The Ten Gods (十神) are ten relationship roles derived from your Day Master. The element your Day Master controls is its Wealth; the element that controls it is its Officer; the element that feeds it is its Resource; the element it produces is its Output; and its own element is its Peers. Each of the five relations splits into a same-polarity and opposite-polarity version, making ten gods. They turn an abstract chart of elements into concrete statements about money, authority, expression, support and competition.
How the Ten Gods are derived
Everything starts from the Day Master. For a Yang Wood (甲) Day Master, the mapping runs: Wood controls Earth → Earth is Wealth; Metal controls Wood → Metal is Officer; Water feeds Wood → Water is Resource; Wood feeds Fire → Fire is Output; Wood matches Wood → Peers. Same polarity (yang meets yang) gives the "direct" or "friend" flavor; opposite polarity gives the "indirect" or "rob" flavor.
| Relation to Day Master | Same polarity | Opposite polarity | Life theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Element I control | Indirect Wealth 偏财 | Direct Wealth 正财 | Money, assets, results |
| Element that controls me | Seven Killings 七杀 | Direct Officer 正官 | Authority, pressure, rules |
| Element that feeds me | Indirect Resource 偏印 | Direct Resource 正印 | Support, learning, protection |
| Element I produce | Eating God 食神 | Hurting Officer 伤官 | Output, expression, talent |
| Same element as me | Friend 比肩 | Rob Wealth 劫财 | Peers, allies, competitors |
Polarity rules vary by school in naming; the five-relation logic is universal. What matters in a reading is the distribution: which gods are strong, missing, or crowded.
The ten gods, one by one
正财Direct Wealth
Salary, business revenue, managed assets — money that arrives through work and stays through care. Strong Direct Wealth people are methodical earners and excellent stewards; they price their time, keep their books and finish their contracts. For men, classical texts also read it as the wife star: commitment-minded, building a household.
Shadow: over-caution — hoarding, under-investing in growth, measuring people by usefulness. Wealth stars crowd out Resource: the chart that only earns stops learning.
偏财Indirect Wealth
Windfalls, commissions, investments, the deal spotted across the room — money in motion. Indirect Wealth people are generous, networked and opportunistic; abundance circulates through them. For men it is also the father star and, classically, the romance-outside-marriage star.
Shadow: boom-and-bust — speculation without ballast, generosity used to buy affection, money leaking through ten open hands.
正官Direct Officer
Legitimate power: titles, institutions, rules that protect. Direct Officer people thrive in hierarchies, carry responsibility visibly and keep their word to the letter. For women, classical texts read it as the husband star — order-bringing partnership.
Shadow: rigidity and approval-seeking — living for the title, obeying the rule past its purpose, suffocating under respectability.
七杀Seven Killings
Force without ceremony: competition, danger, command. Unmanaged, Seven Killings intimidates and self-destructs. Managed — controlled by Eating God (食神制杀) or transformed by Resource (杀印相生) — it produces surgeons, officers, executives: people who metabolize pressure into precision. Classical masters prized a well-handled Seven Killings above a comfortable chart.
Shadow: living under siege — manufacturing enemies, mistaking tension for importance, power without an off switch.
正印Direct Resource
Care, credentials, protection: the mother star, the diploma, the institution that has your back. Direct Resource people learn deeply, attract mentors and recover fast — there is always ground beneath them. It tempers aggression and legalizes ambition (Resource turns Killings into authority).
Shadow: over-protection — analysis paralysis, living on potential, waiting to be rescued or certified before acting.
偏印Indirect Resource
Learning off the main road: esoteric subjects, self-taught mastery, research in the margins. Indirect Resource people see angles others miss and often work in specialized, strange or technical fields. It is the god of the night scholar and the unconventional healer.
Shadow: isolation and suspicion — knowledge that never ships, conspiracy-flavored thinking, help refused because it came in the wrong form.
食神Eating God
Expression that nourishes: craft, cooking, teaching, content, children. Eating God is the kindest of the output stars — production without aggression — and the classic counter to Seven Killings. Eating God people make things people love, and usually age well: the god of appetite, in every sense.
Shadow: comfort drift — talent amortized into leisure, niceness that avoids every hard call, output that never asks to be paid.
伤官Hurting Officer
Output with an edge: wit, innovation, the sentence nobody else dared to say. Hurting Officer people are the most visibly gifted of the ten — artists, founders, critics — and the least manageable. It 'hurts the Officer': rules, bosses and traditions are its natural targets. Paired with Resource (伤官配印), brilliance gains discipline; paired with Wealth (伤官生财), it monetizes.
Shadow: talent as arson — burning institutions for warmth, cleverness that wounds, a self-image built on refusing.
比肩Friend
Your own element standing beside you: independence, stamina, equals. Friend people trust themselves first, carry their own weight and make loyal allies between clear boundaries. It strengthens a weak Day Master like nothing else.
Shadow: stubborn self-sufficiency — refusing help, splitting the pie too often (Friend divides Wealth), pride disguised as principle.
劫财Rob Wealth
The peer that competes: drive, daring, the will to win the contested thing. Rob Wealth people are magnetic, bold and relentless in pursuit — excellent in sales, sport, negotiation and any arena with a scoreboard. The name is literal: it 'robs' the Wealth star — money shared, gambled or chased too hot.
Shadow: zero-sum living — partnerships that turn into contests, financial leaks through bravado, winning the argument and losing the account.
How a reader weighs the Ten Gods
- Strength first. A strong Day Master can "carry" Wealth and Officer — they become results. A weak Day Master is crushed by them and needs Resource and Friend before it can earn or lead.
- Excess is a symptom. Any god crowded three or four times flips to its shadow: too much Officer is oppression, too much Resource is dependence, too much Friend is fragmentation.
- Absence speaks. A missing god is not a missing life — but its theme runs on manual: no Wealth star means money must be systematized deliberately, no Output star means expression needs scheduling.
- Combinations outrank singles. 食神制杀 (Eating God controls Killings), 杀印相生 (Killings feeds Resource), 伤官配印 (Hurting Officer paired with Resource) — named structures carry specific, well-documented readings that override single-star impressions.
- Timing changes the cast. A god missing in the natal chart often arrives in a 10-year luck cycle — which is when its themes switch on.
Questions, answered
Ten relationship roles calculated from how each character's element and polarity relates to your Day Master — Wealth, Officer, Resource, Output and Peers, each in direct and indirect form. They translate element relationships into money, authority, expression, support and competition.
From the Day Master's element: what it controls is Wealth, what controls it is Officer, what feeds it is Resource, what it produces is Output, what matches it is Peers. Same polarity gives the direct/friend versions, opposite polarity the indirect/rob versions.
Direct Wealth is steady earned money — salary, revenue, managed assets. Indirect Wealth is flow money — investments, commissions, windfalls and generous circulation. Healthy charts usually show both; excess of either flips into hoarding or boom-and-bust.
No — it is raw pressure. Uncontrolled, it reads as conflict and danger; controlled by Eating God or transformed by Resource, it becomes command, precision and the ability to metabolize pressure. Classical masters valued a well-handled Seven Killings above a comfortable chart.
Classical texts flagged it as challenging for traditional marriage because it 'hurts the Officer' — the husband star. In modern terms: brilliant, expressive, allergic to being managed. It describes a mismatch with 12th-century marriage, not a curse.
None inherently. Fit matters more than label: a strong Day Master turns Wealth and Officer into results; a weak one needs Resource and Friend first. Every god has a constructive form and a shadow form — the reading is in the balance.
See your own Ten Gods
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