When the day pillar is a Bing 丙 (Bǐng) day, use this bazi hour stem table for Bing day to fix the final pillar. Bing is yang Fire, the sun itself — outward, warming, impossible to hide. Its day opens on the Rat hour 戊子, so the first stem of the day is 戊 Wu, Earth taking the Fire’s heat.
The 12 hour pillars for a Bing 丙 day
| Hour (branch) | Time range | Hour pillar |
|---|---|---|
| Rat 子 | 23:00–00:59 | 戊子 (Wù Zǐ) |
| Ox 丑 | 01:00–02:59 | 己丑 (Jǐ Chǒu) |
| Tiger 寅 | 03:00–04:59 | 庚寅 (Gēng Yín) |
| Rabbit 卯 | 05:00–06:59 | 辛卯 (Xīn Mǎo) |
| Dragon 辰 | 07:00–08:59 | 壬辰 (Rén Chén) |
| Snake 巳 | 09:00–10:59 | 癸巳 (Guǐ Sì) |
| Horse 午 | 11:00–12:59 | 甲午 (Jiǎ Wǔ) |
| Goat 未 | 13:00–14:59 | 乙未 (Yǐ Wèi) |
| Monkey 申 | 15:00–16:59 | 丙申 (Bǐng Shēn) |
| Rooster 酉 | 17:00–18:59 | 丁酉 (Dīng Yǒu) |
| Dog 戌 | 19:00–20:59 | 戊戌 (Wù Xū) |
| Pig 亥 | 21:00–22:59 | 己亥 (Jǐ Hài) |
Worked example
Consider a Bing day birth at 12:05 — solar noon, the Horse hour (午, 11:00–12:59). The hour pillar is 甲午 (Jiǎ Wǔ). Both the branch 午 and the peak of the day are Fire, so a Bing Day Master born here is Fire on Fire: brilliant and hot, and a reader would immediately ask what in the rest of the chart cools or drains it. The same 甲午 pillar, incidentally, is what a Xin day produces at that hour — a reminder that the Five Rats pairing folds Bing and Xin together.
Look one layer down and the heat deepens. The hidden stems (藏干 cánggān) of Wǔ 午 (Horse) are Dīng 丁 (Yin Fire) and Jǐ 己 (Yin Earth); against a Bing Day Master they play Rob Wealth (劫财 jiécái) and Hurting Officer (伤官 shāngguān), while the visible 甲 stem is Indirect Resource (偏印 piānyìn) — Wood feeding the blaze from above even as companions crowd it from below. The Horse hour page explores that branch on its own terms.
What each hour seats in a Bing chart
The hour pillar is the ten-god seat of the destination palace — children, output, later life. Row by row, here is the Ten God (十神 shíshén) each hour stem plays against a Bing Day Master:
| Hour | Hour stem | Ten God for Bing 丙 |
|---|---|---|
| Rat 子 | 戊 | Eating God 食神 |
| Ox 丑 | 己 | Hurting Officer 伤官 |
| Tiger 寅 | 庚 | Indirect Wealth 偏财 |
| Rabbit 卯 | 辛 | Direct Wealth 正财 |
| Dragon 辰 | 壬 | Seven Killings 七杀 |
| Snake 巳 | 癸 | Direct Officer 正官 |
| Horse 午 | 甲 | Indirect Resource 偏印 |
| Goat 未 | 乙 | Direct Resource 正印 |
| Monkey 申 | 丙 | Friend 比肩 |
| Rooster 酉 | 丁 | Rob Wealth 劫财 |
| Dog 戌 | 戊 | Eating God 食神 |
| Pig 亥 | 己 | Hurting Officer 伤官 |
None of these is good or bad in itself. A blazing, well-rooted Bing enjoys the Dragon hour’s Seven Killings as discipline; a dim winter Bing finds the same god punishing. Strength decides, and the Bing Fire Day Master profile together with the strong-versus-weak guide is where that call gets made.
Reading the pattern, and reading the clock
Two things are worth noticing before you lift a pillar off this table. First, the pattern itself: as you move down the hours the branch stays fixed by the clock, but the stem climbs one step of the ten-stem sequence at every hour, looping from 癸 back to 甲 when it reaches the end. That single motion is the whole Five Rats rule at work, and it is why the Bing-day column begins on 戊子 and closes twelve steps later on 己亥.
Second, the clock. The times above are true solar times, tied to the sun’s real position rather than the figure on a birth certificate. Two corrections can push a birth across an hour line. One is the longitude gap between the birth city and the meridian its time zone is officially set to — in Singapore, where clocks run on UTC+8 while the island lies nearer 104°E, civil time can lead solar time by close to half an hour. The other is the equation of time, a seasonal drift of up to about a quarter-hour either way. For a Bing-day birth logged near a boundary such as 08:57, those few minutes decide which row above is genuinely yours. The calculator linked below applies both corrections for you, which is why its result can differ from a hand count taken off raw clock time.
The late Zi (子) note for Bing days
The Rat hour is 23:00–00:59, straddling midnight. A birth from 23:00–23:59 on a Bing day takes the next day stem’s Zi pillar for the hour, while the day pillar stays Bing. This is the late-Zi (晚子時 wǎn zǐshí) convention, and it is one of the few points where reputable schools split. See the birth hour and hour pillar page for the full treatment.
Walking it through your own chart
- Confirm the day stem is 丙 — the upper character of the day pillar, the same character as the Day Master.
- Correct the recorded birth time toward solar time, especially within twenty minutes of any boundary.
- Match the corrected time to its double-hour and lift the pillar from the first table.
- Read the second table for the ten god now seated at the destination, and weigh it against the chart’s strength.
No recorded time at all? Work the six characters you have — the season gate, the Day Master, the spouse palace all survive — and treat the destination palace as an open question. Family recollection (“just before lunch”) often narrows a Bing day to two candidate hours; a practitioner then tests each candidate pillar against the life so far rather than guessing. What matters is not to invent a time for completeness.
What the hour pillar governs
The hour is the destination pillar — children, creative output, ambition and later life. It is the one pillar you cannot copy off a calendar; it is derived through the Five Rats rule (五鼠遁 wǔshǔdùn), which the master hour stem table lays out in full. Its yin-Fire counterpart, the Ding day hour table, opens its Rat hour on 庚子 — a telling contrast with Bing’s 戊子.
Skip the arithmetic and let the calculator fix your Bing-day hour pillar to the minute, late-Zi rule included.