Knowledge base
Bazi Guides
Everything we have written about reading a bazi chart, in the order that makes it easiest to learn. Start with the system, then take the chart apart piece by piece, then add time.
If you have not built your chart yet, the free bazi calculator takes a birth date, time and city. Open any guide from your result and it will point out the parts that belong to your own chart.
Start here
What the system is and how a chart is put together.
- What Is Bazi 八字The system itself: where the eight characters come from, what the Four Pillars of Destiny are, and what a reading can and cannot tell you.Read the guide
- The Bazi Chart 四柱How a birth moment becomes four columns of two characters, what each pillar governs, and the order to read them in.Read the guide
The parts of a chart
Each component, in the order a practitioner reads them.
- Day Master 日干The one character that stands for you. All ten explained, from the tall tree of Jia to the rain of Gui.Read the guide
- The Five Elements 五行Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water: the generating and controlling cycles, and how to read the balance in a chart.Read the guide
- Ten Gods 十神How every other character in the chart is named in relation to your Day Master, and what each of the ten means.Read the guide
- Shen Sha 神煞The symbolic stars: Nobleman, Peach Blossom, Travelling Horse, Yang Blade, Void and more, and how much weight to give them.Read the guide
Time
How a fixed chart meets the years you are actually living.
Build your chart first
The guides make more sense with your own eight characters in front of you.
Open the free bazi calculator