Sigmund Freud’s BaZi: Early-Summer Ji Earth and a Full Output Combination

Sigmund Freud was born in a small town in Moravia and moved with his family to Vienna at four. There he studied medicine, opened his practice and wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, and there he stayed for nearly eighty years, until at 82 he fled the Nazis for London. His birth time is recorded in his authorized biography, and the chart comes out as Bing-Chen, Gui-Si, Ji-Chou, Gui-You (丙辰 癸巳 己丑 癸酉): Ji Earth, the soft soil of fields, born in early summer, with the branches Si, You and Chou combining into Metal. Our engine reads it as balanced. The unusual thing about this chart is that all three systems, BaZi, Zi Wei and Western astrology, seem to match his life very closely. The neater the fit, the more a reminder about hindsight is needed.

Birth data: from the biography, and the hour changes the favorable elements

The Austrian Empire had no standard time zones in 1856. Taking local mean time and adding the equation of time for early May gives 18:34 in true solar time (the time shown by the sun at the birthplace, which BaZi uses), a little over twenty minutes before the Xu hour. This chart needs a special note: we cast all twelve hours, and only 4 of them favor Fire and Earth; the others switch to Metal, Water and Wood. In other words, this chart’s favorable elements are very sensitive to the hour, and the reading below rests on the You hour recorded in the biography.

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.

A score of 0.433: balanced. Ji Earth is fed by Bing Fire (Direct Resource) and rooted in the Chou Earth it sits on, but the Output Metal combination formed by Si, You and Chou drains its strength outward, and the two Gui Water stems wear it down further. The chart favors Fire (Resource) and Earth (companions) and disfavors Water (Wealth) and Wood (Officer).

A full Output combination is this chart’s most vivid feature. Among the Ten Gods, Output is the way a person “speaks themselves out”, and also the urge to see through things and challenge authority. A doctor who invented the “talking cure”, argued that human behavior is driven by the unconscious and took on the moral outlook of an entire Victorian age matches a full Output combination almost word for word.

Luck pillars

For a man born in a yang year (the year stem Bing is yang), the luck pillars run forwards, starting at age 11.

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

From 1886, the two luck pillars Bing-Shen and Ding-You have Bing Fire and Ding Fire on the stem, both Resource and both favorable; the branches Shen and You are Output, neither favorable nor unfavorable. Over these twenty years he went from neurologist to the builder of psychoanalysis, step by step: Resource stands for learning and ideas, Output for expression and breakthroughs, and both arrived together. The next pillar, Wu-Xu, is Earth in both stem and branch and entirely favorable, and in that decade psychoanalysis grew from a small Viennese circle into an international movement.

Freud died in 1939. We do not discuss health, lifespan or cause of death from a BaZi chart, and that holds for every chart in this series.

A few key years

1886 is a Bing-Xu year: the stem Bing Fire is Direct Resource and the branch Xu Earth is Rob Wealth, favorable in both, and that year he opened his practice, married and truly began his life’s work. 1899 is a Ji-Hai year: the stem Ji Earth (Friend) is favorable, the branch Hai Water (Direct Wealth) is unfavorable. He wrote his most important book, but for its first few years it sold only a few hundred copies. 1938 is a Wu-Yin year: the stem Wu Earth is favorable, the branch Yin Wood unfavorable, a half-and-half year in which he lost the city he had lived in for nearly eighty years. We lay these out and go no further.

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.

Freud’s Zi Wei chart has Tai Yang and Ju Men together in the Life Palace (the Shen palace), with Ju Men brilliant. Ju Men is the star of speech in Zi Wei: eloquence, debate, inquiry and doubt. The old texts say that with Tai Yang and Ju Men together, a person is suited to making a living by the tongue, by argument and by teaching. Psychoanalysis, which he invented, is the “talking cure” in which the patient gets better by speaking, so this reading fits smoothly. Interestingly, his Wealth, Career and Travel palaces are all empty, and his Body Palace falls in the empty Travel Palace, where Tian Ma and Di Kong also sit: a chart concentrated in the Life Palace, with every other key palace borrowing stars from across the board. All of this is read with hindsight.

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.

A Scorpio Ascendant, with the Moon and Saturn both in the 8th house: this may be the chart astrologers cite more than any other. Scorpio is the sign most concerned with depth, secrets and instinct, and the 8th house rules sex, death, the hidden mind and taboo, while the core of Freud’s theory is exactly the unconscious, the sexual drive and the death instinct. The Sun is in Taurus in the 7th house, the house of one-to-one relationships, which matches a working life spent beside the couch, facing one patient at a time. The chart ruler Mars is retrograde in Libra, its sign of detriment, traditionally read as “uneasy with open confrontation, with its force turned inward.” A hindsight warning: this chart is almost too on-topic, which is exactly why we should be careful. Had he been born 42 minutes earlier, the Ascendant would be Libra and the whole house arrangement would shift with it.

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 Output form a full combination 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 Eating God and Hurting Officer form a combination, whether your Day Master can carry it, and which elements are favorable for you.