BaZi Calculator - Four Pillars of Destiny
BaZi (八字, Eight Characters) is the Chinese astrological system that maps your birth energy through time, the Five Elements and the Ten Cosmic Gods across a sixty-year cycle.
Explore Every Pillar in Depth
Each aspect of the BaZi map has its own reading - select one to go deeper
Four Pillars of Destiny
Luck Pillars (Da Yun)
Guide to BaZi
What is BaZi - Four Pillars
BaZi (四柱命理, "Four Pillars of Destiny") is the most precise Chinese birth astrology system. Each pillar - Year, Month, Day and Hour - consists of a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch that together reveal your Element, Day Master and ten-year luck cycles (Da Yun).
The Day Master (the Heavenly Stem of the Day Pillar) defines your core character, how you manifest energy and how you give and receive love. The Ten Gods describe the dynamic relationships between the five elements present in your chart.
The ten-year Luck Pillars (Da Yun) show which elemental cycles dominate each decade of your life, revealing periods of expansion, consolidation, challenge or transformation.
BaZi and I Ching: The Same Root
BaZi and the I Ching share the same cosmology: the Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water), yin-yang and the 64 hexagrams that correspond to the 64 Stem-Branch pairs of the 60-year Jia Zi calendar.
Each pillar in your BaZi chart can be read as an I Ching hexagram. The Earthly Branches of the Year and Day evoke specific trigrams, linking your natal map to the 64 archetypal situations of the Canon of Changes.
Explore the BaZi - I Ching connection ->How to use the BaZi calculator
- 1Enter your exact birth date, time and place. The hour is critical: it determines the Hour Pillar and can shift your Day Master if you were born close to midnight.
- 2Read each Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch separately and then as the four-pillar whole. Identify your Day Master and the dominant five elements.
- 3Study the ten-year Luck Pillars to see which elemental cycles dominate each decade and when your useful element is most active.
- 4Consult the in-depth aspects (above) to interpret the Ten Gods, Hidden Stems and the I Ching connection.