Naming your day master is the easy part. The harder, more useful question is how
much support it has. That has a real answer, not a vibe. Here it is, worked
on a real chart: Elon Musk, born June 28, 1971 (birth time unpublished, so this is an
honest three-pillar chart, the same one already used elsewhere on this site).
| Pillar | Stem | Branch | Hidden stems |
| year | Xin 辛 | Hai 亥 | Ren, Jia |
| month | Jia 甲 | Wu 午 | Ding, Ji |
| day (day master) | Jia 甲 | Shen 申 | Geng, Ren, Wu |
Musk's day pillar is Jia Wood: a Yang Wood day master. (Birth time unpublished, so the hour pillar is honestly
left out; the strength test below renormalizes to five positions instead of seven.)
The test itself comes from Wei Qianli's 1935 Qianli Minggao: does the day master
get seasonal support, does it root in the branches, do other stems stand with it? We
quantify that with the position weights standardized in modern popular bazi scoring, the
month branch counting heaviest, at 40% of the whole chart, because season is the
classical test's biggest single factor. For each position, only elements that are the day
master's own element or the one that generates it count as support, and hidden stems
inside each branch carry the strength shares from Zhu Zuxia's 1999 scoring lineage
(a lone hidden stem counts full weight; two-stem branches split 0.7/0.3; three-stem
branches split 0.6/0.3/0.1):
| Position | Weight | Character | Supports Wood? | Points |
| Year stem | 8 | Xin (Metal) | No: Metal overcomes Wood | 0 |
| Year branch | 4 | Hai: hidden Ren (Water, 0.7) + Jia (Wood, 0.3) | Both hidden stems support | 4 |
| Month stem | 12 | Jia (Wood) | Yes: the day master's own element | 12 |
| Month branch | 40 | Wu (Horse): hidden Ding (Fire, 0.7) + Ji (Earth, 0.3) | Neither supports | 0 |
| Day branch | 12 | Shen (Monkey): hidden Geng (Metal, 0.6) + Ren (Water, 0.3) + Wu (Earth, 0.1) | Only Ren's 0.3 share supports | 3.6 |
| Total | out of 76 | 19.6 |
19.6 of 76 possible points is 25.8%, well under the 50% line, so this
chart reads weak. Notice what actually did it: the single heaviest
position, the month branch at 40 points, contributed nothing at all, because a Horse
month's hidden stems (Fire and Earth) don't feed Wood. That is the seasonal-timing test
in action: one position, correctly weighted, can outvote everything else in the chart.
From here, favorable elements follow a fixed rule from the Yuanhai Ziping:
strengthen a weak day master, drain a strong one. Weak means the chart wants company and
feeding, so the favorable elements are the day master's own element and whatever
generates it. For a weak Wood day master, that's Wood and Water. (A
strong day master would instead favor whatever drains it, spends it, or disciplines it:
the opposite instinct.)
That single rule is also what makes a year's score computable. Take 2018, the year Musk
has called his hardest, in his own words. Its stem-and-branch is Wu-Xu: an Earth
year stem (unfavorable: −6) over a Dog branch whose dominant hidden stem is also Earth
(unfavorable: −8), landing inside a ten-year stretch this chart already marks unfavorable
(−18). Score starts every year at a baseline of 50 and adds the three swings:
50 + (−18 decade − 6 year stem − 8 year branch) = 18
Eighteen is the actual number the chart carries for 2018 on Musk's own life chart on this
site, the lowest candle he has. Not a coincidence and not a fit after the fact: the same
three numbers, added up in the open, land on the year he names himself.