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Dear Davi,

1. Thank you for asking an interesting question especially since it involves your personal Pillars of Destiny "eight characters".

2. I have a very real concern not only with such " Four Pillars " software(s) as they can as you have seen for yourself, provide inaccurate information

>From the FourPillar Software:
>1st Pillar: xin you
>2nd Pillar: bing shen
>3rd Pillar: wu zi
>4th Pillar: bing chen

Such as getting the 2nd Pillar wrong.

3. Let me show you why the above computation is `flawed' or inaccurate:-

4. Your Date of birth: 7 Sep 1981 (This is based on the Western Solar Calendar)

In the Chinese Lunar Calendar, your date of birth would be:

The Lunar Year of: 10 Day, 8 month, Year 1981.

In another type of calendar called the Hsia or Xia (or seasonal or Chinese solar calendar), your date of birth would be:

The Hsia/Xia Year of: 29 Day 7 month year 1981

5. The Pillars of Destiny charts (Also known as Four Pillars, Ba Zi or Eight Characters)

5.1 Lunar Calendar (Used on this website - Geomancy.net):

Year (1981): xin-you
Month (8): ding-you
Day (10): wu-zi

5.2 Xia Calendar (the correct date of birth representation)

Hsia Year (1981): Xin-you
Hsia Month (7): bing-shen
Hsia Day (29): wu-yin (and not the Lunar Day 10 or wu-zi)

These should be the correct conversion dates for your Four Pillars.

6. However, in the 4 Pillars Software (which is used by many FS practitioners):-

The result of your 4 pillars chart is as follows:-

Year (1981): xin-you (Here they use Lunar Year)

Month (7): bing-shen (Here they use Xia Month)
Day (10): wu-zi (Here they use Lunar Day)

In the above, you will notice that there is no consistent use of Lunar calendar. There is an `odd' mix of Lunar calendar, followed by Hsia calendar, then, Lunar.

If we include your date of birth (or the 4th Pillar you mentioned as bing-chen. This is also derived from the Lunar calendar.

Thus, if we are to use the above method, we would get:-

1st Pillar (derived from Lunar calendar)
2nd Pillar ("suddenly" derived from Hsia)
3rd Pillar (then go back to Lunar calendar)
4th Pillar (Lunar calendar).

This is like comparing an Apple (say this represents Lunar calendar) and Orange (represented by Hsia/Xia).

Which comes to the comparison of an apple with orange. This is in my opinion certainly flawed or inaccurate.

7. The correct method: All conversions based on Year (Lunar); Month (Lunar); Day (Lunar) = all based on the common denominator the Lunar calendar:-

Your Four Pillars chart or the more accurate chart should be:-

Year (1981): xin-you (Lunar calendar)
Month (8): ding-you (Lunar calendar)
Day (10): wu-zi (Lunar calendar)

Your Lunar date of birth is the 8th month of the Lunar year 1981 and the on the 10th day.

8. Why the " FourPillar " software gave you the wrong information:-

8.1 In an actual Hsia/Xia calendar of your date of birth it should be:-

Your Hsia date of birth: 29 Day (Hsia) 7 month (Hsia) Year 1981 (Hsia)

8.2 But what such software had done is to give you an inaccurate mix of `plucking' Lunar dates and mixing it incorrectly with Hsia which gives your date of birth as:-

Year (1981): xin-you (Here they use Lunar Year)
Month (7): bing-shen (Here they use Xia Month)
Day (10): wu-zi (Here they use Lunar Day)

The result is a wrong mix of Lunar and Hsia calendar resulting in your date of birth in this inaccurate model as:

10 day (Lunar), 7th month (Hsia) and Year 1981 (Lunar).

As I mentioned earlier, this is similar to comparing an apple an orange.

9. Another major flaw of the Hsia/Xia ca lendar is that anyone using this method may not be accurate as it cannot detect Chinese calendar months where there is an intercalary month for that year.

For example, if a person is born 1 year later than you i.e. 1982, there is an intercalary month in April. In that year, there is TWO April months. Here, anyone using partial or full Hsia/Xia calendar system will instead take one Lunar month before it. Therefore resulting in inaccurate Four pillars chart.

Do take note that the Chinese calendar is riddled with lots of intercalary months not just in 1982. But in many `different' years.

10. I am always fearful of such practitioners and infact, there are many Feng Shui practitioners who still `swear-by' using (unfortunately) I called this a flawed method.

The rationale why it is used by so many practitioners is that it is considered a simple method.

11. In this website, I personally feel that we should not take the easy way about to derive everyone's Four Pillars. This is why, we try to be very accurate.

We took much pains to use both methods i.e. in pure calculation we make sure that everything is based on ALL Lunar calendar and indeed, when Hsia is required, we use it especially under the Luck Pillar to obtain the season. Thus, you are assured that one gets a very accurate analysis.

It is interesting to note that the practise of using `mix' Lunar and Hsia originated from Hong Kong practitioners. As Hong Kong uses the Hsia calendar. But the interesting thing here is that it became (in my opinion) inaccurate as a result of using Lunar (Year); Hsia (Month) then Lunar (Day) and Lunar (Hour).

12. It is interesting to note also that, for some diehards using " Hsia / Xia " method would always (unfortunately) swear by it and would not accept that the mixed use of Hsia/Lunar is flawed!

13. It is also equally intresting to note that if one is not further convinced then we should look at all other Feng Shui concepts such as Eight House, Flying Star. These compass school concepts uses totally the Lunar Calendar.

14. In Advanced Pillars of Destiny the following analysis are used:

Oringal Lunar Month analysed with the Hsia Month. This is to point out the fact that if one had incorrectly used the " Hsia " month then if we did a comparison, it would result in one being unable to get any differences between the two (if any).

15. Please sent a personal e-mail to robert
-lee@3dmail.com as you certainly deserve to have a complimentary full Paid Pillars of Destiny report for you to explore further authentic Four Pillars.

Warmest Regards,
Cecil


On 12/18/2001 6:40:00 PM, Davi Diva wrote:
>Hi,
>I'm a bit confused about the
>eight characters birth chart I
>got from the personalised free
>report(from this website),
>because some of the characters
>produced are inconsistent with
>the eight characters of the
>FourPillar software.
>I know I'm not supposed to
>give out all the details of my
>birthdate etc, but I don't
>want it analysed, I just want
>to know why the characters are
>different and which one is
>more accurate.
>My date of birth is Sept 7th,
>1981. Hour of birth is 8:30am.
>From this website, I got:
>1st Pillar: xin you
>2nd Pillar: ding you
>3rd Pillar: wu zi
>4th Pillar: bing chen
>
>From the FourPillar Software:
>1st Pillar: xin you
>2nd Pillar: bing shen
>3rd Pillar: wu zi
>4th Pillar: bing chen
>
>Why is the 2nd Pillar(month)
>different?