Vincent van Gogh’s BaZi: A Spring Fire, and a Decade of Unfavorable Luck

Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, a bookshop clerk and a lay preacher in a mining district before deciding at 27 to become a painter; he died at 37. In that decade he made more than two thousand works, yet sold almost nothing while he lived, and only after his death did he become one of the most famous painters in the world. His birth register gives 11 a.m., which converts to a time right on the boundary between the Si and Wu hours. The chart comes out as Gui-Chou, Yi-Mao, Bing-Shen, Gui-Si (癸丑 乙卯 丙申 癸巳; with the Wu hour, the hour pillar is Jia-Wu): Bing Fire born in spring, and both hour pillars read balanced, favoring Wood and Fire. The most intriguing thing about this chart is that his entire career as a painter falls inside one luck pillar that is unfavorable in both stem and branch.

Birth data: a birth register, on the Si/Wu boundary

Van Gogh’s birth time comes from the birth register in Zundert, and the Astro-Databank birth data collection rates it AA, its highest grade. The problem is that the Netherlands in 1853 had no standard time zone; each town kept its own local time. At the end of March the equation of time puts the true Sun four to five minutes behind local mean time, which gives 10:55, only five minutes short of the Wu hour (11:00–13:00). If the clocks of the day were set by the Sun, it would be exactly 11:00, just inside the Wu hour.

Fortunately the two hour pillars give exactly the same verdict: both are balanced, favoring Wood and Fire and disfavoring Metal and Water, and the luck pillars are identical too. We also cast all twelve hours, and every one of them includes Fire among the favorable elements, so the overall direction does not depend on the hour. Below, the Si hour is the main chart, with both versions shown side by side where it matters.

The Four Pillars and the Ten Gods

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

The Si-hour version scores 0.353, just over the weak threshold, so it reads balanced. Bing Fire has Mao Wood (Direct Resource) feeding it and Si Fire as a root, but two Gui Water Officers attack it and Shen Metal (Wealth) drains it. The favorable elements are Wood (Resource) and Fire (companions); the unfavorable ones are Metal (Wealth) and Water (Officer and Seven Killings).

Two Direct Officers showing on the stems are traditionally read as “very conscious of rules and social expectations, and under heavy pressure from them”. He came from a pastor’s family, and for the first half of his life he kept looking for a “proper” career: art dealer, teacher, preacher. None of them lasted. This is a parallel, not a verdict.

Luck pillars: his painting decade is one unfavorable luck pillar

For a man born in a yin year (the year stem Gui is yin), the luck pillars run backwards, starting at about age 9. The Si-hour and Wu-hour versions have exactly 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.

From 1881 to 1890, after he began to paint, he was in the Ren-Zi luck pillar: the stem Ren Water is Seven Killings and the branch Zi Water is Direct Officer, both unfavorable, and both the Water that attacks him. For ten full years he lived on money his brother Theo sent every month, his work did not sell, and his physical and mental condition was poor. This was also the decade in which he painted nearly all of the works he is known for.

It is one of the most extreme cases in this series: the most important achievement of a life falls entirely inside one luck pillar that is unfavorable in both stem and branch. An unfavorable luck pillar describes pressure and depletion, and he certainly bore enormous pressure in those ten years; but an unfavorable pillar does not mean nothing gets done, and it says nothing about whether the work is good.

Van Gogh died in 1890, aged only 37. We do not use BaZi to discuss lifespan, health or cause of death, and that holds for every chart in this series.

“Famous only after death” is not in the chart

The two luck pillars after his death, Xin-Hai and Geng-Xu, are also unfavorable, yet that is exactly when his reputation began to form. His sister-in-law Johanna published his letters and lent his paintings to exhibitions far and wide, and the large retrospective in Amsterdam in 1905 brought him to the wider public.

Luck pillars describe a person’s chart while they are alive; what the world thinks of them afterwards is not in anyone’s BaZi. Some people say “his destiny was to flourish only after death”, but that cannot be tested, and this site does not use it. The more honest account is that his paintings came to be seen because of Johanna’s work organizing and promoting them, and because taste in art changed in the early twentieth century.

Some key years

In 1886, a Bing-Xu year, the stem Bing Fire is a Friend (companion) and favorable; that year he went to Paris, met the Impressionists, and his canvases moved from dark Dutch tones to bright color. In 1888, a Wu-Zi year, the branch Zi Water is Direct Officer and unfavorable; he painted more of his major works in Arles that year than in any other, and at the end of the year went through a mental crisis. We list these parallels and do not take them 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.

Van Gogh sits on the Si/Wu boundary. In BaZi the two hour pillars give the same verdict, but in Zi Wei they are two different charts. The Si-hour version puts Tian Ji and Tian Liang together in the Life Palace (in the Xu palace). Tian Ji with Tian Liang is a thoughtful, argumentative pairing with a religious and philosophical streak; as a young man he set out to become a pastor and went to preach in the Belgian mining district, so this reading holds up. The Wu-hour version puts Tai Yin with the Ke transformation in the Life Palace, which also holds the Body Palace: Tai Yin is delicate, sensitive and led by feeling. The two charts have one thing in common: both have Di Kong in the Wealth Palace, and the Wu-hour version adds Di Jie. Di Kong and Di Jie in the Wealth Palace are traditionally read as “money that will not stay; having wealth is like having none”. He lived almost entirely on his brother Theo’s support and sold only a handful of paintings in his lifetime, so the match holds in both versions. It is one of the few Zi Wei signals on this page that the birth hour does not change, but it is still a reading made after the fact.

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 Aries in the 10th house: drive, initiative, throwing himself in head first. He only started painting at 27 and produced more than two thousand works in the next ten years, which is Aries speed and intensity. Venus (beauty) and Mars (action) are conjunct in Pisces, also in the 10th house, and Venus is exalted in Pisces: an extreme sensitivity to color and feeling that became his actual work. The chart ruler, the Moon, is in Sagittarius in the 6th house (daily work); Sagittarius is the search for meaning and faith, and early on he wanted to be a missionary. None of the ten planets is in an Air sign, which tradition reads as a weakness in social ease and abstract communication. Where it does not fit: this looks like a fairly powerful chart, and astrology on its own cannot account for the hardship of a man who could barely sell a painting while he lived. On that point, the entirely unfavorable luck pillar in his BaZi fits better.

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 sit on a boundary?

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