TRIPODTERRA
A BaZi chart — 排盘 — looks like four columns of eight characters: year, month, day, and hour. Everything in a reading hangs off those eight characters, so getting the chart right matters more than any later interpretation. Here's how the calculation works, and how to find the luck cycle you're in right now.
The four pillars, step by step
1. The year pillar
The year pillar uses the sexagenary cycle — sixty combinations of the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. The catch: the BaZi year begins at 立春 (Start of Spring, around February 4), not on Lunar New Year. A baby born in late January is, in BaZi terms, still in the previous year.
2. The month pillar
Months follow the 24 solar terms, not the calendar. The first month starts at 立春, and each month pillar runs from one solar term to the next. This is why two people born days apart in the same calendar month can have different month pillars.
3. The day pillar
The day pillar cycles through all sixty combinations in order, regardless of solar terms. It's the anchor of the chart — the day stem is your Day Master (日主), the single most important character in the reading.
4. The hour pillar
The hour pillar comes from your birth time, in two-hour blocks called 时辰. One correction that matters: professional paipan uses true solar time (真太阳时) — your clock time adjusted for longitude. Someone born at 6:55 in western China may still be in the 卯 hour (5–7) by true solar time, but their clock puts them near the boundary.
What you should input
To get an accurate chart, prepare: birth date (solar calendar), birth time to the minute if possible, and birthplace. The birthplace corrects for longitude; the minute corrects for hour-boundary cases. If you only know "morning" or "afternoon", say so — a good tool will still chart, but the hour pillar is your weakest pillar.
Reading your luck cycle — 大运
大运 are ten-year cycles that unfold from the month pillar. The direction (forward or backward) depends on your year stem's yin/yang and your gender, and the starting age is calculated from the distance between your birthday and the nearest solar term. The result: a sequence of ten-year periods, each with its own element combination.
To find the cycle you're in now: look up your chart, find your age in the 大运 table, and read the stem-and-branch pair for that decade. That pair's elements are then weighed against your Day Master — favorable element = a decade to push; draining element = a decade to consolidate. This "which decade am I in" question is the single most practical thing paipan answers.
Try it free
The calculation itself is deterministic — the same inputs always give the same chart. What used to take a manual almanac lookup now takes a second. Get your free BaZi chart on TripodTerra — the four pillars, your Day Master, and the 大运 table are generated instantly, with an optional AI reading that explains each pillar in plain language.