Chinese cultural term · reviewed 2026-10-21
四柱
Four Pillars
sì zhù · four columns
The year, month, day, and hour represented as four pairs of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.
A familiar bridge
Start from something known.
Think of four calendar-linked coordinates on one chart, not four separate predictions.
Worked example
See the term in position.
A complete chart contains eight characters in four positions: year, month, day, and hour.
Cultural context
What surrounds the word.
Also called BaZi, meaning “eight characters” because each pair contains two characters.
Boundary
What it does not mean.
The four pillars are not four predictions. They are four coordinates for a symbolic reading system.
Inside the portrait
How this term appears here.
The canonical portrait stores each available pillar as a separate result fact, while preserving missing-hour and convention variants.