The BaZi Wealth Vault: Having Chen, Xu, Chou or Wei Is Not the Same as Having One

"You have a wealth vault in your chart, so you can hold on to money." People hear this a lot, and the reason given is usually that one of Chen, Xu, Chou or Wei turns up among their branches. But by that standard, about 80% of people in our sample have a wealth vault, and a condition almost everyone meets tells you very little. To read a vault properly, you first need to know what a vault actually stores.

Why they are called vaults

Chen, Xu, Chou and Wei are the last month of each season, where that season's element winds down and goes into storage. Each vault branch holds the leftover qi of the season before it:

So a vault is not a general place for keeping money; it is where one particular element is stored. Earth has no season of its own, and the texts have long disagreed about where Earth's vault is: Chen (following Water) or Xu (following Fire). We list both.

The narrow wealth vault: where your Wealth is stored

Since each vault stores a different element, your wealth vault should be the vault of your Wealth element. A Bing or Ding Fire Day Master has Metal as Wealth, so the wealth vault is Chou; a Geng or Xin Metal Day Master has Wood as Wealth, so the wealth vault is Wei.

How we counted: our engine cast one chart for every day from 1960 to 2005, rotating the birth hour, 16,802 charts in all. This describes how chart structures are distributed; it says nothing about how much money anyone has.

Dropping from eight in ten to about a third is where the idea starts to tell people apart. The home chapter of our in-depth reading still mentions the broad "four vaults" view for reference; for a precise answer, go by the narrow vault.

A vault opens when clashed: money in, or money out?

An old saying goes, "a vault opens when it meets a clash." What is stored normally stays put; when Chen and Xu clash, or Chou and Wei, the vault door is knocked open and what is inside flows out. So when a luck pillar or year clashes your narrow wealth vault, it is often read as a time when money moves.

But "open" does not guarantee income. If Wealth is favorable for you and your Day Master can carry it, an open vault means stored wealth coming out for use. If Wealth is unfavorable, or the Day Master is too weak to carry it, an open vault is more like a door left wide with money flowing out; the classics call it "the vault opens and wealth scatters." Also, a chart that already holds both Chen and Xu, or both Chou and Wei, has a vault that is always being clashed, and money usually moves in and out faster.

Counting Wealth stars alone, this chart looks as if it has very little money. Only the vault and its opening years show that its wealth is the kind that is "stored away, waiting for its time."