What is Nhật Chủ?

What is the Day Master and where does it sit in a chart?

In Bát Tự (BaZi, the Four Pillars), each person has four pillars: Year, Month, Day and Hour. Each pillar consists of one Heavenly Stem and one Earthly Branch, giving eight characters in total. The Day Pillar consists of the Day Stem and the Day Branch. The Heavenly Stem of the Day Pillar is the Day Master, also called the Day Element. For example, a person born on a Giáp Tý day has Giáp as the Day Master, belonging to the Wood element.

Why is the Day Master considered the centre?

When reading a chart, the Day Master is taken as the reference point against which the other seven characters are compared. From this, the reader determines:

• The Five Element relationships between the Day Master and the other Stems and Branches: same element, being generated, generating, being controlled, controlling.
• The Ten Gods (Direct Resource, Indirect Resource, Friend, Rob Wealth, Eating God, Hurting Officer, Direct Wealth, Indirect Wealth, Direct Officer, Seven Killings) are all named according to their relationship with the Day Master.
• The strength or weakness of the Day Master, meaning how far it is supported by generation or drained by control across the whole chart.

For this reason, identifying the Day Master correctly is the first and most important step in reading a chart.

What is the Day Master used for?

After identifying the Day Master and assessing its strength, the reader looks for the Useful God, meaning the element or Five Element factor most needed to balance and remedy the four pillars. The Useful God is not fixed; it depends on the condition of the Day Master. A Day Master that is too strong usually needs an element that drains or controls it; a Day Master that is too weak usually needs an element that generates and supports it. From the Useful God, people infer aspects such as career, colours, directions and living environments that are considered more favourable for that person.

Distinguishing the Day Master from easily confused terms

• Day Master and Day Element: two names for the same concept, both referring to the Heavenly Stem of the Day Pillar.
• Day Master and Day Pillar: the Day Pillar is the whole pair of Stem and Branch of the birth day, while the Day Master is only the Heavenly Stem part.
• Day Master and Day Stem: in many documents, Day Stem is used as a synonym for Day Master; however, when people say "Day Stem" they usually emphasise the Stem aspect without the connotation of "the subject" that Day Master carries.
• Day Master and Self: in BaZi, "Self" also refers to the person being read, but it is usually used in phrases such as "strong Self" or "weak Self" to speak of intensity, rather than as the name of the Day Stem.

What should be kept in mind when using the Day Master?

BaZi is a traditional system of knowledge that is consultative in nature and has not been verified by science. Identifying the Day Master requires converting a solar calendar birth date into Stems and Branches according to the sexagenary calendar, so without a firm grasp of the conversion rules it is very easy to make mistakes. Those exploring it should treat it as a cultural perspective, not a substitute for decisions based on practical reality.

How do different schools understand the Day Master?

• The classical understanding (with the Day Master as the subject): the Day Master represents the person being read, and all Ten Gods and chart structures revolve around it. The strength or weakness of the Day Master determines the Useful God, the Favourable God and the Unfavourable God.
• The understanding that emphasises the Five Elements of the whole chart: some modern documents focus on the Five Element balance of the entire chart rather than assessing only the strength of the Day Master, treating the Day Master as one of the eight characters that must be placed within the whole.

Related articles

• What is the Useful God in Bát Tự (Four Pillars)?
• What is Bát Tự (Four Pillars)? How to read destiny through the eight Stem and Branch characters
• What is the Day Pillar in Bát Tự (Four Pillars)?

What are the ten Day Masters and the Five Element relationships around them?

The Day Master is the Stem of the Day Pillar and represents the person whose chart it is; every relationship in a BaZi chart is referred back to it. The last two columns are the two relationships most used in reading: the element that nourishes the self and the element the self governs.

The figures in the table match the results of the lookup tools on Nhật Nguyệt.