The Ten Gods in Bazi: A Plain-English Guide to Shi Shen
A Bazi chart has only eight characters, and by the time you have identified the Day Master and judged its strength you have used two of them. The Ten Gods are how the remaining six — and every Luck Pillar that will ever arrive — get turned into meaning. They are the classification system that makes a chart readable.
What the Ten Gods actually are
The name is misleading. The Ten Gods are not deities and nothing is being worshipped. Shi Shen (十神) means "ten spirits" in the old sense of "ten functions". Each one is a relationship between the Day Master and some other stem in the chart.
There are only five ways one element can relate to another — the same element, the one it generates, the one it controls, the one that controls it, and the one that generates it. Multiply by two polarities (same yin/yang, or opposite) and you get exactly ten. That is the whole system.
| Relationship to the Day Master | Same polarity | Opposite polarity |
|---|---|---|
| Same element | 比肩 Bi Jian — Companion | 劫財 Jie Cai — Rob Wealth |
| The element I generate (output) | 食神 Shi Shen — Eating God | 傷官 Shang Guan — Hurting Officer |
| The element I control (wealth) | 偏財 Pian Cai — Indirect Wealth | 正財 Zheng Cai — Direct Wealth |
| The element that controls me (authority) | 七殺 Qi Sha — Seven Killings | 正官 Zheng Guan — Direct Officer |
| The element that generates me (resource) | 偏印 Pian Yin — Indirect Resource | 正印 Zheng Yin — Direct Resource |
Worked through: if your Day Master is Wu (戊, Yang Earth), then Earth is your Companion, Metal is your Output (Earth generates Metal), Water is your Wealth (Earth controls Water), Wood is your Authority (Wood controls Earth), and Fire is your Resource (Fire generates Earth). Every stem in the chart, and every future Luck Pillar, falls into one of those five buckets in one of two polarities.
The ten, in plain English
Companion — Bi Jian (比肩)
Same element, same polarity. Peers, siblings, colleagues, your own will. A chart with strong Companion is self-reliant and competitive; it also tends to have to share. In a chart whose Day Master is already strong, more Companion is crowded and unproductive; in a weak chart it is exactly the support needed.
Rob Wealth — Jie Cai (劫財)
Same element, opposite polarity. Also peers — but the ones who take. Traditionally associated with competition for resources, money that arrives and leaves, and the friend who borrows. It is not a curse; it is a warning about how you hold what you have, and it usually coexists with real generosity.
Eating God — Shi Shen (食神)
What you produce, same polarity: smooth, unhurried, enjoyable output. Traditionally the god of food, comfort and unhurried talent — the cook, the craftsman, the person whose work is pleasant to receive. Charts that produce well and without friction usually show a good Shi Shen.
Hurting Officer — Shang Guan (傷官)
What you produce, opposite polarity: brilliant, sharp, and inclined to upset the established order. Shang Guan is the classic signature of the talented critic, the reformer, the performer who says the thing nobody says. It is powerful and it does antagonise authority, which is exactly what the name describes.
Indirect Wealth — Pian Cai (偏財)
Wealth you control, same polarity: windfall, opportunity, money made in motion. Traditionally the trader's god — income from many sources, deals, speculation, other people's money. Fast and large, and correspondingly less stable than its direct counterpart.
Direct Wealth — Zheng Cai (正財)
Wealth you control, opposite polarity: earned, steady income. Salary, savings, assets built deliberately. The classical mark of someone who keeps what they make. Slower than Pian Cai and considerably more reliable.
Seven Killings — Qi Sha (七殺)
Authority that controls you, same polarity: pressure, discipline, danger, and command. Qi Sha is the single most misunderstood of the ten. It is conventionally described as harsh, and in an unbalanced chart it reads as relentless external pressure. But in a chart that can bear it, Qi Sha is the mark of someone who performs under pressure, leads, and thrives in demanding environments. Many accomplished people have prominent Qi Sha. Whether it helps or hurts depends entirely on strength.
Direct Officer — Zheng Guan (正官)
Authority, opposite polarity: the calm, legitimate version. Rank, position, responsibility, the trust of institutions. Zheng Guan reads as propriety and reliability — someone who holds office well. It can be conservative, and a chart with both Zheng Guan and Shang Guan is classically read as a person whose talent and their position are in tension.
Indirect Resource — Pian Yin (偏印)
What generates you, same polarity: unconventional learning, intuition, sudden insight. Traditionally associated with medicine, divination, mysticism and technical craft — knowledge that is absorbed rather than taught. At its extremes it reads as excessive inwardness, which is why the old texts call it the "owl spirit".
Direct Resource — Zheng Yin (正印)
What generates you, opposite polarity: nurture, education, support, a good mother. Zheng Yin is the calmest and most benign of the ten — backing that arrives without being asked for. A chart with a strong Zheng Yin tends to recover from setbacks well.
How practitioners actually use them
Not by ticking off all ten. The working method is:
- Count the gods. Which relationships dominate the eight characters? A chart of four Wealth gods with no Resource reads as someone whose life is heavily about acquiring and holding, with little backing underneath. A chart thick with Output and thin with Wealth produces prolifically and monetises badly.
- Note what is absent. A god that appears nowhere is a theme that the chart does not naturally supply. That is different from a weakness — an absent Officer, for instance, does not prevent someone holding authority.
- Read them against strength. This is the step that separates a reading from a list. The same Qi Sha is a burden in a weak chart and an engine in a strong one. The same Wealth is a resource when the Day Master can carry it and an overload when it cannot.
- Watch the Luck Pillars. A god that is thin in the natal chart but arrives for twenty years in the Luck Pillars is a life theme that turns on in adulthood. This is where the timing layer comes in.
The single most common misreading
Reading the ten gods as good or bad. They are not. Each is a relationship, and a relationship is only helpful or harmful relative to what the chart needs. Qi Sha is not bad. Rob Wealth is not bad. Wealth is not automatically good. The translation conventions in English — "killings", "robber", "hurt" — come from classical Chinese shorthand and have misled a great many beginners.
Seeing them in your own chart
The calculator gives you the eight characters and the Day Master, which is everything you need to derive the ten gods yourself with the table at the top of this page. Full charts label every character with its god, and the paid reading weighs them against each other — which is the part that requires judgement rather than a lookup.
Related: the Day Master · strong or weak Day Master · the five elements.