Most sites hand you a favorable element — sometimes with a luck percentage attached. The truth is there is no single rule: the balance school asks whether your day master is strong or weak, the climate school asks what the season did to it, and they can disagree. This calculator scores your day master with published weights, then runs both schools side by side — including the disagreement.
| Pillar | Character | What it is | Element | Points |
|---|
Weights: visible stem 1 · branch main qi 1 · each hidden stem 0.5 · the whole month pillar doubles. The day stem itself is the subject being measured, so it scores nothing.
A chart's strength is judged by counting what supports the day master against what drains it. Every published method makes this trade-off between simplicity and nuance; ours is a fully transparent tally. Here is the entire rule:
| Character in the chart | Points | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Visible stem (year, month, hour) | 1 to its element | 丁 scores 1 for Fire |
| Branch main qi | 1 to its element | 午 scores 1 for Fire |
| Each branch hidden stem | 0.5 to its element | 午 hides 丁 己: +0.5 Fire, +0.5 Earth |
| The whole month pillar | ×2 (the month branch holds the season's authority) | 己未 month: every point above doubled |
| The day stem itself | 0 — it is the subject being measured | — |
Then one division: the share scored by the day master's own element plus the element that produces it (peers 比劫 + resource 印星). ≥ 55% → strong (身强), ≤ 45% → weak (身弱), in between → balanced (中和). The 55/45 thresholds are this engine's declared choice; other schools draw the line elsewhere, and practitioners who also weigh roots, combinations and clashes by hand may reach a different verdict. That is exactly why we publish the numbers instead of a badge.
The favorable element is not a fact about a chart — it is the output of a school's rule. The two best-known schools ask different questions:
| School | Question it asks | Strong day master | Weak day master |
|---|---|---|---|
| Support & suppress 扶抑 | Does the day master need draining or feeding? | Favorable: Output 食伤, Wealth 财星, Influence 官杀 (drain, spend, discipline). Unfavorable: peers, resource. | Favorable: Resource 印星, peers 比劫 (feed, reinforce). Unfavorable: output, wealth, influence. |
| Climate adjustment 调候 | What did the birth season do to the chart's temperature? | High summer (巳午未 months) → Water to moisten. Deep winter (亥子丑 months) → Fire to warm. Other months: the classical school consults a per-day-stem, per-month table (Qiong Tong Bao Jian, 120 entries) that cannot be compressed into one line — so this calculator gives no season-level answer for spring and autumn rather than a fake one. | |
When both schools point at the same element, the result is flagged as agreement. When the climate school's element lands on the balance school's unfavorable list, the page says so — and does not break the tie. Many practitioners read both together; some follow the climate school first in extreme seasons. That judgement is theirs to make with the full picture in front of them, which is what this page shows.
Born 8 July 1988 at 08:00 in Beijing. Chart: 戊辰 己未 甲子 丁卯 — day master 甲 Jia, yang Wood, born in high summer.
| Pillar | Contributes | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Year 戊辰 | 戊 Earth 1 · 辰 main Earth 1 · hidden 戊乙癸 0.5 each | Earth 2.5, Wood 0.5, Water 0.5 |
| Month 己未 ×2 | 己 Earth 2 · 未 main Earth 2 · hidden 己丁乙 1 each | Earth 5, Fire 1, Wood 1 |
| Day 甲子 | day stem scores nothing · 子 main Water 1 · hidden 癸 0.5 | Water 1.5 |
| Hour 丁卯 | 丁 Fire 1 · 卯 main Wood 1 · hidden 乙 0.5 | Fire 1, Wood 1.5 |
Totals: Earth 7.5, Wood 3, Water 2, Fire 2, Metal 0. The day master is Wood; support = Water + Wood = 5; drain = Fire + Earth + Metal = 9.5. Share = 5 / 14.5 = 34.5% ≤ 45% → weak (身弱). The balance school therefore favors Water (resource — it feeds Wood) then Wood (peers). The climate school, seeing a 未-month summer birth, also takes Water to cool the chart. The two schools agree, and the page marks the agreement. Run the same birth through the calculator above and you will get every one of these numbers back.