The twelve Day Officers, and how Chinese date selection works
A twelve-day cycle that decides whether today suits starting something, finishing it, or getting rid of it.
4 min read · Published 16 August 2026
The short answer
The twelve Day Officers (建除十二神) are a repeating twelve-day cycle in the Chinese almanac, each named for an action — Establish, Remove, Full, Level, Settle, Grasp, Break, Danger, Complete, Receive, Open, Close. Each day carries one, and it is one of the main things date selection reads. Complete (成), Open (開) and Settle (定) are broadly favourable for beginnings; Break (破), Danger (危) and Close (閉) are not. But that is not the whole rule, because for acts that are about ending or removing something — quitting a job, a divorce, stopping smoking — Remove (除) and Break (破) are exactly the right days.
All twelve
| Officer | Name | Read as |
|---|---|---|
| 建 Jian | Establish | Beginnings and taking up a position; traditionally too raw for anything delicate |
| 除 Chu | Remove | Clearing away — illness, obligations, anything you want gone |
| 滿 Man | Full | Abundance and completion; good for celebration, poor for starting |
| 平 Ping | Level | Balance and routine; nothing dramatic goes well or badly |
| 定 Ding | Settle | Fixing things in place — contracts, marriages, foundations |
| 執 Zhi | Grasp | Holding on to what you have; not for letting go or launching |
| 破 Po | Break | Rupture; traditionally avoided, except where breaking is the point |
| 危 Wei | Danger | Caution; read as unstable for anything you want to last |
| 成 Cheng | Complete | The most favoured — things begun today are read as finishing |
| 收 Shou | Receive | Gathering in; good for money and harvests, poor for setting out |
| 開 Kai | Open | Opening up — business, doors, new phases. Broadly auspicious |
| 閉 Bi | Close | Sealing and ending; poor for beginnings, right for finishing |
The rule that is not the rule
Most popular summaries stop at 'Complete and Open are good, Break and Close are bad', which is true for the majority of acts and actively misleading for a large minority of them.
The system is about matching the shape of the day to the shape of the act. If what you are doing is fundamentally a removal — leaving a job, ending a marriage, giving up smoking, clearing a debt — then Remove and Break days are the appropriate ones, and a Complete day is the mismatch.
This is why our date calculator reads Remove, Break and Close as favourable for quitting, divorcing and retiring, and flags it on the page: the officer list looks inverted for those events, and it is supposed to.
How the cycle is assigned
The officer for a given day is determined by the relationship between the day's Earthly Branch and the branch that governs the current month. Establish falls on the day whose branch matches the month's branch, and the remaining eleven follow in fixed order.
One consequence is that the cycle is not a clean twelve-day repeat across the year: at each monthly solar-term boundary, one officer repeats to resynchronise. Anyone counting days forward and finding themselves one out has usually just crossed a solar term.
Where the officers sit in a full reading
The Day Officer is one layer among several. A practitioner also reads the day's 宜 and 忌 lists — the specific activities the almanac names as suitable and unsuitable — whether it is a yellow-path or black-path day, the lunar mansion, and whether the day clashes the person's own zodiac animal.
The clash is the one that overrides the rest. A day can carry a Complete officer, sit on the yellow path and list your exact activity as suitable, and still be set aside because it clashes your year branch. In date selection the personal layer wins.
Common questions
- What are the 12 Day Officers?
- A twelve-day cycle in the Chinese almanac — Establish, Remove, Full, Level, Settle, Grasp, Break, Danger, Complete, Receive, Open and Close — each read as suiting different kinds of activity. Every day carries exactly one.
- Which Day Officers are best?
- Complete (成), Open (開) and Settle (定) for most beginnings. But for acts that are fundamentally about ending something — quitting, divorcing, stopping a habit — Remove (除) and Break (破) are the correct days, which inverts the usual advice.
- How is the Day Officer decided?
- By the relationship between the day's Earthly Branch and the branch governing the current month. Establish falls where the two match, and the rest follow in order. One officer repeats at each solar-term boundary to resynchronise the cycle.
- Do the Day Officers override everything else?
- No. The personal clash does. A day that clashes your own zodiac animal is set aside in date selection regardless of how good its officer, its activity lists or its path reading are.