甲子 jia zi

甲 above, 子 below

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

Where 甲子 sits in the five elements

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

Water leads at 52.4%, then wood at 47.6%.

What is buried inside 子

子 hides a single stem, 癸 (Water) — what produces the stem.

甲 meeting 子: the 沐浴 stage

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

甲 meets 子 at the 沐浴 stage — bath.

子 against 午, with 丑

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

Clashes with

午 (Horse) — 庚午

Combines with

丑 (Ox) — 乙丑

Nayin: 海中金

Nayin (納音) groups the cycle in pairs, each with an image. This one shares its image with 乙丑: 海中金, “gold in the sea.”

How 甲子 is conventionally read

甲 is the first stem: upright, forward, the trunk of a tree rather than its branches. 子 is the middle of the night, where the cycle restarts.

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

When the next 甲子 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 16 December 2026 (Wednesday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 甲子 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 Water — what produces the stem. The other five branches this stem sits on are 戌 (Earth), 申 (Metal), 午 (Fire), 辰 (Earth), 寅 (Wood).