Free BaZi Calculator: Your Four Pillars of Destiny

How to read your BaZi chart

BaZi (八字, “eight characters”), also called the Four Pillars of Destiny, turns your birth moment into four pillars. Each pillar has a top character, the Heavenly Stem, and a bottom character, the Earthly Branch.

• Year pillar: ancestry, early environment and your outer social image. The year changes at Lichun (around 4 February), not at Chinese New Year.
• Month pillar: upbringing, career and the season you were born into. Months follow the twelve solar terms.
• Day pillar: the self and close relationships. Its stem is your Day Master.
• Hour pillar: inner life, ambitions and later years. It needs your birth time.

The ten Day Masters

The Day Master is the centre of a BaZi chart, and it comes in ten forms:

• 甲 — Yang Wood — the tall tree: upright, growth-oriented, principled and slow to bend.
• 乙 — Yin Wood — the vine or flower: flexible, adaptive and resourceful, reaching toward light.
• 丙 — Yang Fire — the sun: warm, open, generous and impossible to ignore.
• 丁 — Yin Fire — the candle flame: focused, perceptive and quietly intense.
• 戊 — Yang Earth — the mountain: steady, protective and hard to move once settled.
• 己 — Yin Earth — the garden soil: nurturing, practical and receptive.
• 庚 — Yang Metal — the axe or sword: decisive, direct and driven by a sense of justice.
• 辛 — Yin Metal — the jewel: refined, discerning and sensitive to quality and detail.
• 壬 — Yang Water — the ocean or great river: expansive, adventurous and restless for movement.
• 癸 — Yin Water — rain or mist: intuitive, gentle, deep and quietly persistent.

The Five Elements

Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water feed and restrain each other in two cycles: in the generating cycle Wood feeds Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth bears Metal, Metal carries Water and Water nourishes Wood; in the controlling cycle each element holds another in check. A chart with plenty of one element and none of another is not good or bad — it simply shows where the weight sits. For the history behind all of this, read BaZi: The Eight Characters of a Life.

Frequently asked questions

What is a BaZi chart?

A BaZi chart (Four Pillars of Destiny) records the moment of birth as eight Chinese characters: a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch for each of the year, month, day and hour. The pillars show the balance of the Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water — and yin/yang at the time you were born.

What is my Day Master?

Your Day Master is the Heavenly Stem of your Day Pillar. In BaZi it represents the self, and the other seven characters are read in relation to it. There are ten possible Day Masters: Yang and Yin versions of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water.

Why does my BaZi year not match my Chinese zodiac year?

BaZi changes year at Lichun (the Start of Spring, around 4 February), not at Chinese New Year. If you were born in January or early February, your BaZi year pillar may be the previous year's. BaZi months likewise follow the twelve solar terms, not the lunar calendar.

Do I need my exact birth time?

The year, month and day pillars only need your birth date. The hour pillar needs your birth time, so without it you get three pillars instead of four. If you were born within an hour or so of a pillar boundary, the exact time matters more.

How accurate is this BaZi calculator?

The pillars are calculated from the sun's position, not from a lookup table, and are tested against known charts. The month boundary can be off by up to about 20 minutes, so the calculator warns you when your birth falls near one. It uses clock time with the UTC offset you enter and does not apply a true-solar-time correction.

Is a BaZi chart fortune-telling?

Kyshara treats it as a tool for reflection, not prediction. A chart describes a pattern of elements and tendencies; what you do with it is up to you. The free chart here is a starting point, and a full Kyshara reading explores what the pattern might mean for your life right now.