Sun Yat-sen’s BaZi chart 孙中山

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 Tiger hides Yang Wood (甲, Direct Wealth), Yang Fire (丙, Direct Officer), Yang Earth (戊, Direct Resource); the Pig hides Yang Water (壬, Hurting Officer), Yang Wood (甲, Direct Wealth); the Rabbit hides Yin Wood (乙, Indirect Wealth).

Direct Officer (Zheng Guan, 正官)

What controls you, opposite polarity. Authority in its orderly form: office, rule, the structure you fit into.

Direct Wealth (Zheng Cai, 正财)

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

Direct Resource (Zheng Yin, 正印)

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

Indirect Resource (Pian Yin, 偏印)

What produces you, same polarity. Support of an indirect kind — the tradition treats it as nourishment that can also crowd out the Eating God (食神).

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.

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 Pig month (Hai, 亥), when Water rules the season. In that season Yin Metal is at rest (Xiu, 休): it produced the season and its work is done. (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

All five elements appear among the six known characters. Hidden stems are not counted here.

All twelve hours, cast one by one

In all twelve hours the Yin Metal day master reads weak. Whatever the hour, the support-and-restrain method favours Earth, Metal — the date alone settles it.

When his birth date was looked into, his first wife Lu Muzhen checked it against the eight characters (Ba Zi, 八字) the two families exchanged at their engagement: the 6th day of the 10th lunar month of 1866, in the Tiger hour (寅). That gives the chart usually quoted: Fire Tiger, Earth Pig, Metal Rabbit, Metal Tiger (丙寅 己亥 辛卯 庚寅). (source: Chinese Wikipedia) Taking the Tiger hour (Yin, 寅), the hour pillar is Metal Tiger (Geng Yin, 庚寅), the day master reads weak, and support-and-restrain favours Earth, Metal. The row is tagged “reported” 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.

Sun Yat-sen’s bone weight (Cheng Gu, 称骨)

Lunar date: day 6 of the 10th month, Fire Tiger year (丙寅年十月初六). Its weights: year 0.6 liang, month 0.8 liang, day 1.5 liang — 2.9 liang before the hour. Over the twelve hours that makes 3.5 liang to 4.5 liang. At the Tiger hour (Yin, 寅), reported: 3.6 liang.

This date falls on a cell where one of the four published tables differs, which would move every total by 1.1 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 ›