Yang Fire day master
Bing, the third stem: Yang Fire, the sun. 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 Fire day master as the sun: bright, generous, impossible to hide, and giving to everything below it without keeping count. The tradition associates it with warmth, openness, a natural authority that does not need to insist, and an enthusiasm that lifts a room. It cannot be dimmed by the things that dim a candle, and what is felt here is generally visible to everyone else.
The honest shadow is the sun's excess: a heat that scorches what it meant to warm, a need to be at the centre of the sky, and an inability to be private. The tradition says a Yang Fire chart with too much Wood burns out of control, and one with too much Water is an eclipse, the sun there and not seen.
What supports it, and what it supports
Yang Fire is Fire. In the cycle of the five, Wood produces Fire and supports it; Fire produces Earth and is drained by it; Fire controls Metal; and Water controls Fire. 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.
Wood to burn, Earth to shine on, enough Water to be reflected in, and Metal to melt into something. Too much Fire beside it and there is no shade anywhere.
The image, as the site reads it
Yang Fire is the sun. It cannot be dimmed and it does not conceal itself, so what is felt here is generally visible to everyone else.
Postcard versus reading, from the other side
Your year animal is the character everyone knows. Yang Fire 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 Fire, what drains it, what it controls and what controls it. A Yang Fire 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 Fire, 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 Fire 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 Fire is strong when Wood and Fire are plentiful in the other pillars and weak when Water and Earth 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 Fire and Yin Fire?
Same element, opposite polarity: the sun against the candle. 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.