乙丑 yi chou

乙 above, 丑 below

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

Where 乙丑 sits in the five elements

Fire does not appear anywhere in this pillar.

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

What is buried inside 丑

丑 hides 3 stems. The primary is 己 (Earth), what the stem restrains; behind it sit 癸 (Water, what produces the stem) and 辛 (Metal, what restrains the stem).

乙 meeting 丑: the 衰 stage

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

乙 meets 丑 at the 衰 stage — decline.

丑 against 未, with 子

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

Clashes with

未 (Goat) — 辛未

Combines with

子 (Rat) — 甲子

Nayin: 海中金

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

How 乙丑 is conventionally read

乙 is the same wood as 甲, but as a vine that bends and keeps climbing. 丑 is the last stretch of winter, storing what is not yet ready.

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 乙丑 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 17 December 2026 (Thursday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 乙丑 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.

乙 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 亥 (Water), 酉 (Metal), 未 (Earth), 巳 (Fire), 卯 (Wood).