Yin Metal day master
Xin, the eighth stem: Yin Metal, the ornament. 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 Yin Metal day master as the jewel or the finished ornament: refined, precise, particular, and valuing quality over quantity in almost everything. The tradition associates it with taste, attention to finish, a quiet pride in craft, and a sensitivity to being handled carelessly. It wants Water to be polished by and Earth to be set in, and it shows best in a little light rather than a furnace.
The honest shadow is the ornament's vanity: a fussiness about surface, a brittleness under pressure, and a resentment at being valued for the wrong things. The tradition says a Yin Metal chart with too much Fire is a jewel in the forge, and one with too much Earth is a jewel buried, precious and unseen.
What supports it, and what it supports
Yin 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.
Water to polish it, a little Earth to set it in, gentle Fire to show it, and not much Wood. Yang Metal beside it scratches; too much Yin Metal and it is a drawer of rings.
The image, as the site reads it
Yin Metal is the ornament. Refined, precise and particular, valuing quality over quantity in almost everything.
Postcard versus reading, from the other side
Your year animal is the character everyone knows. Yin 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 Yin Metal, what drains it, what it controls and what controls it. A Yin 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 Yin 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 Yin 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: Yin 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 Yin Metal and Yang Metal?
Same element, opposite polarity: the ornament against the blade. 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.