Core concept
The ten gods
The ten gods are ten named relationships that any character in a BaZi chart can have to your day master. They are not deities, they are not people, and they are not events. They are a labelling system — and once you see the five relationships underneath the ten names, the whole thing becomes much smaller.
Five relationships, each in two polarities
Take the day master as “self”. Every other character in the chart stands in one of five relationships to it, and each relationship comes in a yang version and a yin version. Five times two is ten.
| Relationship | The two names we use | Older translations |
|---|---|---|
| The same phase as the day master比劫 · bǐ jié | Peer比肩 · bǐ jiānContending Peer劫财 · jié cái | —— |
| What the day master produces食伤 · shí shāng | Nourishing Expression食神 · shí shénUnrestrained Expression伤官 · shāng guān | Eating GodHurting Officer |
| What the day master controls财 · cái | Indirect Wealth偏财 · piān cáiDirect Wealth正财 · zhèng cái | —— |
| What controls the day master官杀 · guān shā | Stern Authority七杀 · qī shāFormal Authority正官 · zhèng guān | Seven Killings— |
| What produces the day master印 · yìn | Indirect Support偏印 · piān yìnDirect Support正印 · zhèng yìn | —— |
Why the traditional English names sound alarming
If you have looked at another tool’s output you may have met two names rendered as Seven Killings and Hurting Officer. Those are common translations, and they are alarming for no good reason.
Both describe structural tension inside a chart — one a particular relationship between restraint and action, the other a particular kind of expressive overflow. The original Chinese names are vivid but not sinister. The English renderings added a menace that was never there.
We render them neutrally instead: Stern Authority and Unrestrained Expression. The meaning is preserved and nothing is lost except the flinch. If you are comparing our output against a tool using the older names, this table is your Rosetta stone.
What the ten gods are used for
Once every character in a chart has a relationship label, patterns become visible — how much of a chart is expressive, how much is structural, where the tension sits. That is what the labels are for: they turn eight characters into a shape you can talk about.
It is worth being honest about the limits. A relationship label is a description of position within a symbolic structure. It is not a statement about your life, and the tradition itself never treats it as a fixed verdict — the reading comes from how the labels interact, not from any single one being present.
A note on vocabulary
We list the older translations purely so you can cross-reference other tools. We do not use them, and we would gently suggest not choosing a tool based on whose labels sound more dramatic.
Where to go next
The ten gods only make sense on top of two other ideas: the day master (the reference point everything is measured against) and the five elements (the phases the relationships run between). For the bigger picture, what BaZi is.