Enter your birth date and time to generate your Four Pillars chart — Day Master, Five Elements, Ten Gods, and 10-year Luck Pillars — based on the classical Chinese BaZi system
Enter your birth year using the Gregorian (Western) calendar
Enter the month you were born (1–12)
Enter the day you were born (1–31)
Your Hour Pillar needs a birth time. Without it, we'll still calculate your Year, Month, and Day Pillars
Used only to determine the direction of your Luck Pillars (Da Yun)
Your Four Pillars
No birth time was entered, so the Hour Pillar is left blank rather than guessed. The other three pillars and your Day Master are unaffected.
Your Day Master
Five Element Balance
Your Luck Pillars (Da Yun)
What does this mean? Your Day Master (highlighted above) is the "you" of the chart — every Ten God label on the other stems describes that stem's relationship to your Day Master. The Five Element bar shows which elements are strong or missing across your eight characters, and your Luck Pillars show which 10-year period you're currently in.
What Is BaZi (Four Pillars of Destiny)?
BaZi (八字, literally "Eight Characters") is a traditional Chinese method of reading a person's birth information as four pairs of characters — a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch for the year, month, day, and hour of birth. Together these eight characters form what's often called a Four Pillars chart. It's frequently confused with the Chinese zodiac, but they're not the same thing: your zodiac animal comes from just your birth year's Earthly Branch, while a full BaZi chart layers in your month, day, and hour as well, and centers on your Day Master rather than your year animal.
How the Four Pillars Are Calculated
Unlike the Gregorian calendar, the Year and Month Pillars in BaZi are anchored to the 24 solar terms (jie qi) — points on the sun's path through the sky, roughly 15 days apart — rather than to January 1st or the lunar new year. The Year Pillar changes at Li Chun (around February 4th), and each Month Pillar changes at one of the twelve "jie" solar terms, not on the 1st of a lunar or Gregorian month. This is one of the most common sources of error in casual BaZi tools. The Day Pillar, by contrast, simply continues in an unbroken 60-day cycle that traditional sources trace back thousands of years, and the Hour Pillar is one of twelve two-hour blocks. The stem of your Day Pillar becomes your Day Master, the anchor point for everything else in your chart.
Understanding the Five Elements and Your Day Master
Every Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch belongs to one of the Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, or Water — which relate to each other through generating and controlling cycles (Wood feeds Fire, Fire creates Earth's ash, and so on). The element count shown above is a simplified overview based on your eight stem-and-branch characters; practitioners doing a deeper reading also weigh the "hidden stems" tucked inside each Earthly Branch, which this overview lists but doesn't add into the count. Your Day Master — the stem of your Day Pillar — is the reference point for that whole picture: whether your chart reads as "strong" or "weak" is judged by how much support or opposition your Day Master's element gets from everything around it.
What Are the Ten Gods (Shi Shen)?
The Ten Gods describe how each of the other seven stems and hidden stems in your chart relates to your Day Master, combining the Five Element cycle with Yin-Yang polarity into five paired categories: Companions (Friend / Rob Wealth), Output (Eating God / Hurting Officer), Wealth (Indirect Wealth / Direct Wealth), Officer (Seven Killings / Direct Officer), and Resource (Indirect Seal / Direct Seal). Practitioners use the mix and placement of these ten labels across your chart to discuss personality tendencies, career aptitude, and relationship patterns — your Day Master itself carries no Ten God label, since everything else is described relative to it.
A Note on How This Calculator Works
This calculator determines your Four Pillars using the classical solar-term (jie qi) calendar rather than fixed Gregorian dates, and follows the widely used modern convention for the 23:00–00:59 "Zi hour" boundary. Birth time is collected as one of twelve two-hour blocks rather than an exact minute, and if you don't provide a birth time, Luck Pillar timing is estimated using midday as a neutral default — which can shift the starting age of your first Luck Pillar by up to a few months. The Five Element count above is a simplified overview of your eight main characters, not a full weighted reading. This tool is built as an educational and cultural reference reflecting a centuries-old tradition, not a scientific, medical, or financial instrument — treat your results as a starting point for exploring BaZi, not a guarantee of any particular outcome.
FAQ
What is BaZi and what are the Four Pillars?
BaZi (八字, literally "Eight Characters") — also known as the Four Pillars of Destiny — is a traditional Chinese method of reading a person's birth information as four two-character pairs: a Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch for the year, month, day, and hour of birth. Together these eight characters form your chart, which practitioners use to explore personality traits, elemental balance, and the timing of different life phases through Luck Pillars.
How is my Day Master determined and why does it matter?
Your Day Master is the Heavenly Stem of your Day Pillar — the stem that falls on your actual day of birth. It's considered the "self" of the chart, the reference point every other pillar and Ten God relationship is measured against. Two people born on the same day, regardless of year, share the same Day Master and the same core elemental nature, even though the rest of their chart differs.
What if I don't know my exact birth time?
You can still get a meaningful reading. This calculator computes your Year, Month, and Day Pillars — including your Day Master — using just your birth date, and clearly marks the Hour Pillar as unknown rather than guessing. Luck Pillar (Da Yun) timing is only mildly sensitive to birth hour, so it's still shown, with a note about the small margin of uncertainty that introduces.
What are the Ten Gods (Shi Shen)?
The Ten Gods describe the relationship between your Day Master and every other stem in your chart, based on the Five Element generating and controlling cycles combined with Yin-Yang polarity. They're grouped into five pairs — Companions, Output, Wealth, Officer, and Resource — and are used by practitioners to read personality tendencies, career aptitude, and relationship dynamics.
What are Luck Pillars (Da Yun) and how do I read the ages?
Luck Pillars are a sequence of roughly 10-year periods that overlay your permanent chart, each contributing its own stem and branch. Whether they run forward or backward through the calendar depends on your gender and the Yin-Yang polarity of your Year Stem. The age shown for each Luck Pillar is when that period is considered to begin, calculated from how many days separate your birth from the nearest solar term.