The 12 Life Stages Of Bazi Pillars

In bazi destiny analysis, there are 12 life stages (12 growth) that can help to determine the strength of each pillar, or the earthly branch in relation to the self-element.

The 12 life stages of pillars are namely:

1. Birth (长生) Chang Sheng
2. Bath (沐浴) Mu Yu
3. Preparation (冠带) Guan Dai
4. Arrival (临官) Lin Guan
5. Peak (帝旺) Di Wang
6. Aging (衰) Shuai
7. Sickness (病) Bing
8. Death (死) Si
9. Burial (墓) Mu
10. End (绝) Jue
11. Conception (胎) Tai
12. Nurture (养) Yang

By using the personal self-element (or day master) as the reference point, the earthly branches contained within the bazi will indicate which stage their respective pillars are at.

It is also important to note that the words (or labeling) used are just representations of their meanings. Different books might translate or transliterate the Chinese words into different English words.

The below table shows the life stages according to the heavenly stem, in this case is the self-element.

Legend to the symbols used above can be found here.

The strength indicated by each life stage can be ranked below from the strongest to the weakest.

1. Arrival
2. Peak
3. Birth
4. Aging
5. Burial
6. Bath
7. Preparation
8. Sickness
9. Death
10. Conception
11. Nurture
12. End

As with everything feng shui and bazi, strong does not necessarily relates to good, and weak does not imply bad by default.

If we take for example, a female born on 27 October 1990 at 3:30am, then the 8 characters would be plotted below.

With the self element of H2 (-wood) as the reference stem, then the life stages of the 4 pillars can be determined according to the previous table.

From the above bazi, it can be deduced that the strongest pillar is hour pillar where it is at the “Peak” stage.

This will play a role in bazi analysis.

By default, the self-element will be used to discover the life stages of pillars at the most basic level.

Alternatively, in more advanced bazi reading, we can also use a different heavenly stem as the reference point to determine it’s own strength compared to other pillars.

Using the previous example, we can use the heavenly stem on the year pillar H7 to plot the life stage of each pillar.

In this exercise, we would tabulate the following.

In fortune telling, the 12 stage life cycle can be applied to forecast what could happen when specific heavenly stems meet specific earthly branches.

The strength of each earthly branch plays a crucial role in destiny analysis.

For example a weak branch might have little impact on a strong self-element even though it’s supposed to be a favorable character.

At an advanced level of bazi reading, the 12 growth relationship can also be used as a way to judge the positive or negative connotations that are implied when earthly branches interact with each other.

Even though the table illustrated previously depicts the relationships between heavenly stems and earthly branches in terms of the 12 stages, stems can also be represented by branches. Thus, making it possible to determine the end result of two interacting branches.

However, one should only get into the details of these interactions between characters when he/she has a good grasp of the basics of bazi.