Four Pillars
The Four Pillars, 八字 or BaZi, describe a moment of birth as four pairs of Chinese characters, one pair each for the year, month, day and hour. Enter a birth to see its chart.
A chart describes tendencies in a traditional system. It cannot decide health, money, law, marriage or children.
Used only to report whether true solar time would change the day or hour pillar.
Calculated in your browser. Your birth details are not sent anywhere, saved or put in a URL.
What the four pillars are
Each pillar is a heavenly stem above an earthly branch, one of the sixty combinations of the sexagenary cycle. In this calculator the year pillar changes at Lichun, the month pillar at each of the twelve major solar terms, the day pillar at midnight by default and the hour pillar every two hours.
The stem of the day pillar is the day master, and the rest of the chart is read relative to it. That is why this calculator shows every other stem as one of ten gods, and why it reports the twelve life stages of the day master at each branch.
This calculator gives no verdict that a chart is strong or weak, and it names no favorable element. Schools disagree about those judgments, so it shows the working and leaves them out.
Read further
- What it isHistory, sources and where the record runs out.
- How it worksThe method and each convention, in plain English.
- The day mastersThe ten heavenly stems as the center of a chart.
- The ten godsHow every stem in a chart relates to the day master.
- The twelve life stagesA stem's cycle through the twelve branches.
- The sixty day pillarsEach stem and branch pair of the sexagenary cycle.