BaZi (Four Pillars) destiny reading: setting up a chart, the Day Master's strength, the Ten Gods, the theory behind it and its history, with a free chart calculator.
The process of BaZi fortune-telling in ten steps: gathering the birth data, fixing the stems and branches, setting up the chart, analyzing the Five Elements, judging the Day Master's strength, the Ten Gods, chart pattern and Useful God, luck cycles and annual luck, an overall reading, and advice.
Why can one BaZi chart match very different lives? The author divides the accuracy of BaZi readings into five levels, argues that the higher levels require resonance between heaven and humanity, and recounts how he unlocked a man's chart, fixed its Useful God, and correctly named his profession.
Direct Wealth is the element the Day Master controls with opposite polarity: steady salaried income, a man's wife and a woman's father. This article covers its meaning and character, its effects as favorable or unfavorable, its luck cycles and years, its images in each element, and verses for reading charts.
Direct Officer is the element that controls the Day Master with opposite polarity, regarded as the god of rank and honor. This article explains its meaning, temperament, the people, events, and objects it represents, its effects as favorable or unfavorable, its annual luck, and verses for reading charts.
Seven Killings, also called Indirect Officer, is the element that controls the Day Master with the same polarity. This article covers its meaning in destiny and family relations, how it turns auspicious when controlled or transformed, its character, favorable and unfavorable combinations, its relation to Day Master strength, suitable careers, and verses for reading charts.
An exploration of how traditional BaZi readings set up and interpret the chart: the ritual dimension of chart plotting, the reserved, dialectical, and open-ended style of verdicts, master-disciple transmission and its ethical rules, and the life philosophy of knowing, awaiting, and establishing one's destiny.
Judging whether the Day Master is strong or weak is a basic BaZi skill. This step-by-step guide covers finding the Day Master, the month command, roots in the branches, support versus control, drain, and expenditure, why counting elements is not enough, and a simple mnemonic.
The author argues that BaZi prediction rests on the resonance between heaven and humanity, draws analogies with relativity, quantum mechanics, and holographic theory, treats the BaZi as a tool for tracking the spacetime information of one's birth, and explains destiny, luck, and why some readers are accurate and others not.
This article traces how BaZi fortune-telling evolved: from Shang divination and the astrological officials of the Rites of Zhou, through Han Five Elements theory and Wang Chong, Tang borrowings from Western astrology and Li Xuzhong, to Xu Ziping's Four Pillars and the Ming and Qing treatises.
This article traces the origins of BaZi's building blocks: the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and the sixty-pair cycle, the Five Elements and their cycles, yin-yang theory, Wang Chong's theory of endowed qi, and the refinements of Li Xuzhong and Xu Ziping that completed the system.
A survey of how BaZi developed: the origins of the stems and branches and the sixty-pair cycle, the theoretical support of the River Chart, Luo Writing, and I Ching, Han views of fate, Li Xuzhong and Xu Ziping, the great Ming treatises, and the scholarly and blind-master lineages.
Ziping BaZi and Ziwei Doushu are the two most influential systems of traditional Chinese destiny reading. This article compares their methods, briefly surveys Tieban Shenshu, Liuyao, and Qimen, and identifies their shared foundation in the resonance between heaven and humanity and the three layers of destiny, luck, and momentum.