Four Pillars of Destiny

Four Pillars of Destiny is a Chinese conceptual term that describes the four components creating a person's destiny or fate. The four components within the moment of birth are year, month, day, and time (hour). The four pillars is a component used alongside fortune telling practices such as Zi wei dou shu within the realm of Chinese Astrology.

Terminology

The four pillars is an English translation of the Chinese dynastic phrase "Shi Chen Ba Zi". The Chinese term (時辰八字 , Shi Chen Ba Zi) literally translates to "Hour of the Eight Characters". It is also under the Chinese term (四柱命理學, sei cyu ming lei hok) which literally translates to "The Four Pillars Life-ology".

Commonly referred to by the shortened names of "Four Pillars" or "Ba Zi", one of the most frequently used alternate phrase is "Four Pillars of your birthday".

Year

The years are calculated by the 12 zodiac animals with the sexagenary cycle of 60 years. Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig

Months

The months are presented by the inner animals.

Days

The days are represented by the animals in a 60 day span.

Hours

The hours are represented by the animals within a 24 hour time span. Rat 11pm - 1am, Ox 1am - 3am, Tiger 3am - 5am Rabbit 5am - 7am, Dragon 7am - 9am Snake 9am - 11 am Horase 11am - 1pm, Sheep 1pm - 3pm, Monkey 3pm - 5pm, Rooster 5pm - 7pm, Dog 7pm - 9pm Pig 9pm - 11pm

The Two Schools

The schools are the Scholarly School (學院派) and the Professional School (江湖派).

The Scholarly School began with Xu Ziping (徐子平) at the beginning of Song Dynasty. Xu founded the pure theoretical basis of the system. Ever since then, scholars continued to do research work on the system and published their work for further development. Representatives of this school and their publications include

Song Dynasty (宋)

Xu Sheng (Also known as Xu Ziping) 宋徐升

Yuan Hai Zi Ping by Xu Sheng 淵海子平

Ming Dynasty (明)

Wan Yu Wu 明萬育吾

San Ming Tong Hui 三命通會

Liu Ji 明劉基

Di Tian Sui 滴天髓

Qing Dynasty (清)

Chen Su An 清陳素庵

Meng Li Yue Yan 命理約言

The Professional School (江湖派) had the original Chinese name "Jiang Hu Pai" which has a negative implication. It refers to people who take Life Reading and Fortune Telling as a profession and is usually regarded as a business. The problem is that these professionals may not know the theory very well. Also, they may just memorize some formulas and also collect a lot of statistical results from their practices which gives a superficial and possibly not as accurate a result as something more in-depth.

(source:wikipedia)