BaZi: Time adjustment

I personally use time adjustment to get the hour pillar. Reason being, back in ancient China, they did not have clocks on their walls, they did not use a standardized time system like we do today. What they had was a device that tells time by indicating the positions of the sun throughout the day and the year, a device named 圭 Gui, which is the same a sundial. In modern times, we no longer use sundials to tell the time, we have clocks which are set according to local timezone. The time displayed on the clock might not tell the correct position of the Sun, but it can be adjusted to Local Apparent Time LAT that tells exactly the position of the Sun.

Gui 圭

For time adjustment, I use a software recommended by the mods in Fivearts called Time Zone Master. The software is available for free here.

I find the software very useful although it took me some time to get used to its feature. In this post, I'd like to explain step by step on how to get the LAT with Time Zone Master.

Firstly we need the birth data of the person, just like we normally do when we want to plot a BaZi chart. We need the time, day, month, year and location of birth to get the LAT.

Let's take for example we need to adjust the time for a male born in KunMing China on 17/March/1980 4.35pm according to his birth certificate.

Next, run Time Zone Master, a little clock would appear somewhere on your screen, like this:

Notice that the clock says 'Spokane', that indicates that the clock is showing time at Spokane, United States,
so we need to change the clock location, from Spokane in United States to KunMing in China. In order to do that, right click on the wall, it will show a list, and choose 'Edit Clock Location'

After that a new Window will show up that looks like this:

The Location says WA, Spokane United States, we should change it to KunMing, China from the drop down list and click 'OK'

After that the Clock's name will change from Spokane to Kunming.

In order to explore the past time, we need to double click on the clock (left click), a new tab will show up - it says Explore Past, Present, Future, notice that there's a section for us to input the birth date, and another section to input the birth time. Let's change both according for the male born in KunMing on 17/March/1980 4.35pm

There are many tabs in the window, click on 'Solar' to display LAT.

The LAT for 17 March 1980 4:35PM in KunMing China is 4:17PM, meaning there's 18 minutes difference between the Standard time (which is LONT) in KunMing and the true Solar time. In this case, the hour pillar remains the same. However, had the man been born on 3.17PM (Shen hour) according to KunMing time, the LAT would be 2.59PM, (Wei hour).

After we get the correct time, we can proceed to plot the BaZi chart.

That's all for today's post. Have a nice day.