Foundation · Node 01
Four moments become Eight Characters.
BaZi records four Stem–Branch pairs from the year, month, day and hour of a local birth moment. The eight written signs are facts produced by a stated calendar convention; their meaning comes later.
The fact layer
The Year, Month, Day and Hour Pillars each contain a Heavenly Stem and an Earthly Branch. DI TIAN SUI calculates these first and preserves them unchanged beneath every interpretation.
The traditional reading layer
The pillars are commonly used as different fields of context: inherited or outer context, seasonal environment, the self-and-partnership axis, and inner or later-life direction. These are interpretive frames, not biographies encoded in advance.
The reflection layer
A useful reading asks whether a pattern helps you notice something testable in lived experience. It should not ask you to surrender agency to a formula.