癸丑 gui chou

癸 above, 丑 below

The branch controls the stem: Earth restrains Water. The stem is working against its own footing, which shows up as effort that costs more than it should.

Where 癸丑 sits in the five elements

Wood and Fire do not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Water leads at 48.1%, then earth at 40.7%.

What is buried inside 丑

丑 hides 3 stems. The primary is 己 (Earth), what restrains the stem; behind it sit 癸 (Water, the same element as the stem) and 辛 (Metal, what produces the stem).

癸 meeting 丑: the 冠帶 stage

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

癸 meets 丑 at the 冠帶 stage — cap and girdle.

丑 against 未, with 子

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

Clashes with

未 (Goat) — 辛未

Combines with

子 (Rat) — 甲子

Nayin: 桑柘木

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 壬子: 桑柘木, “wood of the mulberry.”

How 癸丑 is conventionally read

癸 is water that arrives quietly: rain, mist, groundwater. 丑 is the last stretch of winter, storing what is not yet ready.

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

When the next 癸丑 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 5 December 2026 (Saturday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 癸丑 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.

癸 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 Earth — what restrains the stem. The other five branches this stem sits on are 酉 (Metal), 未 (Earth), 巳 (Fire), 卯 (Wood), 亥 (Water).