Bazi Ten Gods analyzer. Casts the four pillars at 立春 and the solar terms, names each character's 十神 relation to the day stem by element and yin/yang, and counts the five categories. Cultural reference only.
Bazi Ten Gods Analyzer (八字十神)
Your birth information
How to use
Enter the birth time
Gregorian year, month and day, plus the clock hour and minute. Leave the hour blank if you do not know it and the tool casts the year, month and day pillars only.
Pick the clock offset and the 23:00 rule
Choose the UTC offset in force where you were born; solar-term instants are converted to it. For a birth between 23:00 and 24:00, choose whether the day pillar changes at midnight or at 23:00 — the two give different day pillars.
Read the pillars
Each heavenly stem is labelled with its Ten God relative to the day master; each branch with the Ten God of its principal hidden stem, and every hidden stem is listed.
Read the count
How many positions each of the five categories takes, and how bazi readings describe that spread. It describes the tradition; it does not predict.
Ten Gods: how each character stands to the day master
The Ten Gods (十神) name every character in a bazi chart by its relation to the day master, the heavenly stem of the birth day. The rule has two layers: in the five-element cycles the other character is the same element, one the day master produces, one it controls, one that controls it, or one that produces it; and its yin/yang polarity is either the same or the opposite. Five relations times two polarities gives ten names. The Yuanhai Ziping (淵海子平) opens by listing all ten for a 甲 and an 乙 day master, and this tool's rule is checked against both rows.
Five categories, one yin and one yang each
Peer (比肩/劫财, same element), Output (食神/伤官, produced by the day master), Wealth (偏财/正财, controlled by it), Authority (七杀/正官, controlling it) and Resource (偏印/正印, producing it). Within each, the same polarity is the "partial" god (比肩, 食神, 偏财, 七杀, 偏印) and the opposite polarity the "direct" one (劫财, 伤官, 正财, 正官, 正印). The book puts the resource pair this way: yang meeting yin or yin meeting yang is 正印; yang meeting yang or yin meeting yin is 偏印.
How the pillars are cast
The year pillar turns at the instant of 立春 (Start of Spring), not at Chinese New Year, and the month pillar turns at each of the twelve 节 (立春, 惊蛰, 清明 …), to the minute. Those instants come from the site's lunisolar engine, which computes them astronomically and is checked against the Hong Kong Observatory's published solar-term times. The day pillar is the unbroken sixty-day cycle. For a birth between 23:00 and 24:00, schools disagree about which day pillar applies; the tool lets you choose and shows what the other choice gives.
How this tool counts
It counts the stems other than the day master plus each branch read by its principal hidden stem: seven positions with an hour, five without. Nothing is weighted by season or by hidden-stem strength. A full reading also weighs the strength of the day master, the useful god and the luck cycles; this tool does none of that.
Seven Killings and Partial Officer are one relation under two names
The Yuanhai Ziping treats Seven Killings and Partial Officer as one relation — 「偏官即七杀」 — and says which name applies depends on the chart: restrained, it is 偏官; unrestrained, 七杀. This tool labels it 七杀 throughout, the usual modern form.
The same book credits the Tang-era Li Xuzhong with reading fate from the stems and branches of the birth year, month, day and hour, and dates to the Song the step of taking the day stem as the master (「取日干为主」). The Ten Gods are counted from that stem.
The book's names are not all today's: 正印 appears as 印綬, 偏印 as 倒食 or 梟神, 食神 also as 天厨 and 寿星, and 劫财 also as 败财 ("ruined wealth").
The hidden stems come from the book's verse on what each branch conceals: 子, 卯 and 酉 hold one stem each (癸, 乙, 辛), 午 and 亥 two (丁己, 壬甲), and the other seven branches three.
A bazi year turns at 立春, not at Chinese New Year. In 2024 立春 fell at 16:27 on 4 February (Hong Kong Observatory) and New Year on 10 February, so a child born on 5 February already has a 甲辰 year pillar.
On 4 February 2038, 立春 (02:04) and Chinese New Year fall on the same day. A child born between midnight and 02:04 is in the new lunar year but still has the old 丁巳 bazi year pillar.
For a birth between 23:00 and 24:00 the two day-change conventions agree on the hour pillar but give day pillars a day apart, and so different day masters: 23:30 on 10 February 2024 is a 甲辰 day under midnight change and 乙巳 under 23:00 change.
The day master is the stem of the birth day. 15 June 1990 is a 辛亥 day, so its day master is 辛, yin metal; the year pillar that day is 庚午 and the month pillar 壬午.
Any one day master meets each of the ten Gods exactly once across the ten stems: five relations times two polarities, no more and no fewer.
When a birth falls within two hours of a solar-term change, the tool says so: the year or month pillar then depends on the minute, and the term's clock time depends on the time zone of the birthplace.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bazi = 4 pillars × 2 characters (each pillar = a heavenly stem + an earthly branch). The Ten Gods name how those characters stand to your day master, the heavenly stem of your birth day. They are a layer of naming on top of the cast chart.
The two gods in a pair have the same element relation to the day master and differ only in polarity: the same polarity gives 偏财, 七杀, 偏印 and the like; the opposite gives 正财, 正官, 正印.
No. A full reading also weighs Major Luck cycles, annual luck, the useful god, day-master strength and climate balance. This tool does a static Ten Gods count and reports how the tradition describes that spread.
The Ten Gods rule matches the Yuanhai Ziping's table for a 甲 and an 乙 day master entry by entry, and all 100 stem pairs of the lunar-javascript library. The 立春 and 节 instants are checked against the Hong Kong Observatory's published solar-term times. What can change a result is convention, not arithmetic: the 23:00 day change, the time zone of the birthplace, and the minutes either side of a solar-term change.
The tool shows it. The birth day's stem maps to: 甲/乙 = wood, 丙/丁 = fire, 戊/己 = earth, 庚/辛 = metal, 壬/癸 = water; 甲丙戊庚壬 are yang and 乙丁己辛癸 yin. For example, 15 June 1990 is a 辛亥 day, so the day master is 辛, yin metal.
This tool makes no such claim. It casts and counts the Ten Gods by the traditional rule and reports what the tradition says; whether the tradition is right is not something a calculator can check.
They are built differently. Western astrology works with planets and signs; the Ten Gods work with stems, branches, five elements and yin/yang, and describe relations between characters.
The natal chart's Ten Gods are fixed. The tradition also names the stems of the luck cycles and of each year against the same day master; that is a separate layer this tool does not compute.
The four usual reasons: (1) a birth between 23:00 and 24:00, and the other tool changes the day at 23:00; (2) it changes the year at Chinese New Year instead of 立春; (3) the birth is close to a solar-term change and it uses a different time zone or term time; (4) it adjusts the hour to true solar time. This tool uses clock time and does not convert to solar time.
Yes. All RECATOOLS tools are free and ad-supported, with no signup and no paywall. The calculation runs in your browser; the birth details are not uploaded.
Method & sources
How it computes
Pillars from the site's lunisolar engine: year at the 立春 instant, month at each 节, to the minute, at the chosen UTC offset; the 23:00 day change is the reader's choice. Each stem is named against the day stem by element relation (same, produces, controls, controlled by, produced by) × yin/yang polarity; each branch by its principal hidden stem. Seven positions are counted (five with no hour), unweighted (BaziTenGodsKernel).
What this tool implements
- The Ten Gods rule is the one the 淵海子平 tabulates for a 甲 and an 乙 day master (見甲 比肩, 見乙 劫財 … 見癸 印綬), with its polarity rule — 「以陽見陰，以陰見陽，謂之正印；陽見陽，陰見陰，謂之偏印」. The kernel derives the relation from element and polarity; the suite checks it against both rows of that text and all 100 stem pairs of lunar-javascript 1.7.7.
- Hidden stems follow the same book's 地支藏遁歌 (子 癸; 丑 癸辛己; 寅 甲丙戊 …), listed principal stem (本氣) first. A branch is counted by its principal stem; every hidden stem is shown with its god.
- The year pillar turns at the instant of 立春, not at Chinese New Year, and the month pillar at each 节, both to the minute. Checked at ±2 minutes of all 156 节 in Hong Kong Observatory term times 2019–2028 and NAOJ 1984, 2000 and 2050. A birth within two hours of a 节, or on a 节 day with the hour unknown, is flagged on the page.
- The 23:00–24:00 hour is a convention and both are offered: the day pillar changes at midnight (23:00–24:00 keeps that day's pillar and takes the next day's 子-hour stem; lunar-javascript sect 2, the default) or at 23:00 (sect 1). The hour pillar is the same under both; the day pillar, and so the day master, is not, and the page shows the other convention's day pillar.
- Clock time at the UTC offset the reader picks (+7, +7:30, +8, +9). No true-solar-time correction is applied, and the page says so.
- The page carries a cultural-reference notice. The tool names and counts relations by the traditional rule and reports how readings describe a spread; it does not forecast or grade a chart.
Sources
- 淵海子平 (Wikisource, revision 2593607): 「基础」 Ten Gods table for 甲 and 乙, 地支藏遁歌 (hidden stems), 論偏官 (「偏官即七殺」), 論日為主: https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%B7%B5%E6%B5%B7%E5%AD%90%E5%B9%B3
- Hong Kong Observatory. 24 Solar Terms — times at UTC+8; 2024 data file used for the 立春 example (4 Feb 2024 16:27): https://www.hko.gov.hk/en/gts/astronomy/data/files/24SolarTerms_2…
- lunar-javascript 1.7.7 by 6tail (MIT), vendored at /assets/vendor/lunar-javascript/ — SHI_SHEN and ZHI_HIDE_GAN tables and EightChar sects, used as an independent cross-check: https://github.com/6tail/lunar-javascript
Abridged — the full review record for this tool runs longer than the list above.
Pick up where you left off
Stored only in this browser — never sent to our servers.