甲辰 jia chen

甲 above, 辰 below

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

Where 甲辰 sits in the five elements

Fire and Metal do not appear anywhere in this pillar.

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

What is buried inside 辰

辰 hides 3 stems. The primary is 戊 (Earth), what the stem restrains; behind it sit 乙 (Wood, the same element as the stem) and 癸 (Water, what produces the stem).

甲 meeting 辰: the 衰 stage

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

甲 meets 辰 at the 衰 stage — decline.

辰 against 戌, with 酉

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

Clashes with

戌 (Dog) — 甲戌

Combines with

酉 (Rooster) — 癸酉

Nayin: 覆灯火

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 乙巳: 覆灯火, “fire of the covered lamp.”

How 甲辰 is conventionally read

甲 is the first stem: upright, forward, the trunk of a tree rather than its branches. 辰 is damp earth that holds water and receives what falls.

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

When the next 甲辰 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 26 November 2026 (Thursday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 甲辰 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.

甲 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 the stem restrains. The other five branches this stem sits on are 子 (Water), 戌 (Earth), 申 (Metal), 午 (Fire), 寅 (Wood).