庚子 geng zi

庚 above, 子 below

The stem generates the branch: Metal produces Water. The upper half of the pillar feeds the lower half, so the visible stem is spending itself on what it sits above.

Where 庚子 sits in the five elements

Wood, Fire and Earth do not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Water leads at 52.4%, then metal at 47.6%.

What is buried inside 子

子 hides a single stem, 癸 (Water) — what the stem produces.

庚 meeting 子: the 死 stage

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

庚 meets 子 at the 死 stage — death.

子 against 午, with 丑

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

Clashes with

午 (Horse) — 庚午

Combines with

丑 (Ox) — 乙丑

Nayin: 壁上土

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 辛丑: 壁上土, “earth on the wall.”

How 庚子 is conventionally read

庚 is unworked metal: the blade before it is polished. 子 is the middle of the night, where the cycle restarts.

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

When the next 庚子 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 22 November 2026 (Sunday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 庚子 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.

庚 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 Water — what the stem produces. The other five branches this stem sits on are 午 (Fire), 辰 (Earth), 寅 (Wood), 戌 (Earth), 申 (Metal).