Chinese Astrology » How to Construct a Four Pillars Charts
How to Construct a Four Pillars Charts
To construct a Chinese Astrology Four Pillar of Destiny Bazi natal chart, we need the person’s birth year, month, day and birth time, and then convert them to the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.
After construction the chart, then we have the
Year Pillar
Month Pillar
Day Pillar
Hour Pillar
The year and month use for constructing a 4 Pillar chart must base on the 24 Solar Terms.
For a birth year, a year offically start on the day of “Start of Spring”. This means 2009 the year of the Ox, the Start of Spring is at 0050 on the 4th February 2009. So anyone was born after 0050 on the 4th February 2009, this person carries an animal sign of Ox. For anyone was born before 0050 on the 4th February 2009, even thought the Chinese new year was on 26th January 2009, nine days before, this person carries an animal sign of RAT, not OX. (This bit is important)
In short, regardless the Chinese New Year’s date before or after the Start of Spring, In Chinese Astrology Four Pillars of Destiny Bazi or Feng Shui, the Start of Spring is the cut off point for the Chinese Astrology or Feng Shui Year.
The Start of Spring is also the starting point for the first month.
There are 24 Solar Terms, in Chinese Astrology Four Pillars of Destiny Bazi or Feng Shui, the odd one in these 24 Solar Terms called Jit “
". They are more important!
There are two ways, easy and hard, to construct a Chinese Astrology Four Pillars of Destiny Bazi Natal Chart. An easy way is just using a four pillars Bazi software or web tools to generate the charts. By using Four Pillar or BaZi plotting software or web tools, just key in the Four Pillars birth data, hit the Enter key on the keyboard or click OK on the screen, the Four Pillars Bazi Feng Shui Software will generates the Four Pillars or Bazi Chart for you within seconds. It is that easy to use a Four Pillars BaZi software.
The hard way to construct a 4 pillar Natal Chart is to do it manually. But there are benefits to do it manually over computer Four Pillars Bazi software.
First you can understand the procedures how to construct the Chinese Astrology Four pillars of Destiny Bazi natal chart and the Luck Pillars.
Secondly it gives you more opportunities to practise and write the Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branches in Chinese Characters. If you want to be really good at doing something, I mean writing the Chinese Characters and reading the Four Pillars Charts, you need to practise more.
Thirdly, if in the future, you are really good at Four Pillars of Destiny and you decide to teach or run your own four pillars workshop, you need to know and show your students how to construct a Four Pillars Natal Chart manually. You don't just show your students how to key in the birth data in a Four Pillars Bazi Software.
Ok, let’s start construct a Four Pillars Natal Chart manually now.
In order to construct a four pillars natal chart, we need the birth data of a person and the gender of this person.
We need a Chinese Alamance. In Chinese it is called “Ten Thousand Years Calendar”. It has all the information need to build a Four Pillars chart. The information includes the year in Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch that is the Year Pillar. The particular month in Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch that is the Month Pillar. The date in Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch that is the Day Pillar. In Four Pillars of Destiny's jargons, the Day Pillar also called the Day Master or DM.
There is also information about the 24 Solar Terms in the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar” too.
The Hour Pillar is not included in the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar”. At the beginning, you need a table to find out the Heavenly Stem for the hour. However, there is a way to store the hourly Heavenly Stem into the palm (the body part palm not the palm pc). Once you have learnt it you will never forget. You may forget to bring the hourly Heavenly Stem table with you, but you will never forget to bring your own palm.
Have you ever seen a Feng Shui Master using the thumb pointing over the four fingers? After the moving around the thumb, the Bazi Master can tell you the Heavenly Stem for the hour. Or sometimes, the Bazi Master can tell you what is going to happen. Well, it is hard to teach you now. I will draw a table for you instead.
Here is a part of a page of the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar” in 1965.
The birth data, western calendar, 10pm 11th August, 1965. I underlined the year, month and day pillars in red.
After checking at the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar” we have the following 4 pillars.
How does the Hour pillar –Metal pig come from? Just look at the following table.
The person was born on the Ding day at 10pm, so just look at the Ding day in the fifth column and go down to the 21-23 Pig's intersection. The Heavenly Stem is Xin. So the hour pillar is -Xin Pig.