A BaZi chart is a grid of four columns — the four pillars — each consisting of a Heavenly Stem above and an Earthly Branch below. Read from right to left in the traditional format (Year on the right, Hour on the left), the four pillars describe four dimensions of a life: its roots, its productive years, its core self and its legacy. No pillar stands alone; each is modified by and modifies all the others. Learning to read them is learning to read a complete elemental system, not four separate pieces.
The traditional BaZi chart is written in four vertical columns, each read from top to bottom. The Heavenly Stem sits above, the Earthly Branch below — forming a stem-branch pair that represents one position in the sixty-year cycle. Reading the chart requires understanding what each pillar position represents, which characters occupy it, what those characters mean in relation to the Day Master, and how all eight characters interact with each other.
Before any other analysis can proceed, the BaZi practitioner must establish whether the Day Master is strong (旺, wàng) or weak (弱, ruò). This determination shapes the interpretation of every other character in the chart — an element that helps a weak Day Master harms a strong one, and vice versa.
Day Master strength is primarily determined by the Month Branch — the birth season. A Day Master born in a branch that belongs to its own element or the element that produces it is in a seasonally supportive position and likely strong. A Day Master born in a branch belonging to the element that controls or exhausts it is in a weakened position. This is the same logic as TCM's seasonal qi: Wood qi is strongest in spring (Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon months) and weakest in autumn (Monkey, Rooster, Dog months).
Special chart types: some charts are not simply strong or weak but fall into special categories recognised by classical BaZi theory — "Follow the Leader" (从格, cóng gé) charts where the Day Master is so overwhelmed by one element that it adopts rather than resists it; "Dominant" (专旺格, zhuān wàng gé) charts where one element is so dominant that the chart's entire fortune pivots on supporting rather than balancing it; and others. These special chart types require different interpretive frameworks than standard strong-weak analysis, and their misidentification produces dramatically wrong readings. Special charts are one reason BaZi analysis genuinely requires expertise rather than formula-following.
The Ten Gods (十神, shí shén) — sometimes called the Ten Stars or Ten Deities — are the ten possible relationships between any character in the chart and the Day Master. Every Heavenly Stem in the chart (in pillars and in hidden stems) is assigned one of these ten relational roles, which determines what that character represents in the context of the Day Master's life.
The ten relationships arise from five productive-destructive pairs between elements, each appearing in both yang and yin form. Without going into the full technical system, the ten gods produce the following categories of meaning:
Output gods (what the Day Master produces and expresses) — represent creativity, children, performance and expression. Wealth gods (what the Day Master controls) — represent wealth, the father figure, the material world and relationships in male charts. Influence/Officer gods (what controls the Day Master) — represent authority, discipline, career structure and relationships in female charts. Resource gods (what produces the Day Master) — represent support, the mother figure, knowledge and nurturing. Companion gods (what shares the Day Master's nature) — represent siblings, peers, competition and social network.
The same element that is "wealth" for one Day Master is "resource" for another, and "officer" for a third. This is why a single element cannot be said to be universally good or bad in BaZi — its meaning is always relative to the Day Master's nature and the chart's overall balance.
A BaZi chart is not read column by column but as an integrated system. Each character interacts with every other character through the relationships of the sixty-year cycle, the elemental productive and controlling cycles, and the specific clash, harmony and combination dynamics between branches. Reading the chart requires holding all eight characters (and their hidden stems) in view simultaneously and assessing the overall elemental balance before drawing any conclusions about specific life areas.
Experienced practitioners often describe the process as similar to reading a landscape — the individual features matter, but what matters most is how they relate to each other and what kind of environment they collectively produce. Two charts with identical individual characters can produce different readings depending on how those characters are positioned relative to each other and to the Day Master.
The chart requires all four pillars to be meaningful. A reading based on three pillars is like a diagnosis based on three of four vital signs. A reading based on two pillars (year and day, as most online BaZi tools provide) is significantly incomplete. The Month Pillar — determining Day Master strength, the most fundamental question in the entire analysis — is the pillar most commonly omitted from introductory BaZi materials, and its absence makes the Day Master characterisation that those materials provide essentially unverifiable without the complete chart. Year + Day without Month is not BaZi; it is the zodiac animal plus the Day Master character, without the context that makes either meaningful.