FOUR PILLARS
What is Four Pillars of Destiny (Bazi)?
Four Pillars of Destiny converts a person’s birth year, month, day, and hour into four "pillars" expressed in the sexagenary cycle (heavenly stems and earthly branches), then reads life tendencies from the resulting balance of the Five Elements and the ten-year fortune cycles known as "Da Yun." Originating in ancient China, it is a fate-reading system widely applied to career, money, and compatibility.
Overview
- System
- Fate Reading (read from the sexagenary cycle of birth date and time)
- Origin
- China
- What You Need
- Birth date and birth time
- Best For
- Life direction, career, money, and compatibility
- Time Frame
- Life as a whole / one year (Da Yun cycles run in ten-year periods)
Origins & History
Four Pillars of Destiny is one of the ancient Chinese systems of fate calculation. It spread throughout East Asia as "BaZi" ("Eight Characters"), formed by converting a person’s birth year, month, day, and hour into the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Each of the four time units—year, month, day, and hour—yields a stem-and-branch pairing that forms one pillar, and together the four pillars comprise eight characters, giving the system its name.
The practice of recording dates by combining the stem-and-branch cycle with the calendar is said to trace back as far as the Shang dynasty (from around 1600 BCE), while the system for reading fortune developed on the foundation of Han-dynasty cosmology. In Korea, a related practice known as Saju (사주, "four pillars") has reportedly been in use since the Goryeo period and remains widely consulted today before major decisions such as marriage or naming a child. This encyclopedia treats it as a distinct divination system from Four Pillars of Destiny.
How It Works
- 01Convert the birth year, month, day, and hour into the sexagenary cycle (heavenly stems and earthly branches) to form the year, month, day, and hour pillars.
- 02Analyze the balance of the Five Elements—wood, fire, earth, metal, and water—expressed across the stems and branches of the four pillars.
- 03Overlay the ten-year fortune cycles known as Da Yun to read the tendencies of each period.
What It Reveals
Four Pillars of Destiny is well suited to reading innate character traits, aptitudes in career, money, and compatibility, and the flow of fortune across ten-year cycles. However, it requires an accurate birth time, and the interpretation of the Five Elements can differ in its details between schools, so readings may vary somewhat depending on the practitioner.
Related Methods
References
- Wikipedia: Four Pillars of Destiny (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pillars_of_Destiny)