Muhammad Ali’s BaZi: Geng Metal Surrounded by Its Own Kind

When Ali was 12 his bicycle was stolen. Furious, he wanted to find the thief and fight him, and a police officer suggested he learn to box first. At 18 he won Olympic gold in Rome; at 22 he became heavyweight champion of the world. Then he refused induction into the army, was stripped of his title and barred from the ring for more than three years, losing his prime; at 32, in the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire, he knocked out George Foreman and took the title back. His birth time is on his birth certificate and casts as Xin-Si, Xin-Chou, Geng-Wu, Yi-You (辛巳 辛丑 庚午 乙酉): Geng Metal born in deep winter, with two Xin Metal stems (Rob Wealth) on the surface and the branches Si, You and Chou combining into Metal. Our engine reads it as strong.

Birth data: a birth certificate

The United States began year-round “War Time” only on 9 February 1942, so he was born on standard time. Louisville lies a little over four degrees east of the Central time zone’s standard meridian, putting the true Sun seventeen minutes ahead, and in mid-January the equation of time holds it back another ten; converted, that is 18:42, eighteen minutes clear of the Xu hour. (BaZi uses true solar time, the time by the Sun’s actual position.) We also cast all twelve hours: 7 read strong and the rest balanced, and only the Wei and Hai hours switch the favorable elements to Earth and Metal; every other hour favors Water, Fire and Wood. We go with the You hour on the birth certificate.

Four Pillars and Ten Gods

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

Score 0.653: strong. With Metal overgrown, the favorable elements are Water (Output) to drain it, Fire (Officer) to forge it and Wood (Wealth) to wear it down; what the chart does not want is more Earth (Resource) and Metal (companions).

A chart crowded with companions (Friend and Rob Wealth) is traditionally read as “competitive, never admits defeat, intensely self-assertive”; with Direct Officer on the day branch and Officer the only restraining force, it also describes a life spent wrestling with rules and authority. His pre-fight boast, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, and his head-on collision with the U.S. government when he refused the draft both look a lot like this chart. All of this is matching after the fact.

Luck pillars: the decade of his ban was a luck pillar unfavorable throughout

For a man born in a yin year (the year stem Xin is yin), the luck pillars run backwards, starting at age 4.

“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 Wu-Xu luck pillar of 1965–1974 has Wu Earth (Indirect Resource) on the stem and Xu Earth (Indirect Resource) on the branch: unfavorable throughout, and it is Earth, the element that makes overgrown Metal even stronger. Right at the start of this decade he was stripped of his title for refusing the draft, and from age 25 to 28, three and a half years at a boxer’s peak, he could not fight at all.

Yet this all-unfavorable luck pillar ended with the most famous victory of his career. So the fairer reading is: this decade brought enormous drain and confrontation, not “this decade took everything away”.

A few key years

In 1974 (Jia-Yin) and 1975 (Yi-Mao), both stem and branch are Wood, which is his Wealth, and all of it favorable: the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila, the two most famous fights in boxing history, fell in two back-to-back years that were favorable throughout. 1967 was a Ding-Wei year: the stem Ding Fire (Direct Officer) is favorable and the branch Wei Earth (Direct Resource) unfavorable, half and half, the year he clashed head-on with the government. In 1960, the year of his Olympic gold, the Geng-Zi year has Geng Metal (Friend) on the stem, unfavorable, and Zi Water (Hurting Officer) on the branch, favorable, again half and half. We list these matches 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.

Ali’s Zi Wei chart has Tai Yin in the Life Palace (the Chen branch). Tai Yin is fallen there, so the Life Palace itself is not especially bright; but the Body Palace falls in the Travel Palace, where Tai Yang carries the Quan transformation. The Travel Palace is how a person appears out in the world and in front of the public; Tai Yang is radiance and fame, and Quan is authority and command. A chart whose Life Palace is plain and whose power lies entirely “out there”, belonging to a man who blazed in the ring and in front of the cameras and who shaped an era with his words outside it: that reading holds together. The Wealth Palace has Tian Ji, brilliant, and the Career Palace has Tian Tong and Tian Liang along with Tuo Luo and Di Jie. All of this is reading after the fact.

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.

Leo rising with the Sun as chart ruler: confident, flamboyant, happiest at the center of the stage, and “I am the greatest” is practically a Leo Ascendant’s line. But the Sun and Moon both sit in the 6th house (daily work and training), and the Sun is in Capricorn, the sign of discipline: loud in public, grinding in private, two layers the chart shows very clearly. A Aquarius Moon is attachment to freedom and principle; he refused induction into the army, was barred from boxing for more than three years as a result, and did not change his position. None of the ten planets is in a Water sign, which tradition reads as someone who does not easily show vulnerability. BaZi reads him as a strong Geng Metal with companions forming a combination, likewise a hard, unyielding pattern.

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 companions does your chart have?

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 how many companions your chart holds, whether your Day Master is strong or weak, and which elements are favorable for you. A strong chart likes to be drained, worn down and restrained; the further reading below goes into each of these.