己卯 ji mao

己 above, 卯 below

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

Where 己卯 sits in the five elements

Fire, Metal and Water do not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Wood leads at 52.4%, then earth at 47.6%.

What is buried inside 卯

卯 hides a single stem, 乙 (Wood) — what restrains the stem.

己 meeting 卯: the 病 stage

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

己 meets 卯 at the 病 stage — illness.

卯 against 酉, with 戌

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

Clashes with

酉 (Rooster) — 癸酉

Combines with

戌 (Dog) — 甲戌

Nayin: 城头土

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 戊寅: 城头土, “earth on the city wall.”

How 己卯 is conventionally read

己 is cultivated soil: earth that is worked, turned, and made to grow things. 卯 is early spring at its purest, entirely growth.

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

When the next 己卯 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 1 November 2026 (Sunday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 己卯 day, because the day rolls at 23:00 true solar time.

Showing up to eight of the 7 occurrences in the next twelve months, from 2026-10-31.

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