BAZI FUNDAMENTALS
The twelve Earthly Branches (地支) are the lower half of every pillar in a BaZi chart. Each is a season, a two-hour slice of the day and a zodiac animal — and each is a container holding one to three hidden stems, which is where most of a branch's real work happens.
Put the twelve in a ring and every relationship turns into a shape: a clash is always the diagonal, a three-harmony frame is always an equilateral triangle, a seasonal frame is always three neighbours. Learn the geometry once and the tables stop needing to be memorised.
Every card carries the hours it governs, the stems hidden inside it and where to read further. The pillar chips open the day-pillar article for that stem sitting on this branch.
Zi ·Rat
Water at midnight
Still on the surface, moving underneath.
Zi is the quietest two hours of the day, the moment the first Yang stirs inside deep winter. It thinks best where nobody is watching — quick, adaptable, and prone to staying up long past the point of usefulness.
Chou ·Ox
Frozen field before dawn
Slow, but it never stops storing.
Chou is frozen earth with metal and water locked inside — the classical vault. It warms up slowly, carries more than it admits, and once it has decided something, arguing rarely helps.
Yin ·Tiger
First light in the forest
The year begins here — and so does the moving.
Yin opens the solar year at Start of Spring, wood with fire already hidden inside it. It is out the door before sunrise: bold, forward-leaning, better at beginnings than at endings.
Mao ·Rabbit
Sunrise at the east gate
Soft wood turning toward the light.
Mao is pure Yin Wood, the hour when seedlings break ground fastest. Gentle, tasteful and easy to be around — and so invested in keeping the peace that decisions can sit unmade for a long time.
Chen ·Dragon
Cloud gathering over the marsh
The water vault — it holds a lot, and stirs a lot.
Chen is damp late-spring earth with wood and water buried in it, the most mixed of the twelve. Big-picture, many-threaded, able to carry complexity — and quietly exhausting itself running several inner storylines at once.
Si ·Snake
Morning sun climbing
Calm outside, burning inside.
Si is a Yin branch holding Yang Fire and Metal — it looks composed while running hot underneath. Observant and strategic, it prefers to finish a sentence in its head rather than out loud.
Wu ·Horse
Sun at its height
The brightest two hours of the day.
Wu is pure Fire — direct, warm, and physically unable to hide what it feels. Nothing spreads faster than its enthusiasm, and nothing empties faster once the fuel runs out.
Wei ·Goat
Hay stacked in the afternoon
Dry earth still warm from the fire it stores.
Wei is the wood vault: late-summer earth keeping the day's heat. Kind, attentive, good at looking after people — with a streak of stubbornness that hides under all that softness and never argues openly.
Shen ·Monkey
Late sun on stone
Autumn stirs — and so does the mind.
Shen is Yang Metal with water hidden inside: fast hands, faster head. It picks up new things easily and drops them just as easily, which is both its range and its risk.
You ·Rooster
Sunset, the wine jar opened
Pure metal, finished down to the detail.
You is pure Yin Metal — the character itself pictures a wine vessel, the harvest opened at dusk. Precise, well-ordered and quietly demanding; when the standard slips, the first person it judges is itself.
Xu ·Dog
Dusk, the gate closed
The fire vault — it guards, and it can flare.
Xu is dry late-autumn earth holding fire and metal, the hour the door is bolted for the night. Loyal, principled, reliable in a crisis — and capable of holding a line long after the argument stopped being worth it.
Hai ·Pig
Boat returning to the sea
Wide water with wood asleep inside it.
Hai closes both the day and the cycle — big water carrying Yang Wood. Generous, intuitive, hard to offend; it takes people in without much of a filter, which is exactly where it loses energy.
Five ways the branches act on each other. Switch tabs to see each pattern on the same wheel — the branches never move, only the lines do.
Six pairs bond and lean toward a new element. A combination softens both branches and often marks a tie that is hard to walk away from.
| Branch | Animal | Element | Polarity | Month (solar term) | Hour | Hidden stems |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 子Zi | Rat | Water | Yang | Major Snow12/07–01/05 | 23:00–01:00 | Yin Water 100% |
| 丑Chou | Ox | Earth | Yin | Minor Cold01/06–02/03 | 01:00–03:00 | Yin Earth 50% · Yin Water 33% · Yin Metal 17% |
| 寅Yin | Tiger | Wood | Yang | Start of Spring02/04–03/05 | 03:00–05:00 | Yang Wood 50% · Yang Fire 33% · Yang Earth 17% |
| 卯Mao | Rabbit | Wood | Yin | Awakening of Insects03/06–04/04 | 05:00–07:00 | Yin Wood 100% |
| 辰Chen | Dragon | Earth | Yang | Pure Brightness04/05–05/04 | 07:00–09:00 | Yang Earth 50% · Yin Wood 33% · Yin Water 17% |
| 巳Si | Snake | Fire | Yin | Start of Summer05/05–06/05 | 09:00–11:00 | Yang Fire 50% · Yang Metal 33% · Yang Earth 17% |
| 午Wu | Horse | Fire | Yang | Grain in Ear06/06–07/06 | 11:00–13:00 | Yin Fire 60% · Yin Earth 40% |
| 未Wei | Goat | Earth | Yin | Minor Heat07/07–08/07 | 13:00–15:00 | Yin Earth 50% · Yin Fire 33% · Yin Wood 17% |
| 申Shen | Monkey | Metal | Yang | Start of Autumn08/08–09/07 | 15:00–17:00 | Yang Metal 50% · Yang Water 33% · Yang Earth 17% |
| 酉You | Rooster | Metal | Yin | White Dew09/08–10/07 | 17:00–19:00 | Yin Metal 100% |
| 戌Xu | Dog | Earth | Yang | Cold Dew10/08–11/06 | 19:00–21:00 | Yang Earth 50% · Yin Metal 33% · Yin Fire 17% |
| 亥Hai | Pig | Water | Yin | Start of Winter11/07–12/06 | 21:00–23:00 | Yang Water 60% · Yang Wood 40% |
Four jobs. Miss any one of them and the reading goes flat.
The month branch decides whether the Day Master was born into a supporting season or a draining one. Nothing else in the chart carries as much weight.
Every branch holds one to three stems. Those are the roots the visible stems stand on — a stem without a root in the branches is a flag without a pole.
Combinations, clashes, punishments and harms all happen between branches. They are what turns a static chart into events with timing.
The year branch is your zodiac sign — one branch out of four. Handy shorthand, far too coarse to read a life by.
Yang branches move and are strong: they arrive fast and show fortune plainly. Yin branches are still and single-minded: their turns of luck take a whole year to unfold.
Di Tian Sui (滴天髓)
Six branches count as Yang (Zi, Yin, Chen, Wu, Shen, Xu) and six as Yin. The line describes behaviour, not quality: Yang branches move first and let you see the result, Yin branches work slowly and reveal themselves over a season. It is the first thing to check when a clash lands on one.
They are 子丑寅卯辰巳午未申酉戌亥 — twelve symbols marking the twelve months, the twelve two-hour periods of a day and the twelve zodiac animals. Paired with the ten Heavenly Stems they generate the sixty-year cycle.
A stem is a single pure element on display. A branch is a container: it has an element of its own and also hides one to three stems inside. Stems show what is happening; branches say how deeply it is rooted and when it moves.
The animals are a nickname for the branches — 子 is the Rat, 丑 the Ox, and so on. But the animal reads only your year branch, and a chart has four. The day and month branches say far more about you.
They come from your birth year, month, day and hour. The month follows solar terms and the hour follows true solar time, so a calendar alone will not give them — run the free calculator below and all four appear at once.
Calculate your full BaZi chart free — with true solar time correction — and see which branches sit under your year, month, day and hour.
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