BaZi Calculator

What Is a BaZi Chart?

A BaZi chart (八字, "eight characters"), also called the Four Pillars of Destiny, writes the moment you were born as four pairs of Chinese characters: one pair each for the year, month, day and hour. Each pair is a heavenly stem over an earthly branch. There are ten stems, each a yin or yang form of wood, fire, earth, metal or water, and twelve branches, the animals of the Chinese zodiac. The animal sign most people know is the branch of the year pillar; a BaZi chart adds the other seven characters. The stem of the day pillar, called the day master, stands for you, and the rest of the chart is read in relation to it.

How the Year Pillar Is Worked Out

The year pillar follows the solar calendar, not the lunar one. The BaZi year begins at Li Chun (立春, "start of spring"), the moment the Sun reaches 315° of ecliptic longitude, which falls on 3, 4 or 5 February. Chinese New Year, a new moon, moves between 21 January and 20 February, so the two rarely coincide. In 2026 Li Chun fell on 4 February 2026 at 04:01 Beijing time and Chinese New Year on 17 February: someone born on 10 February 2026 gets the Bing Wu (Fire Horse) year pillar, while the popular zodiac calculator still calls them a Snake.

The stems repeat every ten years and the branches every twelve, so the pair repeats every sixty: 1984 was Jia Zi, the first pair, and 2044 will be Jia Zi again. In 2027 Li Chun falls on 4 February 2027 at 09:46 Beijing time (01:46 UTC) and Chinese New Year on 6 February 2027, so the Ding Wei (Fire Goat) year pillar starts two days before the Year of the Goat is celebrated.

How the Month Pillar Is Worked Out

The month pillar also follows the Sun. The year is cut into twelve solar months by the twelve "jie" among the 24 solar terms, 30° of solar longitude apart: Li Chun opens the Tiger month, Jing Zhe the Rabbit month, Qing Ming the Dragon month, and so on round to Xiao Han, which opens the Ox month in early January. This calculator finds the instant of each term with an astronomical ephemeris rather than a fixed date, because a term can fall on the 4th one year and the 5th the next, and for anyone born that day the hour decides the pillar.

The month stem follows the year stem by the five-tiger rule. In a Jia or Ji year the Tiger month is Bing Yin; in a Yi or Geng year, Wu Yin; in a Bing or Xin year, Geng Yin; in a Ding or Ren year, Ren Yin; in a Wu or Gui year, Jia Yin. Each following month takes the next stem. The Ox month, which opens at Xiao Han in early January, still belongs to the previous BaZi year, so a birth on 10 January 2026 has a Yi Si year pillar and a Ji Chou month pillar.

Times are UTC. Beijing time is eight hours later; US Eastern time is five hours earlier (four in summer).

How the Day Pillar Is Worked Out

The day pillar is a straight count. Stems and branches have been paired to days in an unbroken sequence for more than two thousand years, running through the sixty pairs every sixty days with no reset at a new month or new year. The calculator counts from known days: 1 January 2000 was Wu Wu, and 1 January 1900 was Jia Xu. The day runs from midnight to midnight by local standard time, and the day stem is your day master.

How the Hour Pillar Is Worked Out

The Chinese day has twelve double-hours, each named for a branch: Zi runs from 23:00 to 00:59, Chou from 01:00 to 02:59, and so on to Hai from 21:00 to 22:59. The hour stem comes from the day stem by the five-rat rule: on a Jia or Ji day the Zi hour is Jia Zi; on a Yi or Geng day, Bing Zi; on a Bing or Xin day, Wu Zi; on a Ding or Ren day, Geng Zi; on a Wu or Gui day, Ren Zi. Each following double-hour takes the next stem.

The hour pillar appears only when you enter a birth time. With a birth city, the calculator removes daylight saving time first, since the chart is cast in standard time. A birth between 23:00 and midnight is a known point of disagreement: this page keeps the day pillar on the calendar date and takes the Zi hour's stem from that day. Other schools take the hour stem from the next day, and some also move the day pillar forward at 23:00. The result says so when it applies.

How to Read Your Day Master

The day stem is the day master (日主, ri zhu), the character that stands for you. Every other character is described by its element's relationship to the day master's element. The element that produces yours is the resource; the element yours produces is the output; the element yours controls is wealth; the element that controls yours is power; and characters of your own element are companions. Those five labels are the element-level version of the "ten gods" a practitioner works with, and the result names them for your chart.

Each of the ten stems carries a traditional picture used to talk about temperament: Jia is a tall tree, Yi a climbing plant, Bing the sun, Ding a lamp flame, Wu a mountain, Ji garden soil, Geng raw metal, Xin fine jewellery, Ren a river, Gui rain and mist. They are descriptions, not predictions. Whether a chart counts as "strong" or "weak" depends on the season of birth and the whole chart, and that judgement is the practitioner's work rather than a formula.

The Five Elements in a BaZi Chart

Wood, fire, earth, metal and water sit in two cycles. In the generating cycle, wood feeds fire, fire makes earth, earth bears metal, metal carries water, and water feeds wood. In the controlling cycle, wood breaks earth, earth dams water, water puts out fire, fire melts metal, and metal cuts wood. Every stem and branch belongs to one element, so the eight characters can be counted, and the result shows how many of each you have.

The count is the simplest view. Traditional reading also weighs the hidden stems inside each branch and how strong each element is in the month of birth, which a count does not do. The twelve branches and their elements:

Frequently Asked Questions