The day pillar for Wednesday, 19 May 2027

Day pillar	戊戌 (wu xu)
Heavenly stem	戊 (wu)
Earthly branch	戌 (xu)
Day element	Earth 土 (tu)
Polarity	Yang
Month pillar	乙巳 (yi si), governed by 立夏 (lixia)

Today's day pillar is 戊戌 (wu xu), a yang Earth day in the sixty-day cycle. The month pillar is 乙巳 (yi si), governed by the term 立夏 (lixia).

Earth 土 (tu)

Earth is the element of the middle, the phase that holds the other four apart and lets them change into one another.

土 is the odd one out among the five. The other elements each own a season, while Earth owns the seams between them: the last stretch of every season belongs to an earth branch, 辰 (chen), 未 (wei), 戌 (xu) and 丑 (chou). Its stems are 戊 (wu), the mountain, and 己 (ji), the field.

Earth is generated by Fire and generates Metal, since ore is found in ground. It controls Water, which is the image of a dam or a riverbank. Because it is the medium the other elements pass through, it is often described as stabilising rather than as doing anything of its own.

An Earth day is one whose stem is 戊 or 己. Readers frequently call those days steady or slow, and the tradition takes that as a pace, not as a day where nothing counts.