The Ten Gods

Take your Day Master and any other character. Only five things can be true between their elements: it produces yours (生我), yours produces it (我生), it controls yours (克我), yours controls it (我克), or they are the same (同我). That is the complete list — the five-element cycle allows nothing else.

Each relation then splits in two by polarity — the matched pairing and the unmatched one — and five times two is the whole system:

relation           opposite polarity        same polarity
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
produces me   生我   Direct Seal   正印      Indirect Seal  偏印
I produce     我生   Hurting Officer 伤官    Eating God     食神
I control     我克   Direct Wealth  正财     Indirect Wealth 偏财
controls me   克我   Direct Officer 正官     Seven Killings  七杀
same as me    同我   Rob Wealth    劫财      Peer           比肩

The families have working names worth knowing: the Seals are what feeds you — support, learning, shelter. Output is what you produce — expression, skill, visible work. Wealth is what you act on and manage. The Officers are what structures and checks you — duty, rules, pressure. The Peers are what stands beside you — kin, colleagues, competition.

Here is the chart the earlier pages use, with every character labelled by the engine. The Day Master is 辛, so each label is just the table above applied once:

            character        relation to 辛
year  stem   庚 metal        Rob Wealth      劫财
month stem   壬 water        Hurting Officer 伤官
hour  stem   乙 wood         Indirect Wealth 偏财
month branch 午 → 丁 fire    Seven Killings  七杀
             └── 己 earth    Indirect Seal   偏印
day   branch 亥 → 壬 water   Hurting Officer 伤官
             └── 甲 wood     Direct Wealth   正财

Notice what the names are doing: they are coordinates, not judgements. “Seven Killings in the month branch” is a statement about position and relation — the reading of it has not started yet.

Three of the ten sound like a police report, so this needs saying once. Seven Killings (七杀) is named for an old counting rule — it is the character standing seven steps from your Day Master in the cycle, the clash-position — not a threat. Hurting Officer (伤官) is named for what it does to another character: it works against the Officer, the chart’s rule-keeper — it does not hurt you. Rob Wealth (劫财) names competition for the same resources — a sibling reaching for the same plate, not a burglary coming.

None of the ten is good or bad by itself. Seven Killings well-handled reads as decisive command; Direct Officer overdone reads as a cage. The tradition’s own texts say both, at length.

Here is where this page has to break with most of what ranks for it. The category treats each god as a fixed personality module — Hurting Officer people are rebellious and brilliant; Direct Officer people are dutiful. That is the Day Master mistake again, one level up, and 明命｜MING’s reading rules refuse it in the same way: a god’s meanings are selected by its state in the chart, never dumped as a list.

The same Hurting Officer reads differently strong or weak, supported or exposed, paired with a Seal or left alone — the classical commentaries assign it different expressions in each state, and a reading picks the one your chart actually supports. Two people can both “have 伤官” and share almost nothing, because the character sits in two different webs. This is why your reading quotes the state of a god — where it stands, what backs it — every time it names one.

It is also why this page stops short of a “meanings list”. A per-god dictionary without state is exactly the personality carousel this section exists to replace.

The ten names become concrete the moment they are attached to a real chart — yours names which gods hold which seats, and the reading says what state each is in. From there, the two judgements that use this vocabulary are how much backing your Day Master has and — resting on it — which elements genuinely help your chart, which is the centre of the whole reading and the judgement your own reading opens to show.