The Science Of Manually Plotting Your Bazi - FengShuied

While using the Bazi (八字) of residents in a house is not necessary for a feng shui audit that delivers results, applying them into audits can provide more clarity on the how certain elements and specific variables can play a role in feng shui.

Moreover, it also provides a more in-depth diagnosis of the energy dynamics contained in a home.

The basics of how bazi works is explained here.

These days, anyone can easily find a bazi calculator, input his or her birth date and time, and instantly be delivered the 8 characters.

For this training exercise, we will be showing how the logic of determining a person’s bazi, or four pillars of destiny, works.

Let’s use the example of a man born on the 1 December 1979 at 12 noon.

For starters, you would need the Hsia Calendar (夏历), sometimes referred to as the 10,000 year calendar (万年历) or solar calendar, as reference.

If you are serious about practicing feng shui, you should definitely get one to keep on your book shelf as you would undoubtedly be using it often.

For this exercise, we will refer to the excerpts of it available on Wikipedia.

Plotting the bazi

With reference to the Hsia calendar for 1979, we can already derive the following:

• H of year is 6
• E of year is 8
• H of month is 2
• E of month is 12
• H of day is 9
• E of day is 3

* H refers to heavenly stem and E refers to earthly branch

Now by referring to the table of heavenly stems and earthly branches, we can already determine 6 of the 8 characters in this man’s bazi.

Hour	Day	Month	Year
H9 + Water	H2 – Wood	H6 – Earth
E3 + Wood	E12 – Water	E8 – Earth

The final two characters which are the HS and EB in the hour pillar have to be determined in a more complex manner.

To locate the stem and branch for the hour pillar, we have to take note the heavenly stem of the day pillar. Which in this case is H9.

Then with H9 and the birth time of 12 noon, we refer to this table below.

Day HS	H1 H6	H2 H7	H3 H8	H4 H9	H5 H10
2300 – 0100	H1 E1	H3 E1	H5 E1	H7 E1	H9 E1
0100 – 0300	H2 E2	H4 E2	H6 E2	H8 E2	H10 E2
0300 – 0500	H3 E3	H5 E3	H7 E3	H9 E3	H1 E3
0500 – 0700	H4 E4	H6 E4	H8 E4	H10 E4	H2 E4
0700 – 0900	H5 E5	H7 E5	H9 E5	H1 E5	H3 E5
0900 – 1100	H6 E6	H8 E6	H10 E6	H2 E6	H4 E6
1100 – 1300	H7 E7	H9 E7	H1 E7	H3 E7	H5 E7
1300 – 1500	H8 E8	H10 E8	H2 E8	H4 E8	H6 E8
1500 – 1700	H9 E9	H1 E9	H3 E9	H5 E9	H7 E9
1700 – 1900	H10 E10	H2 E10	H4 E10	H6 E10	H8 E10
1900 – 2100	H1 E11	H3 E11	H5 E11	H7 E11	H9 E11
2100 – 2300	H2 E12	H4 E12	H6 E12	H8 E12	H10 E12

The heavenly stem and earthly branch for hour pillar can now be determined as H3 and E7.

The 8 characters can now be presented as below.

Hour	Day	Month	Year
H3 + Fire	H5 + Water	H2 – Wood	H6 – Earth
E7 + Fire	E9 + Wood	E12 – Water	E8 – Earth

It can be quickly be observed that this is a person with a self-element of water in the bazi. This is also what is commonly referred to as the day master or birth element.

Once the bazi is plotted, the next step is to map out the luck cycles of this individual.

While bazi refers to these 8 characters a person is born with, and has no mention of the luck pillars, is implied that the luck cycles should be deciphered as well.

One of the purpose of bazi destiny analysis is after all, discovering a person’s luck in the past and future.

Something to note is that both the stem and branch on each pillar has to have the same yin or yang nature. For instance, in the example above, we see that the month pillar consist of -Wood and -Water, both of which are yin. This means that if you generate any pillar that has two characters of different polarity, you have made a mistake somewhere somehow.

If you are really into the theory of things, you can also do a check for integrity on whether what you have is a legitimate bazi.

Mapping the luck cycle pillars

In essence, the luck pillars represent the elemental influences a person will experience over the years.

The gender of the individual in question will play a vital role in determining the luck cycles.

The first step in tabulating the luck pillars is in determining the year pillar of this person is yin or yang.

This will decide whether the luck pillar would follow a forward sequence of backward sequence.

As we can see, from our example bazi that has been generated, the year pillar is of yin (-) earth and yin (- earth) on both the heavenly stem and earthly branch respectively.

Refer to this table:

Gender	Yin/Yang	Sequence
Male	Yin	Backward
Male	Yang	Forward
Female	Yin	Forward
Female	Yang	Backward

In this case, as the subject is male and has a yin attribute on the year pillar, his luck pillars would follow a backward sequence.

Now that we have derived that the luck pillar sequence would be backward for this person, it’s time to start mapping them out.

Referring to the month pillar, which is H2 and E12 respectively, the first luck pillar would be H1 and E11.

Backwards from H2 and E12 would be H1 and E11.

If we continue with this method of plotting the chart for 8 pillars, the below is what we get.

H4	H5	H6	H7	H8	H9	H10	H1	Stem
E4	E5	E6	E7	E8	E9	E10	E11	Branch

Take note that the luck pillar table above runs from right to left.

It must also be noted that you can carry on plotting for 500 years if you want to.

But for practicality and in practice, feng shui masters tend to plot 8 luck pillars as a standard protocol.

Each pillar represents 10 years.

But as you can see from the above, there is no indication when, or at which age, this subject person will have his luck influenced by which elements.

So in order to make sense out of all these stems and branches, the age of when the elements comes into effect has to be determined.

For this, you need to reference the Hsia calendar again. You won’t be able to manually do this if one is not available.

Are you ready?

The date of birth is 1 December 1979.

This is in the tenth month of 1979 according to the Hsia calendar which runs from 8 November to 7 December.

Because the subject is a male born in a yin year, you have to count backwards the number of days from the date of birth (7 Dec) to the first day of that month (8 Nov).

The number of days is 24.

Now divide 24 by 3 and we get 8. The luck pillars would start from the age of 8.

If the number of days divided by 3 is a number with decimal places, round it off to the nearest whole number.

And since each pillar represents 10 years, each stem and each branch on the luck pillars would make up 5 years each.

If the year is yang for this example, we would count in a forward sequence and end up with a number of 7.

78-87	68-77	58-67	48-57	38-47	28-37	18-27	8-17	Age
H4	H5	H6	H7	H8	H9	H10	H1	Stem
E4	E5	E6	E7	E8	E9	E10	E11	Branch

The manual plotting of the bazi is now complete.

An important point to note is that the correct method to conduct the above luck pillar age commencement formula takes into account information as detailed as the number of hours.

This means that you don’t just take the number of days into consideration, but also the number of hours. This means that the hour the month starts at and the hour the person is born in will have to be considered.

This can mean that the above example would result in 24 days plus or minus a few hours.

But I’ve found that the numbers are usually right without having to take into account the hours. So I’ve stuck to using the number of days divided by 3.

Bazi calculator or manual mapping

As mentioned earlier, we can find bazi calculators all over the place these days. And one would not have to go through the hassle of manually mapping out the 8 characters like how I have shown you here.

I myself, prefer to use calculators.

However, I feel that professional feng shui practitioners should at least learn and be capable of understanding the workings that go on inside the bazi calculators.

This is because having intimate knowledge of how these things work enables a practitioner to have a deeper understanding of feng shui concepts.

Check out the Bazi program here

Which in turn can make them better at what they do.

Come join the FB community here The content provided on this website is free of charge. If you find the information useful, you can buy me a coffee. And come check out my programs here Get exclusive feng shui insights that you would not find anywhere else. Email Submit Ask A Question Manifestation Fengshui Bazi Symbols

NewWhat Is Follow The Leader Structure In BaziHow Substitute Star Natal Charts Work5 Types Of White Tiger Afflictions In Feng ShuiThe Red Star 7 Is One To Keep Your Eye…Period 9 Flying Stars Guide That Will Change How You…How The Music Of Na Yin Elements Work