Open a BaZi (Four Pillars) chart and you'll meet a row of labels that don't exist in Western astrology: Direct Officer, Seven Killings, Eating God, Hurting Officer, Rob Wealth. There are exactly ten, and they reappear everywhere — on the stems, inside the branches, re-shuffled in every decade of your life.
They're called the Ten Gods (十神, shí shén). Despite the name, nothing here is a deity and nothing is a verdict: the Ten Gods are ten relationship labels describing how every other character in your chart interacts with the one that stands for you — your Day Master.
This guide covers:
Everything in BaZi is measured from one reference point: the Day Master — the Heavenly Stem of your birth day, the character that stands for you. Once it's set, every other character in the chart falls into one of exactly five elemental relationships with it:
| Relationship to you | Meaning in one line |
|---|---|
| Same element as you | Your own kind — peers, siblings, rivals |
| The element you produce | What flows out of you — output, expression |
| The element you control | What you manage — resources, money, results |
| The element that controls you | What governs you — authority, rules, pressure |
| The element that produces you | What feeds you — support, learning, protection |
Five relationships alone would be too coarse, because each exists in two polarities. If a character shares your polarity, it behaves as the "indirect" (偏) or intense version; opposite polarity gives the "direct" (正) or steady version. Five relationships × two polarities = exactly ten gods — ten names, one rule.
| Chinese | Pinyin | Common English | Relationship | Reads as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 比肩 | bǐ jiān | Peer / Friend | Same element, same polarity | Self-reliance, allies on equal footing, healthy competition |
| 劫财 | jié cái | Rob Wealth | Same element, opposite polarity | Rivals and peers who compete for what you have; boldness, risk |
| 食神 | shí shén | Eating God | You produce, same polarity | Gentle output — craft, enjoyment, steady creativity, comfort |
| 伤官 | shāng guān | Hurting Officer | You produce, opposite polarity | Sharp output — expression, performance, questioning the rules |
| 正财 | zhèng cái | Direct Wealth | You control, opposite polarity | Steady earning, management, dependable resources |
| 偏财 | piān cái | Indirect Wealth | You control, same polarity | Fluid money, opportunity, dealing, the wider market |
| 正官 | zhèng guān | Direct Officer | Controls you, opposite polarity | Structure, position, responsibility, rules you respect |
| 七杀 | qī shā | Seven Killings | Controls you, same polarity | Hard pressure, discipline, decisive action, survival drive |
| 正印 | zhèng yìn | Direct Resource | Produces you, opposite polarity | Learning, guidance, credentials, steady support |
| 偏印 | piān yìn | Indirect Resource | Produces you, same polarity | Unconventional learning, intuition, self-taught depth |
Note how the two "resource" gods both describe support, and the two "officer" gods both describe governance — the pair differs in texture, not in life area. That's what the polarity rule does: it splits one theme into a composed version and an intense version.
Abstract rules get clearer with one concrete chart. Take a Jia Wood Day Master (甲, Yang Wood). Put any Heavenly Stem next to Jia and the label is fixed by the table above — no interpretation needed yet:
| Stems in the chart | Element & polarity | Ten God relative to Jia Wood |
|---|---|---|
| 甲 Jia | Yang Wood | Peer (比肩) |
| 乙 Yi | Yin Wood | Rob Wealth (劫财) |
| 丙 Bing | Yang Fire | Eating God (食神) |
| 丁 Ding | Yin Fire | Hurting Officer (伤官) |
| 戊 Wu | Yang Earth | Indirect Wealth (偏财) |
| 己 Ji | Yin Earth | Direct Wealth (正财) |
| 庚 Geng | Yang Metal | Seven Killings (七杀) |
| 辛 Xin | Yin Metal | Direct Officer (正官) |
| 壬 Ren | Yang Water | Indirect Resource (偏印) |
| 癸 Gui | Yin Water | Direct Resource (正印) |
This is why the Day Master comes first: "Geng Metal" means nothing alone — the same Geng Metal is Seven Killings to a Jia Wood person and a Peer to a Geng Metal person. The Ten Gods are relational, not absolute.
Two details practitioners always apply: branches count too — every Earthly Branch hides one to three stems (藏干, cáng gān), each classified by the same rule, so a chart with no Water in the stems often carries a Resource god inside a branch; and the labels repeat — a chart can hold several Wealth gods, two Officers, or no Output at all, and the pattern of what appears and what's missing is the real reading material.
The Ten Gods are a vocabulary, not a verdict. In practice the reading runs in a fixed order:
1. Fix the Day Master. Establish which character is you. (Our companion piece on the Day Master covers that first step — and how BaZi and Zi Wei Dou Shu divide the work.)
2. Classify everything. Every stem, every hidden stem, and every luck-pillar stem gets a Ten God label.
3. Weigh strength before meaning. A god's effect depends on whether your Day Master is strong or weak relative to its birth season. A supported Day Master carries pressure and responsibility well; a depleted one leans on support instead. The birth month carries the most weight — the same Seven Killings lands very differently on a strong chart than on a thin one.
4. Place each god in a pillar. Year maps to background, Month to career, Day to self and close partnership, Hour to later life. The same Wealth god reads differently in the Month than in the Hour.
5. Read combinations, not single labels. This is where the vocabulary becomes a reading:
| Combination | What practitioners look for |
|---|---|
| Officer and Killings mixed (官杀混杂) | Competing demands — several authorities pulling in different directions |
| Output controlling the Killings (食神制杀) | Skill and craft applied to pressure; competence as the answer |
| Hurting Officer meeting the Officer (伤官见官) | Directness colliding with structure; friction with rules or superiors |
| Wealth feeding the Officer (财生官) | Resources converted into position and responsibility |
| Resource protecting the self (印护身) | Learning, mentorship, and credentials as a buffer under load |
| Peers contesting Wealth (比劫夺财) | Shared resources, partnerships, and where they get divided |
Eastern and Western readers both stumble here. The English names sound like a morality play — Seven Killings, Hurting Officer, Rob Wealth — but the system attaches no fixed value to any of them.
The honest reading is structural: these are the forces in play, and here's how they interact.
The Ten Gods sit on top of a fixed mapping table — element relation plus polarity determines the label, every time, for every chart. Given your birth date, time, and location, the pillars and their gods are a deterministic result: same input, same output, every run.
That matters more than it sounds. Many "AI BaZi" tools don't compute anything: they're language models asked to improvise a reading, with randomness left on so the prose feels alive. With no rule table to consult, they predict plausible-sounding text — ask twice and you may get two different Ten Gods, which means everything layered on top (strength, combinations, luck pillars) is built on a coin flip. When a reading drifts, it isn't subtlety; it's a guess. (Here's the mechanism.)
A deterministic engine gives you:
The fastest way to make this concrete is to look at your own chart. AskZiWei computes your full BaZi pillars, the hidden stems inside each branch, and the Ten Gods layer on top, then explains what's in play in plain English, with free-form Q&A. The same birth data also runs your Zi Wei Dou Shu chart, so you can cross-check the two systems.
Try it free: enter your birth details at askziwei.com, find your Day Master, and read the gods around it. Then ask the same question again tomorrow — and watch the conclusion hold.
What are the Ten Gods in BaZi? The Ten Gods (十神, shí shén) are the ten labels BaZi uses to classify every other character in a chart by its relationship to your Day Master. Five elemental relationships — same, produced, controlled, controlling, producing — each split by yin/yang polarity, give exactly ten.
How are the Ten Gods calculated? Each character is compared to the Day Master on two axes: its element relation (for example, Metal controls Wood, so Metal is an Officer/Killings to a Wood Day Master) and its polarity (same polarity gives the intense form, opposite polarity the steady form). The label is fixed by rule, not chosen by interpretation.
Is Seven Killings bad luck? No. Seven Killings (七杀) describes concentrated pressure and the discipline that comes with it. Whether it works for or against a chart depends on the Day Master's strength, the season of birth, and how the other gods combine — the same god lands differently on different charts.
Do the Ten Gods predict events? They describe dynamics, not dates. Timing — which decade or year a theme activates — belongs to the luck pillars and annual cycles, a separate layer of the chart.
Which Ten God is the most important? None in isolation. Practitioners weigh the Day Master's strength first, then look at which gods appear, which are missing, where they sit, and how they combine. A reading built on one label is a fragment, not an analysis.
Can I get my Ten Gods chart for free? Yes. AskZiWei computes your four pillars and the Ten Gods layer from your birth date, time, and location, and explains it in plain English.
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