The Ten Gods in plain English
Not deities, and the translation does them no favours. The Ten Gods are the ten ways another character can relate to your Day Master. Five relationships, each in a matching or opposing polarity, which makes ten.
The pattern underneath
Every character in your chart has an element. So does your Day Master. Between any two elements there are exactly five possible relationships, and each comes in two flavours depending on whether the polarities match.
| Relationship to your Day Master | Same polarity | Opposite polarity |
|---|---|---|
| Same element as you | Friend 比肩 | Rob Wealth 劫财 |
| You produce it | Eating God 食神 | Hurting Officer 伤官 |
| You control it | Indirect Wealth 偏财 | Direct Wealth 正财 |
| It controls you | Seven Killings 七杀 | Direct Officer 正官 |
| It produces you | Indirect Resource 偏印 | Direct Resource 正印 |
That is the whole system. Five relationships, two polarities, ten names.
What each one tends to mean
- Same as you. Peers, siblings, competitors, self reliance. Support and rivalry from the same place.
- What you produce. Expression, creativity, work that comes out of you. Children, traditionally.
- What you control. Wealth, resources, and what you are willing to go after.
- What controls you. Structure, authority, pressure, discipline. Career, in the traditional reading.
- What produces you. Support, learning, protection. Mother, in the traditional reading.
Those glosses are a starting point rather than a meaning. A god's effect depends on where it sits, how much of it there is, and what your Day Master needs.
A worked chart
Day Master 辛, yin Metal. Its Ten Gods across the four pillars:
| Pillar | Year | Month | Day | Hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ten God | 劫财 | 伤官 | 日主 | 伤官 |
| Plainly | Rob Wealth | Hurting Officer | the Day Master itself | Hurting Officer |
Hurting Officer appears twice, in the month and the hour. Repetition is a signal. A doubled god dominates the chart's character, and here it points at expression that does not sit comfortably under authority.
Meridian labels the Ten Gods on your chart and explains each one against your own Day Master rather than in the abstract, because Hurting Officer means something different for a strong chart than a weak one. The names stay in Chinese alongside the English, since the literature you go on to read uses them.
A warning about the names
Rob Wealth, Seven Killings and Hurting Officer sound alarming and are not. The translations are Victorian era literalisms of terms that were never sinister in the original. A chart full of frightening sounding gods is not a frightening chart, and any reading that leans on the drama of the names is selling you something.
Related
- What is a Day Master, and is a weak one bad?
- The eight methods Meridian reads, and how to choose one
See the Ten Gods on your own chart
Worked example computed by Meridian's chart engines on 1 August 2026. The engines are deterministic, so the same input returns the same chart.
This page explains calculation conventions. It does not interpret a chart and is not advice.