The day pillar for Friday, 9 April 2027
| Day pillar | 戊午 (wu wu) |
|---|---|
| Heavenly stem | 戊 (wu) |
| Earthly branch | 午 (wu) |
| Day element | Earth 土 (tu) |
| Polarity | Yang |
| Month pillar | 甲辰 (jia chen), governed by 清明 (qingming) |
Today's day pillar is 戊午 (wu wu), a yang Earth day in the sixty-day cycle. The month pillar is 甲辰 (jia chen), governed by the term 清明 (qingming).
How stems and branches work together
干支 (gan zhi) is the whole system in two characters: the stem is what a day shows, and the branch is the ground it is standing on.
The heavenly stems are traditionally read as the visible, upper layer, one element in one polarity and nothing else. The earthly branches are the lower layer and are more crowded: each one hides one, two or three stems inside it, so a branch carries a season, an animal, a two-hour period and its own concealed elements at the same time.
That is why the same element can be present twice in a day in different ways. 庚申 (geng shen) has yang Metal on top and a branch whose main hidden stem is also 庚, while 甲子 (jia zi) has yang Wood over a branch hiding yin Water, the element that feeds it.
Reading a pillar means reading both rows and the relationship between them. Everything the tradition does with the sixty pillars starts there.