BaZi Chart Studio — Four Pillars Calculator
BaZi (八字, "eight characters") writes your birth moment as four stem-branch pairs — year, month, day and hour. The chart is only as good as the time it is computed from, which is why this calculator asks for the birthplace: the hour pillar is read from true solar time, not clock time, and the year and month pillars change at the exact instants of the solar terms.
This page is the whole first page of a reading, not just the eight characters: each pillar with its hidden stems and its ten god, the five-element count, the Day Master and how strongly the rest of the chart supports it, the useful and unhelpful elements that follow from that, your lucky colours, numbers and direction, and how 2027 meets your four branches month by month. Everything is computed in your browser and recomputed the moment you change a field.
The four pillars do not depend on it. Only the ten-year luck pillars do: their direction is set by the polarity of the year stem together with the sex, so pick one above and the eight decades appear below.
Your chart, read on one screen
丙 Bing — Yang Fire Day Master
辛未 乙未 丙戌 癸巳 · Goat by Lichun
Everything below is computed in your browser from the birth details above — nothing is sent anywhere. Change a field and the whole workbench recomputes.
Year 年柱
辛
Xin · Yin Metal
未
Wei · Earth · Goat
Hidden: 己 Ji · 丁 Ding · 乙 Yi
Direct Wealth (Zheng Cai)
Month 月柱
乙
Yi · Yin Wood
未
Wei · Earth · Goat
Hidden: 己 Ji · 丁 Ding · 乙 Yi
Direct Resource (Zheng Yin)
Day 日柱
丙
Bing · Yang Fire
戌
Xu · Earth · Dog
Hidden: 戊 Wu · 辛 Xin · 丁 Ding
Day Master
Hour 时柱
癸
Gui · Yin Water
巳
Si · Fire · Snake
Hidden: 丙 Bing · 庚 Geng · 戊 Wu
Direct Officer (Zheng Guan)
Your Day Master in one line
You are 丙 Bing, Yang Fire — the one character in 辛未 乙未 丙戌 癸巳 that the other seven are read against. Of those seven, 2 points feed it and 6 drain it (25% support, month branch 未 counted twice), which this method reads as a weak Day Master. On that reading Wood and Fire are the useful elements for you and Water and Earth the ones your chart already has enough of.
What 2027 means for this chart
2027 is 丁未, the Fire Goat. Its stem 丁 stands to your Day Master 丙 as Rob Wealth (Jie Cai), and its branch 未 meets your year branch 未 by same branch, your month branch 未 by same branch and your day branch 戌 by punishment and destruction. Your own year branch 未 is in same branch with the Tai Sui, whose direction is South-southwest and whose opposite point, the Sui Po, is North-northeast.
Your best months in 2027
Measured against your day branch 戌, 3 of the twelve solar months read as favourable: 壬寅 (4 Feb – 5 Mar), 癸卯 (6 Mar – 4 Apr) and 丙午 (6 Jun – 6 Jul). 甲辰 (5 Apr – 5 May), 丁未 (7 Jul – 7 Aug), 己酉 (8 Sep – 7 Oct) and 癸丑 (6 Jan – 3 Feb) read as caution; the remaining 5 are steady. The rating is nothing more than the branch relationship between each month and your day branch 戌 — a cultural reading, not a forecast.
Five elements
Stems and branches counted once each; hidden stems are listed on the cards but not weighted here.
Ten-god families
The five families the ten gods are grouped into, by how often their element appears in your eight characters.
Day Master strength
Seven visible characters scored as support (same element, or the element that produces the Day Master) against drain, with the month branch counted twice.
Useful elements
Elements you already have enough of
2027 (丁未) against your pillars
The twelve branches as a ring: 未 is the Tai Sui of 2027, the branch opposite it is the Sui Po, and a dashed line is drawn from every pillar of yours that has a relationship with it.
| Annual stem 丁 | stands to your Day Master 丙 as Rob Wealth (Jie Cai) |
|---|---|
| Year branch 未 | Same branch |
| Month branch 未 | Same branch |
| Day branch 戌 | Punishment, Destruction |
| Hour branch 巳 | no entry in the six relationship tables |
Month by month
Each of the twelve solar months of 2027 against your day branch 戌. Favourable = harmony, caution = clash, harm, punishment or destruction.
Lucky colours, numbers and direction
Read from your useful element Wood: its five-colour correspondences, its He Tu numbers and its compass direction.
Colours
Numbers
Keep your chart
A 1080×1350 card with your four pillars, your Day Master and the five-element count, drawn in your browser.
The card is drawn on your device from the details above; nothing is uploaded to Zodiac Almanac.
How this chart was timed
| True solar time | 10:58 on 1991-07-15 — clock time −4h UTC, longitude correction -56 min, equation of time -5.8 min (New York, United States) |
|---|---|
| Late Zi rule | Day pillar changes at 23:00 (default) |
| Sex used for the luck pillars | Prefer not to say — the four pillars above are unaffected |
| Your sign in 2027 | See the Goat in 2027 → |
Ask about your chart
Two questions a day, answered only from the chart computed above and how 2027 meets it. Every answer lists the parts of the chart it used, and when the chart has nothing to say on something, it says so instead of guessing.
Your email only counts the free questions and confirms it is you asking. No list, no sending, unless you sign up for the almanac separately below.
10 questions about your chart
Ten answers, each one citing the parts of your chart it came from. They do not expire.
20 questions + your 2027 report
Twenty answers, plus the full 2027 Fire Goat year report for this chart delivered by email.
Answers describe what the classical tables traditionally read from these characters. For entertainment and cultural exploration only — nothing here forecasts an event.
Want the 22-page report on this chart?
Five things the report has that this workbench does not:
- Month by month, written out. All twelve solar months of the year against your day branch, each with its stem-branch, its dates and what the relationship is traditionally read as — not just the favourable / steady / caution dot you see above.
- Your own auspicious dates. The almanac filters run against your four pillars rather than your year animal, so the dates that clash with your own day branch are taken out.
- Tai Sui remedies for your pillars. Which of the five Tai Sui relationships actually touch your chart, in which months they are amplified, and the traditional remedies that match.
- A printable year calendar. A full-page calendar of the year with the solar terms, the festival dates and your own marked days, laid out to print.
- Your ten-god portrait in words. The five ten-god families read one at a time — what a high, low or missing count is traditionally said to mean for study, work, money and relationships.
How this calculator works
Year and month pillars: the birth instant is converted to UTC and compared with the astronomical solar terms (Lichun for the year, the twelve "Jie" terms for the months). Day and hour pillars: the clock time is corrected by longitude (4 minutes per degree from the time zone's standard meridian) and by the equation of time, then the hour branch is read from the corrected time.
Late Zi hour: between 23:00 and midnight true solar time, one school changes the day pillar at 23:00 (the default here, used by tyme4ts and most calculators) and another keeps the day pillar until midnight. Both schools take the hour stem from the next day's stem; the switch above lets you see the other reading.
Hidden stems (藏干) are the stems the tradition reads inside each branch; the ten god on each card is that pillar's stem seen from your Day Master. The five-element count tallies the eight visible characters only — the hidden stems are listed but not weighted.
Day Master strength uses the plain support-and-drain method: the seven characters other than the Day Master itself score as support (same element, or the element that produces it) or as drain, with the month branch counted twice. 55% and 45% are the cutoffs for strong and weak. The useful elements follow from the verdict, and the lucky colours, numbers and direction are the five-colour, He Tu and compass correspondences of the first useful element. Seasonal strength, combinations and clashes inside the chart are not weighted here — that is where a full reading begins.
The month ratings compare each of the twelve solar months of the year with your day branch through the six relationship tables: harmony reads as favourable, clash, harm, punishment or destruction as caution, and no entry as steady.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does my month pillar change when I pick a different city?
- It should not, unless your birth falls within hours of a solar term: the year and month pillars are compared as instants, so only the time zone conversion matters. The day and hour pillars do change with longitude, because they use true solar time.
- What is the Day Master?
- The heavenly stem of your day pillar. In BaZi it represents the person; the other seven characters are read as resources, output, wealth, pressure or peers relative to it.
- Why does the tool ask for my sex?
- Only for the ten-year luck pillars, whose direction is set by the polarity of the year stem together with the sex. The four pillars, the five-element count and the Day Master strength do not use it, so the field is optional.
- My birth time is unknown. What can I do?
- Enter 12:00 and ignore the hour pillar; the year, month and day pillars stay valid. The hour pillar is the only one that needs the time, though it also shifts the five-element count by one stem and one branch.
- Where do my birth details go?
- Nowhere. The chart, the charts and the saved card are all computed in your browser from what you type; nothing is sent to the site unless you buy a report or ask for the email PDF.
- Is this the same as the zodiac calculator?
- The zodiac calculator gives the year animal under both boundaries; this tool gives the full four-pillar chart. Both use the same engine and the same Lichun instants.