Four Pillars of Destiny

Four Pillars of Destiny is a 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 . 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 phrase ''"Shi Chen Ba Zi"''.

* The Chinese term literally translates to ''"Hour of the Eight Characters"''.

* It is also under the Chinese term which literally translates to ''"The Four Pillars Life-ology"''.

* It is 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.

Months

The months are presented by the inner animals.

Hours

The hours are represented by the animals within a 24 hour time span.

The Two Schools

Scholarly School

It began with Xu Zi Ping at the beginning of Song Dynasty. He 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

* Xu Sheng 宋徐升

* Yuan Hai Zi Ping by Xu Sheng 淵海子平

Ming Dynasty

* 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

* Chen Su An 清陳素庵

* Meng Li Yue Yan 命理約言

Professional School

The original Chinese name "Jiang Hu Pai" has a negative implication. It refers to people who take Life Reading and Fortune Telling as a profession. Usually it is regarded as a business. These professionals may not know the theory very well. They may just memorize some formulas and also collect a lot of statistical results from their practices.