The 60 Time Pillars: Deriving Hour Stems via Five Rats Method

The sixty time pillars, or 六十时柱, are the full set of hour-pillar combinations formed from the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches in the sexagenary cycle. In a Four Pillars chart, the time pillar is the fourth pillar. Its earthly branch is fixed by the two-hour double-hour of birth, but its heavenly stem is not fixed independently. The stem must be derived from the day stem through the Five Rat Escape method. The time pillar therefore depends on both the clock time of birth and the day pillar that is already in effect.

时柱对应的人生段落

Within the standard four-pillar division of a life into stages, the time pillar governs the later years. The year pillar corresponds to early life, the month pillar to youth and early adulthood, the day pillar to the middle years, and the time pillar to the final period of life. This is a broad symbolic correspondence rather than a precise age range. The time pillar is read as the section of the chart that speaks most directly to how the closing portion of life is patterned. At the same time, the time pillar is not only a life-stage indicator. It also carries the meaning of the children palace in the six-relatives system, so the same pillar is interpreted in two registers: one temporal, one relational. The two meanings are not separated into different pillars; they are both read from the one hour pillar.

时干由日干推定

The earthly branch of the hour pillar is determined by the clock time of birth. The heavenly stem of the hour pillar cannot be determined from the clock alone. It must be derived from the heavenly stem of the day pillar by the Five Rat Escape method, known in Chinese as 五鼠遁. The method begins from the 子 hour and uses the day stem to fix the stem of that first hour. The traditional verse is: 甲己还加甲，乙庚丙作初，丙辛从戊起，丁壬庚子居，戊癸何方发，壬子是真途.

The ten day stems are grouped into five pairs. For a 甲 day or a 己 day, the 子 hour begins with 甲子. For a 乙 day or a 庚 day, the 子 hour begins with 丙子. For a 丙 day or a 辛 day, the 子 hour begins with 戊子. For a 丁 day or a 壬 day, the 子 hour begins with 庚子. For a 戊 day or a 癸 day, the 子 hour begins with 壬子. Once the stem of the 子 hour is established, the remaining hour pillars follow the sexagenary sequence in order: after 甲子 comes 乙丑, then 丙寅, and so on through the twelve double-hours.

The input to the Five Rat Escape method is the heavenly stem of the day pillar, not the date printed on a calendar at the moment of birth. This distinction matters for births after 23:00. In the Chinese day-counting system used for Four Pillars, the day changes at 子 hour, which begins at 23:00. A person born at 23:30 on a given calendar date is already in the next day pillar. If the hour stem is computed from the calendar date rather than the day pillar in effect, the hour pillar will be wrong by one position. The correct procedure is to advance the day pillar first, then use the stem of that advanced day pillar to set the 子 hour stem.

The Five Rat Escape method cannot be used in reverse to recover the hour branch. It assumes that the hour branch is already known and that the day stem is known. It supplies only the hour stem. It does not provide the earthly branch of the hour pillar, and it cannot correct an uncertain clock time. If the hour branch is missing or doubtful, the Five Rat Escape method alone cannot fill that gap.

时柱与子女宫

In the six-relatives assignment of the Four Pillars, the hour pillar is the children palace. This is one of the fixed positions of the chart: the year pillar is the ancestors palace, the month pillar is the parents palace, the day pillar is the spouse palace, and the hour pillar is the children palace. The hour pillar is therefore read both for matters concerning the person’s later stage of life and for matters concerning children. The two functions are carried by the same pillar at the same time.

Because one double-hour covers two hours of clock time, an error of one double-hour replaces the entire hour pillar. The earthly branch changes, and the heavenly stem is recomputed from the new branch by the Five Rat Escape method. The result is not a partial adjustment but a different pillar altogether. This is one reason the hour pillar is treated as especially sensitive to birth-time accuracy.

时辰不确定时时柱条目的用法

When the birth hour is genuinely unavailable, the standard practice in Four Pillars reading is to use only the year, month, and day pillars and to state explicitly that the hour pillar is missing. The reading is then based on three pillars rather than four. The missing hour pillar is not guessed, and the Five Rat Escape method is not applied without a known hour branch. The children palace and the later-life section of the reading cannot then be filled from the hour pillar, and that limitation should be noted.

This is distinct from a case where the hour is known within one of two adjacent double-hours. In that situation, the hour pillar is uncertain because the branch may be wrong, and the stem may consequently also be wrong. The remedy is to verify the clock time and then recompute the hour pillar from the corrected branch and the correct day stem. The pillar itself cannot be adjusted by averaging or by selecting a middle position between two possibilities.

晚年取象的措辞边界

The time pillar provides an image, or 象, of the later years; it does not determine a fixed outcome. In reference writing, statements about the later period should be framed as what the pillar symbolizes or points toward, not as predictions of specific events, health conditions, or lifespan. The time pillar may be described as governing the closing stage of life in the structural scheme of the Four Pillars, but the actual reading depends on the full chart, the elemental interactions, and the strength and position of the relevant stems and branches.

The same restraint applies to the children palace. The hour pillar is the positional palace for children; it is not a direct statement about how many children a person will have or what will happen to them. A reference entry should say that the hour pillar is the children palace and that it is read relationally in that role. It should not translate that into definite claims about fertility, the number of children, or the character of individual children. The wording should remain at the level of structural correspondence: the pillar is the children palace, and the later-life stage is also read from this pillar. Both statements describe the position of the pillar in the chart, not a guaranteed result.

If the day pillar has advanced because the birth occurred after 23:00, two pillars are affected. The day pillar itself changes, and the hour stem changes because it is derived from the new day stem. The hour branch remains tied to the double-hour. The year pillar and the month pillar are not affected by this day-boundary change. The year pillar is set by 立春, and the month pillar is set by the twelve solar terms, so they are independent of the daily 子 hour transition. The 子 hour is the only one of the twelve double-hours that crosses midnight. It runs from 23:00 to 01:00. The segment from 23:00 to 23:59 belongs to the previous civil date, while the segment from 00:00 to 01:00 belongs to the next civil date. Yet for Four Pillars purposes both segments belong to the 子 hour of the day pillar that begins at 23:00.

To convert a clock time into an hour pillar, four steps are applied in order. First, any daylight saving time or summer time is removed. Second, the time is standardized to the correct time zone. Third, the local solar time is computed. Fourth, the result is checked against the hour table. The order cannot be rearranged. If daylight saving time is not removed first, or if the time zone is not standardized before solar time is calculated, the resulting hour branch may be wrong, and the hour stem will then also be wrong. The engine on this site takes the Gregorian year, month, day, hour, minute, and sex as input. It interprets the time as Beijing clock time and does not accept a longitude correction. The four steps are therefore input preparation to be completed before the time is entered, not adjustments performed by the engine.