In BaZi, five elements form your stats and ten archetypes your cast of characters — each generating and controlling the next, like a living game system. Here is the full deck.
Each element generates the next in a cycle (生), and controls another across it (剋). Balance is everything.
Ten forces describe how every element relates to your Day Master — your character classes, in five polar pairs. The five families — Peers, Output, Wealth, Officer, Resource — are defined relative to your Day Master.
Two forms of each element — Yang and Yin — expressed as forces of nature. One of these is your Day Master.
The twelve zodiac animals, each a two-hour gate of the day and a season of the year — the ground your chart stands on.
Every Day Master moves through twelve phases as it meets the twelve branches — a full life cycle from birth to storage and back to conception. Not fortunes, but seasons: each pillar and each decade of your chart sits somewhere on this wheel.