Yang Metal day master
Geng, the seventh stem: Yang Metal, the blade. 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 Metal day master as the blade or the raw ore: direct, decisive, useful, and loyal to whoever it serves. The tradition associates it with courage, justice, a black-and-white sense of right, and a readiness to cut through what others are still discussing. It wants Fire to forge it and Water to temper it, and it is at its best when there is something to be cut.
The honest shadow is the blade's edge turned the wrong way: a harshness that wounds friends, a rigidity about rules, and an impatience with anything soft. The tradition says a Yang Metal chart with no Fire is ore that was never made into anything, and one with too much Fire is a blade melted back down.
What supports it, and what it supports
Yang Metal is Metal. In the cycle of the five, Earth produces Metal and supports it; Metal produces Water and is drained by it; Metal controls Wood; and Fire controls Metal. 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 forge it, Water to give it an edge, Earth to be mined from, and Wood to work on. Too much Metal beside it and everything is a fight.
The image, as the site reads it
Yang Metal is the blade. Direct, decisive and useful, and it needs work to keep its edge from turning on the wrong things.
Postcard versus reading, from the other side
Your year animal is the character everyone knows. Yang Metal 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 Metal, what drains it, what it controls and what controls it. A Yang Metal 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 Metal, 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 Metal 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 Metal is strong when Earth and Metal are plentiful in the other pillars and weak when Fire and Water 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 Metal and Yin Metal?
Same element, opposite polarity: the blade against the ornament. 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.