How to Read a BaZi Chart: The Four Pillars, Your Day Master, and the Ten Gods

A BaZi chart looks forbidding the first time you see one: eight Chinese characters in four columns, sometimes with animals, elements, and coloured boxes layered around them. The structure underneath is plain. Take the year, month, day, and hour of a birth. Write each one as a pair of characters from the Chinese calendar, a Heavenly Stem over an Earthly Branch. Those four pairs are the Four Pillars, and the eight characters together are the BaZi, 八字, literally "eight characters." Everything a reader does after that point is an exercise in relationships: how the five elements carried by those eight characters feed, drain, and press on one another, read from one fixed reference point.

That reference point is the Day Master, the stem of the day pillar. This guide builds the chart up in the order a teacher lays it out: the calendar underneath the pillars, the ten stems, the twelve branches and what hides inside them, the Day Master and its strength in season, the five element relationships, and the Ten Gods that fall out of those relationships. It then reads one labelled hypothetical chart from start to finish, covers the ten-year luck pillars that run over every natal chart, and closes with the limits of the system stated the way teachers inside the tradition state them. Belief content here is framed as tradition throughout. A BaZi reading, in feng shui and fortune-telling tradition, describes patterns in symbolic language. It does not forecast events, and nothing in this guide promises an outcome for any reader.

If you want your own four pillars in front of you while you read, the site BaZi calculator will lay them out for a birth date and time. The guide explains what you are looking at once it does.

The calendar underneath the chart

BaZi is calendar work before it is anything else. The characters in a chart are not chosen; they are read off the position of a birth moment inside the sexagenary cycle, the sixty-unit cycle formed by pairing the ten Heavenly Stems with the twelve Earthly Branches in order. Ten and twelve share a rhythm that repeats every sixty: sixty stem-branch pairs, running through years, months, days, and hours alike. A year pillar, a month pillar, a day pillar, and an hour pillar are the same kind of unit read at four different scales of time.

Two calendar decisions shape every chart, and both surprise people who know the zodiac only from New Year celebrations.

The first is that the BaZi year turns at Li Chun, not at Lunar New Year. Li Chun, 立春, is the first of the twenty-four solar terms, the start of spring in the solar framework, and it falls on February 4 in 2026. Lunar New Year falls on February 17 in 2026. Popular zodiac reckoning, the animal on the calendar and the one families celebrate, turns at Lunar New Year. Chart work turns at Li Chun. A person born on February 10, 2026 is a Horse by the lunar count and still a Snake by the solar count used for the year pillar. The site's ben ming nian guide works through the same two-week gap from the custom side: red clothing and temple visits follow the lunar date, chart pillars follow the solar one. Neither side is making an error. They are two systems sharing one calendar.

The second decision follows from the first. If years turn on a solar term, months do too. The BaZi month pillar does not follow the lunar month. It follows the solar terms, each month pillar opening at its term: the Yin Tiger month opens at Li Chun in early February, the Mao Rabbit month at Jing Zhe in early March, and so on through the year. This is why a BaZi month pillar can name a different branch than the lunar month on a birth certificate suggests, and why serious chart work asks for a birth date converted through the solar framework rather than read straight off a lunar calendar page.

Hours run on the third scale. The traditional day divides into twelve double-hours, shichen, each carrying one Earthly Branch. Zi Rat runs 23:00 to 01:00 across midnight, Wu Horse sits at midday, 11:00 to 13:00, and the rest follow in branch order. The birth-hour animals guide gives that table in full, with the boundary cases - a birth at 10:58 and a birth at 11:02 fall in different double-hours, Snake and Horse, on four minutes. The hour pillar takes its branch from that table and its stem from a derivation off the day stem, which is one reason a chart caster wants the day settled before the hour.

A practical consequence runs through all three scales. A BaZi chart is only as good as the birth record underneath it. An exact time beats a remembered one, a date near Li Chun or a solar-term boundary needs its rule stated, and a birth near midnight carries the known Zi-hour question about which day the day pillar belongs to. Teachers ask about the record first and interpret second. Readers learning the system should copy that order.

The ten Heavenly Stems

The top character of each pillar is a Heavenly Stem, tian gan. There are ten stems, and each one is an element in a polarity: the five elements, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, each in a yang form and a yin form. Yang stems are read in tradition as the outward, larger-scale expression of their element, yin stems as the finer, closer-scale expression. The images teachers attach to the stems - tall tree and climbing vine for the two Woods - are teaching pictures for that difference of scale, not claims about a person.

The list runs in a fixed order, Jia through Gui, and the sexagenary cycle steps through it without skipping: a Jia year is followed by a Yi year, a Jia day by a Yi day. Two facts about the stems do most of the work in a reading. First, the stem is the visible element of the pillar, the element a quick count of a chart sees first. Second, one of the four stems - the day stem - is not read as weather around the person. It is read as the person. That is the Day Master, taken up after the branches.

Year stems also give the quick element attached to a birth year in popular tables. Years ending in 4 or 5 carry a Wood stem, 6 or 7 Fire, 8 or 9 Earth, 0 or 1 Metal, 2 or 3 Water, turning at Li Chun for chart purposes. The Chinese zodiac by birth year chart sets the year animals and their stems out together. A year element from that table is one stem of eight. A chart reading starts where that single-stem shortcut stops.

The twelve Earthly Branches and their hidden stems

The bottom character of each pillar is an Earthly Branch, di zhi. There are twelve branches, and each one carries a zodiac animal, a main element, a season or month in chart work, a double-hour in the day, and one or more hidden stems stored inside it. The branch is the layered part of the pillar. Where a stem shows one element openly, a branch carries a small bundle.

Read the table the way a chart reader scans a pillar. The animal is the label everyone recognises. The main element is the branch's own weight in the five-element count. The hidden stems, cang gan, are the stems stored inside the branch in tradition, listed here main stem first. A branch is strongest in its main hidden stem: Zi is Water through and through, hidden Gui and nothing else, while the four Earth branches - Chou, Chen, Wei, Xu - each store three stems and act in a reading as small reservoirs of mixed elements.

Hidden stems do two jobs. They add depth to the element count, so a chart that looks short of an element on its four visible stems may carry that element tucked inside a branch. And they take part in the relationship reading: the Ten Gods are worked out for hidden stems as well as visible ones, with the main hidden stem carrying the most weight. Introductory readings often stop at the four stems. A teacher's reading counts all eight characters and then looks inside the four branches as well, which is one reason two readings of the same chart can agree on the layout and differ in depth.

Season sits inside the branch layer too. Each branch belongs to a season in chart work: Yin, Mao, and Chen to spring, Si, Wu, and Wei to summer, Shen, You, and Xu to autumn, Hai, Zi, and Chou to winter, with the Earth branches closing each season. The month branch, the branch of the month pillar, names the season the chart was born into. That fact becomes the first strength judgement in the reading, and it belongs to the Day Master.

The Day Master: the stem the chart is read from

Find the day pillar, the third of the four. Read its stem. That stem is the Day Master, ri zhu, and every other character in the chart is interpreted in relation to it. The Day Master is the self-symbol of the chart in this tradition: not the year animal, which two people share with everyone born in their year, but one of ten stems fixed by the day of birth. Two siblings born in the same year, even twins born across a double-hour boundary, can carry different Day Masters and therefore differently organised charts.

A reader's first question about the Day Master is its strength, and strength here has a technical meaning inside the system. It asks whether the elements around the Day Master feed it and stand with it, or drain it and press on it, starting with the season.

Season comes first. An element is at its strongest in its own season: Wood in spring, Fire in summer, Metal in autumn, Water in winter, Earth at the season turns. A Day Master born in its own season starts with the weather on its side. A Day Master born in the season of the element it produces is drained by the season itself. The classic example teachers use: a Water Day Master born in spring, when Wood is flourishing, gives its strength away feeding Wood all season. The chart has not changed; the season has weighed it.

Support and neighbours come next. A reader counts what feeds the Day Master - its Resource element - and what shares its element - its companions - across the stems, branches, and hidden stems, then counts what drains and controls it on the other side. Roots matter: a Day Master stem whose own element sits in the branches below, a Water stem over a Zi or Hai branch, is described in tradition as rooted, with somewhere to stand. An unrooted stem surrounded by draining and controlling elements is read as weak, whatever its teaching image suggests. An ocean stem, Ren, can sit in a weak chart, and a rain stem, Gui, can sit in a strong one. The image is a picture. The count is the reading.

Strength is a description inside the system, not a grade on a person. Tradition reads a strong Day Master and a weak Day Master as different configurations to work with, each with elements that help it and elements that strain it. The elements that help a given chart, its favourable elements in the teacher's judgement, follow from this weighing. That judgement, not the Day Master label alone, is what feng shui and BaZi advice about colours, directions, and timing is built on when it is built carefully. The site's five elements balancing guide covers the home side of that work.

The five relationships around the Day Master

Once the Day Master is fixed, every element in the chart takes a role defined by the two five-element cycles. The cycles themselves are short enough to memorise, and the whole relationship layer of BaZi is these two lists read from the Day Master's seat.

The generating cycle, sheng, runs Wood feeds Fire, Fire makes Earth from ash, Earth bears Metal, Metal collects Water, Water nourishes Wood. The controlling cycle, ke, runs Wood parts Earth, Earth dams Water, Water quenches Fire, Fire melts Metal, Metal cuts Wood. The site's Chinese fortune telling methods comparison places these cycles among the shared tools of the tradition, where the same five elements serve feng shui, calendar work, and chart work alike.

Read from the Day Master, the two cycles give five relationships:

• Resource is the element that generates the Day Master. Water's Resource is Metal, because Metal collects Water in the generating cycle.
• Companion, also called the Friend and Rival layer, is the Day Master's own element. Other Water in a Water chart.
• Output is the element the Day Master generates. Water generating Wood makes Wood the Output of a Water chart.
• Wealth is the element the Day Master controls. Water controls Fire, so Fire is the Wealth element of a Water chart.
• Officer, also called Power, is the element that controls the Day Master. Earth dams Water, so Earth is the Officer element of a Water chart.

Resource and Companion stand on the supporting side of the chart: they feed the Day Master or share its element. Output, Wealth, and Officer sit on the spending and pressing side: the Day Master feeds its Output, spends itself controlling its Wealth, and is controlled in turn by its Officer. A reading weighs the two sides after the season has had its say. No single relationship is good or bad on its own inside the system. A chart heavy with Resource and light everywhere else reads differently from a chart where Wealth stands unsupported, and teachers describe both as configurations with their own costs.

The Ten Gods: five relationships split by polarity

Split each of the five relationships by polarity and you get the Ten Gods, shi shen, the named roles that fill the boxes in most printed charts. The rule is mechanical. Where the other character's polarity matches the Day Master, yang with yang or yin with yin, it takes one name; where the polarity differs, it takes the other. Direct names go to the differing polarity in four of the families and the naming flips for companions, but the table is fixed and every chart reader uses the same one.

The traditional family and social labels in the last column are part of the classical system and are stated here as the system's own vocabulary. A Direct Officer character in a chart marks the Officer relationship with differing polarity. It does not mark a promotion, a boss, or a court case, and the same discipline applies to every row. Teachers read the Ten Gods as a map of which relationships the chart emphasises: a chart crowded with Output gods and thin on Resource reads, inside the tradition, as one that spends itself expressing and making, and leans less on support and study. That is a thematic description. The step from theme to forecast is one the tradition's careful teachers decline to make mechanically, and it is the step popular summaries most often skip stating.

Ten Gods are counted for hidden stems as well. The main hidden stem of each branch gets its own Ten God label against the Day Master, with the lesser hidden stems behind it. A printout that shows Ten Gods under the branches is showing this layer. For a first reading, the four visible stems are enough to follow the method. The hidden layer is where a teacher's second hour on a chart goes.

A worked hypothetical chart, read in order

The chart below is a labelled hypothetical, built to show the steps. It is not a real person's chart, and no reading of a real chart should be copied from its conclusions. Its only job is to put the machinery in motion once.

Step one, fix the Day Master. The day stem is Ren, Yang Water, the ocean in the teaching image. Everything else is now read against Water.

Step two, name the season. The month branch is Yin Tiger, opening the spring months at Li Chun. Wood is flourishing, Fire is rising, Water is in its draining season, giving strength to Wood. The Day Master starts the weighing on the drained side.

Step three, name every visible relationship. The year stem Jia Wood is the element Water generates, same yang polarity: Eating God, an Output god. The month stem Bing Fire is the element Water controls, same polarity: Indirect Wealth. The hour stem Geng Metal is the element that generates Water, same polarity: Indirect Resource. Three stems, three different relationships, one on the spending side twice over and one support.

Step four, look inside the branches. The year branch Zi Rat is pure Water, hidden Gui: a Companion root directly under the year pillar, and a root for the Day Master itself. The day branch Wu Horse hides Ding Fire, a Wealth god, and Ji Earth, an Officer god, sitting under the Day Master. The hour branch Chen Dragon hides Wu Earth Officer first, then Yi Wood Output and Gui Water Companion. The month branch Yin Tiger hides Jia Wood Output first, then Bing Fire Wealth and Wu Earth Officer. Counted whole, the chart carries Water support in the year branch, one Metal Resource stem, and a lot of Wood, Fire, and Earth in the month, day, and hour positions.

Step five, weigh the Day Master. Season says drained. Support says one Resource stem and one strong Water root. Spending and pressing say Output, Wealth, and Officer in most other seats. A teacher working in this frame would call this Ren Water weak to middling, held up by its Rat root and its Metal hour stem, spending into a spring chart full of Wood to feed and Fire and Earth to manage. The favourable elements in that judgement would be Metal and Water, the supporting side. The strained side would be more Wood, Fire, and Earth piled onto an already spending chart.

Notice what the five steps did not do. They did not name a career, a lucky year, a colour to wear, or a person to marry. They produced a weighed description of a configuration, in the system's own terms, with the evidence for each call shown. Colour, direction, and timing suggestions in this tradition are a second conversation built on that weighing, and they inherit every uncertainty in it. The I Ching casting guide shows the neighbouring system making the same division: a mechanical casting anyone can learn, and an interpretation layer where schools and judgement carry the weight.

The luck pillars: the chart in time

A natal chart is cast once. Over it, tradition runs the luck pillars, da yun, a sequence of ten-year pillars that a reader moves through across a life. Each luck pillar is one stem-branch pair, stepping forward or backward through the sexagenary cycle from the month pillar, and each ten-year span is read against the natal chart with the same five relationships: a Metal decade feeding a Water Day Master is read as a Resource period, an Earth decade pressing on it as an Officer period, and so on.

Three mechanics are fixed enough to state plainly. The direction turns on the year stem's polarity and the person's sex in the classical rule: yang year with a man, or yin year with a woman, runs the sequence forward; the other two combinations run it backward. The starting age is counted from the birth moment to the nearest solar term boundary in the direction of travel, converted at the traditional rate of three days to one year, so luck pillars rarely start at a round age. And the annual pillar, the stem-branch of each passing year, is read as a one-year layer over the luck pillar and the natal chart together, which is the machinery underneath the yearly zodiac forecasts and the ben ming nian reckoning covered in the ben ming nian guide.

Schools differ on details at every one of those steps, and the symbolic reading of a decade is a theme inside the tradition, not a timetable of events. A reader who tells you a Resource decade is a supported decade is speaking the system's language. A reader who converts that into a guaranteed contract, illness, or windfall in a named year has left the system's own careful ground, and the chart does not go with them.

Limits, and how to use a reading well

BaZi is a traditional symbolic system built on the Chinese calendar. Its parts that can be checked - the stems, branches, solar terms, double-hours, and cycle counts - check out as calendar facts, and this guide has kept to those for every dated claim: Li Chun on February 4, 2026, Lunar New Year on February 17, 2026, and the stem and branch orders as published in standard tables. Its interpretive layer - Day Master strength, favourable elements, Ten God themes, luck pillar periods - is the tradition's internal reading of those facts. It is not a measurement, and it does not forecast health, wealth, relationships, or any other outcome.

Used inside those limits, a chart reading does the work its followers value. It gives a structured self-description in a vocabulary two thousand years of teachers have refined, a set of themes to think with, and a calendar rhythm - the returning sign year, the turning decade - for taking stock. Families use it the way the ben ming nian customs are used: as a prompt to slow down, read the paperwork twice, and pay attention on a schedule. That use needs no forecast to justify it.

Three habits keep a reading straight at any level. State the birth record the chart was cast from, including which boundary rule was applied to a January or February birth. Show the weighing, season and support and spending, rather than announcing a favourable element as if it fell from the sky. And hold the line between theme and prediction, in your own reading most of all. A chart that is allowed to describe, in a tradition's symbolic terms, will still be useful in ten years. A chart that was made to promise will not survive its first missed date.