The Ten Gods 十神
The stem that controls the Day Master from the opposite polarity — the classical image of legitimate office, and the one god the texts say is spoiled by having more of it.
| Term 十神 | 正官 — Direct Officer (zheng guan) |
|---|---|
| Relation to the Day Master | 克我 · 阴阳相异 — controls the Day Master, opposite polarity |
| Group | Authority |
正官者，乃甲见辛、乙见庚之例。阴阳配合，相制有用，成其道也。故正官为六格之首，止许一位，多则不宜。
The Direct Officer is the case of Jia meeting Xin, or Yi meeting Geng. Yin and yang pair up, the restraint is put to use, and the way of it is complete. So the Direct Officer heads the six structures — but only one position is allowed; more than that is unwelcome.
克我者，我受制于人之义，故立名官煞。官者，官也。煞者，害也。
What controls me carries the sense of my being restrained by another, so it was named Officer-and-Killing. The Officer is office. The Killing is harm.
Two things in those passages are easy to read past. The first is 止许一位 — only one position allowed. Direct Officer is the one relation in the ten where the classical texts treat quantity as a defect rather than a degree. One office is a position; three offices is a claim nobody honours.
The second is that the naming chapter puts 官 and 煞 in the same sentence and then glosses 煞 as 害, harm. Direct Officer and Seven Killings are not a good god and a bad god; they are the same relation — something outside you that constrains you — split by whether the polarity matches. The texts are unusually blunt about the cost even of the favourable half: 以身属之公家，任其驱使, the self is made over to the public body and put at its disposal.
The pairing rule is mechanical, and the table below states it for all ten Day Masters. A yang Day Master takes a yin controlling stem as Direct Officer; a yin Day Master takes a yang one. Same-polarity control is Seven Killings instead.
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 | 辛 — Xin |
| 乙 Yi yin Wood | 庚 — Geng |
| 丙 Bing yang Fire | 癸 — Gui |
| 丁 Ding yin Fire | 壬 — Ren |
| 戊 Wu yang Earth | 乙 — Yi |
| 己 Ji yin Earth | 甲 — Jia |
| 庚 Geng yang Metal | 丁 — Ding |
| 辛 Xin yin Metal | 丙 — Bing |
| 壬 Ren yang Water | 己 — Ji |
| 癸 Gui yin Water | 戊 — Wu |
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 →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 · 比肩 Parallel · 劫财 Rob Wealth