Day Pillar #2 · 乙丑
| Position in the cycle | #2 of 60 |
|---|---|
| Heavenly stem 天干 | 乙 — 木 Wood |
| Earthly branch 地支 | 丑 — 土 Earth |
| Nayin 纳音 | 海中金 — Gold in the Sea (Metal) |
| Hidden stems 藏干 | 己、癸、辛 — 己 (Earth), 癸 (Water), 辛 (Metal) |
| Twelve-stage placement 十二长生 | 衰 — Decline (of the stem in its own branch) |
Yichou (乙丑), day pillar #2, shares its nayin with Jiazi: both are 海中金, Gold in the Sea. But the sixty-pillar register gives Yichou a different image and, more importantly, a different condition.
乙丑金，为顽矿，喜火及南方日时。
Yichou metal: stubborn ore. It favours fire, and day or hour pillars in the south.
"Stubborn ore" (顽矿) is unrefined rock with metal still in it — quiet on the surface, dense underneath, and not yet usable. Where Jiazi was already a finished treasure needing only exposure, Yichou is raw material needing process.
The Yu Xiao Bao Jian, quoted inside San Ming Tong Hui, states the mechanism for both pillars in one line:
甲子乙丑未成器，金见火则成，多见则吉。
Jiazi and Yichou are not yet made into vessels; this metal is completed when it meets fire, and the more it meets, the better.
That is the whole reading, and it is a condition rather than a verdict: the value is real and present, but latent, and it is heat — pressure, refining, being worked on — that converts it. A late bloomer in the precise sense that the raw material was never in question.
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.
Open the chart calculator →甲子 Jiazi · 丙寅 Bingyin · 丁卯 Dingmao · 壬申 Renshen · 癸酉 Guiyou · 甲戌 Jiaxu · all sixty →