八字, the eight characters
The Four Pillars
The fuller system that the popular year-animal reading is a single slice of.
The structure
Year, month, day, hour
The Four Pillars of Destiny, 四柱, also called Bazi, 八字, encode a birth moment as four stem-and-branch pairs, one pillar each for the year, month, day, and hour. Four pillars of two characters make eight characters. Each character carries a phase and a polarity, and the day stem, 日主, the Day Master, stands for the person.
Why our reading is a slice
One pillar of four
The popular reading of a year animal plus its element, for example a Fire Horse, is only the year branch and the year stem's phase, two of the eight characters. The full system uses all four pillars, so it tells apart people born in the same year, and tradition treats the day and month pillars as more personally central. On Spirit Omega we use the one-pillar popular reading on purpose, and we say so. Find your animal, then read how feng shui ties to it.
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