For a thousand years, people have read these eight characters to know themselves.
The year, month, day and hour of your birth become eight characters. They sketch your temperament, your strengths and the rhythm of each stage of life: when to push ahead and when to build up strength. Seeing this makes decisions feel steadier.
A chart describes tendencies and timing, not a sealed outcome. It clarifies the situation; the path is still yours.
Each conclusion points back to specific stems and branches in your chart, and you can open the reasoning line by line.
Birth time is converted to local solar time, with 1986–1991 daylight saving and solar-term boundaries handled automatically.
Charting is free, no sign-up needed.See a sample chart
From the four pillars and the stems and branches to the Five Elements and Ten Gods — the traditional ideas behind a BaZi chart.
BaZi ("eight characters"), also called the Four Pillars of Destiny, is one of the most widely used systems in Chinese metaphysics. The year, month, day and hour of birth are each converted into a pair of Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch — four pairs, eight characters.
The system matured during the Tang and Song dynasties: Li Xuzhong worked from year, month and day, and Xu Ziping added the hour pillar and centred the reading on the Day Stem — the "Ziping method" still used today. Classics such as Yuan Hai Zi Ping, San Ming Tong Hui, Di Tian Sui and Zi Ping Zhen Quan form its theoretical base.
Charting is only the first step. A practitioner looks at the balance and interplay of the Five Elements, the strength of the Day Master and the pattern of the Ten Gods, then layers in the ten-year luck cycles and annual influences. bazitao treats this as a traditional lens for self-reflection, not a verdict on fate.
Each pillar pairs a Heavenly Stem above with an Earthly Branch below. Together they form the complete chart.
Ancestry, family background and early childhood; source of the zodiac animal
Parents, upbringing and youth; the month branch sets which element is in season
The Day Stem is the Day Master — you; the day branch is the spouse palace
Children, later life and inner aspirations
Stems and branches pair in sequence — Jia-Zi, Yi-Chou … Gui-Hai — giving the sixty-pair cycle used to count years, months, days and hours.
Each branch also holds hidden stems — Yin, for example, contains Jia, Bing and Wu — and these count when weighing the elements.
The Five Elements are phases of change rather than substances. At the heart of BaZi is whether the elements in a chart are balanced and flowing.
Growth and expansion; benevolence, planning
Rising and radiant; courtesy, passion, expression
Holding and nurturing; trust, stability
Cutting and refining; righteousness, decisiveness
Flowing and adaptive; wisdom, flexibility
Neither cycle is good or bad in itself — too much support overwhelms, the right restraint refines. The "useful god" is the element or two that bring a chart toward balance.
The Ten Gods are defined relative to the Day Master: each of the other characters is classified by its elemental relationship to the Day Stem, and by whether its yin-yang polarity matches (the "indirect" gods) or differs (the "direct" gods). None is inherently good or bad — what matters is balance within the whole chart.
| Relation to Day Master | Same polarity | Opposite polarity | Common themes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same as me | Friend | Rob Wealth | Self, peers, competition |
| I produce | Eating God | Hurting Officer | Expression, talent, creativity |
| I control | Indirect Wealth | Direct Wealth | Wealth, resources, pragmatism |
| Controls me | Seven Killings | Direct Officer | Rules, career, pressure |
| Produces me | Indirect Resource | Direct Resource | Learning, support, reflection |
The natal chart is the constant; luck and annual pillars are the changing seasons around it.
Luck pillars start from the month pillar and run forward or backward through the 60-pair cycle — forward for men born in yang years and women born in yin years, backward otherwise. The starting age comes from the distance between birth and the nearest solar term (traditionally three days per year). Each pillar colours a ten-year stage of life.
Every year has its own stem-branch — 2026 is Bing-Wu. How the annual pillar interacts with the natal chart and the current luck pillar is used to read the tone of that year, always within the context of the ten-year pillar it falls in.
The hour pillar follows the sun's actual position, while clock time is a zone standard (China Standard Time is set at 120°E). Each degree of longitude west adds about four minutes — local solar time in Ürümqi runs over two hours behind the clock, Chengdu about one hour. Add the equation of time (roughly −14 to +16 minutes across the year) and anyone born near an hour boundary can end up with a different hour pillar.
Likewise, months change at the solar terms rather than on the lunar new moon, and the year changes at Lichun (Start of Spring), not at Chinese New Year — two people born hours apart around a solar term can have entirely different charts.
Your birth date, time, place and gender. The birthplace is used for solar-time correction; gender sets the direction of the luck pillars. If you don't know your birth time you can still chart the other three pillars, with a coarser reading.
Either works — the calendar is converted automatically. Note that BaZi years and months follow the solar terms, not the lunar calendar: someone born after Chinese New Year but before Lichun still belongs to the previous year's pillar.
The Day Master is the Heavenly Stem of the day pillar and represents you. In the Ziping method every other character is read relative to it — which is why people born in the same year, with the same zodiac animal, can have very different charts.
The zodiac animal uses only one character, the year branch, repeating every twelve years; a sun sign uses one position. BaZi combines eight characters across year, month, day and hour — over half a million combinations — and changes over time through the luck cycles.
11 pm begins the Zi hour. One tradition changes the day at 11 pm; another distinguishes an "early" and "late" Zi hour, keeping the same day pillar until midnight. Schools differ; bazitao changes the day at 23:00 and shows this in the form's time settings.
No. BaZi is a traditional way of thinking about people and time — useful for reflecting on temperament and rhythm. It is not a substitute for medical, legal or financial advice and makes no predictions or guarantees about health, relationships or wealth. Your choices remain your own.
Charting is free and needs no account. Calculating a chart doesn't store your birth details; a chart is saved to your account only when you sign in and choose to save it, and you can delete it at any time.
Free, no sign-up. Cast precisely with true solar time and the solar terms.
