Bazi Day Master ended at the seam where a chart actually gets read: once the day stem is fixed and its strength judged, the remaining characters are interpreted through the ten gods (十神, shishen) — the labels a calculator prints beside every stem, and the first place a beginner gets stuck. Ten names, but not ten things to memorize: each one is the product of a single two-step rule — five element relations crossed with two polarities — and this page derives them and charts them rather than asking you to learn them by rote.
What are the Ten Gods in Bazi?#
The name misleads twice, so correct it first. One: 神 (shen) here does not mean a god or a spirit. In this classical usage shen names the function of a thing — what it does — so 十神 is closer to “the ten functions” than to “ten deities”; nothing in Bazi involves worshipping ten gods. Two: the ten gods are not entities but relationship names. Each is the label for how one stem relates to the Day Master — fix the day stem, take any other stem in the chart, and exactly one of the ten names applies to that pair.
The relation is read on two axes. The first is the five wuxing (五行) relations between elements — same as me, I generate, I overcome, overcomes me, generates me — the same generating-and-overcoming cycle What Is Bazi introduced. The second is the yin-yang polarity of the pair of stems: both yang, both yin, or one of each. Five relations × two parity cases = ten names, and the system is closed — no stem falls outside it.
How each god is derived#
Memorizing a grid is the slow way; deriving is the fast way. Two steps, always in this order:
- Find the element relation between the other stem and the Day Master. This picks the family: what overcomes me, what generates me, same as me, what I generate, what I overcome.
- Compare polarity. In the wealth, officer, and resource families, polarity selects between the pair’s two members: opposite polarity gives the zheng 正 (“direct”) god, same polarity its pian 偏 (“indirect”) counterpart. The irregular name in the officer pair gives the pattern away — qisha is also called pianguan 偏官, “indirect officer.” The peer and output families name their two members outright instead: bijian/jiecai, shishen/shangguan.
Run the two steps once, for one Day Master, and the whole column falls out. Taking 戊 (yang earth) — the Day Master of the example chart carried through this series, 甲子 丙寅 戊辰 壬戌:
| Other stem | Element | Relation to 戊 | Polarity | Ten god |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 甲 | wood | overcomes me | same (yang–yang) | 七杀 qisha |
| 乙 | wood | overcomes me | opposite | 正官 zhengguan |
| 丙 | fire | generates me | same | 偏印 pianyin |
| 丁 | fire | generates me | opposite | 正印 zhengyin |
| 戊 | earth | same as me | same | 比肩 bijian |
| 己 | earth | same as me | opposite | 劫财 jiecai |
| 庚 | metal | I generate | same | 食神 shishen |
| 辛 | metal | I generate | opposite | 伤官 shangguan |
| 壬 | water | I overcome | same | 偏财 piancai |
| 癸 | water | I overcome | opposite | 正财 zhengcai |
Reading the example chart against this column: the year stem 甲 is qisha, the month stem 丙 is pianyin, the hour stem 壬 is piancai — three same-polarity gods in a row, because all four visible stems of that chart happen to be yang. And the derivation travels: a 己 (yin earth) Day Master meets the same 甲 wood with opposite polarity, so the label flips to zhengguan. Same relation, different polarity, different name — which is the entire point of the second step.
The five families#
Charts are discussed family-by-family as often as god-by-god, so the grouping deserves a table of its own:
| Family | Pinyin | Relation to the Day Master | Members | Collective sense |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Officer & Killings | guansha 官杀 | what overcomes me | zhengguan, qisha | constraint, authority, structure — what disciplines the self |
| Resource | yin 印 | what generates me | zhengyin, pianyin | support, absorption, learning — what feeds the self |
| Peers | bijie 比劫 | same element as me | bijian, jiecai | parallel selves — siblings, peers, rivals |
| Output | shishang 食伤 | what I generate | shishen, shangguan | expression and expenditure — what the self puts out |
| Wealth | cai 财 | what I overcome | zhengcai, piancai | possession and control — what the self holds |
One convention to fix early: every relation is stated from the Day Master’s viewpoint — “me” is always the day stem. Wealth is what the Day Master overcomes, not what overcomes it; Resource is what generates the Day Master. This direction is why the ten gods anchor on the Day Master and cannot be read from any other character in the chart.
The complete ten gods chart#
English-language Bazi writing has no standard translations for the ten names. One author’s “Friend” is another’s “Companion” or “Shoulder-to-Shoulder”; qisha is near-universally “Seven Killings,” but zhengguan splits between “Direct Officer” and “Proper Officer,” and pianyin appears as “Indirect Resource” or “Owl God” depending on the school. The pinyin is the only label stable across books, teachers, and software — so each god is named here pinyin-first, with the literal translation as the handle:
| Pinyin | Chinese | Literal translation | Formed by | Traditionally stands for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| zhengguan | 正官 | Direct Officer | overcomes me, opposite polarity | order, duty, rank and reputation; in a woman’s chart, classically the husband |
| qisha | 七杀 | Seven Killings | overcomes me, same polarity | pressure, decisiveness, command — authority that attacks rather than arranges |
| zhengyin | 正印 | Direct Resource | generates me, opposite | learning, credentials, protection; classically the mother |
| pianyin | 偏印 | Indirect Resource | generates me, same | unconventional study, inspiration, solitude; nicknamed the “owl” (xiao 枭) for snatching the Eating God’s food |
| bijian | 比肩 | Shoulder-to-Shoulder | same as me, same | self and willpower, peers and siblings |
| jiecai | 劫财 | Rob Wealth | same as me, opposite | partnership that turns rivalrous — help that arrives with a cost |
| shishen | 食神 | Eating God | I generate, same | talent, appetite, unhurried expression; ease |
| shangguan | 伤官 | Hurting Officer | I generate, opposite | brilliance, edge, defiance of convention — talent that clashes with structure |
| piancai | 偏财 | Indirect Wealth | I overcome, same | fluid income, enterprise, networks; classically the father |
| zhengcai | 正财 | Direct Wealth | I overcome, opposite | earned income, steady accumulation; in a man’s chart, classically the wife |
The kinship entries need their caveat stated plainly. “Wealth is the wife’s star for a man; the Officer is the husband’s star for a woman; Resource is the mother” is how the classical texts mapped the ten gods onto family roles — a convention of the tradition, not a description of actual people. Modern practice, especially Western-facing Bazi, increasingly reads the same stars as temperament domains: Wealth as one’s relation to money and attachment, Officer as one’s relation to rules and authority. That is the reading this site takes as well.
How to read the ten gods in your chart#
Deriving the labels by hand means reconciling solar terms, calendar lookups, and hidden-stem tables all at once — the practical route is the site’s Bazi Calculator: enter a birth time and it returns the four pillars with every stem’s ten god already labeled, including the stems hidden inside each branch. A branch such as 寅 carries three hidden stems — 甲, 丙, 戊 — and each gets its own god: for a 戊 Day Master, qisha, pianyin, bijian. This page’s chart is the legend for that output.
What a label means still depends on strength — the point the Day Master page fixed and this one inherits. The same god reads opposite ways in two charts: wealth, officer, and output gods benefit a strong Day Master, which can afford to be checked and drained, and burden a weak one, which needs support first; resource and peer gods rescue the weak and merely add weight to the strong. A ten-god label is a relation, not a verdict — the verdict requires the strength judgment in front of it.
Classical source vs. modern usage#
The ten-god apparatus is the working vocabulary of the Ziping (子平) school — the lineage that moved Bazi from the year-stem method of its Tang-dynasty beginnings to the day-stem-centered chart — and it reached its fixed form in the school’s received compilation, Yuanhai Ziping (《渊海子平》, Song dynasty). What that literature standardized is precisely what this page has been doing: giving each stem’s relation to the day stem a name, so that any chart can be discussed in a shared shorthand. The Ming-dynasty synthesis Sanming Tonghui (《三命通会》) carried the same apparatus through the late imperial period, and every modern descendant — Chinese popular manuals, English-language courses, and every online calculator, this site’s included — still speaks in these ten names.
The usage, though, keeps moving. The classical texts lean on the kinship mappings and on blunt prosperity-and-rank readings; modern practice recasts the same labels as matters of temperament — how a person handles money, authority, expression, and company. The relation names have held stable for roughly a millennium; what each name is taken to mean is the layer that shifts with each generation of readers.
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