Because there are two words in each column and eight characters in four columns, fortune telling is also called "measuring eight characters" According to the principles of yin and yang, five elements, ten gods, restraining life, combining punishment and the sound of cadres and branches, we can infer people's fate (that is, wealth, poverty, good or bad).
When predicting a person's fate, the first thing to do is to make the person's birth conversion of time into four pillars and eight characters. This process is called "eight-character dish arrangement". The information arranged in eight characters includes four pillars, ten gods, solar terms, gods, Universiade, Universiade, fleeting time, fetus, life palace and so on. In the past, the arrangement of eight characters required knowledge of astronomical calendar, heavenly stems and earthly branches, 24 solar terms and so on, and it was realized with the help of a perpetual calendar reference book. Now the eight-character arrangement has basically been replaced by high-tech tools (computer and mobile phone arrangement software).
Let's give an example to illustrate. Suppose a male life was born in the solar calendar 1949, 10, 0 1, 16, 08+00,05, and his birthplace was Jincheng, Shanxi, then the four-character corresponding to this birth time is: I am ugly, I am innocent. The details of the eight-character arrangement are as follows: