Warren Buffett’s BaZi chart 巴菲特

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 Horse hides Yin Fire (丁, Direct Wealth), Yin Earth (己, Direct Officer); the Monkey hides Yang Metal (庚, Indirect Resource), Yang Water (壬, Friend), Yang Earth (戊, Seven Killings); the Rat hides Yin Water (癸, Rob Wealth).

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).

Direct Wealth (Zheng Cai, 正财)

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

Direct Officer (Zheng Guan, 正官)

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

Eating God (Shi Shen, 食神)

What you produce, same polarity. Output that comes easily: making, feeding, expressing, without strain.

Friend (Bi Jian, 比肩)

Same element, same polarity as you. A peer: someone standing where you stand, competing for the same thing and equally able to share the load.

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.

Day master

Born in a Monkey month (Shen, 申), when Metal rules the season. In that season Yang Water 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.)

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, 8 read strong and 4 weak (strong: the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig hours). Strength, and the useful element that follows from it, depend on the hour — the date alone cannot settle them.

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.

Warren Buffett’s bone weight (Cheng Gu, 称骨)

Lunar date: day 7 of the 7th month, Metal Horse year (庚午年七月初七). Its weights: year 0.9 liang, month 0.9 liang, day 0.8 liang — 2.6 liang before the hour. Over the twelve hours that makes 3.2 liang to 4.2 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 ›