Ten of them
The character your reading is about.
A BaZi chart has eight characters. Seven of them are circumstances; one is you. That one is the heavenly stem over the day you were born — the day master — and there are only ten. Five elements, each arriving in a yang form and a yin form, which are less alike than the shared element suggests.
Wood 木
Yang Wood甲tall timber
Yang Wood is the trunk that picked its direction early and has been committing to it ever since. It grows by adding rings rather than by changing shape, which is why a 甲 day master is hard to redirect and easy to rely on.
Yin Wood乙a climbing vine
Yin Wood is the vine, and a vine is not a weaker trunk. It is solving a different problem: it finds what is already standing and uses it, which is how it reaches heights its own thickness could never hold.
Fire 火
Yang Fire丙a bonfire
Yang Fire is the bonfire: light that was never meant to be private. A 丙 day master warms the whole room without being asked and without keeping score, and people find their way toward it before they can say why.
Yin Fire丁a candle flame
Yin Fire is the candle — small, deliberate, aimed. A 丁 day master does not light the room; it lights the one thing you needed to see, and it is still lit long after the bonfire has eaten its wood and gone out.
Earth 土
Yang Earth戊a mountain
Yang Earth is the mountain — the thing other people take their bearings from. A 戊 day master does not move for weather, and that is precisely the value: everyone around you gets to make plans, because you will still be there.
Yin Earth己garden soil
Yin Earth is garden soil, the one day master whose whole function is to make other things possible. A 己 holds what is planted in it and feeds it, and gets no credit — the harvest is named after the crop.
Metal 金
Yang Metal庚an axe-head
Yang Metal is the axe-head, made to meet something and settle it. A 庚 day master says the sentence the whole room was working around, and is genuinely puzzled that it needed saying at all.
Yin Metal辛a jeweler's blade
Yin Metal is the jeweler's blade: the same hardness, a hundredth of the mass, and a tolerance measured past where the eye can follow. A 辛 day master finds the flaw in the thing you were proud of, and is usually right.
Water 水
Yang Water壬a river in flood
Yang Water is the river in flood — volume with a direction. A 壬 day master goes around obstacles instead of through them and arrives anyway, which looks like luck to anyone who did not watch the whole route.
Yin Water癸morning dew
Yin Water is dew: the quietest of the ten and the one that gets everywhere. A 癸 day master arrives overnight without announcement, and by morning it is already in the places nothing else could reach.
Your day master is half of a crossing
The other half is your Western Sun. Five day-master elements meeting four Sun elements makes twenty crossings, each named for the device where those two elements actually meet in the world.
The twenty crossings