What Is Day Master Strength? How Much Support You Get
A strong Day Master gets a lot of support, and a weak one gets little. Your Day Master is the Heavenly Stem of the day you were born, and it stands for you.
Two kinds of element support it. The same element as your Day Master is called Peers. The element that feeds it is called Seal. For example, a Bing Fire Day Master has fire as Peers, and since wood feeds fire, wood is its Seal.
Enter your birth details in the free BaZi calculator to get your Four Pillars. Your Day Master is marked "Strong" or "Weak". That label comes from counting your four branches.
Calculate your BaZi chart
Enter your birth details to discover your Day Master, elemental balance, and how these concepts apply to your Four Pillars.
How Do You Tell? Count the Main Qi of Four Branches
To judge strength, count how many of your four branches support the Day Master. Each Earthly Branch has one main element, called its main qi.
- Find your Day Master's element. Bing, for example, is fire.
- Look up the main qi of your year, month, day and hour branches.
- Count how many of them are Peers or Seal.
| Main qi | Branches |
|---|---|
| Wood | Yin, Mao |
| Fire | Si, Wu |
| Earth | Chou, Chen, Wei, Xu |
| Metal | Shen, You |
| Water | Zi, Hai |
| Supporting branches | Result |
|---|---|
| Three or four | Strong |
| Two | Still strong, but close to balanced |
| One or none | Weak |
Sometimes three particular branches all appear and merge into one element. This is called a Three Harmony (San He) or Three Meeting (San Hui) combination. When it happens, those three branches count as the merged element. The stems are not counted, and the month branch counts once, like the other three.
Worked Example: One Weak Chart, One Strong
In the first chart, a Bing Fire Day Master is born in the tiger month of early spring. Only one of its four branches supports it, so it is weak.
| Pillar | Stem and branch | Branch main qi | For the Day Master |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Jia Xu | Earth | Output, does not count |
| Month | Bing Yin | Wood | Seal, counts |
| Day | Bing Xu | Earth | Output, does not count |
| Hour | Wu Xu | Earth | Output, does not count |
It has to feed three earth branches, and its strength drains away. Favorable elements are the elements that help a chart. For this chart, look for them in wood and fire, which are its Seal and Peers.
In the second chart, a Ji Earth Day Master is also born in the tiger month. Three earth branches support it, so it is strong.
| Pillar | Stem and branch | Branch main qi | For the Day Master |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Xin Wei | Earth | Peers, counts |
| Month | Geng Yin | Wood | Officer and Killings, does not count |
| Day | Ji Wei | Earth | Peers, counts |
| Hour | Xin Wei | Earth | Peers, counts |
It has strength to spare. Its favorable elements lie in wood, which controls it, water, which it controls, and metal, which it feeds.
Why Not Use the Common Scoring Method?
All four branches affect the Day Master, so Fortune Cloud counts each one once. The month branch does not get to decide most of the result. It marks the season you were born in.
The common scoring method checks three things. Is the Day Master in season, judged by the month branch? Do the branches hold its own kind? And how many stems help it?
| Aspect | Common scoring | Counting main qi |
|---|---|---|
| Month branch | 50 to 60 percent | One of four |
| Stems | Scored | Not counted |
| Result | A score | Strong or weak |
The month branch still matters. The calculator's "Timely" and "Untimely" marks come from it, and so does the season's warmth or cold.
The two methods often disagree when the Day Master is in season. In the examples, the fire chart is in season yet weak, and the earth chart is out of season yet strong.
Strong vs Weak: What Is the Difference?
The difference is that their favorable elements point in opposite directions. A strong Day Master has strength to spare and needs an outlet. A weak one is short of strength and needs support.
There are five ways an element can relate to your Day Master. Split each by yin and yang, and you get the Ten Gods.
| Group | Relation to Day Master | When strong | When weak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peers | Same element | Unfavorable | Favorable |
| Seal | Feeds it | Unfavorable | Favorable |
| Output | It feeds | Favorable | Unfavorable |
| Wealth | It controls | Favorable | Unfavorable |
| Officer and Killings | Controls it | Favorable | Unfavorable |
This is only a direction, not a verdict. Which group your chart actually uses depends on whether it has a root in the branches.
What About a Very Weak Day Master, or a Yin Stem?
However weak you are, the chart still takes Peers and Seal, and no other method replaces them. Lifting the weak and holding back the strong is called support and restrain (Fu Yi). Ditian Sui Chanwei puts it simply: "restrain when restraint is due, support when support is due."
A yin stem can have a root just as a yang stem can. Having a root means a branch hides a stem of your Day Master's element. You may read elsewhere that yin stems have no root, but Fortune Cloud does not follow that view.
