Chinese Astrology · BaZi

What Is BaZi?

BaZi — literally "Eight Characters" — is the ancient Chinese system of destiny analysis based on the exact date and time of your birth. Also called the Four Pillars of Destiny (四柱命理, Sì Zhù Mìng Lǐ), it encodes your birth into four pillars: Year, Month, Day, and Hour. Each pillar carries a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch, together forming eight characters that describe the energetic blueprint of your life.

Rooted in Taoist philosophy and the Five Element theory that underlies Traditional Chinese Medicine, BaZi is one of the most sophisticated and precise destiny systems ever developed. Miri began studying Chinese metaphysics in 2020 after decades of working with TCM, bringing a deep embodied understanding of the Five Elements to every reading.

The Five Elements · 五行

Everything in the universe — every personality, every season, every organ, every relationship — can be understood through the lens of the Five Elements. In BaZi, your chart is a blend of these five forces in their Yang and Yin expressions, each shaping who you are and how you move through life.

The Ten Heavenly Stems · 十天干

The Ten Heavenly Stems are the ten phases of Qi cycling through the universe — five elements, each in their Yang and Yin expression. They form the upper row of every BaZi pillar and describe the quality of energy present at each level of your chart.

The 60 Jia Zi Cycle · 六十甲子

The Ten Heavenly Stems pair with the Twelve Earthly Branches (the twelve animal signs) in a 60-year cycle known as the Jia Zi. Each of the 60 combinations carries its own unique energetic signature, describing not only the year but the month, day, and hour of your birth. The chart below shows the full 60-pillar system — the very foundation of BaZi analysis.

What a BaZi Chart Looks Like

Below is an example of a Natal Destiny Chart — the Four Pillars laid out across Hour, Day, Month, and Year, showing the Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, Ten Gods, and additional destiny indicators such as the Guardian of Destiny, Star of Destiny, Door of Destiny, and Life Stem.

The Twelve Earthly Branches · 十二地支

Each of the twelve animals corresponds to an Earthly Branch carrying specific elemental energies, seasons, directions, and personality traits that colour each pillar of the chart.

Luck Pillars · 大運

Luck Pillars (大運, Dà Yùn) are one of the most powerful and distinctive features of BaZi. Each Luck Pillar spans approximately ten years of your life, describing the dominant elemental energy of that decade. Unlike Western transits which shift constantly, Luck Pillars reveal the prevailing "weather" of each major chapter — whether it is a season that supports your Day Master, challenges you to grow, or brings specific types of opportunity and obstacle.

Understanding your Luck Pillars is transformative: it allows you to move with your seasons rather than against them, to know when to push forward and when to consolidate, when relationships are favoured and when career requires focus.

The Day Master · 日主

At the heart of every BaZi chart is the Day Master — the Heavenly Stem of your Day Pillar. This is your elemental identity, the "you" that all other chart elements relate to. Miri reads the Day Master in the context of the full chart, assessing its strength, its relationships with other elements, and what it needs to thrive. This becomes the lens through which all other readings are interpreted.

What You'll Explore in a Session

• Your Four Pillars — Year, Month, Day, and Hour stems and branches
• Your Day Master element and its strength in the chart
• The Ten Gods — your relationships, career, resource, and output energies
• Your current and upcoming Luck Pillars and what they mean for you
• Annual pillars (流年) — the specific energies of the current year
• Favourable and unfavourable elements for your chart
• How your chart interacts with key relationships in your life

Extra Question: Chinese Gender Prediction Chart

A traditional chart used for centuries — cross-referencing the mother's Chinese age at conception with the lunar month of conception to predict the baby's gender. This is available as an extra question added to any Chinese metaphysics session. See Ask a Question ($29) for returning clients, or request it as an add-on when booking your reading.

What to Prepare

• Your exact birth date, time, and location
• If you do not know your birth time, consider Chart Rectification first
• Questions or areas of life you'd like to explore