Ten Gods Calculator 十神

How each ten god is derived

There are exactly ten gods because the arithmetic allows exactly ten. Two stems can stand in five possible relationships, and each relationship splits in two by polarity. That is the whole system — no chart-specific judgement is involved.

1. Find the Day Master. It is the stem of the day pillar — the one the whole chart is measured from. The Day Master is never itself a ten god; it is the yardstick.
2. Compare the phase relationship. Take the other stem's element and ask what it does to the Day Master's element:
   • Same phase → Self & Peers 比劫
   • Day Master produces it → Output 食伤
   • Day Master controls it → Wealth 财星
   • It produces the Day Master → Resource 印星
   • It controls the Day Master → Influence 官杀
3. Compare polarity. Yang with yang, or yin with yin, is the same polarity. Yang with yin is different.
4. Name it. Inside each group, same polarity takes one name and different polarity takes the other. The pairs are fixed:

The descriptions above are the traditional associations, given as cultural and reflective material. They are tendencies people read into a chart, not predictions, and they are not advice of any kind.

The complete ten-gods matrix

All one hundred combinations, published in full. Find your Day Master down the left, then read across to any stem that appears in your chart. This table is what the calculator above the fold is doing — nothing more is involved.

Read any two rows against each other and you will notice they are rotations of the same ten-step sequence. That is the point: the ten gods are one mechanism applied in ten directions, not a list of one hundred separate facts. Every cell above is generated from the four-step rule in the previous section — you should be able to reproduce any of them on paper in about fifteen seconds, and we would rather you could.

A worked example, with the arithmetic shown

Born 23 March 1991 at 11:00 in New York. Chart: 辛未 辛卯 壬辰 丙午 — day master 壬 Ren, yang Water. Run it through the calculator and you get the same four pillars.

Now the part most calculators leave out. The hour branch 午 hides two stems, 丁 and 己. Measured against the same day master, 丁 (yin Fire) is also Water controlling Fire but at a different polarity, so it is 正财 Direct Wealth — the yin twin of the hour stem's 偏财. The switch from indirect to direct between 丙 and 丁 is nothing more than polarity flipping. That is the entire mechanism, and it is why the matrix above can be memorised as one pattern rather than one hundred entries.

Why the same clock time in another city gives a different chart. Enter 11:00 on the same date in Beijing instead and the hour pillar becomes 乙巳, not 丙午. Beijing's clock runs on UTC+8 with a central meridian at 120°E, but the city sits at 116.41°E — so true solar time is 14.4 minutes behind the clock, putting 11:00 back inside the 巳 hour and out of 午. New York's longitude (−74.01°) is almost exactly on its −75° central meridian, so its correction is only about 4 minutes forward and the birth time stays in 午. This is why place of birth is a required field and not a decoration; our full conventions are in the methodology.

Questions people actually ask

What are the ten gods in BaZi?

The ten gods are the ten named relationships between your Day Master and every other stem in a chart. They are not deities. There are exactly ten because the five-phase relationship between two stems can only take five forms, and each form splits into two by polarity: 5 × 2 = 10.

How do I find my ten gods if I don't know my birth hour?

The hour pillar is the only thing missing. Every ten god belonging to the year, month and day stems — and to the hidden stems inside the year, month and day branches — is still exact. This calculator accepts an unknown birth hour and leaves the hour pillar blank rather than guessing it.

Why do two BaZi calculators give me different ten gods?

Almost always because the Day Master differs. The day master comes from the day pillar, which shifts under the day-pillar school rule for births between 23:00 and 00:59, under the true solar time correction, and under any difference in birth place or time zone. Because all ten gods are measured from the day master, one shifted pillar changes the whole set. Our methodology page declares which convention produced your chart, including a public corrections log.

Do the hidden stems inside a branch have ten gods too?

Yes. Each earthly branch contains one to three hidden stems, and every hidden stem is measured against the day master in exactly the same way. Hidden stems are how most practitioners judge a chart's depth, so this calculator lists them for every pillar instead of hiding them behind a summary.

Does the day stem itself have a ten god?

No. The day stem is the reference point that all ten gods are measured against, so it is called the Day Master (日主), not a god. It never appears in its own chart as a ten god.

Is any ten god good or bad?

No. The ten gods are labels for relationships, not scores. Traditional readings associate each one with tendencies that can help or hinder depending on the rest of the chart and on the time period being examined. Treat them as a vocabulary for self-reflection and cultural study, not as a verdict.