How this reading picks what it says
This page does not read your birth year on its own. It builds the four pillars from your whole birth date, and then each topic reads the seat tradition gives it — which is why changing the topic changes more than the wording. Two of the five open on the same seat; the note under the table says which two, and where they part.
What each topic reads in your chart, and how many different readings that seat produced across the birth dates we measured — counted in whichever of our languages gives the fewest| Topic | What it reads in your chart | Different readings across our sample |
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| Overall | The Ten God commanding the month you were born into — then the thickest layer in the chart, and the thinnest, named against it | 244 |
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| Love | The Ten God of the day branch — the seat tradition reads as the partner's | 86 |
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| Money | How strong the wealth element runs, crossed with how solid the day master is | 151 |
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| Career | The Ten God commanding the month you were born into | 123 |
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| Health | Your day master's own element first, then whichever of the five weighs heaviest across the chart | 186 |
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Overall and Career open on the same thing — the Ten God commanding your month — so their first lines can echo each other. Overall then goes further than Career: it names the thickest layer in the whole chart whenever that is not the month's, which is the case for 31 of the 250 birth dates we measured (5 dates a year, 1960 through 2009). In 6 more of those dates another layer sorts to the top but weighs exactly as much as the month's, and that line stays silent rather than hand you one of the two as the thickest. Overall also names the thinnest layer when one runs thin — and when more than one is equally thin, it says so instead of naming a single seat.
The day's own pillar only reaches the spans that contain a day. Today opens on it; This week lists it once for every day of the week, with that day's stem, branch and Ten God. This month is read from that month's pillar instead, and This year from that year's — a single day's pillar says nothing about a month, and attaching it anyway would be inventing. Of the 4 spans, 2 open straight away and 2 ask you to tap once first.
The heading over the reading names the topic and the span you picked — it is not your zodiac animal, and it is not your chart. Your chart is named in the line underneath: your day master, how solid it runs, the element it most wants, and — on every span but This week — the stem and branch of the span itself. This week shows each of its days' own stem and branch in a row instead.
Under the topic's own paragraph every reading adds one more, and it is not the same seat said twice — each topic draws it from a different engine. Overall and Health take a structural note about the chart itself: Overall takes the first that applies of a fused bureau, an empty palace, a special star, your core strength, a friction pattern, the element your chart most wants; Health looks at only two of them — the element first, your core strength behind it — and the element is the note every chart carries, so that is the one it always shows. Love takes the spouse-palace reading, which is the one place sex is read. Money and Career take the year's own pillar, where tradition reads position and income — so on every span but This year that paragraph is speaking about the year, and opens by saying which kind of year it is. On This year the year already leads the reading, so those two name the chart's one weak point and its remedy instead.
Across the 250 birth dates we measured, with sex left blank, that paragraph came out 61 different ways for Overall, 94 for Love, 7 for Money and Career on This year, and 5 for Health — the narrowest of them, because that slot always names the element your chart most wants, and there are only that many elements. Outside This year the Money and Career paragraph is not counted here at all, and deliberately so: it moves with the year as well as with your chart, so any count we printed would be true of one year only.
The one small step at the end is not general advice. It starts from the element your chart most wants, then says why — how solid the day master runs, whether the chart leans hot or cold, and which branches in it clash, grate or bind. Across the 250 birth dates we measured it came out 148 different ways. It does not change with the tab you are on: it reads your chart, not your topic.
Sex is optional, and exactly one of the readings uses it — Love. Tradition reads the spouse star as the wealth element for a man and the duty element for a woman, which moves where in the chart that reading looks; it lands differently for 218 of the 250 birth dates we measured. Leave it blank and neither is assumed — the reading looks for both. Birth time is optional too: give it and the hour pillar joins the other three; leave it out and the reading is built from three pillars and says nothing about the fourth.
How often each of those readings actually comes up
The seats that read a Ten God all land on the same short list — the groups named below, one row each. This counts how many of the 250 birth dates in that same grid landed on each one, seat by seat. Money and Health are not on this table: Money crosses two axes and Health reads an element, so their answers are not the same kind of thing.
How many of the sampled birth dates landed on each Ten God group| Ten God group | Thickest layer (Overall's second line) | Day branch (Love) | Month (Overall and Career open here) |
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| peer energy (比劫) | 66 | 53 | 47 |
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| expression (食傷) | 56 | 57 | 56 |
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| wealth energy (財星) | 40 | 42 | 45 |
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| duty energy (官星) | 46 | 50 | 53 |
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| support energy (印星) | 42 | 48 | 49 |
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No group runs away with it. Across those columns the widest any group reaches is 66 of the 250 dates and the narrowest is 40 — a spread, not a monopoly. That spread is the charts' doing, not a dial we set.
This is a count over one grid of birth dates, not a chance for you. Nothing here is drawn: your chart lands where your birth date puts it, and the same date always lands in the same place.