Start here · the seven steps
Ba zi is built out of parts that can be enumerated, and those parts depend on each other in a fixed order — you cannot read ten gods before there is a day master, and you cannot fix a day master before the year boundary is settled. This page is that order: seven steps, each answered on a chart you can type in, each landing on the pages that compute it in full.
Each step below is a separate computation and each depends on the one above it. The birth data is computed in your browser and is never sent or stored.
The order is not a convention, it is a dependency: every step takes the previous step as its input.
Any term that comes up in the seven steps is listed in the A–Z glossary (91 entries with the characters, pinyin and a plain English gloss, each pointing at the page that owns it); questions of convention go to the methodology and corrections log.
Each step produces the input of the next one; skipping a step leaves the later conclusions without a basis.
The most common wrong order is to read the ten gods first and the day master afterwards. Every ten god is a name relative to the day master: the same stem is indirect wealth under a Jia day master and seven killings under a Ji day master. Learn a stem god first and the conclusion flips as soon as the chart changes.
The second common error is treating 1 January as the year boundary. The year pillar changes at lichun (sun longitude 315 degrees), which in 2025 fell on 3 February at 22:10 — anyone born before that moment still carries the previous year pillar, and the zodiac animal follows it. This site carries a lichun table for 1900 to 2100, minute by minute.
After step three the path still branches: favourable elements need the strength score, annual readings need the current year pillar stacked on top, and date selection runs a separate set of rules. None of them is compulsory, but all of them need the first three steps standing firm.
The table below lists the family indexes and their page counts; the numbers come from the build manifest, not from an estimate.
| Family | Pages | Entry |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese zodiac | 27 pages | /chinese-zodiac |
| Sixty day pillars | 60 pages | /day-pillar |
| The twelve branches | 12 pages | /earthly-branches |
| The twelve stages | 12 pages | /twelve-stages |
| Ten gods by position | 30 pages | /ten-gods |
| The 64 hexagrams | 64 pages | /hexagrams |
| The 36 shen sha | 36 pages | /shensha |
| The 30 scenario pages | 30 pages | /scenarios |
| The ten day masters | 10 pages | /day-master |
| The 8 stem & branch relations | 8 pages | /relations |
| The five elements | 5 pages | /elements |
| Learning path (this family) | 9 pages | /learn-bazi |
These are the questions specific to this page; broader conventions live on the methodology page.
Every enumerable component of ba zi has its own page here. Each page is computed by the same engine and can be checked item by item — none of it is a personality table.