Mao Zedong’s BaZi chart 毛泽东

The three pillars the date fixes

Each pillar is two characters: a stem on top (an element, yin or yang) and a branch below (one of the twelve zodiac animals). The day stem is the day master — the person. The label above each other stem is its ten god (Shi Shen, 十神): what that element is to the day master.

Each animal also hides stems of its own, strongest first: the Snake hides Yang Fire (丙, Rob Wealth), Yang Metal (庚, Direct Wealth), Yang Earth (戊, Hurting Officer); the Rat hides Yin Water (癸, Seven Killings); the Rooster hides Yin Metal (辛, Indirect Wealth).

Seven Killings (Qi Sha, 七杀)

What controls you, same polarity. Pressure with nothing softening it: demand, risk, and whatever you answer to whether you chose it or not.

Rob Wealth (Jie Cai, 劫财)

Same element, opposite polarity. A peer who takes rather than shares — the tradition reads it as what draws on your resources through people close to you.

Direct Wealth (Zheng Cai, 正财)

What you control, opposite polarity. Wealth held steadily — earned, kept, accounted for.

Hurting Officer (Shang Guan, 伤官)

What you produce, opposite polarity. Output with an edge on it. The name means it injures the Direct Officer (正官), which is why the tradition reads it as talent that does not sit well with authority.

Direct Resource (Zheng Yin, 正印)

What produces you, opposite polarity. Straightforward support: what teaches, shelters and backs you.

Indirect Wealth (Pian Cai, 偏财)

What you control, same polarity. Wealth that comes sideways rather than by salary — the uneven kind.

Day master

Born in a Rat month (Zi, 子), when Water rules the season. In that season Yin Fire is dead (Si, 死): the season controls 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.)

Elements in the six known characters

None of the six is Earth. 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

Of the twelve hours, 2 read strong and 10 weak (strong: the Snake, Horse hours). Strength, and the useful element that follows from it, depend on the hour — the date alone cannot settle them.

The chart most often quoted for Mao — Water Snake, Wood Rat, Fire Rooster, Wood Dragon (癸巳 甲子 丁酉 甲辰) — takes the Dragon hour (辰). We know of no primary record of his birth time, so all twelve are still cast. Taking the Dragon hour (Chen, 辰), the hour pillar is Wood Dragon (Jia Chen, 甲辰), the day master reads weak, and support-and-restrain favours Wood, Fire. The row is tagged “circulating” below.

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.

Mao Zedong’s bone weight (Cheng Gu, 称骨)

Lunar date: day 19 of the 11th month, Water Snake year (癸巳年冬月十九). Its weights: year 0.7 liang, month 0.9 liang, day 0.5 liang — 2.1 liang before the hour. Over the twelve hours that makes 2.7 liang to 3.7 liang. At the Dragon hour (Chen, 辰), circulating: 3.0 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 ›