to it. They part over Fire, which the verse sees as dimmed and the engine sees as fuel, and over Wood and Water, where the months show more pressure than the verse admits. The disagreement comes mostly from how each weighs the same elements, not from relations the site leaves out. Which field a chart holds, standing, tempered or unrooted, is mostly a question of its month.