Chen Shui-bian’s BaZi chart 陈水扁

Quick answers

What is Chen Shui-bian’s day master?

Yang Metal, the Sword: born on a Metal Dragon day (Geng Chen, 庚辰).

What is Chen Shui-bian’s zodiac sign?

The Tiger: born in a Metal Tiger year (Geng Yin, 庚寅), counted from the Start of Spring.

What is Chen Shui-bian’s bone weight?

4.3 liang to 5.3 liang, depending on the hour, which is not public. How it is worked out ›

Is Chen Shui-bian’s birth time known?

No published time, so the hour pillar is cast all twelve ways below.

Compare your chart with Chen Shui-bian’s

Birth dates only: day masters, day pillars and signs.

The three pillars the date fixes

Day master

Born in a Dog month (Xu, 戌), when Earth rules the season. In that season Yang Metal is rising (Xiang, 相): the season produces it. (One of five seasonal states, Wang Xiang Xiu Qiu Si, 旺相休囚死, after the San Ming Tong Hui, 三命通會, book 2.)

Day pillar: Metal Dragon (Geng Chen, 庚辰)

The classic San Ming Tong Hui (三命通会) gives each of the sixty day pillars an image, its sound element (Na Yin, 纳音). For this one it is White Wax Metal (白蜡金), and it says:

Tin and pewter; likes autumn, and a little Wood.

This is what the book says of every Geng Chen day, not of Chen Shui-bian. The Geng Chen day pillar › (what the classic says at each birth hour, what the branch holds, and others born on one)

Elements in the six known characters

None of the six is Water. The hour pillar’s two characters may supply it or may not — that depends on the hour. Hidden stems are not counted here.

All twelve hours, cast one by one

In all twelve hours the Yang Metal day master reads strong. Whatever the hour, the support-and-restrain method favours Water, Wood, Fire — the date alone settles it.

Each row is exactly what the full calculator would say for a birth in that hour. Strength comes from three tests: in season (De Ling, 得令) — born in the season of the day master’s own element; rooted (De Di, 得地) — the same element hidden in a branch; backed (De Shi, 得势) — as much support around it as drain. Two of three reads strong. The favoured elements come from support and restrain (Fu Yi, 扶抑): a strong day master wants draining, a weak one wants support. There are three other methods for the useful element — climate (Tiao Hou, 调候), bridging (Tong Guan, 通關) and disease and cure (Bing Yao, 病藥) — each from its own text; see the useful god page. Hours are solar time at the birthplace, so a clock time needs correcting first; and a birth after 23:00 falls in the late Rat hour, where the two schools disagree about whether the day has turned.

Chen Shui-bian’s bone weight (Cheng Gu, 称骨)

Lunar date: day 2 of the 9th month, Metal Tiger year (庚寅年九月初二). Its weights: year 0.9 liang, month 1.8 liang, day 1.0 liang — 3.7 liang before the hour. Over the twelve hours that makes 4.3 liang to 5.3 liang.

Bone weighing is a folk almanac sum over the calendar positions of the year, month, day and hour — not the elements, and not the chart above. How heavy is heavy? The tables and the spread ›

Two birthdays, two charts

Chen Shui-bian’s ID card gives 18 February 1951; the actual birth was on 12 October 1950. His family, fearing he would not survive, did not register his birth until February 1951; Time reported the actual birth as October 1950. A chart cast from the ID card date is somebody else’s:

Not even the day master survives: one is Yang Metal (Geng, 庚), the other Yin Earth (Ji, 己). A chart giving Chen Shui-bian a Yin Earth day master was not cast from the actual day of birth. Other ways a chart goes wrong