Four pillars

What is this method?

The birth year, month, day and hour each form a stem–branch pair: four pillars and eight characters. This is a calendar structure used in traditional Chinese natal interpretation.

What you need

Gregorian date and birthplace timezone are required; time is optional. Without it, inspect definite year/month/day pillars.

How to read the result

Start with the pillars, then the day stem, month command, hidden stems and ten-god relations. Ten-year cycles are sequences, not automatic favorable/unfavorable verdicts.

Birth details (editable example)

Gregorian date

Birth time (optional)A blank time is never guessed. Four pillars show the reliable part; Ziwei cannot generate the twelve palaces.

Birthplace timezoneThe list shows current UTC offsets. Birth calculations apply historical offsets and DST for the entered date automatically.

Traditional chart sex parameterUsed for traditional cycle direction or Ziwei rules, not a personality judgment.

Advanced: day boundary, DST and chart conventions

Defaults usually suffice. Change these when a record lies on a time boundary or you intend to follow a different convention.

The repeated hour when DST endsIf clocks move from 02:00 back to 01:00, 01:30 occurs twice. This selects that occurrence; it does not turn DST on. Skipped spring times are rejected.When does a new day begin?A convention difference: Aug 16 at 23:30 belongs to Aug 16 by default, but to the next day under the Zi-hour rule. It affects day/hour pillars; Ziwei applies the corresponding Zi-hour convention.How the cycle start age is convertedCycles are traditional ten-year pillar sequences. The interval from birth to the adjacent Jie is converted at three days per year; these methods subdivide that interval differently.Clock used for day/hour pillarsCivil time is the clock shown in the birth record. Solar time approximately adjusts for longitude and the equation of time and may change a boundary result. Date-only results use civil time.

Birthplace name (optional, page only)