Reading the Four Pillars — what the year, month and day pillars show
updated · 7 min read
The Four Pillars is one of the systems of divination that began in China. The year, month, day and hour of birth are each converted into a stem-and-branch pair and set out as four columns, or pillars. From these four, a person's nature and the movement of their fortune are read.
What the stems and branches are
The pairs combine ten heavenly stems with twelve earthly branches. The lowest common multiple of ten and twelve gives sixty combinations, which is where the sixty-year cycle comes from.
The ten stems are the five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal and water — each divided into a yang and a yin form. So the first stem is yang wood, the second yin wood, and so on.
| Element | Yang | Yin | The image |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wood | Yang Wood | Yin Wood | A great tree and grasses. The force that grows |
| Fire | Yang Fire | Yin Fire | The sun and a lamp. The force that lights |
| Earth | Yang Earth | Yin Earth | A mountain and a field. The ground that raises |
| Metal | Yang Metal | Yin Metal | Ore and a jewel. The force that gives form |
| Water | Yang Water | Yin Water | A great river and rain. The force that flows and moistens |
The twelve branches are the familiar animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Yang Metal with Horse gives the pillar this service shows as Yang Metal Horse.
What the four pillars show
| Pillar | Taken from | What it is taken to show | Roughly which years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | The year of birth | Family line, what was inherited, how society sees you | Up to about twenty |
| Month | The month of birth | Home, work, where you stand socially | About twenty to forty |
| Day | The day of birth | Yourself and your partner. The centre of the four | About forty to sixty |
| Hour | The hour of birth | Children, later years, where you arrive | Sixty onward |
Of these the day pillar carries the most weight, and within it the stem, called the day stem. The day stem is taken to be the person themselves, and is the reference point when the other pillars are read against it.
The hour pillar needs a time of birth. Where that is unknown, reading with three pillars is usual, and it reads perfectly well. This service does not ask for the time of birth, so it produces three pillars.
Where people go wrong: the year does not start on 1 January
This is where mistakes happen most. In the Four Pillars the year begins not on 1 January but at the Start of Spring. And the months change over not on the first of the month but at the solar terms.
- From the Start of Spring, around 4 February, the Tiger month (the first)
- From the Awakening of Insects, around 6 March, the Rabbit month
- From Clear and Bright, around 5 April, the Dragon month
- and so on, each month turning over on the day of its term
So someone born on 20 January belongs, in the Four Pillars, to the Ox month of the previous year. The same goes for 1 February. Get this wrong and the year and month pillars are both out.
The dates and times of the terms also move from year to year. The Start of Spring can fall on 3 or 4 February, and with the time included it differs every year. This service finds the boundary by calculating the moment the Sun reaches 315 degrees of longitude. For anyone born on the day of a boundary, it shows a note saying that either side is possible.
Reading the balance of the elements
With the pillars in front of you, the next thing to read is how the five elements are weighted. Someone with a great deal of wood; someone with no water at all. That imbalance is taken to shape their tendencies.
The elements have a relationship that produces and one that checks.
- Producing: wood makes fire, fire makes earth, earth makes metal, metal makes water, water makes wood
- Checking: wood checks earth, earth checks water, water checks fire, fire checks metal, metal checks wood
Supplying what is short and draining what is excessive: the practical side of the Four Pillars lies in this idea of adjustment.
What the Four Pillars suits
Because it reads from fixed information, the Four Pillars suits looking at what does not change about a person and at movement over long spans. For a short question — what happens tomorrow — a method that reads from chance, such as tarot, suits better.
Common questions
- Can it be read without a time of birth?
- Yes, with three pillars — year, month and day. Without the hour pillar the reading of later years and of children is thinner, and since the day pillar that represents the person is still available, it is ample for reading character.
- I was born on 3 February. Which year pillar is mine?
- It depends on the date and time of the Start of Spring that year. Before it, the previous year applies. Since the term falls on either 3 or 4 February depending on the year, the time has to be taken into account.
- What if I was born outside Japan?
- Properly, the local time is converted to Japan time before the pillars are set. This service uses a simplified calculation on Japan time, so results for a birth outside Japan may be out.