The Ten Gods in Bazi, Explained Without the Jargon
The name puts people off. Ten Gods (十神) sounds religious. It is not. The term describes ten categories of relationship between your Day Master and the other characters in the chart — five elemental relationships, each in two polarities.
The logic in one paragraph
Take your Day Master's element. Any other element in the chart either is the same, produces it, is produced by it, controls it, or is controlled by it. That is five relationships. Each comes in a same-polarity and opposite-polarity version, giving ten. Those ten are the Ten Gods.
The five families
Same element — Peer (比肩 / 劫财)
Same polarity: Friend (比肩). Opposite: Rob Wealth (劫财). These represent peers, siblings, colleagues, competitors — and your own will. A chart heavy in peers is self-directed and competitive; it can also struggle to share credit or resources.
Element you produce — Output (食神 / 伤官)
Same polarity: Eating God (食神). Opposite: Hurting Officer (伤官). Output stars govern expression: craft, speech, creativity, performance. Eating God is steady and nourishing; Hurting Officer is sharp and disruptive — it questions authority, which is useful for artists and awkward for bureaucrats.
Element you control — Wealth (偏财 / 正财)
Same polarity: Indirect Wealth (偏财). Opposite: Direct Wealth (正财). Wealth stars describe what you manage: money, resources, and (traditionally) for a male chart, a partner. Direct Wealth is earned, incremental, salaried. Indirect Wealth is opportunistic, entrepreneurial, windfall-shaped.
Element that controls you — Officer (偏官 / 正官)
Same polarity: Seven Killings (偏官, also 七杀). Opposite: Direct Officer (正官). These represent structure, rules, responsibility, authority — and pressure. Direct Officer is legitimate authority: titles, contracts, reputation. Seven Killings is raw pressure: competition, crisis, the thing that either breaks you or forces you to grow.
Element that produces you — Resource (偏印 / 正印)
Same polarity: Indirect Resource (偏印). Opposite: Direct Resource (正印). Resource stars govern support and learning: teachers, credentials, frameworks, the mind's intake. Direct Resource is orthodox study; Indirect Resource is unconventional — pattern-reading, intuition, self-taught knowledge.
How they are used
A reading does not count them like a scoreboard. It looks at:
- Which are present — a chart with no Output stars reads differently from one with three.
- Which are dominant — the top two or three set the tone.
- Where they sit — a star on the month stem is more visible in life than one buried in a hidden stem.
- Whether they support or attack the Day Master — the same star helps a weak chart and overloads a strong one.
A common mistake
Reading a single star in isolation. "You have Seven Killings, so you are aggressive" is not how it works. Seven Killings in a chart that can handle pressure reads as competence under load. In a chart that cannot, it reads as chronic stress. The star is a force; the chart determines what that force does.
You can see your own ten-god distribution on any chart — the free calculator lists them by count and names the dominant ones.