The Relationships
The Ten Gods (十神) — How BaZi Talks About Relationships
The Ten Gods aren’t deities. They’re labels for the relationship between your Day Master and every other element in your chart — the bridge between BaZi math and real-life meaning.
TL;DR
- Ten Gods are relationships, not actual gods. The translation is unfortunate but standard.
- Each one names how a stem relates to your Day Master: same element, what produces you, what you produce, what you control, what controls you — each split by polarity (yin or yang).
- They translate elemental math into real-world meaning: career style, wealth pattern, authority response, support sources.
- Reading the Ten Gods in a chart is how practitioners get from “you have a lot of Metal” to “you respond well to structure and authority.”
The setup
Your Day Master — the Heavenly Stem of your day pillar — is the anchor of your chart. Everything else gets interpreted relative to it. The Ten Gods are how that interpretation is formalized. Pick any other stem in your chart, ask “what is its relationship to my Day Master?”, and you’ll get one of ten possible answers. Those answers are the Ten Gods.
There are five categories of relationship — and each category splits in two depending on whether the polarities (yin/yang) match. Five categories times two polarities equals ten gods. That’s the whole structure.
The five categories
Self group
Other stems with the same element as your Day Master. Peers, rivals, allies.
Same element as the Day Master, same polarity. Peers, allies, equals.
People with strong Friend energy tend to be independent, self-directed, and competitive in a low-friction way — they treat others as collaborators or rivals depending on context.
Common in entrepreneurs, freelancers, and athletes. Too many Friends and a chart can read as stubborn or lone-wolf; too few and the person looks for support from others to define themselves.
Same element as the Day Master, opposite polarity. Aggressive ambition, willingness to gamble.
Rob Wealth shows up as boldness, risk tolerance, and a willingness to take from competitors. It can manifest as drive or as recklessness depending on the rest of the chart.
Strong in traders, sales, sports, and competitive industries. Watch for impulsive financial losses if Wealth elements are weak. Often seen in charts of people who repeatedly start over.
Output group
Stems of the element your Day Master produces. Creativity, expression, what you make.
The element the Day Master produces, same polarity. Creative output, appetite for life.
Eating God energy is generative, sensual, and easygoing — these are people who enjoy making things, eating well, and producing without strain.
Strong in artists, chefs, performers, and craftspeople. Generally favorable. Too much can mean indulgence or lack of discipline; too little, a person who finds it hard to express what they actually want.
The element the Day Master produces, opposite polarity. Sharp output, intensity, rebellion.
Hurting Officer is the brilliant edge of creativity — fast, original, often unwilling to accept conventional structure. It clashes with authority almost on principle.
Strong in critics, comedians, designers, surgeons, and revolutionaries. Famous for friction with bosses and traditional career paths. When balanced, it produces extraordinary output; when unbalanced, it self-sabotages.
Wealth group
Stems of the element your Day Master controls. Resources, money, what you direct.
The element the Day Master controls, same polarity. Variable income, opportunistic gain.
Indirect Wealth is the deal-maker pattern — opportunistic, networked, comfortable with money that comes in lumps rather than salary.
Strong in entrepreneurs, investors, real estate, and commission-based careers. Often correlated with father figures and male romantic partners in traditional readings. Less stable than Direct Wealth but with higher upside.
The element the Day Master controls, opposite polarity. Stable income, reliable structures.
Direct Wealth is the salary pattern — steady, methodical, builds slowly. People with prominent Direct Wealth are usually good with budgets and long-term planning.
Strong in accountants, engineers, civil servants, and operations roles. In traditional readings, the wife star in male charts. Dependable but can read as conservative.
Power group
Stems of the element that controls your Day Master. Authority, pressure, status.
The element that controls the Day Master, same polarity. Pressure, intensity, raw power.
Seven Killings is the high-pressure, do-or-die pattern — aggressive, decisive, used to operating under stress. When tamed, it produces commanders; when not, it produces casualties.
Strong in military, emergency services, surgeons, executives in turnaround situations. Needs the Resource group to channel it — pure Seven Killings without supports tends toward burnout.
The element that controls the Day Master, opposite polarity. Status, structure, legitimate authority.
Direct Officer is the institutional version of Seven Killings — respectable, rule-following, oriented toward titles and recognition.
Strong in government, law, academia, and large corporates. In traditional readings, the husband star in female charts. Reliable, but can be image-conscious or stuck inside hierarchies.
Resource group
Stems of the element that produces your Day Master. Support, knowledge, mentorship.
The element that produces the Day Master, same polarity. Unconventional knowledge, intuition.
Indirect Resource is the niche-expertise pattern — fascinated by obscure subjects, often a touch eccentric, and prone to overthinking.
Strong in researchers, religious scholars, occultists, and specialists in fringe technical fields. Tends to learn what nobody else bothers to learn. Can produce isolation if unbalanced.
The element that produces the Day Master, opposite polarity. Support, education, reputation.
Direct Resource is the steady-mentor pattern — academic, well-credentialed, reliant on institutional knowledge and good reputation.
Strong in teachers, doctors, and traditional professions. The mother star in classic readings. Provides protection and status but can also create dependence on external validation.
The full table at a glance
All ten in a single grid. Useful as a memorization aid or a quick reference once you start reading charts.
How to read your Ten Gods
Once your chart is generated, the Ten Gods read happens in three passes. First, count which categories dominate. A chart with multiple Wealth Gods on the surface stems usually points to a money-oriented life, regardless of whether the person consciously chose that path. A chart with multiple Resource Gods points to learning, credentialing, and reputation as central themes.
Second, identify what’s missing. Missing Power Gods often mean an uneasy relationship with authority — the person doesn’t instinctively know how to respond to bosses, hierarchies, or external rules. Missing Output Gods often mean difficulty with self-expression or creative satisfaction even when other things are going well. Absence is informative.
Third, look at where each Ten God sits. A Direct Officer in the month pillar (career palace) reads very differently from a Direct Officer in the hour pillar (children/late life). The same God in the day branch — the spouse palace — gets read for partnership patterns. Position is half the meaning.
Practitioner detail: polarity, position, and luck pillar Ten Gods
The split between “same polarity” and “opposite polarity” isn’t arbitrary, but the feel of each group isn’t uniform across all five categories. In the Wealth, Power, and Resource groups, the 正/偏 prefix maps cleanly to polarity: opposite-polarity gods (Direct Wealth, Direct Officer, Direct Resource — the 正 “proper” set) read as conventional, structured, and stable, while same-polarity gods (Indirect Wealth, Seven Killings, Indirect Resource — the 偏 “lateral” set) read as opportunistic, raw, or eccentric. In the Self and Output groups the feel flips: the same-polarity Friend (比肩) is the easygoing peer and Eating God (食神) is the generative version of output, while their opposite-polarity siblings Rob Wealth (劫财) and Hurting Officer (伤官) read as sharper and more competitive.
Ten Gods on the day branch carry special weight. The day branch is the spouse palace (夫妻宫), so whatever Ten God sits there — by its main hidden stem — is read for partnership patterns. A Day Master with Direct Officer in the day branch is traditionally said to attract or marry institutional, status-oriented partners. With Seven Killings there, the partnership tends to be intense, high-pressure, and transformative. With Eating God or Hurting Officer, partners are usually creative or expressive types.
Ten Gods also change in luck pillars. Each ten-year pillar brings its own stem, which has its own Ten God relationship to your (fixed) Day Master. A decade ruled by Direct Wealth is a decade structured around steady earning and stable resources. A decade ruled by Hurting Officer is a decade of creative output and friction with authority — the kind of period where people quit jobs to start things. Reading luck pillars by their Ten God labels is most of how practitioners do timing analysis.
How it connects
The Ten Gods sit on top of the elements and underneath the workflow of actual chart reading. Three pages to read next:
- The Five Elements — the substrate. Without the elements, the Ten Gods are just labels.
- Day Masters — the anchor. Every Ten God is defined relative to your Day Master, so changing the Day Master changes everything.
- Reading a Chart — the workflow. Mapping the Ten Gods is step four of the eight-step chart reading sequence.
FAQ
Are some Ten Gods 'good' and others 'bad'?
No, and any source that tells you so is oversimplifying. Context determines value. Seven Killings is dangerous in a weak chart with no Resources but extraordinary in a strong chart with proper supports — many high-performing executives and surgeons carry it prominently. Direct Officer looks safe but in a weak chart can mean chronic pressure from authority figures. The categories don't have inherent moral charges; they have outcomes that depend on the rest of the structure.
What if I have all ten Gods in my chart?
Rare but possible, and it usually means a versatile, complex life. Charts with all ten represented tend to belong to people whose careers and relationships pull them through multiple modes — academic and entrepreneurial, creative and structured, public and private. The flip side is that no single mode dominates, so the person can feel scattered or undefined unless they consciously pick which Ten Gods to develop.
What if I'm missing several?
Also common, and informative. Missing Wealth Gods often mean money is treated as a tool rather than a goal — these people aren't poor, they just don't optimize for financial gain. Missing Resource Gods often mean self-taught learners who skip credentialing. Missing Power Gods often mean an instinctively non-hierarchical life. Missing Output Gods often mean people who consume more than they create. Use absences as descriptive hypotheses, not deficiencies to fix.
How does this differ from Western astrology houses?
Houses in Western astrology are spatial — twelve sectors of the sky, each tied to a life domain. Ten Gods are relational — labels for how stems relate to your Day Master, not fixed positions in space. Houses ask 'where is this planet?'; Ten Gods ask 'how does this element relate to me?' They overlap thematically (career, wealth, relationships) but the underlying machinery is different.
Why are they called 'gods' if they're just relationships?
Translation artifact. The Chinese 神 (shén) means 'spirit' or 'agency' more broadly than the English 'god' — it's closer to 'force' or 'principle.' Calling them the Ten Forces or the Ten Roles would be more accurate but the literal translation stuck. There's no theology involved.