Quick answer: 丁卯 is yin fire (丁) sitting on wood (卯, the Rabbit). The branch produces the stem, so it sits on its resource star (偏印 Indirect Resource), at the Sickness life stage; its Na Yin is 炉中火 (Fire in the Furnace).
When your day pillar is 丁卯 (Ding Mao), your Day Master is 丁 — yin fire — and it sits on 卯, the Rabbit. 丁卯 is number 4 of the sixty pillars. Below we unpack the stem, the branch, the hidden stems, the element balance and the traditional readings, with links to the deeper guides.
| Pillar | 丁卯 Ding Mao |
|---|---|
| Stem | 丁 Ding — yin Fire (火) |
| Branch | 卯 Mao — Rabbit, Wood; hours 05:00–07:00 |
| Hidden stems | 乙 |
| Life stage of 丁 in 卯 | Sickness (病) |
| Na Yin (納音) | 炉中火 — Fire in the Furnace (Fire), shared with 丙寅 |
| Void branches (空亡) | 戌亥 |
| Branch clashes with · combines with | 酉 (Rooster) · 戌 (Dog) |
The stem: 丁 Ding
The classical description of 丁 comes from the Di Tian Sui (滴天髓):
丁火柔中，內性昭融，抱乙而考，合壬而忠，旺而不烈，衰而不窮，如有嫡母，可秋可冬。“Ding fire is gentle and centred, bright and warm within. Holding Yi, it is filial; combining with Ren, it is loyal. Strong, it is not fierce; weak, it is not exhausted. If it has its true mother, it does well in autumn and in winter.”— Di Tian Sui (Drops from Heaven’s Marrow) 《滴天髓》, 天干論. Original text: Wikisource · also on ctext.org (different edition). Translation: bazimethod.
Ding (丁) is yin fire: the candle or lamp. The Di Tian Sui calls it soft and gentle yet “inwardly bright” — fire that is small and steady and works best when it has wood to burn. On the day pillar, this stem is the Day Master — the “self” of the chart that every other character is measured against. The full verse and a ten-gods table are on the Ding Fire Day Master page.
The branch: 卯 Mao
Mao (卯), the Rabbit, is mid-spring and pure wood, holding only 乙. It is the most concentrated wood branch. The day branch is traditionally called the spouse palace (夫妻宮), the seat closest to the self, so readers look at it for themes of partnership and private life. As a month it corresponds to the 卯 month (early March to early April, mid-spring).
How the stem and branch work together
The branch’s element produces the stem’s element, so 丁 sits on its own resource (印) star. The seat is supportive: the branch feeds the stem the way a parent feeds a child. Traditional readings associate it with learning, protection and an inward, reflective temperament, and say the spouse palace here brings support.
In the life-stage cycle this is Sickness, a weakening stage. On its own the seat lends the stem little strength, so support has to come from the month and the other pillars.
Hidden stems in 卯
Each branch contains one to three hidden stems. Measured against 丁, they take these ten-god roles:
| Hidden stem | Layer | Element | Ten god for 丁 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 乙 | Main qi (本氣) | Wood | 偏印 — Indirect Resource |
The main qi, 乙, is an Indirect Resource (偏印) — the element that produces the Day Master, same polarity; unconventional learning and support. Because 卯 holds only one stem, its meaning in this pillar is unusually concentrated.
Element balance
Counting the stem plus the hidden stems (weighting the main qi fully and the minor qi less, one common convention), the pillar leans wood > fire, and earth, metal, water are absent from the pillar itself. That does not mean the chart lacks them — the year, month and hour pillars usually change the picture entirely, and the month branch matters most of all.
Because the strength of 丁 depends above all on the month of birth, the same 丁卯 day reads very differently in different seasons: a fire Day Master is strongest in summer and weakest in winter. The five elements and useful god guides explain how practitioners decide whether a chart wants more of an element or less.
Na Yin: 炉中火
In the older Na Yin system the sixty pillars are grouped in pairs, each with a poetic “sound element”. 丁卯 and 丙寅 share 炉中火, “Fire in the Furnace”, a fire image. Note that the Na Yin element (Fire) is separate from the elements of the stem (Fire) and branch (Wood); most modern Zi Ping readers use Na Yin as colour rather than as the basis of the reading.
Traditional personality themes
Popular Bazi writing associates 丁 Day Masters with a quiet, inward light and attention to detail, and sometimes with insight, care and steady attention. On a 卯 seat, the 偏印 (Indirect Resource) star in the spouse palace colours that picture, as described above. These are traditional images, offered for cultural interest. They are not evidence about any real person, and a single pillar never decides a reading — the classics always judge the whole chart, its season and its balance.
Clashes, combinations and void branches
卯 clashes with 酉 and forms a six-combination (六合) with 戌, said to produce fire. It also belongs to the 亥卯未 three-harmony group of wood. When those branches appear in the year, month or hour, or arrive in a luck pillar, tradition says the spouse palace is “moved”. See combinations and clashes.
The pillar belongs to the 甲子 decade (旬) of the sixty-cycle, whose two “void” branches (旬空, 空亡) are 戌 and 亥. Many practitioners note when those branches appear elsewhere in the chart or in luck pillars, reading them as weakened or “empty”.
A closer look at 丁卯
丁卯 puts one line of the Di Tian Sui verse quoted above directly into the chart: 丁 “holding 乙 is filial” (抱乙而孝). 卯 contains nothing but 乙, so the candle sits on the very stem the verse names. The traditional commentary explains the image: 乙 is the mother of 丁, metal (辛) is what cuts 乙, and 丁 melts that metal, so the child protects the parent. The same verse adds that with its “true mother” (嫡母, 甲 wood) 丁 copes with autumn and winter. 卯 offers only 乙, so readers look for 甲 elsewhere, for example 寅 or 亥.
The seat looks generous but is not a strong root. Under the yin-stem life-stage cycle 丁 is at Sickness in 卯, and 乙 is grass rather than timber. A common teaching, often summed up as 濕乙傷丁 (“damp 乙 harms 丁”), says fresh spring growth smokes more than it burns. Schools that run yin stems on the same cycle as yang stems would place 丁 at the Bath stage here instead, which shows how much the label depends on the convention.
One detail is specific to this pillar. 卯 combines with 戌 into fire, the Day Master’s own element, yet 戌 is one of 丁卯’s two void branches. The partner that would turn the seat into fire is the one this decade treats as “empty”, so practitioners watch for a 戌 year or luck pillar. A 酉 branch clashes the rabbit and strikes the only stem it holds.
Find your own day pillar
The day pillar cannot be worked out from the Western date alone — it follows an unbroken sixty-day cycle, and a birth after 23:00 may count as the next day in some schools. Enter your birth data in the free Bazi calculator to see yours, then read the chart-reading guide.
Previous in the cycle: 丙寅 Bing Yin · Next: 戊辰 Wu Chen · All 60 day pillars
Keep learning
More in Day pillars, plus core guides — or go back to the Bazi calculator home page.
Classical quotations are copied from the public-domain texts on Wikisource; links let you check every line. English translations are our own. Traditional Bazi statements are reported as tradition, not as fact.