What is BaZi?

BaZi (八字, "eight characters") — also called the Four Pillars of Destiny — is a Chinese system for understanding a person through the moment they were born. It is older than most things we call astrology, and it works quite differently from the Western zodiac.

Eight characters, four pillars

Your birth year, month, day and hour each become a pair of characters: a Heavenly Stem (one of ten, carrying an element and a polarity) and an Earthly Branch (one of twelve — the zodiac animals). Four pairs, eight characters. Together they form your chart.

The zodiac animal most people know is just the branch of the year pillar. BaZi reads all eight characters, and the most important one is not the year at all.

The Day Master

The Heavenly Stem of your day pillar is your Day Master — the "you" in the chart. There are ten, from Yang Wood (the oak) to Yin Water (the rain). Everything else in the chart is read in relation to it.

The Five Elements

Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Each character carries one, and the balance across your chart — which elements are abundant, which are missing — says a great deal about how you are wired. More on the Five Elements.

Patterns, not predictions

Traditional BaZi was often used to predict events. FateBook uses it differently: as a map of tendencies — how you work, how you love, what drains you and what restores you. The chart does not tell you what will happen; it shows the grain of the wood you are carved from. What you make is still yours.

What you need to calculate it

Your birth date, your birth time (optional but valuable — see unknown birth time) and your birth city, which sets the time zone and allows true solar time. That is all.

FateBook is designed for reflection and entertainment. BaZi is a traditional cultural framework; readings describe tendencies, not certainties, and are not medical, legal or financial advice.