How is Bazi, the Four Pillars done?

Get your birth hour: every pillar needs it. Find the day element: it is your self. See which elements are missing or excessive.

Master Li Wen

Living tradition

Bazi, the Four Pillars

China since the Tang dynasty; today also Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore.

Year, month, day and hour of birth become eight characters describing your balance of elements and your ten-year cycles.

How it's done

01Get your birth hour: every pillar needs it.
02Find the day element: it is your self.
03See which elements are missing or excessive.

With your own tools

It is a calendar calculation, not intuition: by hand it takes an afternoon and a table of stems and branches.

With Ocluna

Here I raise your year, month and day pillars, and the hour pillar if you know it: I tell you your day master and which element you have in excess and which you lack.

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Your reading

Master Li Wen does your Bazi, the Four Pillars reading

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What Master Li Wen tells you

Bazi means eight characters: two for each pillar of year, month, day and hour. Court astrologers calculated them to choose wedding and coronation dates.
The day weighs more than the year: that is why two people of the same animal sign can have opposite Bazi charts.
The oracle bones of the Shang dynasty, around the 13th century BC, already date days with stem and branch pairs: it is the oldest sixty-year cycle still in use.
The revolution that ended the Chinese empire in 1911 is called Xinhai because that is how that year was named: the xin stem combined with the branch of the Pig.
Each double hour is named after a terrestrial branch, and noon falls in the hour of the wu branch, which corresponds to the Horse.
In China, an almanac is printed every year that indicates, according to the stem and branch of the day, when it is convenient to marry or move; it is called Tong Shu.
The four pillars method as practiced today is attributed to Xu Ziping, who lived during the Song dynasty, and for this reason it is also called Ziping Bazi.
In addition to the four pillars, the method divides life into segments called dayun, or luck pillars, each lasting ten years.

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This reading is symbolic self-knowledge and entertainment content based on folk traditions. It does not predict the future, is not medical, legal or financial advice, and does not replace qualified professionals.

What Master Li Wen tells you

Bazi means eight characters: two for each pillar of year, month, day and hour. Court astrologers calculated them to choose wedding and coronation dates.

The day weighs more than the year: that is why two people of the same animal sign can have opposite Bazi charts.

The oracle bones of the Shang dynasty, around the 13th century BC, already date days with stem and branch pairs: it is the oldest sixty-year cycle still in use.

The revolution that ended the Chinese empire in 1911 is called Xinhai because that is how that year was named: the xin stem combined with the branch of the Pig.

Each double hour is named after a terrestrial branch, and noon falls in the hour of the wu branch, which corresponds to the Horse.

In China, an almanac is printed every year that indicates, according to the stem and branch of the day, when it is convenient to marry or move; it is called Tong Shu.

The four pillars method as practiced today is attributed to Xu Ziping, who lived during the Song dynasty, and for this reason it is also called Ziping Bazi.

In addition to the four pillars, the method divides life into segments called dayun, or luck pillars, each lasting ten years.