What Are the Ten Gods in BaZi?

Every Four Pillars reading eventually arrives at the Ten Gods — and almost every beginner bounces off them, because the name promises something mystical and the content delivers something structural. Here is the whole idea, in the order it actually makes sense.

The Ten Gods are relationships, not deities

Ten Gods is the standard English translation of 十神 (Shi Shen), and it is a poor one. Nothing divine is involved. The Ten Gods are ten relationship categories — ways one element can stand in relation to another. In a chart, every element is measured against one fixed reference point, and the result of that measurement is its Ten God.

So the first question is not "what are the Ten Gods?" but "measured from what?"

The one reference point: your Day Master

The reference point is the Day Master — the Heavenly Stem of your Day Pillar. If you were born on a 甲 (Jia) day, every other element in your chart is classified by what it does to Jia Wood. If you were born on a 丙 (Bing) day, the same element gets a different label, because the reference changed.

This is why the Day Master is the single most important character in the chart, and why "what is my Chinese zodiac animal" and "what is my Day Master" have very different answers. The zodiac animal is one branch in one pillar. The Day Master is the lens the entire chart is read through.

The five families

Ten labels come from five kinds of relationship, each split in two by polarity:

Relationship to Day Master	Family	Same polarity	Opposite polarity
Same element as me	Peer / Companion	比肩 Shoulder-to-Shoulder	劫财 Rob Wealth
I generate (produce) it	Output	食神 Eating God	伤官 Hurting Officer
I control (overcome) it	Wealth	正财 Proper Wealth	偏财 Indirect Wealth
Controls me	Authority	正官 Proper Officer	七殺 Seven Killings
Generates (supports) me	Resource	正印 Proper Seal	偏印 Indirect Seal

The "proper" versus "indirect" split is purely about polarity: same polarity (both Yang, or both Yin) gives the proper version, opposite polarity gives the indirect version. That is the entire mechanism. Ten labels, five relationships, one polarity rule.

What each family describes

The families describe functions, not fates:

• Peer (比劫) — your own kind. Drive, independence, self-reliance, and competition. Peers are friends who are also rivals: they support the Day Master's element, which is good when the Day Master is weak and draining when it is already strong.
• Output (食伤) — what you produce and put into the world. Expression, creativity, performance, teaching, children in classical terms. Output drains the Day Master the way a flame consumes wood.
• Wealth (财) — what you control and manage. Money in the obvious sense, but also resources, staff, and (classically) a partner's role. Wealth is controlled by the Day Master, so a strong Day Master can hold it and a weak one cannot.
• Authority (官杀) — what controls you. Structure, rules, bosses, pressure, status. Authority disciplines the Day Master the way metal chops wood — shaping, but also cutting.
• Resource (印) — what supports you. Learning, knowledge, mother figures, credentials, rest. Resource generates the Day Master, the way water nourishes wood.

Notice what this framework does and does not do. It describes how energy moves in the chart — who feeds whom, who drains whom, who polices whom. It does not, by itself, say whether any of that is lucky. A strong Wealth star in a weak chart is not automatically "you will be rich"; it can just as easily describe a person managing resources they cannot hold.

A worked example

Say your Day Master is 戊 (Wu) — Yang Earth, the mountain.

• Another Earth element (戊 or 己) is a Peer — 比肩 for 戊, 劫财 for 己.
• Metal appears in the chart. Earth generates Metal, so Metal is Output — 食神 (庚) or 伤官 (辛).
• Water appears. Earth controls Water, so Water is Wealth — 正财 (壬) or 偏财 (癸).
• Wood appears. Wood controls Earth, so Wood is Authority — 七殺 (甲) or 正官 (乙).
• Fire appears. Fire generates Earth, so Fire is Resource — 偏印 (丁) or 正印 (丙).

Same element, five different families, five different functions — all determined by one character at the top of your Day Pillar.

Why counting hidden stems changes the answer

Here is where most beginner tools quietly mislead. A pillar is not just its visible Heavenly Stem. Every Earthly Branch carries hidden stems (藏干) — typically one to three of them — and in classical practice those hidden stems are counted as part of the chart's Ten God picture.

The difference is not cosmetic. A chart with one visible Wealth stem and two hidden Wealth stems has a very different wealth picture from a chart with one visible Wealth stem and none hidden. A report that counts only the four visible stems is answering an easier question than the one you asked.

When you see a Ten Gods analysis — ours or anyone's — the first thing to check is what got counted.

What the Ten Gods do not tell you

Three honest limits:

1. The ratio is not the verdict. "Your chart is 30% Wealth" does not mean "you will be rich." Whether a Wealth star is useful depends on the Day Master's strength, the season, and what the rest of the chart is doing — the question of usefulness (用神) is a separate analysis from the question of quantity.
2. A strong star is not a strong trait. Seven Killings prominent in the chart does not make someone violent, and a strong Resource star does not make someone wise. These are structural categories, and what they describe in a life depends on everything else in the structure.
3. The labels are translated, and translations wobble. "Hurting Officer" sounds alarming until you learn it also covers performers, writers, and anyone whose work is criticism. Different schools emphasize different aspects. Treat the English labels as pointers, not definitions.

The honest summary

The Ten Gods are the grammar of BaZi: a fixed set of relationship categories, measured from your Day Master, that let you describe how the elements in your chart interact. They are structural, reproducible, and — once the polarity rule clicks — genuinely simple. What they build toward (whether a star is useful to you, and when its themes activate) is the reading itself, and that is a separate conversation.

BaZi Desk generates a full Four Pillars reading from your exact birth date, time, and place, in plain English. The Ten Gods section counts every stem and hidden stem, shows each family's share, and explains what the balance suggests — presented as a framework for reflection, not as prediction.