The Ten Gods explained

Five relationships, split by yin and yang, and the whole interpretive layer of BaZi. Learn the polarity rule and half the mistakes disappear.

5 min read · Published 18 August 2026

The Ten Gods (十神) name every stem in your chart by what it does to your Day Master. There are five relationships, same element, what feeds you, what you produce, what you control and what controls you, and each splits in two depending on whether the polarity matches, giving ten labels. They cover peers and rivals, output and expression, wealth, authority and pressure, and support and learning. This is where BaZi interpretation happens.

The five families first

Family	Relationship to your Day Master	Domain
Peers	The same element as you	Self, siblings, colleagues, rivals
Resource	Feeds your element	Learning, support, mentors, care
Output	What your element produces	Expression, creativity, what you make
Wealth	What your element controls	Resources, enjoyment, what you can direct
Authority	What controls your element	Rules, pressure, status, obligation

Learn these five and you have most of it. The split into ten comes from polarity: each family divides depending on whether the other stem shares your yin or yang. Which of the pair is the 'direct' one depends on the family, so the table below is the thing to learn, not a shortcut.

All ten

God	Family	At its best	Unchecked
比肩 Companion	Peers	Self-reliance, stamina, backing yourself	Stubbornness, refusing help
劫財 Rob Wealth	Peers	Drive, boldness, competitive nerve	Money leaving fast, costly friendships
食神 Eating God	Output	Ease, craft, humour, relaxed talent	Comfort turning into drift
傷官 Hurting Officer	Output	Brilliance, originality, saying the unsaid	Contempt for rules, burnt bridges
偏財 Indirect Wealth	Wealth	Opportunism, generosity, spotting value	Speculation, over-extension
正財 Direct Wealth	Wealth	Diligence, thrift, reliability	Caution hardening into penny-pinching
七殺 Seven Killings	Authority	Courage under pressure, decisiveness	Aggression, burnout, seeking conflict
正官 Direct Officer	Authority	Integrity, judgement, earned respect	Rigidity, paralysis outside the rulebook
偏印 Indirect Resource	Resource	Depth, intuition, genuine originality	Isolation, overthinking, never shipping
正印 Direct Resource	Resource	Learning, kindness, protection	Dependence, staying a student too long

The polarity rule

There is no single rule that covers every family, and the tidy one ('opposite polarity is always the direct god') is wrong for Output. Read it family by family. Same element: same polarity is 比肩 Companion, opposite is 劫財 Rob Wealth. What your Day Master produces: same polarity is 食神 Eating God, opposite is 傷官 Hurting Officer. What it controls: same polarity is 偏財 Indirect Wealth, opposite is 正財 Direct Wealth. What controls it: same polarity is 七殺 Seven Killings, opposite is 正官 Direct Officer. What produces it: same polarity is 偏印 Indirect Resource, opposite is 正印 Direct Resource.

So for a 甲 yang Wood Day Master, 丙 yang Fire is Eating God and 丁 yin Fire is Hurting Officer. The same-polarity gods read sharper in three families (Rob Wealth aside, Seven Killings, Indirect Wealth and Indirect Resource) and gentler in one, where Eating God is the relaxed producer and the opposite-polarity Hurting Officer is the edged one.

It is a real asymmetry rather than an inconsistency, and in twenty years of reading charts it is the rule I see clients get backwards most often. AsterNym checks all one hundred Day Master and stem combinations against this table in its tests.

Seven Killings is the god I would bet on. Every chart that does something interesting has it somewhere.

Reading the balance

Which family dominates? A chart heavy in Output is organised around what you make. Heavy in Authority, around structure and pressure. This is often the single most informative thing in a BaZi reading.
Which gods are absent? BaZi treats absence as meaningful. A missing god is traditionally read as a theme you build deliberately instead of one you arrive with.
Count hidden stems too. Gods hiding inside branches are real and a chart read only from the eight visible characters will miss several.
Weigh, don't just count. A god appearing in a strongly rooted position carries more than one appearing as a residual hidden stem.

One caveat on the Ten Gods

The Ten Gods are a coherent, systematic and completely unvalidated framework. No study has tested whether a chart dominated by Output correlates with creative work, and the system's descriptions are broad enough that most people can find themselves in several.

What it's good at is giving you a vocabulary for asking about yourself. Is my energy going into what I make, into meeting standards, into competing, into learning? Those are practical questions regardless of where the framework came from.

AsterNym computes all ten across your visible and hidden stems, with the weighting shown, on your BaZi page.

What are the Ten Gods in BaZi?

Ten labels naming every stem in your chart by its relationship to your Day Master. There are five relationships (peers, resource, output, wealth and authority) and each splits in two according to whether the polarity matches yours.

What is the difference between Direct and Indirect gods?

Each of the five families splits by polarity, and which member is the direct one depends on the family. Same polarity gives Companion, Eating God, Indirect Wealth, Seven Killings and Indirect Resource; opposite polarity gives Rob Wealth, Hurting Officer, Direct Wealth, Direct Officer and Direct Resource. Hurting Officer is the opposite-polarity Output god, which the common shortcut gets wrong.

Does the Wealth god mean I will be rich?

No. The Wealth family names the element your Day Master controls: a structural relationship in the chart. The naming is traditional and doesn't describe income. Treating it as a financial forecast goes beyond what the system supports.

What does a missing Ten God mean?

BaZi treats absence as informative. A god that appears nowhere in your chart, visible or hidden, is traditionally read as a theme you develop deliberately, not one you arrive already carrying.