bing-shen day pillar

Fire sits above metal in 丙申, and fire melts metal, so the stem controls its seat on the Monkey branch. Three hidden stems in this site's 申 each carry a different name for 丙: 庚 is Indirect Wealth, 壬 is Seven Killings and 戊 is the Eating God. Seven Killings is a loud label for a plain relation, yang water restraining yang fire at matching polarity. The manuals also split over its use: 三命通會 divides 七殺 from 偏官 by whether something holds it in check, while 淵海子平 also weighs the vigor of the day master.

三命通會 卷一 pictures this pair as 白茅野烧, white thatch grass burning across open country, and says it likes autumn, winter and wood. The 納音 name it shares with 丁酉, Fire at the Foot of the Mountain, sets a different scene from a grass fire, and the chapter does not reconcile them.

On 申 the twelve stages put 丙 at Sickness, 病. It comes one step after Decline in a sequence borrowed from the course of a life, and it reports nothing about anybody's body.