The Ten Gods — Ten Archetypes of Relationship and Fate

In BaZi, your chart has eight characters — four Heavenly Stems and four Earthly Branches drawn from your birth moment. One of those stems, the one in the day column, is your Day Master (日主), the symbol for you. The Ten Gods (十神) describe how each of the other stems stands in relation to that Day Master. They are relational, not absolute: the exact same stem, say Yang Wood, is a completely different “god” depending on whose chart it sits in.

Think of the Day Master as the protagonist of a story and the Ten Gods as the cast of roles around them — the mentor, the rival, the child, the money, the boss. Classical texts personified these forces as “gods” because they behave like characters with motives, but the house view at Qysmet is plainer: they are patterns of pressure and support. We map patterns, not fortunes. Knowing your dominant Ten Gods tells you which pressures shape your instincts, not what will happen to you on a given Tuesday.

The Ten Gods are built from two simple ideas layered together. The first is the Five Elements (五行, wǔ xíng) cycle. Between your Day Master’s element and any other element there are exactly five possible relationships: something produces you, something is the same as you, you produce something, you control something, and something controls you. Five relations.

The second idea is polarity. Every Heavenly Stem is either yin or yang. A stem can share the Day Master’s polarity (both yang, or both yin) or oppose it. This splits each of the five relations into two flavours, giving five times two equals ten — the Ten Gods.

The polarity rule carries a consistent feel. When the other stem is the opposite polarity to your Day Master, you get the “proper” or “direct” (正, zhèng) versions: 正官, 正财, 正印. These attractions are complementary, like the two poles of a magnet — they read as smoother, more refined, more socially sanctioned. When the polarity matches, you get the harsher, rawer versions: 七杀, 偏财, 偏印, 劫财, 伤官. Same-charge forces repel or overdrive, so these read as more intense, less filtered, and higher-variance — powerful, but harder to hold.

Here are all ten, grouped by the five relations. Read the middle column as the answer to “what does this stem do to the Day Master?” and the right column as the flavour it lends to personality, career, and relationships.

The two “inward” groups feed and reinforce the Day Master. Resource (印, yìn) is the element that produces you — like Water feeding Wood. Direct Resource (正印, zhèng yìn) is the archetypal nurturer: the mother, the mentor, formal education, patience, and being cared for. A chart rich in Direct Resource often reads as studious, protected, and reputation-conscious, sometimes to the point of dependency. Indirect Resource (偏印, piān yìn), nicknamed 枭神 (xiāo shén, “owl spirit”), is the same nourishing force with a strange edge — intuition, niche expertise, spirituality, and unconventional thinking, but also detachment and a tendency to overthink or start without finishing.

Companion (比劫, bǐ jié) is the element identical to your Day Master — Wood standing next to Wood. Friend (比肩, bǐ jiān) brings peers, allies, and self-reliance; a strong Friend makes you independent and steady but can harden into stubbornness or a reluctance to share. Rob Wealth (劫财, jié cái) is the competitive cousin: siblings, rivals, boldness, and hunger, with a shadow of impulsiveness and money slipping through the fingers. Together, Resource and Companion answer the question of how well-supplied and well-defended the self is — the raw material of Day Master strength.

The two “outward” groups flow away from the Day Master into the world. Output (食伤, shí shāng) is what you produce — Wood feeding Fire. Eating God (食神, shí shén, which happens to share its name with the whole system) is gentle, generative expression: creativity, craft, appetite, enjoyment, and a contented ease with life. Hurting Officer (伤官, shāng guān) is the intense version: dazzling talent, performance, wit, and originality, paired with a streak that rebels against authority and rules — the artist who cannot stand a bad boss, the speaker whose honesty cuts.

Wealth (财, cái) is the element your Day Master controls — Wood controlling Earth. Direct Wealth (正财, zhèng cái) is steady, earned, reliable money: salary, thrift, and dependability, and in classical texts the wife for a man. Indirect Wealth (偏财, piān cái) is fluid, opportunistic money: windfalls, business, generosity, and a large appetite for the world’s pleasures. Output and Wealth are linked — expression often generates income — so a chart heavy in these tends toward creativity, enterprise, and outward engagement rather than quiet accumulation of the self.

The last relation is the one that presses on you: the element that controls your Day Master — Metal cutting Wood. This is Officer/Influence (官杀, guān shā), and it is where structure, authority, and pressure enter the chart. Direct Officer (正官, zhèng guān) is discipline made benign: rules that fit, legitimate status, duty, self-restraint, and respect for order. In classical texts it stands for the husband in a woman’s chart and for career rank generally. A healthy Direct Officer reads as principled, responsible, and trustworthy.

Seven Killings (七杀, qī shā), also called Indirect Officer, is the same controlling force at full voltage. It is power under pressure — decisiveness, competitiveness, command in a crisis, and the appetite to fight and win. Where Direct Officer follows the rules, Seven Killings often makes its own. Unbalanced, it reads as combative, ruthless, or accident-prone; well-supported, it produces generals, entrepreneurs, and reformers. The classical rule of thumb is that Seven Killings needs either an Output god to “restrain” it or a strong Day Master to “ride” it; raw and unchecked, it turns on its owner.

Ten gods collapse neatly into five groups, one per elemental relation. When you zoom out from individual gods to these groups, you can read the overall shape of a life — where its energy is invested.

No single Ten God defines a person. Charts are read as balances: which groups are abundant, which are missing, and how they interact. A chart heavy in Output and Wealth but light on Officer might describe a gifted, self-directed creator who chafes under bosses. A chart dense with Resource and Officer might describe a diligent, credentialed, rule-respecting professional who thrives inside institutions. The interesting cases are the tensions — an Officer sitting next to a Hurting Officer, for instance, is the classic “rebel against authority” signature, brilliant but friction-prone.

The Ten Gods also shift over time. The luck pillars (大运, dà yùn) and annual pillars introduce new stems, so a person can move through a “Wealth decade” or a “Seven Killings year” when a particular pressure dominates. This is why we describe the chart as the weather, not the verdict: the Ten Gods tell you the prevailing winds, and your choices decide how you sail.

One honest caveat. The classical gender framings — Wealth as wife, Officer as husband — are conventions from texts written in a patriarchal era. Read them as archetypes of the controlled-resource and the controlling-pressure roles in any relationship, not as literal rules about spouses or gender. The underlying mechanics are symmetric; the labels are historical.