How to Begin Your BaZi Analysis
A step-by-step guide to reading your Four Pillars chart: your Day Master, friends and foes, luck decades, symbolic stars and conflicts.
Calculate your chart →Six Steps to Reading Your Chart
Start with step 1 and work your way down.
Who, Where & When
Your self-discovery begins with finding your main element, your Day Master. Once you make your BaZi birth chart, this is the Heavenly Stem of the day you were born, read together with the hour, month and year.
After you discover your Day Master, you can also find which luck cycle you are living: a Forward (progressive) or Reverse (regressive) cycle. It depends on your biological sex at birth and the polarity of your birth year. Someone born in 2004 is a Yang person, because 2004 was a Yang year; someone born in 1975 is a Yin person, because 1975 was a Yin year.
Read more in BaZi: The Destiny Code by Joey Yap.
Find your Friends & Foes
Once you know your Day Master element, you can locate the elements that are your enemies and friends, so to speak. If you want to know what “the Earth Penalty” is, contact me.
When you discover the strength or weakness of your Day Master, you can also find which element is the most beneficial for you. Strength depends on the season you were born in and the cycle of the elements.
Read more in BaZi: The Destiny Code Revealed by Joey Yap.
Your “best friend” & “Daddy”
Each element has Yin and Yang sides. Based on who we are, we can find which side of each element supports us and which side causes us losses. These connect directly to each element’s interaction with our own: the support or the conflict cycle.
This is very important when we are attracted to people who are our opposites. See the charts by Mingli.ru ©.
Life Periods: Feel vs Look
Finally, study your Life Periods, the luck decades. They project the possibilities of your success. Sometimes how we feel is not how we appear to others, and people may perceive us the wrong way during certain periods.
Once you know this, you can see the luck, possible failures and recovery options for each decade of your life. Even if we cannot prevent every tragedy, we can be prepared for the bumps on the road.
Symbolic Stars · Shen Sha
“Shén Shā is sometimes translated literally as ‘gods and devils,’ but in fact they do not relate to ghosts or celestial beings: shen 神 means beneficial influence and sha 煞 means baleful influence.”
The Symbolic Stars in your birth chart are more important than those in the decade, but they all need to be reviewed. Do not panic at the words Death Star or “Wang Shen”: sometimes it means a breakthrough.
Conflicts & Resolutions
What is “The Golden Carriage”? Who are “The Peaceful Allies”? What is “The Heavenly Merger”? What is “The Clash”? And what are the “Self-Penalty” and the “Earth Penalty”?
See every pairing for the twelve Earthly Branches in the chart at the bottom of this page.
Read More
Two books by Joey Yap that go deeper into the Four Pillars.
Clashes & Penalties Chart
Every clash, penalty, merger and peaceful ally of the twelve Earthly Branches.