What is the structure of a BaZi birth chart?

A complete birth chart represents a moment in time recorded by the Chinese system of recording time. It shows a moment of birth in the year, month, day, and hour as four ‘pillars’ in the diagram below. They are named the Year Pillar, the Month Pillar, the Day Pillar and the Hour Pillar. Each pillar consists of a pair of Chinese characters. Ba Zi, literally, means ‘Eight Characters’ as one complete birth chart has 8 characters in total.

The structure of BaZi Astrology Birth Chart:

Year Month Day Hour Heavenly Stem ▖ ▖ ▖ ▖ Earthly Branch ▖ ▖ ▖ ▖

A BaZi chart also comes with a series of Phases of Fortune (or Luck Pillar), which indicates the general ups and downs of one’s life path.

A complete BaZi birth chart of 8 characters with the Phases of Fortune

Like Western Astrology, BaZi Astrology is about a reading of one moment in time. But unlike Western astrology, We can see that the BaZi analysis does not look at an 'alignment' of celestial bodies of stars and planets but is based on the 'alignment' of blocks of time delineated by the Ancient Chinese time recording system, The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle.