Each pillar is a pair — a heavenly stem on top, an earthly branch beneath. Together, four pairs make the eight characters that give BaZi its name.
| Pillar | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Year pillar | Family, background, the environment you were born into — and how the wider world reads you. |
| Month pillar | Career and drive. Traditionally the strongest pillar: it shows what you came to build. |
| Day pillar | You. The day stem is the Day Master; the day branch is your spouse palace and your adult self. |
| Hour pillar | Later life, children, output — what you produce and how you finish. |
The year pillar flips at Chinese New Year, not 1 January. The month pillar flips at the solar term, not the 1st of the month. The day pillar flips at 23:00, not midnight — which is why the traditional day starts at 11pm. And the hour pillar changes every two hours.
On top of the four static pillars, BaZi adds a sequence of luck pillars (大运) — one per decade. The sequence starts at an age derived from how far your birth date sits from the nearest seasonal boundary, and runs forward or backward depending on your year stem and gender. Each adds a pair of characters that colour that decade.
Reading a chart means holding both layers at once: the fixed structure of the four pillars, and the moving weather of the current luck pillar.
Four pillars, ten gods, element balance and eight luck cycles, from your exact birth data.
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