Bazi Four Pillars

Bazi converts a birth time into four pillars — year, month, day, and hour — each written as a stem and branch pair. The day pillar is treated as central, and its stem is the Day Master, the reference point for the whole reading.

Each pillar carries elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. A Bazi reading weighs which are abundant and which are scarce, then interprets tendencies from that balance. The pillar calculation is fixed; the interpretation varies between schools.

In Bazi the year turns at Lichun, the astronomical start of spring in early February. People born in January routinely use the wrong year — a mistake that changes the entire reading.