Jia (甲) is the first of the ten heavenly stems and the yang form of Wood. If Jia is your Day Master, it is the stem sitting on top of your day pillar — the character in your chart that everything else is read against.
Jia Wood is the Yang form of Wood, one of the ten Day Masters. New to this? Start with what a Day Master is and how it is calculated.
The classical image for Jia is a standing tree: something that grows in one direction, takes years to reach full height, and does not bend easily once it has chosen where to put its trunk. That image carries most of what the stem means in practice.
Jia tends to be upright in the plain sense of the word — direct, principled, uncomfortable with things that require pretending. It takes responsibility early and often ends up carrying more than it was asked to, because a tree is what other things lean on. Where Yi Wood (乙) grows around obstacles like a vine, Jia grows through them or stops.
That is also the limitation. A tree cannot step sideways. The recurring difficulty for a Jia Day Master is not weakness of will but excess of it: continuing along a decided road well past the point where the evidence stopped supporting it. The classical phrasing is that Jia must be cut to be useful — it needs shaping from elsewhere in the chart rather than an easy ride.
Wood is produced by Water and controls Earth; it is in turn controlled by Metal and drains into Fire. For a Jia Day Master this means Water appears as support and learning, Earth as wealth and material ground, Metal as authority and pressure, and Fire as output and expression. Which of these actually helps depends entirely on whether the chart as a whole is strong or weak — the same element is a remedy in one chart and a burden in another.
These relationships are the Ten Gods (十神). They are not personality labels — they describe what another stem does to your Day Master when it appears in your chart. This table is generated from the same function the chart tool uses, so it matches what the calculator would tell you.
| Stem | Relation to Jia Wood | What it does to Jia Wood |
|---|---|---|
| Jia Wood 甲 | Friend 比肩 | A true peer for the great tree; a rival for the same ground. |
| Yi Wood 乙 | Rob Wealth 劫財 | Wood of the other polarity beside the great tree — money leaves through people. |
| Bing Fire 丙 | Eating God 食神 | the great tree outputs Fire easily — talent that flows. |
| Ding Fire 丁 | Hurting Officer 傷官 | the great tree outputs Fire sharply — brilliance that cuts. |
| Wu Earth 戊 | Indirect Wealth 偏財 | the great tree works Earth in lumps — windfalls, not salary. |
| Ji Earth 己 | Direct Wealth 正財 | the great tree works Earth steadily — earned in proportion to effort. |
| Geng Metal 庚 | Seven Killings 七殺 | Metal cuts at the great tree — pressure that asks no permission. |
| Xin Metal 辛 | Direct Officer 正官 | Metal shapes the great tree — structure you accept. |
| Ren Water 壬 | Indirect Resource 偏印 | Water feeds the great tree unevenly — sideways insight. |
| Gui Water 癸 | Direct Resource 正印 | Water feeds the great tree steadily — support and schooling. |
What each of the ten relations means in general — Direct Wealth, Seven Killings, Hurting Officer and the rest — is set out in the Ten Gods glossary.
Classical BaZi grades a stem by the season it was born into — the 旺相休囚死 scale. Wood peaks in spring, is supported in winter, and is at its weakest in autumn when Metal rules.
| Birth season | Grade | What it does to Jia Wood |
|---|---|---|
| Spring (寅卯辰 · Feb–Apr) | 旺 Peak | A tree in its own season. Jia born in spring rarely needs more Wood; adding it produces a thicket rather than a canopy. |
| Summer (巳午未 · May–Jul) | 休 Resting | The tree in full leaf, spending itself on Fire. Output comes easily, and Water at the root is what stops it becoming exhaustion. |
| Autumn (申酉戌 · Aug–Oct) | 死 Weakest | Metal season cuts the trunk directly. Jia born here is shaped by pressure from the start — classically read as timber rather than damage, provided Fire is present to temper the blade. |
| Winter (亥子丑 · Nov–Jan) | 相 Supported | Frozen ground. The roots are supported but nothing grows above; Fire matters more here than additional Water. |
Wood corresponds to Green, the numbers 3, 8, and the direction East. These are traditional correspondences for the element itself. They are not a prescription — whether Wood is helpful to you depends on your whole chart, not on your Day Master alone.
15 June 1990, born in Hong Kong — day pillar 甲午 (Jia Wu).
The day stem is 甲, so the Day Master is Jia Wood. The birth month is 午 — deep summer, when Wood is resting and spending itself on Fire. So this is a Jia that expresses easily and tires easily, and Water in the rest of the chart matters more than it would for a spring-born Jia. Note what this example does not do: it does not declare the chart strong or weak from the Day Master alone, because you cannot.
How the day pillar is derived — solar terms, true solar time and the late Zi hour — and what a Day Master cannot tell you on its own, are covered on what is a Day Master.
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