The day pillar for Monday, 21 June 2027

Day pillar	辛未 (xin wei)
Heavenly stem	辛 (xin)
Earthly branch	未 (wei)
Day element	Metal 金 (jin)
Polarity	Yin
Solar term	夏至 (xiazhi)
Month pillar	丙午 (bing wu), governed by 芒种 (mangzhong)

Today's day pillar is 辛未 (xin wei), a yin Metal day in the sixty-day cycle. Today is also the solar term 夏至 (xiazhi), one of the twenty-four stations of the solar year. The month pillar is 丙午 (bing wu), governed by the term 芒种 (mangzhong).

夏至 (xiazhi), summer solstice

夏至 is the longest day, the point where the light stops increasing and begins, very slowly, to go the other way.

至 means arrival or extremity, so the name is the arrival of summer at its limit. It falls around the twenty-first of June and pairs with 冬至 (dongzhi) at the opposite end of the year.

It is a medial term, seated in the middle of the 午 (wu) month. The tradition reads it as the turning point where yang is at maximum and yin has just started, which is the clearest statement in the whole calendar that the two are a cycle and not a contest.

The heat keeps rising for weeks afterwards. That gap between the peak of the light and the peak of the warmth is exactly what the twenty-four terms are built to describe.