Chinese astrology
The FourPillars
Ba Zi writes your birth as four pairs of Chinese characters, one for the year, month, day and hour. Here they are, with the elements they carry.
02How it worksCalculated
Each pillar is a Heavenly Stem (ten of them) joined to an Earthly Branch (twelve). The pairs run in a cycle of sixty. The year changes at Li Chun, when the Sun reaches 315° of the ecliptic, about 4 February. The month changes at each of twelve solar terms. Both are found from the real position of the Sun, not from fixed dates.
The day pillar is plain counting from a known day, so it never drifts. The hour pillar uses the two-hour Chinese watches, starting with Zi from 23:00 to 01:00.
Practitioners differ on two points. Some move the clock to true solar time; some start the new day at 23:00 and some at midnight. Both are options above. Luck cycles run forward or backward from the month pillar, by the sex and the polarity of the birth year, and start after a number of days to a solar term that is counted as years at one year per three days.
03Zodiac animalCalculated
The animal most people mean by their Chinese sign follows the lunar new year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February. The Four Pillars year follows Li Chun instead. Someone born in January or early February can have a different animal under each rule, and both are shown.
04What the Day Master meansAttributed
The Day Master is the stem of the day pillar. Practitioners treat it as you, and read the other characters by how they relate to it. The short descriptions of the five elements are from the tradition. They describe a temperament in symbols and do not predict events.