Deep Oracle

Glossary

The BaZi vocabulary, 680 entries arranged in four reading tiers. Each entry gives the definition, how the term is derived, and where it is commonly misread. Lookup tables are generated from this site's chart engine; classical quotations are checked against the source.

Tier 1 — the raw material

The characters a chart is made of, and the calendar rules that produce them.

Foundations

464

Yin-yang, the five elements, stems, branches and hidden stems — the characters a chart is built from.

Calendrics

1

The calendar rules a chart is cast from: solar terms for months, 立春 for years, true solar time.

Tier 2 — the reading apparatus

How four pillars become a reading: ten gods, patterns, strength, day pillars.

Ten Gods

11

The ten relations every other stem can hold to the day master.

Ten-God Combinations

10

Named configurations formed when two or more ten gods appear together.

Patterns

12

Taking the pattern from the month branch — the regular patterns and the outer ones.

Useful God & Strength

8

How the day master's strength is judged, and the corrective direction that follows.

Twelve Stages

1

The twelve stages a stem passes through across the twelve branches.

Sixty Day Pillars

60

The sixty day pillars of the stem-branch cycle, one entry each.

Tier 3 — motion and time

A chart is not static: branches act on each other, and the cycles move.

Branch Relations

53

The six ways earthly branches act on one another.

Luck Cycles

5

The ten-year luck pillars and the annual pillars, with the rules that start them.

Tier 4 — auxiliary and adjacent systems

Markers that supplement the main judgement, and systems adjacent to Ziping.

Auxiliary Stars

39

Star markers read off stem-branch lookup tables, classed auspicious, inauspicious or neutral.

Nine Periods

14

The Three Cycles Nine Periods of Xuankong — an adjacent system, not Ziping itself.

Palaces

2

What each pillar stands for in a life, plus the derived palaces.

See these in a chart

BaZi Glossary — Terms Explained