Day pillar 42 of 60

乙巳 yi si

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

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

乙 above, 巳 below

乙 Heavenly stem Wood 木 · yin
巳 Earthly branch Fire 火 · Snake

The stem generates the branch: Wood produces Fire. The upper half of the pillar feeds the lower half, so the visible stem is spending itself on what it sits above.

Where 乙巳 sits in the five elements

Water does not appear anywhere in this pillar.

Fire40.7%
Wood37.0%
Earth11.1%
Metal11.1%

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

What is buried inside 巳

丙Fireprimary
庚Metalmiddle
戊Earthresidual

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

乙 meeting 巳: the 沐浴 stage

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

沐浴
bath exposed and unstable, the stage where things get tested and sometimes sullied

乙 meets 巳 at the 沐浴 stage — bath.

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: 覆灯火

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

How 乙巳 is conventionally read

乙 is the same wood as 甲, but as a vine that bends and keeps climbing. 巳 is the fire that has just caught, still gathering.

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

When the next 乙巳 days fall

The sixty-cycle repeats every sixty days, so this pillar returns roughly every two months. The next one is 27 November 2026 (Friday). Each is calculated at midday Beijing time; a birth in the hour before midnight can still belong to the previous 乙巳 day, because the day rolls at 23:00 true solar time.

DateWeekdayYear / month / day pillar
2026-11-27Friday丙午 己亥 乙巳
2027-01-26Tuesday丙午 辛丑 乙巳
2027-03-27Saturday丁未 癸卯 乙巳
2027-05-26Wednesday丁未 乙巳 乙巳
2027-07-25Sunday丁未 丁未 乙巳
2027-09-23Thursday丁未 己酉 乙巳

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:

PillarBranchFootingStage
乙丑丑 · OxWood on Earthdecline
乙亥亥 · PigWood on Waterdeath
乙酉酉 · RoosterWood on Metalseverance
乙未未 · GoatWood on Earthnurture
乙巳 ←巳 · SnakeWood on Firebath
乙卯卯 · RabbitWood on Woodoffice

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

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