Yao Ming’s BaZi chart 姚明

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 Monkey hides Yang Metal (庚, Eating God), Yang Water (壬, Indirect Wealth), Yang Earth (戊, Friend); the Rooster hides Yin Metal (辛, Hurting Officer); the Rat hides Yin Water (癸, Direct Wealth).

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.

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.

Direct Officer (Zheng Guan, 正官)

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

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 Wealth (Zheng Cai, 正财)

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

Day master

Born in a Rooster month (You, 酉), when Metal rules the season. In that season Yang Earth 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

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

In all twelve hours the Yang Earth day master reads weak. Whatever the hour, the support-and-restrain method favours Fire, Earth — 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.

Yao Ming’s bone weight (Cheng Gu, 称骨)

Lunar date: day 4 of the 8th month, Metal Monkey year (庚申年八月初四). Its weights: year 0.8 liang, month 1.5 liang, day 1.5 liang — 3.8 liang before the hour. Over the twelve hours that makes 4.4 liang to 5.4 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 ›