Element Balance

The census of which elements your chart holds and in what proportion.

A naive count treats all eight characters equally. A better count weights them: a stem standing openly in a pillar acts more forcefully than a stem concealed inside a branch, and the third hidden stem in a branch is barely felt at all.

This is the most common reason a free chart calculator produces a picture that feels wrong to someone who already knows their chart — it counted hidden stems as though they were standing in the open.