甲申 jia shen

甲 above, 申 below

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

Where 甲申 sits in the five elements

Fire does not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Metal leads at 40.7%, then wood at 37.0%.

What is buried inside 申

申 hides 3 stems. The primary is 庚 (Metal), what restrains the stem; behind it sit 壬 (Water, what produces the stem) and 戊 (Earth, what the stem restrains).

甲 meeting 申: the 絕 stage

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

甲 meets 申 at the 絕 stage — severance.

申 against 寅, with 巳

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

Clashes with

寅 (Tiger) — 丙寅

Combines with

巳 (Snake) — 己巳

Nayin: 泉中水

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 乙酉: 泉中水, “water in the spring.”

How 甲申 is conventionally read

甲 is the first stem: upright, forward, the trunk of a tree rather than its branches. 申 is the turn from heat to metal, the first contraction.

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

When the next 甲申 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 6 November 2026 (Friday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 甲申 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 Metal — what restrains the stem. The other five branches this stem sits on are 子 (Water), 戌 (Earth), 午 (Fire), 辰 (Earth), 寅 (Wood).