How to read a Bazi chart

A Bazi chart is a snapshot of four moments in time: the year, month, day, and hour you were born. Each moment is written as two Chinese characters — one heavenly stem (天干) and one earthly branch (地支) — so four moments give eight characters. Together they are called the Four Pillars, or 八字 (bā zì, “eight characters”).

Follow the steps with our complete fictional sample chart. Open the example to see the Four Pillars, Day Master, Ten Gods, and hidden stems together.

The pieces of a Bazi chart are not hard to learn. The hard part is resisting the urge to treat them as a verdict. They are a vocabulary, not a sentence about you.

1. The four pillars: a snapshot of four moments

Every pillar has the same shape: a heavenly stem on top (天干) and an earthly branch on the bottom (地支). The stem is the more visible part; the branch carries more hidden detail in classical reading.

• Year pillar — the year of birth, by the calendar you used.
• Month pillar — bounded by solar terms (around the 4th, 6th, or 7th of each Gregorian month), not by your calendar's month.
• Day pillar — the day you were born, by a continuous 60-day cycle that has been used for over a thousand years.
• Hour pillar — the time of day, split into 12 two-hour blocks.

On a BaziTrace chart the four pillars are written left to right: year, month, day, hour. Each pillar shows one heavenly stem paired with one earthly branch — two characters, one pillar.

2. The day master: a starting point, not a verdict

The day's stem is called the day master (日主). It is the most common starting point in English-language Bazi reading.

Each stem has a traditional image: Yang Wood is a tall tree, Yin Wood is a vine, Yang Fire is the sun, Yin Fire is a candle flame, and so on. These are starting images. They are not personality types. A real reading would look at the day master in relation to the other seven characters, not in isolation.

We list the day master's element (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and its yin/yang polarity. That is the most we are willing to say with a non-validated engine.

3. The five elements (五行): a tally, not a score

Each of the eight characters maps to one of five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. A BaziTrace chart counts how many of each element appear across the four pillars. With all four pillars present, the total is always 8. With an unknown hour, the total is always 6.

The tally is descriptive. It tells you which elements appear in your chart and how often. It does not tell you that you "lack" something, that you should "balance" it with food, colors, or careers, or that any particular count is good or bad. Those recommendations are common on the internet; they are not part of the calculation we publish.

4. The Ten Gods (十神): a label, not a verdict

Every visible stem in the chart can be given a label that says how it relates to the day master through the five-element cycle and yin/yang polarity. There are exactly ten labels, and together they are called the Ten Gods (十神). The labels are fixed — the same stem in the same position always gets the same label for a given day master.

BaziTrace prints the Ten Gods label next to every visible stem so you can see, at a glance, which roles each pillar carries. The label is structural: it tells you what kind of relationship a stem has to the day master. It does not say whether that relationship is good, bad, lucky, or unlucky. See the ten gods page for the full list and the five relationship families.

5. Hidden stems (藏干): a fixed map inside each branch

Each earthly branch carries a small set of hidden stems inside it. The set is taken from a traditional branch-to-stem table that has been used for centuries; it does not change with the day or the chart. On a BaziTrace chart the hidden stems appear under each branch, grouped by their layer (main, secondary, residual).

The hidden-stem map is structural information about each branch. It does not change the four pillars and it does not change the visible five-element tally. It gives you a finer-grained view of what each branch already represents. See the hidden stems page for the full table and how to read each layer.

6. What the chart is not

• Not a personality test. A Bazi chart does not classify you.
• Not a prediction. It does not forecast events.
• Not medical, legal, or financial advice. Even an experienced reader is one of many lenses, not a clinical, legal, or financial tool.
• Not a verdict on a person. A pillar is a starting observation.

7. A small reading order

1. Find the day master on the day pillar. Read its image as a starting observation, not a definition.
2. Look at the four pillars left to right: year, month, day, hour. Each pillar is one heavenly stem and one earthly branch.
3. Read the five-element tally. Notice which elements are most and least present.
4. Read the Ten Gods label next to every visible stem. Notice which relationship families repeat across the chart.
5. Open the fixed hidden-stem map for each branch. Notice which extra stems each branch carries.
6. Stop there. For anything that affects a real decision, talk to a person you trust.

Generate your own chart on the home calculator, see an example end-to-end on the Sample page, or read about charts with an unknown birth time.