Day pillar 6 of 60

己巳 ji si

Earth stem over Fire branch. The yin earth day master, sitting on the Snake (巳).

Every structural fact about 己巳 below can be checked against an almanac; only the passage marked conventionally read as is interpretation.

己 above, 巳 below

己 Heavenly stem Earth 土 · yin
巳 Earthly branch Fire 火 · Snake

The branch generates the stem: Fire produces Earth. This is the more comfortable arrangement of the two — the ground under the stem is feeding it rather than draining it.

Where 己巳 sits in the five elements

Wood and Water do not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Earth48.1%
Fire40.7%
Metal11.1%

Earth leads at 48.1%, then fire at 40.7%.

What is buried inside 巳

丙Fireprimary
庚Metalmiddle
戊Earthresidual

巳 hides 3 stems. The primary is 丙 (Fire), what produces the stem; behind it sit 庚 (Metal, what the stem produces) and 戊 (Earth, the same element as the stem).

己 meeting 巳: the 帝旺 stage

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

帝旺
peak the peak; strongest here, and closest to the point where it starts to fall

己 meets 巳 at the 帝旺 stage — peak.

巳 against 亥, with 申

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

Clashes with
亥 (Pig) — 乙亥
Combines with
申 (Monkey) — 壬申

Nayin: 大林木

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 戊辰: 大林木, “wood of the great forest.”

How 己巳 is conventionally read

己 is cultivated soil: earth that is worked, turned, and made to grow things. 巳 is the fire that has just caught, still gathering.

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

When the next 己巳 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 21 December 2026 (Monday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 己巳 day, because the day rolls at 23:00 true solar time.

DateWeekdayYear / month / day pillar
2026-12-21Monday丙午 庚子 己巳
2027-02-19Friday丁未 壬寅 己巳
2027-04-20Tuesday丁未 甲辰 己巳
2027-06-19Saturday丁未 丙午 己巳
2027-08-18Wednesday丁未 戊申 己巳
2027-10-17Sunday丁未 庚戌 己巳

Showing up to eight of the 6 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:

PillarBranchFootingStage
己巳 ←巳 · SnakeEarth on Firepeak
己卯卯 · RabbitEarth on Woodillness
己丑丑 · OxEarth on Earthtomb
己亥亥 · PigEarth on Waterconception
己酉酉 · RoosterEarth on Metalbirth
己未未 · GoatEarth on Earthcap and girdle

Here the footing is Fire — what produces the stem. The other five branches this stem sits on are 卯 (Wood), 丑 (Earth), 亥 (Water), 酉 (Metal), 未 (Earth).

The Earth element  ·  The Fire element  ·  30 worked reference charts  ·  How the calculation is verified