丙申 bing shen

丙 above, 申 below

The stem controls the branch: Fire restrains Metal. The pillar is internally under tension, and that tension is structural, not a mood.

Where 丙申 sits in the five elements

Wood does not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Metal leads at 40.7%, then fire at 37.0%.

What is buried inside 申

申 hides 3 stems. The primary is 庚 (Metal), what the stem restrains; behind it sit 壬 (Water, what restrains the stem) and 戊 (Earth, what the stem produces).

丙 meeting 申: the 病 stage

The twelve stages (十二長生): yang stems run forward, yin stems backward.

丙 meets 申 at the 病 stage — illness.

申 against 寅, with 巳

Opposite across the cycle (六沖), and paired with (六合):

Clashes with

寅 (Tiger) — 丙寅

Combines with

巳 (Snake) — 己巳

Nayin: 山下火

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 丁酉: 山下火, “fire at the mountain foot.”

How 丙申 is conventionally read

丙 is the sun itself: visible, outward, impossible to keep indoors. 申 is the turn from heat to metal, the first contraction.

A fire-element day master on a metal footing — one of eight characters, which colours a chart and does not fix the person.

When the next 丙申 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 18 November 2026 (Wednesday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 丙申 day, because the day rolls at 23:00 true solar time.

Showing up to eight of the 6 occurrences in the next twelve months, from 2026-10-31.

丙 on six different footings

Six pillars carry this stem. It is the same day master every time, so everything that differs below is caused by the branch underneath it:

Here the footing is Metal — what the stem restrains. The other five branches this stem sits on are 寅 (Wood), 子 (Water), 戌 (Earth), 午 (Fire), 辰 (Earth).