The Four Pillars

The Four Pillars are four slices of your birth time, each written with one Heavenly Stem on top and one Earthly Branch below.

Pillartime column

時Pillar Hourchildren, inner side

日Pillar Dayyourself, partner

月Pillar Monthparents, career

年Pillar Yearancestors, childhood

Heavenly Stemtop character

Stem HourOutcomes and expression shown late in life

Stem DayDay Master: the symbol of yourself

Stem MonthAttitude and role at work

Stem YearOuter image and ancestral influence

Earthly Branchbottom character

Branch HourInner side, aspirations, children

Branch DayPrivate side and partner

Branch MonthCareer, parents, the “season” of birth

Branch YearFamily roots and childhood

The Day Pillar is the center, and the stem on top of it is called the Day Master. Year and Month pillars follow solar terms (the BaZi year changes around 4 February), not the 1st of each month.

Pillar, Stem, and Branch: what is the difference?

These terms are confusing because one word is used at several levels. The idea is simple: a pillar is one column of time, and every pillar has two characters, one on top and one below.

Day Pillar = both characters in the Day column (stem + branch).
Day Stem = the top character of the Day column. This is the Day Master, the symbol of yourself.
Day Branch = the bottom character of the Day column. Often linked with the private side and partner.

The same applies to Year, Month, and Hour. So a full chart = 4 pillars = 4 stems + 4 branches = 8 characters (that is what “BaZi” means). On the Shen Sha page, names like “Day Stem” or “Year Branch” only tell you which character is used as the reference point of the rule.

Yin and Yang NextDay Master: “Who am I?”