Construct a Four Pillars of Destiny Natal Chart

To construct a Four Pillars of Destiny natal chart or bazi natal chart, we need the person’s birth year, month, day and birth time, and then convert them to the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. After construction the chart, we have the

Year Pillar
Month Pillar
Day Pillar
Hour Pillar

The year and month use for constructing a Four Pillars of Destiny natal chart or bazi chart must base on the 24 Solar Terms.

For a birth year, a year officially starts on the day of “Start of Spring”. This means 2009 the year of the Ox, the Start of Spring is at 0050 on the 4th February 2009. So anyone was born after 0050 on the 4th February 2009, this person carries an animal sign of Ox. For anyone was born before 0050 on the 4th February 2009, even thought the Chinese new year was on 26th January 2009, nine days earlier, this person carries an animal sign of RAT, not OX. (This bit is important)

In short, regardless the Chinese New Year’s day falls before or after the "Start of Spring", In Chinese Astrology Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny or Feng Shui, the Start of Spring is the cut off point. A new year,new cycle starts at this point. The Start of Spring is also the starting point for the first month in lunar calendar.

There are two ways, easy and hard, to construct a Four Pillars of Destiny Natal Chart or Bazi chart.

An easy way to construct is just using a Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny chart plotting software or web tools to generate the charts. With computer software or web tools just key in the Year, Month, Day and birth hour, then hit the Enter key on the keyboard or click OK on the screen, the Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny chart constructed for you within seconds. It is that easy to use a Bazi Four Pillars of destiny plotting software.

The hard way to construct a Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny natal chart is to do it manually. There are benefits to do it manually over computer Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny chart plotting software.

First you can understand the procedures how to construct a Four pillars of Destiny natal chart or bazi chart and the luck pillars.

Secondly it gives you more opportunities to practice and write the Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branches in Chinese Characters. If you want to be really good at doing something, I mean writing the Chinese Characters and reading the Four Pillars of destiny Charts, you need to practice more.

Thirdly, if in the future, you are really good at Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny analysis and you decide to teach or run your own four pillars of destiny workshop, you need to show your students how to construct a Four Pillars of Destiny Natal Chart manually. You don't just show your students how to key in the birth data in a Bazi Four Pillars of Destiny chart plotting Software.

Ok, let’s start construct a Four Pillars of destiny Natal Chart manually now.

In order to construct a four pillars of destiny natal chart, we need the birth data of a person and the gender of this person.
We need a Chinese Alamance. In Chinese it is called “Ten Thousand Years Calendar”. It has all the information need to build a Four Pillars of destiny natal chart. The information includes the year in Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch that is the Year Pillar. The particular month in Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch that is the Month Pillar. The date in Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch that is the Day Pillar. In Four Pillars of Destiny jargon, the Day Pillar also called the Day Master or DM.

There is also information about the 24 Solar Terms in the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar” too.

The Hour Pillar is not included in the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar”. At the beginning, you need a table to find out the Heavenly Stem for the hour pillar. However, there is a way to store the hourly Heavenly Stem into the palm (the body part palm not the palm pc). Once you have learnt it you will never forget. You may forget to bring the hourly Heavenly Stem table with you, but you will never forget to bring your own palm.

Have you ever seen a Feng Shui Master using the thumb pointing over the four fingers? After moving around the thumb, the Bazi Master can tell you the Heavenly Stem for the hour. Or sometimes, the Bazi Master can tell you what is going to happen. Well, it is hard to teach you now. I will draw a table for you instead.

Here is a part of a page of the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar” in 1965.

The birth data, western calendar, 10pm 11th August, 1965. I underlined the year, month and day pillars in red.
After checking at the “Ten Thousand Years Calendar” we have the following Foru Pillars of Destiny chart.

How does the Hour pillar –Metal pig come from? Just look at the following table.

The person was born on the Ding day at 10pm, so just look at the Ding day in the fifth column and go down to the 21-23 Pig's intersection. The Heavenly Stem is Xin. So the hour pillar is -Xin Pig.