Guides
How each system actually works, written for people who have just drawn their first hexagram.
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The Useful God (Yong Shen) in BaZi: What It Means
If you have spent any time with BaZi you will have met the Useful God, or Yong Shen (用神). It is the single most important concept in chart interpretation and al…
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The Five Day Master Types in BaZi: A Reading Guide
The Day Master is the single most important character in a BaZi chart. It is the heavenly stem of your birth day, and it represents you. Ten stems, five element…
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What to Do When You Don't Know Your Birth Time (BaZi Guide)
A surprising number of people do not know their birth time. It is a real problem for BaZi, because the Hour pillar is a quarter of the chart. But the usual work…
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Why True Solar Time Matters in BaZi (and How to Correct for It)
Here is a detail that quietly invalidates a lot of online BaZi results. The system tracks the sun, not the clock. If you were born far from your time zone's cen…
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What If an Element Is Missing from Your BaZi Chart?
Charts missing one of the five elements are common — somewhere around a third. Online, this is usually presented as a deficiency to be fixed. The classical read…
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How to Read a BaZi Chart, Step by Step
Reading a chart has an order. Jumping straight to interpretations is what produces the contradictory advice you see online. Work through the steps and most of t…
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Da Yun Explained: How Luck Pillars Work in BaZi
A birth chart is fixed. Luck pillars are what make it move. Each pillar governs roughly ten years and is derived directly from the birth chart, which is why two…
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BaZi vs. Chinese Zodiac: What Is the Difference?
Almost everyone in the English-speaking world knows their Chinese zodiac animal. Almost nobody who stops there has enough information for a meaningful reading.…
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What Is a "Lucky Element" in BaZi — and How Do You Use It?
Ask a Chinese astrology site for your lucky element and you will usually get a colour to wear or a direction to sleep in. The underlying idea is more interestin…
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The Five Elements in Chinese Astrology: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water
Every Chinese divination system runs on the same engine: the five elements, or Wu Xing (五行). BaZi uses them for the Four Pillars, Liu Yao uses them for the six…
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The Ten Gods in BaZi, Explained Without Jargon
The Ten Gods (十神) are the part of BaZi that most English sources explain badly. They are not deities and they are not a moral ranking. They are simply the ten p…
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How to Find Your Day Master — and Why It Matters
If you learn one thing about BaZi, learn this one. The Day Master is the heavenly stem of your Day pillar, and it stands for you. Every other element in the cha…
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What Is BaZi? A Beginner's Guide to the Four Pillars of Destiny
BaZi (八字) literally means "eight characters." It is the Chinese system of reading a person from the moment they were born — not from a star sign or a personalit…