How a chart moves through a life
What are luck pillars?
The eight characters are fixed at birth, but BaZi adds two moving layers to read timing: the ten-year luck pillars (大运) and the yearly annual pillar (流年). Each is read as a season of life, a climate to plant or steady yourself in, never a schedule of events. The luck pillars are drawn from the month pillar and step forward or backward through the sixty-fold cycle.
The decade sets the weather
Each ten-year pillar is read by one question: does its element help what the chart needs, or feed what it already has too much of? The decade outweighs any single year within it.
The year triggers
The annual pillar is the year's own stem and branch, the trigger against the fixed chart. The tradition orders them: the year is the sovereign, the decade the minister, the chart the people.