Methodology
Casting the Chart
Converting a birth date and time into the four stem-and-branch pillars.
Pai Pan
Casting the chart converts a birth date and time into the four pillars, each a heavenly-stem-and-earthly-branch pair drawn from the sexagenary cycle. This step is mechanical and agreed across schools: the month pillar is fixed by the solar terms rather than the lunar month, and the day stem is taken as the Day Master. Given the same birth data and timezone, every school produces the same eight characters; interpretation begins only after this.