Ernest Hemingway’s BaZi: Midsummer Metal and a Whole Field of Wealth Stars

At 18 Hemingway went to the Italian front as an ambulance driver and came home wounded; in his early twenties he moved to Paris and became the defining writer of the “Lost Generation”. He wrote about war, bullfighting, hunting and the sea, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature the following year. His birth time comes from his birth certificate, and the chart is Ji-Hai, Xin-Wei, Geng-Yin, Geng-Chen (己亥 辛未 庚寅 庚辰): Geng Metal born in high summer, with the branches combining Hai and Yin, and Hai and Wei, into Wood, a full combination of Wealth stars. Our engine reads it as balanced, and all twelve hours favor Earth and Metal.

Birth data: birth certificate

Oak Park lies a little over two degrees east of the Central time zone’s meridian, which puts the Sun nine minutes ahead of the clock, and the equation of time in late July takes six minutes back. The result is 8:03, comfortably inside the Chen hour. We also cast all twelve hours: every one favors Earth and Metal, with the strength moving between balanced and weak (4 of the twelve read weak), so the big picture does not depend on the hour.

Four Pillars and Ten Gods

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

A score of 0.451: balanced. Geng Metal is held up by the companions on the stems and the Resource in the branches, while the Wood combination in the branches wears it down. The favorable elements are Earth (Resource) and Metal (companions); the unfavorable ones are Wood (Wealth) and Fire (Officer and Seven Killings). On climate, high summer runs hot and dry, but the Hai Water in the year branch keeps the chart moist, and our engine notes that “the chart already has Water; it is moist enough”.

A full combination of Wealth stars has two traditional meanings. One is a strong appetite for material things, pleasure and adventure. The other is that in a man’s chart Wealth is also the star of the wife, so plenty of Wealth is read as plenty of change in love and marriage. He married four times, which is public fact; we explain the traditional reading and do not comment on his marriages.

Luck pillars

For a man born in a yin year (the year stem Ji is yin), the luck pillars run backwards, starting at age 6.

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

In the Wu-Chen luck pillar, when he made his name in Paris, stem and branch are both Earth and both favorable, and in those ten years he wrote the two novels that secured his place in literature. The next two pillars, Ding-Mao and Bing-Yin, are unfavorable in both stem and branch: Fire attacks Metal and Wood wears it down. In those twenty years he reported on the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea, which many consider his finest work.

Hemingway died in 1961. We do not use BaZi to discuss health, lifespan or cause of death, for him or for anyone else in this series.

Where it does not fit: an all-unfavorable Nobel year

1940 is a Geng-Chen year: the stem Geng Metal is Friend and the branch Chen Earth is Indirect Resource, all favorable, and that year For Whom the Bell Tolls sold enormously. That fits. But 1926, Bing-Yin, the year he became famous, and 1954, Jia-Wu, the year he won the Nobel Prize, are unfavorable in both stem and branch: Bing-Yin is Fire plus Wood and Jia-Wu is Wood plus Fire, exactly the two elements this chart fears most. The highest honor of a writer’s life fell in an all-unfavorable year, right at the boundary of all-unfavorable luck pillars. We list both years as they are, because talking only about 1940 would make this chart look far more accurate than it is.

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.

Hemingway’s Zi Wei chart has Tian Tong in the Life Palace (the Mao palace). Tian Tong is not bright there, and Di Jie sits in the same palace. Tian Tong is a star of good fortune that loves pleasure and feeling; that fits the hunting, fishing, bullfights, good food and drink of his public life, but Tian Tong is usually a gentle star, which is not quite the tough-guy image. The Wealth Palace holds a bright Ju Men, and the Body Palace falls in the Wealth Palace too. The Career Palace holds a fallen Tian Ji together with Qing Yang and Di Kong, so the palace of work is far from calm. Opposite the Life Palace, the Travel Palace holds a bright Tai Yin with Zuo Fu: he spent most of his life in Paris, Spain and Cuba, far more of it abroad than at home. All of this is hindsight reading.

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.

Mars is in Virgo in the 1st house, right on the Ascendant. The 1st house is a person’s outward image and body, and Mars stands for action, competition, combat and adventure: going to war, boxing, hunting, bullfighting. The image he gave the world is almost a portrait of “Mars in the 1st house”. Virgo rising prizes precision, which sits well with a prose style pared down to the bone; he said writing should be like an iceberg, with only one-eighth showing above the water. The Sun is in Cancer, an emotional, nostalgic sign that contrasts sharply with the tough-guy image, and the Moon is in Capricorn, in its detriment, traditionally read as emotions held in and hard to express. Where it does not fit: BaZi reads him as a balanced Geng Metal with a full combination of Wealth stars, while the natal chart gives a Cancer Sun and a Capricorn Moon. The two systems describe very different people.

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.

How many Wealth stars are in your chart?

The Four Pillars, strength score and luck pillars on this page all come from the same engine as the chart on our home page. Enter your birth date to see whether your Wealth stars form a combination, whether your Day Master can carry them, and what your favorable elements are.