Cast a free BaZi chart from your birth date and birthplace

First, enter the birth details. Choose the Gregorian or lunar calendar, then gender, date, time and birthplace. If the lunar date is a leap month, mark it. What remains is a frozen birth record. Every pillar comes from it.

Second, restore the clock time. The chart takes the timezone and daylight saving of the birthplace in that year, then applies longitude and the equation of time if you turn that switch on. Mainland China returns to UTC+9 in the summers of 1986 to 1991. Each correction stays on the chart so you can check it.

Third, the chart is cast. The four pillars, Ten Gods, hidden stems, element strength, strength score, structure and ten-year luck cycles are computed in the same pass. The AI explains only fields already on the chart. It does not move a pillar, and it does not fill in a birth time you left blank.

Five items: birth date, birth time, birthplace, gender and calendar. Without the hour, the hour pillar cannot be set, and the Ten Gods on it are not reliable. One branch off is not a single character off. The Ten Gods on the hour pillar change with it.

If you live abroad and were born in China, the place is still the birthplace. The timezone follows the birthplace, not the city you live in now. The wrong timezone can shift the hour pillar by one branch.

True solar time does not always change the pillars. It corrects clock time by longitude and the equation of time. A pillar changes only when that correction crosses an hour, a day boundary or a solar term. If it does not cross, the pillars stay as they were.

Mark a lunar leap month. Unmarked, it is treated as an ordinary month, the Gregorian date is already wrong, and the month pillar follows. If the birth record says leap month, mark it.

If these fields are still unclear, start with what BaZi is.

The chart turns this submission into a result you can calculate again. The input is calendar, date, time, birthplace and gender. The output is the four pillars, day master, Ten Gods, hidden stems, element strength, strength score, structure, seasonal adjustment, void branches, twelve stages, nayin, and the ten-year luck cycles with annual pillars. Match those fields before you read the commentary.

After the calculation, these are the fields left on the chart. Each one can be checked against a BaZi manual. The chart does not add a luck grade.

What you see after casting is calculated, and you can check it line by line. Match the field on the chart first, then read the note beside it. No luck grade is added here.

• Pillars and day master: the year, month, day and hour pillars sit at the top. The day stem is the day master. The other seven characters are read against it.
• Ten Gods and hidden stems: each stem is labelled with a Ten God. Under each branch are the primary, middle and residual stems, weighted 1, 0.5 and 0.3. Read the primary first, then the two lighter layers.
• Element strength and the score: the elements are weighted counts, not a tally of the eight characters. Under the strength score, every plus and minus is listed.
• Structure and seasonal adjustment: the structure names the stem that stands in the month command, with its evidence. Seasonal adjustment is a separate line for that month. Do not merge the two lines into one verdict.
• Void, the twelve stages and nayin: void marks the two branches missing from this cycle, the stages mark where the day master stands, and nayin is the tone of a stem-branch pair. All three are supplementary.
• Luck cycles and annual pillars: a luck cycle is ten years, with its stem, branch, Ten God and the years it covers. Annual pillars sit inside that step. They do not open a second natal chart.
• The settings used this time: whether true solar time is on, which solar term was used, whether the day boundary is 23:00 or 00:00, and the birthplace timezone, all stay on the chart.

If a Ten God does not match, see Ten Gods and hidden stems. If an element does not match, see element strength. If a luck-cycle age does not match, see luck cycles. If void, the stages or nayin do not match, see void, stages and nayin.

This example shows where each field sits. It is not a judgment of a person, and the score is not written as character or fortune. The input is lunar 8th day of the leap 5th month, 1990, at 21:40, female, birthplace Beijing, timezone Asia/Shanghai, day boundary 23:00, true solar time on.

The calendar line shows “lunar” and “leap month”. The Gregorian date is 1990-06-30. Without the leap-month mark it would be treated as the ordinary 5th month, and both the Gregorian date and the month pillar would differ from this step. The timezone line shows +09:00 for that summer: standard time +08:00, plus one hour of daylight saving. That is how mainland China is restored for the summers of 1986 to 1991.

The true-solar-time line lists the longitude correction and the equation of time. In this example the corrected clock time is 20:22. The entered 21:40 falls in Hai. 20:22 falls in Xu, so the hour pillar crosses an hour boundary. When a correction does not cross a boundary, the hour pillar stays as it was. To keep this chart, look first at whether true solar time is on or off.

The pillar line prints Geng-Wu, Ren-Wu, Bing-Yin and Wu-Xu (庚午, 壬午, 丙寅, 戊戌). The day master is the day stem, Bing. The Ten Gods sit beside the stems: year stem Geng is Indirect Wealth, month stem Ren is Seven Killings, and hour stem Wu is Eating God. Hidden stems sit under the branches. The day branch Yin, for example, is primary Jia, middle Bing and residual Wu, weighted 1, 0.5 and 0.3.

The element line is the weighted count, not a tally of the eight characters. In this example Fire is 3.8, Earth 3.3, Metal 1.5, Wood 1 and Water 1. The strength line gives a score and lists each plus and minus, including whether the month branch’s primary stem, the day branch’s hidden stems and the year stem add or subtract. The score is the total of those lines. It is not an evaluation of the person.

The luck-cycle line starts with the wait before the first cycle. In this example that is 8 years, 2 months and 10 days, with the start date printed beside it. Year stem Geng is yang and the gender is female, so this example runs backward. The first cycle is Xin-Si. Annual pillars sit inside that decade; 1998, for example, is marked Wu-Yin. They do not replace the four pillars. How the start and the ages are derived is in luck cycles.

If another calculator disagrees, check in this order: the year boundary (Beginning of Spring or not), the day boundary (23:00 or 00:00), how the hours are cut, then whether true solar time is on. Do not reverse the order. Comparing two BaZi charts before the timezone, true solar time and day boundary are aligned is not a comparison of the same chart.

A different year boundary changes the year pillar. A different day boundary changes the day pillar around 23:00. A different hour cut changes the hour pillar. True solar time changes a pillar only when it crosses a boundary. Off and on can be two charts.

Where those switches sit in the glossary: BaZi.

If the pillars and Ten Gods are still unclear, start with what BaZi is. For the terms in detail, start with the four pillars.