Yang Chen-Ning’s BaZi chart 杨振宁

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 Dog hides Yang Earth (戊, Seven Killings), Yin Metal (辛, Direct Resource), Yin Fire (丁, Direct Wealth); the Rooster hides Yin Metal (辛, Direct Resource); the Tiger hides Yang Wood (甲, Eating God), Yang Fire (丙, Indirect Wealth), Yang Earth (戊, Seven Killings).

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.

Direct Resource (Zheng Yin, 正印)

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

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.

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 Rooster month (You, 酉), 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 Fire. 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 Rat, 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.

Yang Chen-Ning’s bone weight (Cheng Gu, 称骨)

Lunar date: day 11 of the 8th month, Water Dog year (壬戌年八月十一). Its weights: year 1.0 liang, month 1.5 liang, day 0.9 liang — 3.4 liang before the hour. Over the twelve hours that makes 4.0 liang to 5.0 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 ›

Two birthdays, two charts

Yang Chen-Ning’s passport gives 22 September 1922; the actual birth was on 1 October 1922. He knew only his lunar birthday, the 11th day of the 8th month. Applying for a passport in 1944 with no time to convert it, he estimated 22 September, and that date stood for decades until he checked a perpetual calendar himself. A chart cast from the passport date is somebody else’s:

Not even the day master survives: one is Yang Water (Ren, 壬), the other Yin Water (Gui, 癸). A chart giving Yang Chen-Ning a Yin Water day master was not cast from the actual day of birth. Other ways a chart goes wrong