The old almanac, translated
BaZi as themes, seasons, and tendencies — not fortunes, not verdicts. Every line traces back to reasoning you can read.
Free to start, no sign-up to cast.
The almanac
Your Four Pillars are computed from an exact astronomical almanac — then read as themes, seasons, and tendencies you can question at every step.
The practice
The old almanac as a mirror you hold, not a fortune handed to you. Sit with a theme, name a pattern, decide for yourself.
Before a big change — a job, a move, a relationship — you want a second mirror, one that doesn't flatter or frighten. The reading shows the season you're in, so the choice stays yours.
The same friction keeps showing up — at work, with people, inside yourself. The chart gives you language for the loop: which elements run loud, which run quiet, what tends to exhaust you.
Come back and see what's shifted. What felt unmanageable in spring is often readable by autumn — a chart you revisit is a chart that grows with you.
This year rewards depth over speed. Tend the fire; don't chase the current.
Every line opens to the step that produced it — and to how sure we are about it. Nothing hidden, nothing invented.
Inside the reading
金 Metal · 木 Wood · 水 Water · 火 Fire · 土 Earth
Strength, balance, and what’s out of season — read at a glance, traced back to your pillars.
The daily question
“What am I leaning on that isn’t mine to hold?”
Answered against your own chart — one a day.
A prompt to sit with, shaped by your chart — not a horoscope you half-read and forget.
丙火 ↔ 戊土 — grounded warmth
Where your seasons meet — a relationship read with the same auditable care, minus the verdicts.
How it’s different
One real reading, played back step by step: from the clock on the wall to the final sentence — nothing hidden, nothing invented.
Frame 01 · True solar time
Your birth moment is corrected for your longitude and the equation of time — so the pillars are anchored to the sun’s actual position, not to a timezone.
Frame 02 · The engine
年 · 月 · 日 · 时 are computed from an astronomical calendar. Then the reading weighs the chart the way the tradition does.
“Geng metal, born in Shen month — in season, strong.”
Frame 03 · The choice
For this strong-metal chart the reading looks to what gives strength somewhere to flow — not what piles on more.
Frame 04 · The reading, with receipts
Nothing is asserted into the text by mood. Each line traces back to the step that produced it — and to how solid the almanac is about it.
“Your Favorable Elements lean toward Fire, Water, and Wood…”
Sōngyǐn Academy
A guided path into BaZi — short lessons, quizzes, and progress that sticks. The same auditable reasoning, taught step by step.
Elements, stems, branches, the ten gods — the alphabet of a chart, in plain language.
Day-master strength, structure, the useful god — then luck periods and annual flow.
Shensha, the 60-pillar cycle, hidden stems — and a full worked example to finish.
Free to learn. Progress saves on this device — sign in to sync it across devices.
The voice
Sōngyǐn (松隱) — “the recluse among the pines,” a fictional keeper of the old almanac, and the voice these readings speak in.
A character we write in the open, not a person and not a claim to special powers. The tradition is real; the storyteller is made up on purpose.
Wellness, not prophecy
Themes to sit with, seasons to move with — the old almanac as a mirror, not a fortune.
Cast your chart free