A God is not a deity
The word is the first obstacle of the method, and it is better cleared straight away. In the Four Pillars, a God designates no deity, no entity, no power coming from outside the chart. It is the name of a relation. Every stem present in the chart is set against the Day Master, and the name that pairing carries is what is called a God. There is therefore nothing to invoke and nothing to honour: there is a position to read.
The consequence is more interesting than the warning. A God never exists on its own. Remove the Day Master and the ten names vanish with it, because there is no longer any point of comparison. The same stem, in two different charts, does not necessarily carry the same God: it is not the stem that changed, it is the reference. That is what separates this grid from a dictionary of fixed meanings, where each sign would carry the same sense everywhere. Here everything is relative to one single character, and the module home page places that character within the whole of the four pillars.
In other words, the Ten Gods are not ten contents. They are ten ways of being placed in relation to the centre of the chart. The vocabulary is old and pictorial, the mechanism it covers is almost arithmetical in its regularity.
Why ten, neither nine nor twelve
The number rests on no arbitrary convention, it follows. Between the Day Master and another stem, five relations are possible, and five only:
- both share the same element;
- the Master generates the element of the other;
- the Master controls the element of the other;
- the other controls the element of the Master;
- the other generates the element of the Master.
Five cases, then. But each of them splits in two, because a stem does not only carry an element: it also carries a polarity. The relation is not read the same way depending on whether the two stems are of identical or opposite polarity. Five relations, two polarities, and the count is closed: five times two equals ten. Nothing more, nothing less, and no empty box. The page devoted to Yin and Yang details that second axis, which doubles the table here without changing its logic.
That construction also explains why the grid closes on itself. There is no eleventh relation waiting to be discovered: the five possible positions around the Day Master exhaust the element relationships, and polarity offers only two answers.
The five relations and the ten names
| Relation with the Day Master | The two Gods |
|---|---|
| Same element | Bi Jian (identical polarity), Jie Cai (opposite polarity) |
| Element generated by the Master | Shi Shen, Shang Guan |
| Element controlled by the Master | Pian Cai, Zheng Cai |
| Element that controls the Master | Qi Sha, Zheng Guan |
| Element that generates the Master | Pian Yin, Zheng Yin |
On the first line, the sharing is named without ambiguity: Bi Jian for identical polarity, Jie Cai for opposite polarity. The four other lines obey the same principle, each of the two names going to one of the two polarity cases. The table is therefore always read in two stages: first the element relation, which chooses the line, then the polarity, which chooses the name.
One reading note is called for on the two control relations, which are easily confused. “Element controlled by the Master” and “element that controls the Master” do not describe the same situation: the direction of the relation changes everything, and the four names concerned (Pian Cai, Zheng Cai, Qi Sha, Zheng Guan) are not interchangeable. The same vigilance applies to the two generation relations, one running from the Master towards the other stem, the other from the other stem towards the Master.
Names that stay in pinyin
Bi Jian, Jie Cai, Shi Shen, Shang Guan, Pian Cai, Zheng Cai, Qi Sha, Zheng Guan, Pian Yin, Zheng Yin: those ten names are pinyin, and they are not translated in any language. A German, Spanish or Portuguese reader will meet exactly the same ten labels as an English speaking one.
The choice is not an affectation. A translation would produce ten approximate formulas, and above all ten formulas differing from one book to the next, where pinyin guarantees that we are talking about the same term. It is the same rule that applies to the names of the heavenly stems, such as Jia: they are transcriptions, therefore proper names, and a proper name is copied.
What the grid does not say
A God names a relation, not a verdict. Spotting a Qi Sha or a Zheng Yin in a chart means noting a position, not describing an event or announcing an outcome. The grid serves to describe the structure of a chart, not to predict what is going to happen in it.
Nor does it replace the reading of the elements themselves. A stem keeps its element and its polarity whether or not we take an interest in the God it carries: the element pages, such as the one on Wood, describe that raw material, and the Ten Gods come only afterwards, to say how it stands in relation to the centre of the chart. The two readings lay over one another, they do not replace each other.
