I
The Ten Gods
Every stem and hidden stem in your chart is read through its relationship to your day master — as one of ten gods. They are not deities; they are ten working temperaments: the Friend who stands beside you, the Officer who demands your discipline, the Wealth that rewards your labor, the Resource that feeds your mind, the Talent that flows out of you. A chart's character is the arithmetic of which gods repeat.
Read them as recurring themes, not fixed roles: a chart rich in Hurting Officer questions authority brilliantly; rich in Direct Wealth earns steadily; rich in Seven Killings performs best under real stakes.
II
Shen Sha — the Spirit Marks
Shen sha are the oldest layer of the tradition: dozens of named marks — the Traveling Horse, the Literary Star, the Peach Blossom — placed over the pillars by fixed rules. Practitioners disagree about their weight, which is honest to admit: the modern consensus treats them as seasoning, not substance.
The few that nearly everyone agrees on: the Heavenly Noble (help in corners), the Literary Star (gift for study), the Traveling Horse (motion as medicine), and the Peach Blossom (magnetism).
III
Strong and Gentle
The first real question of any chart: is the day master strong or gentle? Count its support — same-element companions, generating resources, seasonal advantage. A strong chart needs release: challenge, expression, wealth to pursue. A gentle chart needs support: nourishment, allies, environments that hold.
Neither is better. A strong chart wastes itself without worthy opposition; a gentle chart collapses under arenas it was never built for. The art is matching the environment to the constitution.
IV
Combinations & Clashes
The characters in a chart do not sit still. Stems combine into new elements (Jia and Ji join into Earth); branches clash like opposing weather. A combination is a doorway; a clash is a storm. Both are read as activity — the chart is a meeting in progress, not a photograph.
The practical line: combinations show where things merge (talent + resource = learning; wealth + officer = career), and clashes show where friction is structural — to be managed, not eliminated.
V
The Useful God
Once strength is judged, the chart names its useful god — the element or elements it is asking for. For a strong chart, the useful direction is release (what you generate, what challenges you). For a gentle one, it is support (what generates you, what stands beside you).
This is where reflection begins: a useful element is not a lucky charm. It is a symbolic direction to test through environment, attention and ordinary choices.
VI
Reading the Decades
Life is divided into ten-year seasons — the decade fortunes — which begin not at birth but at the "starting age" counted toward the nearest solar term. Each decade carries its own pillar, read against the day master as one of the ten gods.
So a Resource decade favors study and support; a Wealth decade favors earning; a Seven Killings decade favors decisive, high-stakes work. Read the decade as climate — you still choose the crop.
Method & Verification · 校验
Accuracy, honestly defined.
We verify what can be verified: calendar calculation, reproducibility, and engine consistency. We do not turn those checks into a scientific claim about fortune-telling.
i
Two independent engines
The four pillars are computed with tyme4ts and cross-checked against lunar-javascript. Public reference charts, historical time zones and the zi-hour convention are fixed as permanent regression tests.
ii
Public reference charts
Steve Jobs, Charles III and Diana are checked pillar by pillar against an independent engine using published birth moments. The test stores the expected four pillars, so a future code change cannot silently rewrite the result.
iii
500 random charts per run
Every test suite casts five hundred random births, checking stems, branches, hidden stems, ten gods, element weights and internal invariants. Boundary cases receive separate tests instead of being hidden inside an average.
iv
What this does not prove
Cross-engine agreement proves that the same calendar rules were calculated consistently. It does not prove that metaphysical interpretation predicts events. BaZi is presented here as cultural tradition, entertainment and a tool for self-reflection.
The casebook reads charts as cultural reflection. Famous birth times circulate with some uncertainty; they are read here as the tradition has handed them down.