Chinese birth chart calculator
Put in your birthday to see your Chinese birth chart: the Four Pillars of Destiny (八字, BaZi), your Day Master, your zodiac animal and your lunar birthday. It's free, and it takes a second.
Your chart is worked out from your exact birth moment and birthplace, not a lookup table, so the year, month, day and hour are right even for a birthday that falls on the day the seasons turn.
What a Chinese birth chart is
A Chinese birth chart, called BaZi or the Four Pillars of Destiny, describes the moment you were born with eight characters. Each pillar is a pair: a heavenly stem on top and an earthly branch below. There is a pillar for your year, your month, your day and your hour of birth, which makes eight characters in all, and that is what BaZi means: "eight characters".
Each of the ten stems and twelve branches belongs to one of the five elements, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water, and is either yin or yang. Reading a chart is reading how those elements meet: which one leads, which ones feed it, and which are missing.
The four pillars
The year pillar is the setting you were born into and the people of your generation. Its branch is your zodiac animal.
The month pillar is the season you were born in. It colours your whole chart and says which elements were strongest in the air when you arrived.
The day pillar is you. Its stem is your Day Master, the heart of the reading, and its branch is called the spouse palace, which describes how you love and what you look for in a partner.
The hour pillar is your inner world and the projects and people you bring into being. It needs your birth time: without one, the chart has three pillars and still reads well.
Your Day Master
Your Day Master is the stem of your day pillar, and every school of BaZi starts here. There are ten, each with its own image.
| Day Master | Element | Image |
|---|---|---|
| 甲 Jia | Yang Wood | A tall tree |
| 乙 Yi | Yin Wood | Flowers and vines |
| 丙 Bing | Yang Fire | The sun |
| 丁 Ding | Yin Fire | Candlelight |
| 戊 Wu | Yang Earth | A mountain |
| 己 Ji | Yin Earth | Garden soil |
| 庚 Geng | Yang Metal | Raw ore and a blade |
| 辛 Xin | Yin Metal | A jewel |
| 壬 Ren | Yang Water | The ocean |
| 癸 Gui | Yin Water | Rain and mist |
Most people know their zodiac animal and nothing else. Your Day Master is closer to the bone: two people born in the same year share an animal, but the Day Master changes every day.
The five elements
The five elements feed and steady one another in a cycle: Wood feeds Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth holds Metal, Metal carries Water, and Water feeds Wood. They also keep each other in check: Wood breaks up Earth, Earth dams Water, Water puts out Fire, Fire melts Metal, and Metal cuts Wood.
Your chart counts all eight characters, along with the elements hidden inside each branch, and shows the share each element has in you. A chart heavy in one element has a clear, strong character. An element that doesn't appear at all is common, and it is worth knowing which one, because the things that carry it (its colours, its season, the kind of people and work it brings) tend to feel good to have around.
Luck pillars
Your chart also carries a sequence of luck pillars (大运), each one a ten-year chapter of life with its own stem and branch. They follow on from your month pillar, running forward or backward through the cycle depending on your year stem and your sex at birth, which is why the calculator asks for it. Your first luck pillar begins somewhere between infancy and about age ten, counted from how many days separate your birthday from the turn of the solar month: three days to a year.
Your sex is only used to count the luck pillars. It isn't kept on our servers, and it isn't sent to the AI that writes your reading.
Why your animal can be different from what you expected
The Chinese zodiac animal most people know changes at Chinese New Year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February. The year pillar in BaZi changes at the Start of Spring (立春), the moment the Sun reaches 315 degrees of the ecliptic, around 4 February. So if you were born in January or early February, your animal and your year pillar can belong to different years. The calculator shows both.
How we work it out
Most Chinese chart calculators read the year and month from a printed table and the hour from your clock time. Pluto Garden works each one out from the sky:
- The year and month pillars change at the exact moment the Sun reaches each solar term, from NASA JPL's DE440 planetary data.
- The day and hour pillars come from true solar time at your birthplace, the time a sundial would have shown, which can be more than half an hour from the clock. The day turns at 11pm, the start of the Rat hour.
- The lunar calendar follows China's national standard, and it is checked against the Hong Kong Observatory's tables for every month from 1901 to 2100.
Your Chinese reading
The chart above is free. Your Chinese reading is a one-time payment, written for you in about a minute, and yours to keep. It covers your Day Master, your five elements drawn to scale, how your chart shows up in love, work and money, and the luck pillar you are in now and the one that comes next. It reads only your chart, leads with your strengths, and makes no predictions about events.
Draw your Western birth chart too
Questions
What is my Chinese birth chart?
It is your Four Pillars of Destiny, or BaZi: eight characters, a heavenly stem and an earthly branch for the year, month, day and hour you were born. Each one belongs to one of the five elements, and together they describe your character. Pluto Garden works them out from your birth date, time and place.
What is my Day Master?
Your Day Master is the heavenly stem of your day pillar. It is the element you are at heart, one of ten: Yang or Yin Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal or Water, each with its own image, from a tall tree to rain and mist. Put your birthday into the calculator on this page to see yours.
Do I need my birth time?
No. Without a birth time you get three pillars, year, month and day, which still give your Day Master, your animal and most of your elements. Your birth time adds the hour pillar.
Why does the calculator ask for my sex?
Traditional BaZi counts your ten-year luck pillars forward or backward depending on your sex at birth and whether your year stem is yin or yang. It is used for that count only, isn't kept on our servers, and isn't sent to the AI that writes the reading.
Why is my zodiac animal different from my year pillar?
The animal people usually go by changes at Chinese New Year, between 21 January and 20 February. The BaZi year changes at the Start of Spring, around 4 February. Born between the two, you belong to one year by the calendar and another by the pillar.
What is true solar time?
It is the time by the Sun at your birthplace, the time a sundial shows. Clock time is set for a whole time zone, so it can differ from the Sun by more than half an hour, and daylight saving adds another hour. BaZi was made for sundial time, so the day and hour pillars here use it.
How accurate is this Chinese chart calculator?
The solar terms and new moons come from NASA JPL's DE440 data, and the lunar calendar is checked against every month in the Hong Kong Observatory's tables from 1901 to 2100. The only differences are a handful of events within minutes of midnight.
Is BaZi the same as the Chinese zodiac?
The zodiac animal is one character of the eight in a BaZi chart: the branch of your year pillar. BaZi reads all eight, and it centres on the Day Master rather than the animal.