Day Pillar #4 · 丁卯
| Position in the cycle | #4 of 60 |
|---|---|
| Heavenly stem 天干 | 丁 — 火 Fire |
| Earthly branch 地支 | 卯 — 木 Wood |
| Nayin 纳音 | 炉中火 — Fire in the Furnace (Fire) |
| Hidden stems 藏干 | 乙 — 乙 (Wood) |
| Twelve-stage placement 十二长生 | 病 — Illness (of the stem in its own branch) |
Where 丙 Bing is the sun, 丁 Ding is the star and the lamp. The classical framing of Ding is always comparative — it is defined by what it is not:
丁火继丙之后，为万物之精，文明之象。
Ding fire follows Bing; it is the essence of all things, the image of civilisation.
The instruction, as usual, sits in the conditions rather than in any adjective. The most striking is a timing condition:
凡丁日生人，喜遇夜，喜遇秋，如星光之得时也。
The Ding-day person favours the night and favours the autumn — like starlight coming into its season.
It underperforms while competing with a brighter source and comes into its own when the ambient light drops. Not a preference, a mechanism.
The second condition is about durability, and it corrects the obvious misreading that a smaller fire is a more fragile one:
石里所藏属丁火，石虽在水，即时取击，亦自有火。
The fire hidden inside stone belongs to Ding: though the stone sits in water, strike it there and then, and the fire is still there.
An open flame goes out in a wet environment. This one does not, because it is latent rather than exposed — recoverable, and struck rather than blown.
The sixty-pillar register files 丁卯 itself under a matching image: 为炉烟, the smoke of the furnace, favouring the eastern quarter and the autumn and winter.
Sources: 《三命通会》 (San Ming Tong Hui, Ming, 万民英) and 《滴天髓》 (Di Tian Sui) — both quoted from local plain-text editions and verified character by character. Translations are ours. Corrections are welcome.
Enter a birth date and time to get the four pillars, the hidden stems, the nayin and the twelve-stage placements for a real chart — the same tables this page is built on.
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