Your Day Master is the stem of your day pillar — the character that stands for you in a BaZi chart. Here's how to find yours, what each of the ten Day Masters describes, and how to use it to know yourself better.
There's no scientific evidence that BaZi can predict specific events — so what is it good for? Here's what it can tell you about yourself, what it can't, and five simple ways to test it against your own life.
A plain-language walkthrough of a BaZi chart: get your Four Pillars, find your Day Master, label and count the five elements, see how they relate to you, and turn it all into questions worth asking yourself.
BaZi grew out of one of the world's oldest calendar systems. Here's its history, from stems and branches on Shang-dynasty oracle bones to Li Xuzhong, Xu Ziping, the classic texts and its spread to Korea and Japan.
What each of the Four Pillars in a BaZi chart represents — the year, month, day and hour of your birth — and how to use them as prompts for understanding where you come from, how you grew up and who you are.
What each of the five elements describes as a personality lens — its season, traditional virtue, typical strengths and what it can look like when overdone — and how to find the elements in your own BaZi chart.
How the five elements can help you understand the people around you — colleagues, friends, family and partners — through support, balance and difference, without labelling anyone or any relationship as good or bad.
Your Chinese zodiac animal is one character in your BaZi chart — the branch of your year pillar. Here's how the two relate, why the zodiac gives a broad picture and BaZi a personal one, and why your animal year may start on a different date than you think.
How BaZi, MBTI and the Big Five compare: where each comes from, what it uses, what it tells you, its limits, and how to use more than one to understand yourself better.
A guide to all ten BaZi Day Masters: what the classic text says about each, how they're commonly pictured today, the strengths they're often described with, possible blind spots and a question to ask yourself.