Guides · BaZi
BaZi four pillars and the day master Eight characters from your birth
How BaZi works on this site: four pillars from your birth date and time, the stem and branch of each pillar, the day master and the five elements.
Four pillars from your birth
BaZi means eight characters. A chart has four pillars for the year, month, day and hour of birth. Each pillar has one heavenly stem on top and one earthly branch below, which makes eight characters in all. This site reads every pillar from the Chinese calendar.
People born in early February can see a year pillar that differs from the animal in the zodiac tool. If you do not know your birth time, the chart has no hour pillar and shows six characters.
Examples from this site's calculator
What you enter
- Born 13 June 1990, time unknownResult Year pillar Geng Wu, month pillar Ren Wu, day pillar Ji You
- Born 13 June 1990, time unknownResult Day master Yin Earth (Ji)
- Born 13 June 1990, time unknownResult No hour pillar
What the day master is
The stem of the day pillar is called the day master. It stands for the person in the chart. The tool shows its element and whether it is Yin or Yang, so the day master is the first thing to read in a chart.
In the example above the day master is Yin Earth (Ji). Another date gives another day master, and there are ten in all.
Five elements in the chart
Every stem and branch belongs to one of five elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The tool shows how many characters of each element the chart has. This site does not rate how strong or weak an element is, and it does not pick a helpful element or luck periods.
How to read a BaZi result
Start with the day master, then look at the other pillars and the count of elements. If the birth time is unknown and you were born on a day when a pillar changes, the tool notes that the pillar has two possible values. The chart is traditional belief, not a prediction.