The day pillar for Thursday, 29 July 2027

Day pillar	己酉 (ji you)
Heavenly stem	己 (ji)
Earthly branch	酉 (you)
Day element	Earth 土 (tu)
Polarity	Yin
Month pillar	丁未 (ding wei), governed by 小暑 (xiaoshu)

Today's day pillar is 己酉 (ji you), a yin Earth day in the sixty-day cycle. The month pillar is 丁未 (ding wei), governed by the term 小暑 (xiaoshu).

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.