Free BaZi luck pillars calculator

Luck pillars split a life into 10-year periods. Each period has its own stem-branch pair, such as Jia Shen (甲申), laid over your birth chart. The chart does not change; a new pair is added on top of it every ten years.

The pillars are counted from your month pillar, forward or backward through the 60-pillar cycle, depending on your gender and the yin or yang of your birth year. The age at which the first one starts comes from the days between your birth and a solar term: the next one if the pillars run forward, the previous one if they run backward.

A luck pillar covers 10 years, and annual luck (流年, liu nian) covers one. Read the pillar first for the decade, then the year for what stands out in it. Each pillar also carries a Ten God, the relationship of its stem to your Day Master, which points to the areas that decade leans toward, such as career, money or study.

Take the stem-branch pair, the Ten God and the five elements in turn.

The stem-branch pair

A pillar is a heavenly stem plus an earthly branch. Read the two together, and see how each relates to the elements already in your chart.

The Ten God

The Ten God is the relationship between the pillar's stem and your Day Master, read against your birth chart. Hurting Officer leans toward expression and change, Direct Officer toward duty and position. The Ten Gods page explains all ten.

The five elements

Check whether the pillar adds to an element your chart already has plenty of, or supplies one it lacks. How the pillar shifts the balance of your chart is the main thing to read.

Harsh-sounding names

Seven Killings or Hurting Officer on a pillar is read against the whole chart, like any other.

Around a change of pillar

Many people look at the next pillar a few years ahead to see what is coming. Nothing is fixed to happen on the date; use it as a prompt to review your plans.

Forward or backward

A man born in a yang year (the year stem is Jia, Bing, Wu, Geng or Ren) and a woman born in a yin year (Yi, Ding, Ji, Xin or Gui) run forward. A woman born in a yang year and a man born in a yin year run backward. Forward means the pairs after the month pillar in the 60-pillar cycle (the sexagenary, or Jiazi, cycle); backward means the pairs before it.

Start age

Forward pillars count the days from birth to the next solar term (jie); backward pillars count from the previous one to birth. Only the twelve terms that open a month count, not the mid-month ones (zhongqi). Three days equal one year, one day equals four months, and two hours equal ten days. The result is the time from birth to the first pillar, usually under ten years.

Solar terms and the year and month pillars

The year pillar changes at Lichun and the month pillar at each month's opening solar term, not on the first of a month. The birth moment is converted to China Standard Time (UTC+8) and compared with the term's time, so a birth on the day of a solar term depends on the exact time you enter.

Midnight and the 23:00 hour

The day pillar changes at midnight, local time. A birth between 23:00 and 24:00 keeps that day for the day pillar, while the hour pillar takes its stem from the next day.

If you don't know your birth time

Noon stands in for the missing time. You still get the year, month and day pillars and the full list of pillars. The start date can be off by a few days up to about two months, and a birth on the day of a solar term may change the month pillar itself.

No longitude correction

The clock time you enter is used as it is, with no true solar time or longitude correction. Sites that apply one can show a different hour pillar, or a different change date near a solar term.

How ages are counted

Ages are full years and months since birth. Many Chinese-language sites show the East Asian age, which is one or two years higher for the same pillar.

Why calculators differ

Differences mostly come from longitude correction, how the start age is rounded (to the year, or to the month and day), how age is counted, and whether the new day starts at midnight or at 23:00. Schools differ on these points and none is the single correct one, so this page lists its assumptions above.

A check you can run

Compare the example with your own chart or another site. For a man born on May 15, 1990 at 2:30 pm in Shanghai, the first pillar is Ren Wu (壬午) and it starts at age 7 years 2 months.