The Ten Gods explained
Five relationships, split by yin and yang, and the entire interpretive layer of BaZi.
4 min read · Published 18 August 2026
The short answer
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 actually 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, and the same-polarity version consistently reads sharper than the opposite-polarity one.
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
For every family except peers, the opposite polarity gives the 'direct' or proper god (正), and the same polarity gives the indirect one. Peers invert it: same polarity is the plain Companion, opposite is the Rival.
The reasoning offered is that a same-polarity stem meets your Day Master head-on with nothing complementary about it, which is why those gods — Seven Killings, Hurting Officer, Indirect Wealth — consistently read sharper and more difficult than their counterparts.
It is a real asymmetry rather than an inconsistency, and it is worth knowing because it is the rule people most often get backwards.
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 rather than 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, do not just count. A god appearing in a strongly rooted position carries more than one appearing as a residual hidden stem.
The honest caveat
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 is genuinely 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 useful 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.
Common questions
- 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?
- For every family except peers, opposite polarity gives the direct or 'proper' god and same polarity gives the indirect one. Same-polarity gods such as Seven Killings and Hurting Officer consistently read sharper, because they meet the Day Master head-on with nothing complementary.
- 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 does not 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 rather than one you arrive already carrying.