Bob Dylan’s BaZi: Early-Summer Ren Water, and an Hour on the Line

At 19 Bob Dylan left Minnesota for New York and sang folk songs in the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village. He released his first album at 21, and “Blowin’ in the Wind” became an anthem of the civil rights movement. In 1965 he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, was booed by folk fans, and changed rock music for good. In 2016 he became the first musician to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his songs. His birth time is on his birth certificate, and converted to true solar time it comes out at exactly 9 p.m., right on the boundary between the Xu hour and the Hai hour. The chart is Xin-Si, Gui-Si, Ren-Shen, Xin-Hai (辛巳 癸巳 壬申 辛亥); with the Xu hour the hour pillar becomes Geng-Xu 庚戌. Either way it is Ren Water born in early summer, and in both versions Wood and Fire are favorable.

Birth data: a birth certificate, right on the Xu/Hai boundary

The birth certificate gives 9:05 p.m. on 24 May, and astrological databases rate it AA, their highest grade. Duluth lies a little over two degrees west of the Central time zone’s standard meridian, so the true Sun runs about eight minutes behind the clock, while in late May the equation of time pushes it about three minutes ahead. The two roughly cancel, landing near 21:00, which is exactly where the Xu hour (19–21) hands over to the Hai hour (21–23). Rounding true solar time to the minute, our site reads it as the Hai hour, but the margin is a matter of seconds, well within the error of a hospital clock.

Fortunately both versions point the same way: Wood and Fire are favorable in both, and Metal and Water unfavorable in both, and the luck pillars are identical. The difference is strength: the Hai hour adds one more Water and reads strong; the Xu hour adds an Earth and reads balanced. Below we use the Hai hour as the main chart and show both where it matters.

Four pillars and Ten Gods

Our strength engine scores season, roots, visible stems, and the balance of Resource and companions against Wealth, Officer and Output: below 0.35 reads weak, above 0.55 reads strong.

The Hai-hour score is 0.596, strong. The favorable elements are Wood (Output) to drain the chart, Fire (Wealth) to spend its energy and Earth (Officer) to restrain it; what it does not want is more Metal (Resource) and Water (companions).

Two Direct Resource stems plus a Day Master sitting on its birth stage are traditionally read as “absorbs everything, and inspiration never runs dry”; and the favorable Wood is Output, which means getting what you have absorbed back out, in writing and in song. As a young man he read his way through practically every poetry book and folk record in Greenwich Village, and went on to write more than six hundred songs, so the structure is easy to match. But this is a reading made after the fact.

Luck pillars

For a man born in a yin year (the year stem Xin is yin), the luck pillars run backwards, starting at about age 7. The Xu and Hai versions share the same luck pillars.

“fav / unfav” reads the stem first, then the branch: whether each one’s element is favorable (useful), unfavorable, or neither (neutral) for this chart.

The years that made him famous, 1957–1966, fall in the Xin-Mao luck pillar: the stem Xin Metal is Direct Resource and unfavorable, while the branch Mao Wood is Hurting Officer and favorable. Unfavorable on top and favorable underneath can be read as “heavy outside expectations and labels, with the creative drive still running beneath them.” In that decade he was held up as the spokesman of the folk movement and kept rebelling against the label; going electric in 1965 was, in effect, throwing away the “king of folk” crown with his own hands.

Some key years

“fav / unfav” reads the stem first, then the branch: whether each one’s element is favorable (useful), unfavorable, or neither (neutral) for this chart.

1965 (Yi-Si), 1975 (Yi-Mao) and 1997 (Ding-Chou): in all three years both stem and branch are favorable. Wood is Output, Fire is Wealth, and the Chou Earth of 1997 is Officer. The three turning points most widely seen as the most important of his career all fall in fully favorable years. 2016, a Bing-Shen year, is split: the stem Bing Fire is favorable and the branch Shen Metal unfavorable. That year he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and then stayed silent for two weeks before responding. We list these parallels and leave it there.

Where does the chart miss his real life?

Zi Wei Dou Shu chart

The same birth time, cast in Zi Wei Dou Shu (San He school, the same engine as our Zi Wei chart tool, using the same true solar time as the BaZi chart above). BaZi weighs the five elements and what the chart favors; Zi Wei looks at which stars fall in which palace. The two systems ask different questions, so the Zi Wei chart is shown on its own first, followed by where it agrees and disagrees with the BaZi reading.

The gold frame is the Life Palace; the shaded palaces are its three-sides-and-four-directions (Wealth, Career, Travel). Solid badges are the birth-year transformations (Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji), red names are the six malefic stars, and the small word after a major star is its brightness.

Bob Dylan sits right on the line between the Xu and Hai hours. In BaZi the two versions point the same way; in Zi Wei they could hardly be further apart. The Hai-hour version puts Zi Wei, the Emperor star, in the Life Palace in Wu, at its brilliant (strongest) position, joined by Tian Kui. The Emperor star sitting in the Life Palace at full brightness is described in the classics as proud, self-directed and a natural leader. The Wealth Palace holds Wu Qu and Tian Xiang and the Career Palace Lian Zhen and Tian Fu, so the Life, Wealth and Career palaces are all bright. The Xu-hour version, by contrast, has an empty Life Palace, with Tai Yang and Tian Liang in the Wealth Palace. For a singer hailed as “the voice of a generation” who always refused to be anyone’s spokesman, the Emperor star of the Hai-hour version reads very neatly; but a few minutes earlier and the whole chart is replaced. This is exactly where Zi Wei depends on the birth time far more than BaZi does.

With the other birth-time versions, the Zi Wei chart becomes:

In BaZi the hour pillar changes every two hours while the day pillar and above stay put. In Zi Wei the Life Palace is set by the lunar month and the hour, so a different hour moves the Life Palace, the Body Palace, the bureau and every major star at once. The same dispute over a birth hour therefore usually matters more for Zi Wei than for BaZi.

For school, leap-month and Zi-hour settings see the Zi Wei chart page; for how the two systems differ see BaZi vs Zi Wei Dou Shu. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any star can be made to explain it.

Western astrology chart

The same moment of birth, cast as a Western natal chart (tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, the same engine as our natal chart tool). A natal chart uses the sky at the moment of birth, so it needs no true-solar-time correction, but it does need the latitude of the birthplace to fix the Ascendant and the houses. BaZi and Zi Wei are both derived from the Chinese calendar, while a natal chart computes planetary positions directly. Because the three systems start from different places, the chart is listed on its own below, followed by where it agrees with the BaZi and Zi Wei readings.

The Sun is in Gemini, and Mercury, the key planet here, is also in Gemini, in its own sign (domicile). Gemini is the sign of words, language and change, which suits a singer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his lyrics and has overhauled his style every few years. Even more striking is the 5th house: the Moon, the chart ruler Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus are all packed into Taurus in the 5th house. The 5th house rules creativity and performance, and Taurus is the sign of sound, rhythm and solid craft; Uranus there is traditionally read as constant rebellion in one’s creative work, overturning oneself again and again. Not one of the ten planets is in a cardinal sign, which is often read as “not the pioneer who leads the charge, but someone who keeps changing”. A natal chart uses the moment of birth, so it is not affected by the Xu/Hai boundary; the Sagittarius Ascendant would only change sign if he had been born 103 minutes earlier.

Domicile, exaltation, fall and detriment in brackets are the classical categories for how comfortably a planet works in a sign; they are not verdicts of good or bad. For how to read the big three, the ten planets and aspects, see rising sign, Moon sign, the ten planets and aspects. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any sign can be made to explain it.

Does your birth time fall on an hour boundary?

The four pillars, strength score and luck pillars on this page all come from the same engine as the chart on our home page. If your birth time also falls close to the top of an hour, cast both neighboring hours and see whether your strength, favorable elements and luck pillars change. Our page on birth time rectification explains how true solar time and hour boundaries are handled.