Chart anatomy · 四柱
Four Pillars of Destiny 八字: Year, Month, Day & Hour
4 pillars carry 8 characters: one stem and branch each for year, month, day and hour. Find the Day Master and read how each calendar boundary works.
A chart is four paired coordinates for one birth moment. Each pillar places a heavenly stem above an earthly branch; the day stem becomes the reference from which the rest of the chart is read.
Build your four pillars
One moment, four scales
What each pillar contributes
All four pillars have the same two-character construction. Their difference is the scale of time they locate: year, solar month, day and two-hour period.
- 01年
Year pillar
The chart's annual coordinate
The year pillar changes at Li Chun in Four Pillars practice. Its branch is also an animal, but this chart coordinate is not always the same as the familiar Chinese New Year animal year.
- 02月
Month pillar
A solar month, not a lunar month number
Each chart month opens at one of the twelve Jie solar terms. The month branch follows a fixed Tiger-to-Ox sequence, while the month stem is derived from the year stem.
- 03日
Day pillar
The chart's reference point
The day stem is called the Day Master. Every other visible stem—and every hidden stem inside a branch—is named by its phase and polarity relationship to this one stem.
- 04时
Hour pillar
One of twelve two-hour positions
The hour branch changes every two hours. Its heavenly stem is paired from the Day Master and that branch, so a birth time adds a complete fourth pillar rather than an animal label alone.
Read one complete chart
A Gregorian birth on 15 June 1990 at 12:00 in Asia/Shanghai (UTC+09:00 on that date) gives these four pillars. The year uses Li Chun and the month uses the solar terms; the day uses the 23:00 boundary.
- Year庚午Yang Metal Horse
- Month壬午Yang Water Horse
- Day辛亥Yin Metal Pig
- Hour甲午Yang Wood Horse
The day starts with Xin 辛, so the Day Master is Yin Metal. The month opens at Grain in Ear, not the first day of a lunar month.
If the birth time is unknown, leave the hour pillar unknown too. Near a solar-term or day boundary, the missing time may also prevent a single month, year or day answer.
Open this example with its hidden stems and Ten Gods →The year has two useful doors
Chinese New Year and Li Chun answer different questions
The site keeps both results visible because the popular animal year and a Four Pillars year can turn on different dates.
Chinese New Year
Outer animal year
The first day of the first lunar month begins the familiar zodiac year used for the outer-animal result.
Li Chun
Four Pillars year
The Start of Spring solar term turns the chart's year pillar and opens the Tiger month.
The centre of the reading
Why the day stem matters
The Day Master is not a fifth pillar. It is the visible stem already sitting in the day pillar, promoted to a special job: it becomes the point of comparison for every other stem in the chart.
First compare the five phases: same, generated by, generating, controlling, or controlled by. Then compare yin and yang. Those two facts produce the chart's Ten Gods names.
What the characters reveal
Visible stems, visible branches—and stems inside branches
The written chart starts with eight characters. A complete structural reading can then open each branch and inspect the stems it carries within it.
Visible characters
Four heavenly stems above four earthly branches.
Hidden stems
Each branch contains one, two or three stems in a fixed order.
Relationship names
Every visible and hidden stem can be read against the Day Master.