易 八 卦
Yibagua
?

Nobody knows whether
the future is fixed.

Not physicists. Not philosophers. Not the men who wrote these books. We are not going to pretend otherwise — and that turns out to be the interesting part.

What we can do is cast your chart correctly, on true solar time, and name the book behind every line of it. What you do after reading it was never in the chart.

Set from the city, then add an hour if daylight saving was in force that day. The whole correction is shown further down, so you can check it.
Don't know your birth hour?
Not on the list? Pick the nearest big city — anywhere within a few hundred kilometres gives the same chart. Only the longitude is used, and a small difference does not move a pillar.
This decides which direction the decade pillars run, and which of the Ten Gods reads as partnership. It is a rule of the method, not an assumption about you.

A bazi calculator that shows its work

This is a free bazi calculator — 八字, the Chinese four-pillar birth chart. It answers what is my day master, prints your four pillars with their hidden stems and Ten Gods, and gives the daily Chinese almanac (黃曆) read against your own chart. The same four pillars are what Korean saju is built on, so a saju reading starts from this identical calculation.

Two things most English-language calculators skip. Your chart is cast on true solar time rather than clock time, which can move your hour pillar and, near local midnight, your day pillar. And the year turns at 立春 Start of Spring, not on 1 January — which is why roughly one person in ten has been told the wrong zodiac animal their whole life.

4,704solar terms checked
0.149%disagreement with ephemeris
<30msand no AI

What the free chart gives you

免費 · no account, no email, no card

Type a date, a time and a city. The page casts the chart here, in the browser, and prints about 2,700 words about it before anything is priced.

The four pillars

Year, month, day and hour, each written as a heavenly stem over an earthly branch. Every branch is opened to show the stems hidden inside it, and every stem is labelled with the Ten God it takes against your Day Master. These eight glyphs are what 八字 is named after, and they are the whole of the chart.

The Day Master card

The stem of the day pillar is the person in the chart. It is drawn as a card with its phase, its polarity, the line the classics give it and the book that line comes from.

The five phases, counted

Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water weighed across the eight characters and the hidden stems, so you can see for yourself what the chart is heavy in and what it is short of rather than being told.

The true solar time correction, step by step

Clock time, then the offset in force that day, then the longitude of the birthplace, then the equation of time for that date, then the apparent solar time it all comes to. Each number is on the page, so the arithmetic can be checked against any ephemeris.

Your decade pillars

The 大運: which direction the decades run, the age the first one begins at given to the month, and the stem and branch of each decade after it.

A glossary for every glyph

Any Chinese character on the page can be tapped for its sound, its sense and its role in the method. Nothing is left standing as decoration.

Also free: the day's almanac read against your own chart, the solar term you were born in, and, if you enter a second birth, both charts side by side.

What it costs

The chart is free and stays free. What is priced is the reading — the writing that interprets the chart. Prices are in US dollars. Everything except the last item opens on this page the moment the payment clears.

One-off
Membership — answers, monthly
Written by hand

Instant answers are looked up, not generated. The text was written in advance for one exact chart condition each, which is why the same question in a different year returns different writing and why it arrives in under a second. Only the $199 reading is written by a person.

These are launch prices and they will rise. Anyone who buys now keeps the price they bought at. Every section states what the system says and names its source.

What is actually in each reading

篇目 · measured from the corpus, not rounded up

Full Life Reading — 37 sections, about 10,700 words

Core character · the tension the chart carries · how you handle pressure · how you decide · what you output · your blind spot · what people misread about you · what the classics warn about · work and vocation · money · partnership · family and origin · peers and rivals · children and what outlasts you · study · constitution · travel · reputation · your decades one by one · the years ahead · directions, home, workspace, colours, materials, numbers, and what the tradition keeps out.

Love & Compatibility — 4 sections, about 1,300 words

Needs both birth charts. The two Day Masters, the two day branches the tradition calls the spouse palaces, what the pair generates and what it grinds against, and where the friction is structural rather than personal.

The Year Ahead — about 3,400 words

The twelve months read one by one against your chart, each with the month pillar that governs it, not a single paragraph about the year.

One question answered — 4 sections, about 1,060 words

The question framed, what your chart says about it, what the timing says, and the classical source the reading rests on.

The Master’s Reading — answered by email

Written personally for one specific matter, delivered in one to two weeks. This is the only text on the site a person writes to order.

Why this chart differs from the one you were given elsewhere

立法 · the reasons, stated so they can be checked

It is cast on true solar time

The chart is cast on the sun standing over the birthplace, not on the clock on the wall. The correction has two parts: four minutes for every degree the birthplace lies from the meridian its time zone is named after, and the equation of time, which runs to roughly sixteen minutes either way depending on the date. Both are shown step by step on the page so you can check them. The correction can move the hour pillar, and a birth near local midnight can move the day pillar, which changes the Day Master and with it the entire reading. Most English-language bazi tools skip this, which is why two sites hand you different charts from the same birth certificate.

Every line names its source

The readings quote 《子平真詮》, 《滴天髓》, 《三命通會》, 《淵海子平》, 《窮通寶鑑》 and 《神峰通考》 by name, giving the Chinese and a plain English rendering next to it. You can see which book a claim comes from and decide what you think of it.

Written once, then audited

The corpus is 3,590 blocks and 1.13 million words. Each block was written for one exact chart condition rather than adapted to fit, and the whole set was put through an independent citation audit against the received texts, line by line.

It states the cost as plainly as the gift

This is not a horoscope. Nothing here promises what will happen, and where a chart is difficult the reading says so. The year turns at 立春, Start of Spring, not on 1 January, which is why roughly one person in ten has been told the wrong zodiac animal their whole life.

Two people, and what the ad unlocks

合盤 · 兩盤對看

Enter a second birth and the page becomes a 合盤, the two charts read against each other. Both charts side by side, and the relation between the two Day Masters, are free. The full reading of those two Day Masters unlocks by watching one short advertisement, once. The rest of the compatibility reading is paid.

Paid readers never see an advertisement. Casting a chart never shows one. Buying never shows one. It appears at the single point where a free reader asks for more, and it is stated here because most people never find out it exists. Both charts are cast in your browser, and nothing about either birth is sent anywhere.

Questions

常見問題

What is bazi, and what are the four pillars?

八字 means eight characters. The Chinese calendar gives every year, month, day and two-hour period a pair of glyphs: one of ten heavenly stems over one of twelve earthly branches. A birth moment therefore carries four pairs, eight characters in all, and those are the four pillars. Korean saju is built on the same eight characters and the same calculation.

Do I need to know my exact birth time?

No. Three of the four pillars do not depend on the hour, so a chart cast without it is still mostly right. If you want the hour back, the Don't know your birth hour tool above asks eight questions — two rule hours out outright, six weight the rest — and shows which of the twelve hours survive and which is likeliest.

What is true solar time and why does it matter?

Clock time is a legal convention; the chart wants the sun. The correction is longitude plus the equation of time, and it can exceed an hour. An hour pillar covers two hours, so a correction landing near a boundary moves it, and a birth near local midnight can move the day pillar. The day pillar is the Day Master, so this is not a rounding detail. Every step is shown on the page.

Is this fortune telling?

No. Nothing here predicts events and no section promises anything will happen. Each one states what the system says about a chart of this shape, and names the book it says it in. It is not a medical, legal or financial service.

Is my birth data stored?

No. The chart is computed in your browser. Your date, time and place of birth are never sent to the server, and nothing is written to the device either — no cookies for this, no local storage — so reloading the page clears it. The single exception is The Master's Reading, which a person writes and which therefore needs the details you type into that order form.

What do I get for free?

The whole chart and about 2,700 words about it: four pillars with hidden stems and Ten Gods, the Day Master card, the five-phase distribution, the true solar time correction shown step by step, the decade pillars, the day's almanac read against your chart, and a glossary for every glyph. No account, no email, no card.

How fast is delivery?

Immediately, on the same page. The paid text was written in advance rather than generated on request, so it opens under your chart within a second of the payment clearing. The Master's Reading is the exception, because a person writes it: one to two weeks.

Can I get a refund?

Yes. Write to the support address and say so, and the purchase is refunded. If The Master's Reading cannot be delivered inside one to two weeks, we write to you before the date and either agree a new one or refund you in full, without you having to ask.