How to Read a Bazi Chart

Start with one character: the Day Master at the top of the Day Pillar. Then look at its season, the other elements and their relationships. Add Life Chapters (大运) only after reading the birth chart. The example above and the steps below use the same teaching chart: a male birth in Beijing on June 15, 1990, at 12:00 local recorded time. It is a calculation example, not a user’s birth record.

Chart Anatomy: What You're Looking At

A complete Bazi chart has four pillars (四柱): Year, Month, Day, and Hour. Each contains a Heavenly Stem on top and an Earthly Branch below. This site displays them from left to right in that order. For our Beijing example, historical daylight saving time and true solar time correction turn the recorded 12:00 into 10:45, giving the Hour Pillar 癸巳. A chart with unknown birth time omits the Hour Pillar.

Stems and branches have assigned Five Elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water — and Yin or Yang polarity. Branches also contain hidden stems. These calendar classifications provide the information used to derive relationships; the chart does not measure physical substances or a person’s abilities.

Step 1 — Find Your Day Master

Find the column labelled Day. Its top character is the Day Master (日主), the reference point for classifying the other stems. In this example the Day Pillar is 辛亥, so the Day Master is 辛 (Xin), Yin Metal. With unknown birth time this reference is provisional: time correction near midnight may change the calendar date, Day Pillar and the relationships derived from it.

There are ten possible Day Masters: each of the five elements has a Yang and a Yin stem. For Metal, 庚 (Geng) is Yang and 辛 (Xin) is Yin. Our example has both: 庚 in the Year Pillar and 辛 in the Day Pillar. They share an element but differ in polarity, which will matter when we reach the Ten Gods.

Natural images can help you remember the stems: a tree for 甲, a jewel for 辛. These images describe the symbols, not fixed personality types. In this chart, identifying 辛 tells us which element and polarity to use as our reference; it does not establish precision, sensitivity or any other personal trait.

Step 2 — Assess Day Master Strength

Next, check the Month Branch for the seasonal context. Here it is 午 (Wu), a summer branch associated with Fire. That is a starting point for assessing Day Master strength (日主强弱), not a complete verdict on the Yin Metal Day Master.

A strong Day Master (身强) has relatively strong support in the chart; a receptive Day Master (身弱) has relatively less. Support comes from its own element and the element that generates it. The assessment weighs this against Output, Wealth, and Authority relationships: the elements the Day Master produces, controls, or is controlled by. It describes the chart's structural balance, not someone's independence, need for approval, or ability to handle pressure.

Neither label is inherently better. Read the season, roots and surrounding stems together. Roots refer to the Day Master’s own element in the branches’ hidden stems. In this example, Water hidden in 亥 is produced by Metal; it is not a Metal root. The calculator gives an indicative, rule-based strength assessment. Its Five Element distribution is a separate weighted tally, so a large percentage is not a second strength verdict.

Step 3 — Map the Ten Archetypes (Ten Gods)

Each other stem is classified relative to the Day Master in two steps: identify its element relationship, then compare Yin and Yang. The five relationships are same element, producing the Day Master, produced by it, controlling it, and controlled by it. Splitting each into same and opposite polarity gives the Ten Gods (十神), also called the Ten Archetypes on this site.

Use 辛 (Yin Metal) as the reference. The Month Stem 壬 is Yang Water: Metal generates Water, and the polarities differ, so 壬 is Hurting Officer (伤官). The Hour Stem 癸 is Yin Water: the same generating direction, but matching polarity, so it is Eating God (食神). Our plain-English labels for these are The Rebel Visionary and The Creative Mind.

The Year Stem 庚 is Yang Metal. It shares 辛’s element but has opposite polarity, so it is Rob Wealth (劫财), labelled The Challenger on this site. These names identify relationships, not character diagnoses. Traditional themes such as expression, resources and responsibility need to be read with placement, season and the rest of the chart.

Step 4 — Read the Five Element Balance

Every visible stem and branch carries one of the five elements, and branches also store hidden stems. The calculator weights these contributions to show the chart's element balance (五行平衡) — the relative contributions of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Read these proportions as context alongside the strength label in Step 2. This balance is read on two levels.

First, composition: find where each element appears. In our example, Water is visible as 壬 and 癸; it also appears in hidden stems, including 壬 inside 亥. The chart’s tally weights visible stems, branches and hidden stems separately. A larger share means a larger contribution under that tally, not a stronger personality trait. A small or zero share does not automatically identify an element to add.

Second, relationships: the generating cycle runs Wood → Fire → Earth → Metal → Water → Wood. The controlling cycle runs Wood → Earth → Water → Fire → Metal → Wood. For our Metal Day Master, Earth generates it, Metal shares its element, Water is produced by it, Wood is controlled by it, and Fire controls it. The directions stay fixed; whether a relationship is useful depends on the whole chart.

Step 5 — Spot Clashes and Combinations

The relationships between branches add a final layer of dynamic information. The classical system identifies several kinds of interactions:

• Clashes (冲, chong) — specified pairs of opposing branches, traditionally read for tension or change.
• Combinations (合, he) — specified pairs or groups of branches read as joining. A combination does not automatically transform into another element.
• Punishments (刑, xing) — a named set of branch relationships traditionally read for constraint or friction.
• Harms (害, hai) — specified branch pairs with a separate traditional interpretation of obstruction.

Our example contains 巳 in the Hour Pillar and 亥 in the Day Pillar, a clash pair. First locate those two branches, then consider their positions and the other relationships. The clash alone does not establish a job change, separation or other life event. If birth time is unknown, the Hour Branch is unavailable, so this particular pair cannot be assumed.

Step 6 — Read Each Pillar's Life Area

Traditional readings associate each pillar with a set of life themes. Use these correspondences to understand where a reading is directing attention, after checking the actual stems and branches:

1. Year Pillar — ancestry, generational influences, the social backdrop you were born into. The animal here is your familiar Chinese zodiac sign.
2. Month Pillar — parents and early home environment. The branch here also sets the season, which is the single biggest factor in Day Master strength.
3. Day Pillar — the self (top character, the Day Master) and your intimate one-to-one relationships, including marriage (bottom character, the spouse palace).
4. Hour Pillar — children, late-life trajectory, hidden potential, and what you leave behind. If your birth time is unknown, this pillar is absent from the chart: every Hour-Pillar judgment in this list is simply unavailable rather than blank-to-fill-in (see the FAQ below on reading a three-pillar chart).

In this example, 壬 (Hurting Officer) is the Month Stem, while 癸 (Eating God) is the Hour Stem. Both belong to the Output family, but they differ in polarity and position. Traditional interpretation considers those differences alongside the whole chart. A placement cannot prove a family history, talent or life event.

Step 7 — Check Your Current Life Chapter

The four pillars form the natal chart, calculated from the birth details. Life Chapters (大运, dayun) add a timing layer: a sequence of stem–branch pairs, each covering roughly ten years. The first chapter begins at a calculated age, not automatically at birth.

The starting age is computed from the interval between birth and the relevant solar-term boundary. Direction also follows the method’s rules, so people born days apart can have different start ages. In our example, keep 辛 as the Day Master when reading any chapter’s stem, then check how that chapter’s branches interact with the natal branches. A Metal or Fire chapter does not have one universal meaning for everyone, and its element alone does not predict an outcome.

Our calculator generates your full Life Chapter sequence automatically from your birth details, with the start and end age of each ten-year window. If your birth time is unknown, the calculator cannot fix that starting age, so it omits the decade start age and the current Life Chapter rather than guessing them — check your own chart's output to see whether the timing layer is present.

A Worked Example

Return to the example above: 庚午 / 壬午 / 辛亥 / 癸巳. The Day Master is 辛, the Month Branch is 午, and the visible non-Day stems are 庚, 壬 and 癸. These are calculated chart facts. They remain the reference for every step below.

Relative to 辛, 庚 is Rob Wealth, 壬 is Hurting Officer, and 癸 is Eating God. This is a classification of the visible stems, not a ranking of the whole chart: hidden stems also carry relationships. The Five Element tally shows weighted composition; season, roots and structure are needed for a broader assessment.

For timing, use this example’s calculated Life Chapter sequence and its actual start ages. Keep the natal pillars in place and add the selected chapter as a separate layer. With an unknown birth time, stop before exact start ages or a current-chapter claim. The unknown-time section explains which information remains available.

A reading moves from calculated characters to derived relationships, then to interpretation in context. Keeping those steps separate makes it easier to check a claim. For a longer explanation using this same reproducible chart, continue to the complete worked Bazi reading.

Reading Your Own Chart

Start with your own Day Master and locate the Month Branch. Then work out one visible stem relationship and check where each element’s tally comes from. Broader strength, structure and timing judgments take more context; you do not need to settle them all on a first reading.

If you haven't already, read our primer on what Bazi is for the historical and conceptual background, see how it compares to Western astrology if that's your existing reference point, or study a complete worked Bazi reading to see the finished interpretation rather than the instructional sequence.