| Day pillar | 乙丑 (yi chou) |
|---|---|
| Heavenly stem | 乙 (yi) |
| Earthly branch | 丑 (chou) |
| Day element | Wood 木 (mu) |
| Polarity | Yin |
| Month pillar | 壬寅 (ren yin), governed by 立春 (lichun) |
Today's day pillar is 乙丑 (yi chou), a yin Wood day in the sixty-day cycle. The month pillar is 壬寅 (ren yin), governed by the term 立春 (lichun).
Wood is the element of growth and direction, the phase where something that was only potential picks a way to go.
木 is one of the five elements, or five phases, that BaZi uses to describe everything in a chart. Wood is spring, morning, and the act of putting out shoots. It appears as two heavenly stems, 甲 (jia) for its yang form and 乙 (yi) for its yin form, and as two earthly branches, 寅 (yin) the tiger and 卯 (mao) the rabbit.
The five elements are a cycle rather than a list. Water feeds Wood, Wood feeds Fire, and Wood in turn controls Earth, which is the image of roots breaking up ground. Nothing in that cycle is good or bad by itself; the readings come from what a particular chart has too much or too little of.
On the daily page the day element is the element of the day's stem. So a Wood day is a day whose stem is 甲 or 乙, and it can perfectly well carry a branch of some other element underneath.