Ask a BaZi reader "what's my element?" and they'll look for one thing first: your Day Master — the Heavenly Stem of your birth day.
1. What the Day Master is
A BaZi chart is built from four pillars: year, month, day, and hour. Each pillar has a Heavenly Stem (one of ten) and an Earthly Branch (one of twelve). The ten stems each carry one of the five elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — in either yang or yin form:
| Element | Yang stem | Yin stem |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 甲 Jia | 乙 Yi |
| Fire | 丙 Bing | 丁 Ding |
| Earth | 戊 Wu | 己 Ji |
| Metal | 庚 Geng | 辛 Xin |
| Water | 壬 Ren | 癸 Gui |
Your Day Master is the stem on your day pillar. It represents "you" in the chart — your baseline temperament and how you respond to the world. In classical texts it's called 日元 (the "day origin"), and the entire chart is read relative to it.