From "what is BaZi" to "what if I don't know my birth time" — clear answers to the forty questions that come up most in Chinese divination.
Updated 2026-08-19
BaZi is a Chinese natal chart made of eight characters: one stem-branch pair each for the year, month, day and hour of birth. The day stem represents the person; analysis revolves around five-element balance, structure and the "useful god" (favorable element). It has been the backbone of Chinese fate analysis since the Song dynasty.
Zi Wei Dou Shu ("Purple Star Astrology") places fourteen major stars into twelve palaces — life, wealth, marriage, career and so on — from the birth moment. It excels at describing each life domain in detail. Classical practice reads it alongside BaZi and trusts only conclusions both charts agree on.
Da Liu Ren is one of the Three Ceremonial Arts of Chinese divination, historically regarded as the master method for concrete questions. The monthly general is added to the asking hour to set a heaven-earth board; four "lessons" yield three "transmissions", each carrying one of twelve generals. Its casting rules are fully deterministic — on Suan (suan.you) the entire procedure is computed by an engine and AI only interprets the resulting board.
Qi Men Dun Jia is a board-based art fixed by solar terms: three nobles and six instruments, nine stars, eight doors and eight deities are laid into a nine-palace grid. Traditionally used for timing and choosing directions — the Open, Rest and Life doors mark auspicious bearings.
A Liu Yao reading casts one of the 64 hexagrams and then rigs it in the Jing Fang tradition: stems and branches on every line, six relatives, self and response lines. Judgment follows the strength of the "useful god" line and the changing lines. The I-Ching is the text; Liu Yao is the divination technique built on it.
Xuan Kong Flying Stars charts a building from its compass facing (precise to 24 "mountains", 15° each) and the 20-year period of its completion or occupancy. Mountain and water stars grade the dwelling; annual stars mark each year's favorable and afflicted sectors. It requires a measured facing — a rough 8-way direction is not precise enough.
The yong shen is the element that best balances a BaZi chart: supportive elements for a weak day master, draining or controlling elements for a strong one, with seasonal temperature adjustments taking priority in extreme months. Once fixed, it anchors judgments about timing, directions and fields of activity.
It means your birth-year branch forms a clash, punishment, harm, destruction — or is identical — with the current year's branch. Tradition reads such years as turbulent and advises steadiness. The relationship is a simple table lookup, not mysticism; the traditional remedy is prudence, not expensive "dissolution" services.
BaZi is built on the stem-branch calendar and five elements; Western astrology on planetary positions and aspects along the ecliptic. Both need the birth time for full precision. They are independent systems from different civilizations — which makes their agreement meaningful: when both point the same way, that conclusion deserves attention. Suan (suan.you) runs both in one reading for exactly this cross-check.
Neither is "more" accurate; they are two projections of the same birth moment. BaZi excels at structure, favorable elements and the rhythm of luck cycles; Zi Wei excels at detailed domain-by-domain portraits. The classical answer is to read them together and trust what both confirm — a cross-check Suan performs by engine.
Both specialize in concrete matters. Liu Yao casts a hexagram and judges by the useful god's strength; Da Liu Ren works without hexagrams, through a heaven-earth board with richer information and more explicit timing. Da Liu Ren is traditionally ranked the deeper art with the steeper learning curve. When both are cast and agree, the signal is strong.
They fail differently. A good human brings lived judgment but may miscast charts, and quality varies wildly; an AI system is only as good as its casting — if a language model "calculates" the chart itself, errors are common, but engine-cast charts are exactly as accurate as careful manual work, with multiple systems opened at once and fixed pricing. The first question to ask any AI fortune app: who computes your chart?
Tarot mirrors the psychological landscape — good for "how should I face this"; hexagram methods judge objective success and timing — good for "will it work, and when". Ask the heart with tarot, ask the matter with the hexagram; when both agree, you have your answer.
Three layers, not one: the ten-year luck pillar sets the decade's tone, the year's stem-branch is checked against your chart's favorable element, and Tai Sui relations plus monthly shifts fill in the timing. Zodiac-sign horoscopes alone are the coarsest layer. A Suan "Luck" reading tallies five engine votes — decade, year, month, Tai Sui and Zi Wei transformations — into one verdict.
Yes — it is the classic "matter" question. Practice casts for this one question: Da Liu Ren for outcome and timing, Liu Yao with the officer and resource lines as focal points, read against whether your current luck pillar favors movement. The useful answer is rarely a bare yes/no; it is when to move and in which direction.
Proper synastry compares two charts: each person's day stem viewed through the other's Ten Gods (the roles you play for each other), the day branches checked for combination, clash, punishment and harm, and whether each chart's favorable element is supplied by the other. More combinations than clashes reads as a natural fit; more clashes means the work is knowing where the friction lives.
Traditional date selection checks the day's Twelve Officers (Establish, Remove, Full … Success and Open days favor action; Destruction and Danger days do not), the yellow-black path gods, and avoids days clashing with your birth-year branch. All of it is almanac table lookup — the essential rule is simply not to launch major matters on a Destruction day or a day that clashes with you.
Split the question in two. Chart casting is either right or wrong: language models that "calculate" charts themselves frequently err, while deterministic engines cast exactly as the classics prescribe — reproducibly. Interpretation is a cultural framework applied to that chart: often insightful, never a decree. Judge any AI divination product by its casting first.
It depends on the platform's practices. Check three things: whether birth data is used only for casting, whether shared results are scrubbed of names and birth details, and whether location is uploaded. On Suan, shared verdict cards are auto-scrubbed and the Auspicious Place pin is computed on-device with coordinates never uploaded.
A serious reading never announces doom; it describes the current of the moment. An unfavorable result points to three adjustable things: timing (avoid the rough window), direction (lean into the favorable element's domains), and tempo (hold rather than push). Be wary of anyone charging heavily to "dissolve" misfortune.
A natal chart once in a lifetime — it never changes. A luck reading once a year, revisited at genuine turning points. Matter readings per question, one cast per matter — repeatedly asking the same question is noise, not signal.
Four things: birth year, month, day and hour (to the hour is enough; minutes help), plus sex for the luck-pillar direction. Birthplace helps pin the time zone. On Suan you enter these once as a profile "capsule" and every reading type reuses it.
Three options: check birth certificates or ask family; if you know the rough period, cast the two candidate hours and keep the one that matches your lived history (the traditional "hour verification"); with no hour at all, BaZi still reads year-month-day and luck cycles at reduced precision, though Zi Wei needs the hour to set the life palace.
Stand inside the front door facing out, hold the phone flat at chest height, and read the compass bearing — that outward bearing is the "facing", and a degree-precise number maps to the 24 mountains. Step back from metal frames and take two or three stable readings. Suan's profile page has a built-in compass capture that stores only the degree, never your location.