Yang Earth day master
Wu, the fifth stem: Yang Earth, the mountain. In Four Pillars the stem of the day of birth is the self, and everything else in the chart is read as what supports it, drains it, or stands in its way.
What the tradition says
Four Pillars reads a Yang Earth day master as the mountain: immovable, dependable, slow, and difficult to shift once a position has been taken. The tradition associates it with trustworthiness, a protective stillness that others shelter behind, patience over long stretches, and a stubborn honesty. It does well with Fire to warm it and Water running through it, and it holds whatever is planted on its slopes.
The honest shadow is the mountain's inertia: a stubbornness that mistakes itself for principle, a coldness at the summit, and a slowness that other people experience as being ignored. The tradition says a Yang Earth chart with too much Earth is a range with no valleys, and one with too much Wood is a hillside being dug into.
What supports it, and what it supports
Yang Earth is Earth. In the cycle of the five, Fire produces Earth and supports it; Earth produces Metal and is drained by it; Earth controls Water; and Wood controls Earth. A chart is read by counting which of the five is plentiful and which is missing around the day master, and the tradition's word for a good chart is not a strong one but a balanced one.
Fire to warm it, Water to run through it, Wood on its slopes and Metal in its veins. The tradition reads a mountain with none of the others as a barren one.
The image, as the site reads it
Yang Earth is the mountain. Immovable, dependable and slow, and difficult to shift once a position has been taken.
Postcard versus reading, from the other side
Your year animal is the character everyone knows. Yang Earth is the one the tradition reads first, and hardly anyone knows theirs.
The year animal is the branch of the year pillar, shared by everyone born in the same twelve months. The day master is the stem of the day pillar, one of ten, and it changes every day, so it is the character of a birth rather than of a cohort. The tradition weighs the other seven characters against it: what feeds Yang Earth, what drains it, what it controls and what controls it. A Yang Earth born in a Dragon year and one born in a Rat year are read as the same self in different weather, and two Dragons with different day masters are read as different people who share a postcard.
The ten year luck pillars are read against the day master too: each decade's stem and branch is weighed as support or drain for Yang Earth, which is what the calculator's luck pillar section does once sex at birth is given.
About 60 seconds · needs your date, time and place · the four pillars are drawn for you
Questions people ask
How do I find my day master?
From the day pillar, which the calculator works out from your date and place of birth by the solar terms rather than the calendar. It is the stem, the upper character, of the day column, and it is the same for everyone born on that day anywhere in the world.
Is Yang Earth a strong day master?
Strength in Four Pillars is a reading of the chart around the day master, not a virtue of the stem: Yang Earth is strong when Fire and Earth are plentiful in the other pillars and weak when Wood and Metal are. The tradition prefers balance to strength, and reads a strong day master with nothing to do as a burden.
What is the difference between Yang Earth and Yin Earth?
Same element, opposite polarity: the mountain against the field. The tradition reads Yang as the outward, forceful form of the element and Yin as the inward, flexible one, and it does not rank them.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.