Day master element: how the five elements relate

What is your day master element?

Open the free BaZi calculator, find the stem of your day pillar and look it up in the table below. That one stem is your BaZi day master, and its element is your day master element; the calculator's Day master field also shows that stem with its element. The year animal and the longest element bar describe other things.

Jia and Yi are both Wood, but Jia is yang and Yi is yin. You can group them as Wood while you learn the five relationships. Polarity matters once those relationships are split into ten names, so keep the stem in your notes, not just “Wood”.

How do the generating and controlling arrows work?

Two cycles run through the same five elements in different orders, and every arrow points one way. What the five categories are is covered in BaZi five elements; here you only need the order.

• Generating: Wood to Fire to Earth to Metal to Water, and back to Wood.
• Controlling: Wood to Earth to Water to Fire to Metal, and back to Wood.

The arrows do not reverse. Water generates Wood, but Wood does not generate Water; Wood controls Earth, but Earth does not control Wood. Generating and controlling are directional relationships in a traditional system, and Zi Ping Zhen Quan discusses them together. Read the direction first and its role in a chart later; calling generating good and controlling bad loses most of what they describe.

Five relationships around Jia Wood

Take a Jia day master and let “me” mean Wood. Water generates Wood, so Water generates me. Wood generates Fire, so Fire is what I generate. Metal controls Wood, so Metal controls me. Wood controls Earth, so Earth is what I control. Another Wood is the same as me.

Traditional terms group these as Resource, Peers, Output, Wealth and Power, then split each by yin and yang into the BaZi ten gods. Wealth here names the element I control; one Earth character says nothing about anyone's income.

Why does the same stem change relationship?

Take two hypothetical charts. One has Jia as the day stem and Ren elsewhere; the other has Bing as the day stem and the same Ren. Ren is Water in both. Water generates the first day master and controls the second, so the change comes from the reference, and Ren has no single relationship label that fits everyone.

The same logic runs the other way. From Jia, Bing is what I generate; from Bing, Jia is what generates me. It is one Wood to Fire arrow read from its two ends. When BaZi compatibility sets two charts side by side, each has its own day master, so one stem can relate differently to each.

1. Write the day stem and its element

   Use the stem of the day pillar, for example Jia, which is Wood.

2. Write the other stem and its element

   Note its position as well, for example Bing in the month stem, which is Fire.

3. Draw the arrow between the two elements

   Find the pair in the generating or controlling order, for example Wood generates Fire.

4. Name the relationship from the day stem's side

   Read the arrow from the day master's end, so Wood generating Fire becomes “I generate”.

Is an element missing if no stem shows it?

The element bars answer a different question. They add the visible stems and the branches' hidden stems with different weights, so a long Wood bar describes Wood's share of that count; whether Wood is in season or rooted needs its own look. Where the bars fit in a full reading is covered in how to read a BaZi chart.

How to note one relationship in your chart

Say you find a Jia day master and Bing as the month stem. Write down the relationship and its position, and stop there for now.

Next, the BaZi month pillar adds the season, and the question of a strong vs weak day master weighs support against what drains or controls it. Each step adds a condition: a lookup names the elements, an arrow names the relationship, and the rest of the chart supplies the context.