☯Four Pillars

Chinese Four Pillars astrology (bazi): the year, month, day and hour of a birth or of this moment, each written as a heavenly stem over an earthly branch with its phase, polarity and animal, the year turning at the start of spring and the months at the solar terms, worked out from the Sun. See your Day Master, the balance of wood, fire, earth, metal and water among the eight characters and the phase that is missing, drawn as a shape inside the pentagon and star of generation and overcoming; tap a phase and the arrows that touch it brighten. Tap any character for a note on it — its image, its Ten God, its hidden stems and everything it meets. The twelve branches stand on a wheel, south at the top as on the Chinese compass, with your chart's branches ringed and its harmonies, trines, clashes, harms and punishments traced between them. The luck pillars run as a row of decades, the one in force marked, with the year pillar of every year in the decade you pick; the year's twenty-four solar terms turn on a dial with the Sun of the moment on it; today's pillars are read against your chart; and the chart can be kept in the journal. Every stem carries its Ten God, every branch its hidden stems and every pair its nàyīn. Scrub through a whole life year by year and watch each year's pillar, and the luck pillar in force, meet your chart on the wheel, with the years that clash, combine or bring back your own animal marked along a strip. Not sure of the birth hour? Try each of the day's twelve double-hours with a tap. Turn the ten stems and twelve branches together like two gear wheels to see why the cycle is sixty, with the table of all sixty and your pillars ringed in it. And set a second birth beside yours — a partner, a friend, a child — to see how the two Day Masters stand, which stems combine and which branches meet.