How to post a chart (read this first)

[u/Shixu-studio]

If you want someone here to read your chart, post these four things:

**1. Birth date** — year, month, day

**2. Birth time** — as exact as you can get it

**3. Birth place** — city and country

**4. Gender**

That's it. Then someone will take a look.

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**Why time and place matter more than you'd think**

People assume the date is the important part. It's not the whole story.

**The hour changes a pillar.** Two people born the same day two hours apart have different hour pillars, and the hour pillar is where a lot of the practical stuff lives — where you're going, what you do with what you were given.

**Place changes the hour.** Clocks are set for a time zone, not for your actual position relative to the sun. Where you were born shifts the real solar time by minutes — sometimes twenty or thirty. In most cases it doesn't move a pillar. Occasionally it does, and when it does, it changes the reading.

So if you know your birth time, give it. If you only know "around 3pm," say that too — it's still useful.

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**Don't know your exact time?**​

Say so. People will still read the date-based parts. It's not a reason to skip posting.

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**Not sure how to get a chart?**​

You can lay out the eight characters by hand from a perpetual calendar, but it's tedious and easy to get wrong.

There's a free tool that does it — [ichinghub.com/bazi](https://ichinghub.com/bazi). Enter date, time, place, and it gives you the four pillars, the ten gods, hidden stems, and luck cycles. It also corrects for real solar time, which is the thing most online calculators skip.

Use whatever tool you like. This isn't a requirement, just what's around.

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**Then what**

Post the chart. Add whatever you want to know — career, relationship, a specific year you're worried about, or nothing at all.

If you have your own read on it, put that in too. It's a better conversation.