The Ten Gods 十神
A stem of the same element and the same polarity — shoulder to shoulder: reinforcement of the self, and a second claimant on everything the self holds.
| Term 十神 | 比肩 — Parallel (bi jian) |
|---|---|
| Relation to the Day Master | 同我 · 阴阳相同 — same element as the Day Master, same polarity |
| Group | Companion |
建禄者，月建逢禄堂也，禄即是劫。或以禄堂透出，即可依以用者，非也。故建禄与月劫，可同一格，不必加分，皆以透干支，别取财官煞食为用。
The Established Salary means the month-branch meets the hall of salary — and salary is simply the Rob. Some hold that once the hall of salary shows in the stems it can be relied on as the governing element; that is wrong. So Established Salary and Month Rob may be treated as one structure, with no need to divide them further: in both, one goes by what shows in stem and branch and takes Wealth, Officer, Killings or Eating God separately as the governing element.
比肩 is literally shoulder-to-shoulder. Of the ten relations this is the one the classical corpus has least to say about directly, and the silence is informative: San Ming Tong Hui has full chapters on Officer, Killings, Wealth, Resource, Eating God and Hurting Officer, and no chapter on 比肩 at all. We would rather say that than pad the entry with a passage that merely contains the word.
Zi Ping Zhen Quan explains why. The companion stars are not read as a structure in their own right — 皆以透干支，别取财官煞食为用, one takes Wealth, Officer, Killings or Eating God as the governing element instead. A chart full of peers is described by what it does with them, not by the peers.
Structurally the relation cuts both ways and the texts treat both directions as ordinary. A companion reinforces the Day Master against pressure, and a companion is a second claim on the same Wealth. Which of the two is at issue depends on the rest of the chart, which is why the entry cannot be reduced to a keyword.
This is a lookup, not a judgement — it falls straight out of the element relation and the yin/yang match, and the table below is generated by the same function the chart calculator uses. Where the Day Master has its own essay, the name links to it.
| Day Master | This god is… |
|---|---|
| 甲 Jia yang Wood | 甲 — Jia |
| 乙 Yi yin Wood | 乙 — Yi |
| 丙 Bing yang Fire | 丙 — Bing |
| 丁 Ding yin Fire | 丁 — Ding |
| 戊 Wu yang Earth | 戊 — Wu |
| 己 Ji yin Earth | 己 — Ji |
| 庚 Geng yang Metal | 庚 — Geng |
| 辛 Xin yin Metal | 辛 — Xin |
| 壬 Ren yang Water | 壬 — Ren |
| 癸 Gui yin Water | 癸 — Gui |
Sources: 《三命通会》 (San Ming Tong Hui, Ming, 万民英) and 《子平真诠》 (Zi Ping Zhen Quan, Qing, 沈孝瞻 — the original text, without Xu Leyu's commentary). Every passage above is quoted from a local plain-text edition and verified character by character. Translations are ours; corrections are welcome.
Enter a birth date, time and longitude — the calculator returns the four pillars, the hidden stems, the nayin and the ten gods, with true solar time applied.
Open the chart calculator →正官 Direct Officer · 七杀 Seven Killings · 正印 Direct Resource · 偏印 Indirect Resource · 正财 Direct Wealth · 偏财 Indirect Wealth · 食神 Eating God · 伤官 Hurting Officer · 劫财 Rob Wealth