Why read this
BaZi literally means "eight characters." Your birth moment is encoded as four pairs of Chinese characters - year, month, day, hour - and those eight characters are the whole chart.
BaZi is the branch of the tradition this site reads most. If you remember only one thing: the character in the "day" position is you. It is called the Day Master (日主), and every other character in the chart is read as a relationship to it - a resource, an output, an officer, a rival. The Ten Gods table in the glossary names those relationships.
The four pillars
Each pillar has a Heavenly Stem (天干) on top and an Earthly Branch (地支) below. Year pillar - your environment and roots. Month pillar - your upbringing and the season you were born into. Day pillar - you, the Day Master. Hour pillar - your inner life and later years. Four pillars × two characters = eight.
A daily-life analogy
A 30-second example
Open a chart and do exactly one thing: find the day column and look at its top character - the stem. That is the Day Master. Then ask whether its element is strong or weak: does the surrounding year, month and hour feed it or drain it? That single question is where nearly every reading starts.
Where this leads
From the Day Master, two timelines extend outward: the Ten Gods (how other people and events relate to you) and the luck cycles - dà yùn (大運) and liú nián (流年) - which move the chart through a life. The glossary covers both.
For guidance and self-awareness purposes only. This lesson explains Chinese astrology as a cultural and philosophical framework - what it is, where it came from, and how its vocabulary works. It is not a prediction of your future, a medical or financial opinion, or a substitute for professional advice.