The Ten Gods in Saju (BaZi): A Plain-English Guide
Your chart comes back with a list: Direct Officer, Seven Killings, Hurting Officer, Eating God. The names sound like the cast of a martial-arts film, and two of them sound like warnings. They aren't. The Ten Gods, called sipseong (십성, 十星) in Korean and also sipsin (십신, 十神), are relationship labels. Each one names how a character in your chart treats you, and "you" is always the same character: your Day Master, the heavenly stem of your birth day.
Once you see the logic, the ten names come down to two questions you can answer in seconds. Below, each Ten God gets plain keywords, and then we read a real chart computed with the same engine that runs our calculator.
Two questions, ten names
Every character in a saju chart carries one of the Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) and a polarity, yang or yin. To name its Ten God, set it next to your Day Master and ask two things.
First: how does its element relate to mine? There are only five possibilities, because the elements move in two fixed cycles. In the feeding cycle, Wood feeds Fire, Fire feeds Earth, Earth feeds Metal, Metal feeds Water and Water feeds Wood. In the controlling cycle, Wood controls Earth, Earth controls Water, Water controls Fire, Fire controls Metal and Metal controls Wood. Any other character is therefore my own element, an element I feed, one I control, one that controls me, or one that feeds me.
Second: is its polarity the same as mine? Same polarity gives the first name of each pair; opposite polarity gives the second.
| Relationship to the Day Master | Group | Same polarity | Opposite polarity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same element | Peers (bigeop, 비겁, 比劫) | Friend | Rob Wealth |
| I feed it | Output (siksang, 식상, 食傷) | Eating God | Hurting Officer |
| I control it | Wealth (jaeseong, 재성, 財星) | Indirect Wealth | Direct Wealth |
| It controls me | Authority (gwanseong, 관성, 官星) | Seven Killings | Direct Officer |
| It feeds me | Resource (inseong, 인성, 印星) | Indirect Resource | Direct Resource |
"Direct" and "indirect" translate the Korean jeong (정, 正) and pyeon (편, 偏). Opposite polarities balance each other, so the old texts called that bond proper; same polarity is one-sided, so they called it partial. Korean readers treat the direct version as the steady, institutional form of an energy and the indirect version as the dynamic, unconventional one. Direct Wealth is a salary and Indirect Wealth is a deal; Direct Officer is promotion through the ranks and Seven Killings is the reputation you earn in a crisis. Neither is better. They are two styles.
Some names explain themselves once you know the rule. Seven Killings, also called the Indirect Officer (pyeongwan, 편관, 偏官) or chilsal (칠살, 七殺), is always the seventh stem counting from your own: Jia to Geng, Yi to Xin, Bing to Ren. Rob Wealth shares your element, so it competes for the Wealth you control. Hurting Officer is the Output that attacks your Direct Officer, the way a sharp tongue attacks a rulebook. And old texts nickname Indirect Resource dosik (도식, 倒食), the overturned rice bowl, because it controls the Eating God.
The ten at a glance
Keywords are shorthand, not verdicts. How a Ten God plays out depends on the strength of your Day Master and on what else sits in the chart.
| Ten God | At work | In relationships | When excessive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friend (bigyeon, 비견, 比肩) | Independence, running your own show | A partnership of equals | Stubbornness, going it alone |
| Rob Wealth (geopjae, 겁재, 劫財) | Drive, competition, turnarounds | Passionate, a little rivalrous | Impulsive spending, risky partnerships |
| Eating God (siksin, 식신, 食神) | Craft, steady output, care work | Easygoing and generous | Complacency, indulgence |
| Hurting Officer (sanggwan, 상관, 傷官) | Performance, persuasion, innovation | Witty, needs to be heard | Sharp words, clashes with bosses |
| Indirect Wealth (pyeonjae, 편재, 偏財) | Deals, sales, ventures | Sociable, openhanded | Overextension, a gambler's streak |
| Direct Wealth (jeongjae, 정재, 正財) | Salary, budgets, careful management | Loyal and practical | Tightfistedness, rigidity |
| Seven Killings (편관 / 칠살) | Crisis leadership, high-pressure fields | Intense, protective | Stress, harshness |
| Direct Officer (jeonggwan, 정관, 正官) | Organizations, rank, reputation | Responsible, faithful | Rigidity, fear of judgment |
| Indirect Resource (pyeonin, 편인, 偏印) | Specialist knowledge, unusual fields | Needs a meeting of minds | Isolation, overthinking |
| Direct Resource (jeongin, 정인, 正印) | Study, credentials, mentors | Caring, supportive | Dependence, passivity |
Two rules of thumb come from Korean practice. Three or more characters from one group make that group a theme of the whole life: a Resource-heavy chart belongs to a learner, an Output-heavy chart to a maker. And a missing Ten God is a blank, not a lack. You can still have the skill; you build it without a default setting, and the theme tends to wake up when a luck pillar brings that Ten God in.
How to spot them in your own chart
- Find your Day Master, the top character of the Day Pillar. Everything else is read against it.
- Label the other stems. Each heavenly stem has one element and one polarity, so it gets one Ten God.
- Label the branches by their main qi. An earthly branch holds one to three hidden stems, and its Ten God comes from the main one. That is why the Horse (午) counts as Ding Fire rather than Bing Fire. Our guide to hidden stems lists all twelve.
- Count by group. Seven characters get labels, or five if you don't know your birth time. Which group leads, and which is absent?
- Note where they sit. The year pillar speaks for roots and early life, the month pillar for career and the social world, the Day Branch for you and your partner, and the hour pillar for later life, children and the results of your work.
Because every label is relative, one character means different things to different people. The stem 丙 (Bing, Yang Fire) is a Friend to a Bing Day Master, an Eating God to Jia, Indirect Resource to Wu, Seven Killings to Geng and Indirect Wealth to Ren. So the same Bing Wu year, 2026, reads as a year of expression for a Jia Day Master and a year of pressure for a Geng.
A worked example
Take a woman born in Seoul on 23 January 1984 at 4:40 p.m. Ipchun, the saju New Year, didn't arrive until 5 February, so her Year Pillar still belongs to 1983. This is the chart our engine gives, and you can reproduce it on the calculator with the UTC+9 time zone.
| Position | Character | Element | Ten God |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year stem | 癸 Gui | Yin Water | Direct Officer |
| Year branch | 亥 Pig | Water (main qi 壬, yang) | Seven Killings |
| Month stem | 乙 Yi | Yin Wood | Direct Resource |
| Month branch | 丑 Ox | Earth (main qi 己, yin) | Hurting Officer |
| Day stem | 丙 Bing | Yang Fire | Day Master |
| Day branch | 辰 Dragon | Earth (main qi 戊, yang) | Eating God |
| Hour stem | 丙 Bing | Yang Fire | Friend |
| Hour branch | 申 Monkey | Metal (main qi 庚, yang) | Indirect Wealth |
Her Day Master is Bing, the Midday Sun, seated on the Dragon: the Bing Chen Day Pillar. Seven characters produce seven different Ten Gods, which is unusually varied. Authority and Output have two each; Peers, Wealth and Resource have one each. Rob Wealth, Direct Wealth and Indirect Resource don't appear on the surface.
Reading it means following the relationships. Water, the element that controls Fire, fills the year pillar, and she was born in the Ox month, the depth of winter: a Sun under pressure from structure and expectation. The month stem Yi is Direct Resource, the Wood that feeds Fire, so learning, credentials and mentors are how she turns pressure into fuel. The month branch holds the Hurting Officer, which in the career seat reads as a gift for questioning how things are done. Classical texts flag a Hurting Officer that meets a Direct Officer (sanggwan-gyeongwan, 상관견관, 傷官見官) as friction with rules; a modern reader might call her the insider-critic every organization needs, provided she chooses her words. The Eating God in the Day Branch, the spouse seat, suggests a home built on shared pleasures, and the Friend and Indirect Wealth of the hour pillar point to independent ventures later on.
One more layer sits underneath. Open the branches and Direct Wealth (辛, inside the Ox) and Indirect Resource (甲, inside the Pig) turn up as hidden stems, so neither is truly absent. Rob Wealth appears nowhere, not even hidden. This is also a weak chart, which changes how every Ten God behaves; our guide to Day Master strength scores it step by step.
The Ten Gods talk to each other
Because the Ten Gods are built from the element cycles, they inherit them. In the feeding direction, Resource feeds you, you feed Output, Output feeds Wealth, Wealth feeds Authority and Authority feeds Resource. In the controlling direction, Output restrains Authority, Authority restrains Peers, Peers restrain Wealth, Wealth restrains Resource and Resource restrains Output.
This is where readings get their depth. In the example, the Eating God in the Dragon holds back the Seven Killings of the Pig, a pairing the classics praise as siksin-jesal (식신제살, 食神制殺), the Eating God restraining the Killings. Her Direct Resource also stands between the pressure and the self: Water feeds Wood and Wood feeds Fire, so the weight of the year pillar can reach her as support instead of hitting her head-on.
The same logic underlies the traditional family reading, yukchin (육친, 六親): Resource for the mother, Peers for siblings and friends, Indirect Wealth for the father, Wealth for a man's wife, Authority for a woman's husband, Output for a woman's children and Authority for a man's children. Those assignments mirror the households the classics were written in. Sajucheop reads them as roles rather than genders: the person who steadies you, the person you nurture, the person who pushes you.
Three misreadings to drop
- "Seven Killings and Hurting Officer are bad luck." They are the most intense Ten Gods, not the worst. Seven Killings is the pressure that forges leaders; Hurting Officer is talent that won't stay quiet. What matters is whether the chart can channel them.
- "More Wealth means more money." A crowd of Wealth around a weak Day Master can mean more responsibility than resources. Counts describe emphasis, not income.
- "The Ten Gods never change." Your natal ones don't, but every luck pillar, year and day brings a new character with its own Ten God. That is how saju describes timing, and it is the subject of our guide to luck pillars.
To see your own labels, enter your birth date on the Sajucheop calculator. The "Ten Gods in your chart" panel counts them for you, and the result links your Day Pillar to its page among the 60 Day Pillars. The daily reading builds each day's theme from the Ten God that day's stem brings you, and the match page shows what two people are to each other in the same language.
The Ten Gods one by one
Each god has its own page — meaning, personality, love, money, career, and which stem plays it for every Day Master.
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All articles · The ten Day Masters · 60 Day Pillars · 한국어로 읽기
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