Walt Disney’s BaZi: A Candle Flame Ringed by Winter Water

Walt Disney started his first company at 21, went bankrupt at 22, and headed for Hollywood with a single suitcase and forty dollars to start again. He went on to create Mickey Mouse, make the world’s first full-length color animated feature, and build Disneyland; his lifetime tally of Academy Awards is still the record for any individual. His birth time is on his birth certificate, and the chart is Xin-Chou, Ji-Hai, Ding-Si, Geng-Zi: Ding Fire born at the start of winter, with the branches Hai, Zi and Chou forming a complete Water combination. Our engine reads it as weak. What makes this chart worth studying is how neatly the favorable and unfavorable years line up with the great ups and downs of his life, and why the neater the fit, the more careful we should be about hindsight.

Birth data: a birth certificate

Chicago lies a little east of the Central time zone’s standard meridian (90° W), and in early December the equation of time puts the real sun nearly ten minutes ahead of the clock, so the true solar time (the local sun time BaZi uses) comes to 0:53. The Zi hour begins at 23:00 the previous evening, and some schools change the day pillar at 23:00 rather than midnight; but he was born after midnight, so his day pillar is Ding-Si 丁巳 of 5 December under either rule. We also cast all twelve possible hours: 11 of them read weak, and every one has Wood and Fire among its favorable elements.

The Four Pillars and the Ten Gods

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

A score of 0.167 is clearly weak. The Ding Fire root is clashed, the pressure stars form a combination, and Wealth shows in the stems: this is a chart under enormous pressure. The favorable elements are Wood (Resource) to feed the fire, Fire (companions) to back it up, and Earth (Output) to dam the water. The unfavorable ones are Metal (Wealth) and Water (Officer and Seven Killings).

A weak chart in which the pressure stars form a combination is traditionally read as “chased by pressure all his life, and forced by pressure to find what he is capable of”. Eating God is the one thing that can stop the water, and Eating God stands for creativity, entertainment and the gift of making people happy. A man who held off one financial crisis after another with cartoons and a theme park makes an easy match for this structure.

Luck pillars

For a man born in a yin year (the year stem Xin is yin), the luck pillars run backwards, starting at age 10.

“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 1940 to 1959, the two luck pillars Yi-Wei and Jia-Wu are favorable in both stem and branch: Wood feeds the fire, Fire backs up the Day Master, and Wei Earth dams the water. These twenty years actually opened very badly. In 1940 two big films failed one after the other, in 1941 his staff went on strike, and the company was deep in debt. But by the 1950s Cinderella had rescued the finances, Disneyland had opened, and his career reached its peak.

Walt Disney died in 1966. We do not use BaZi to discuss lifespan or health, and that holds for every chart in this series.

Year by year: a chart that lines up very neatly

1923 was a Gui-Hai year: stem and branch are both Water, the Officer and Seven Killings his chart fears most, and that year he went bankrupt. The years Wu-Chen (1928), Ding-Chou (1937) and Yi-Wei (1955) are favorable in both stem and branch: Earth dams the water, Fire backs up the Day Master, Wood feeds the fire. Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Disneyland arrived in those three years. Of all the charts in this series, this is the one where the years line up most neatly with the big events of a life.

But a fully favorable year is not a smooth one. Early in 1928 his distributor took Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the character he had created, and hired away most of his animators, one of the heaviest blows of his career; Mickey Mouse was conceived on the gloomy train ride home. Within the same favorable year came first the setback, then the comeback. A year’s rating describes the five-element structure of the year as a whole, not the quality of every single day.

Then there is 1940, a Geng-Chen year: the stem Geng Metal is unfavorable and the branch Chen Earth is favorable, half and half, and that was the year two big films failed back to back. That fits too. Precisely because this chart lines up so neatly, the warning bears repeating: we knew his life before we looked at the years, and hindsight is at its most powerful here.

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.

Walt Disney’s Zi Wei chart has Tian Ji in the Life Palace (in the Hai palace), with the Body Palace in the same place, joined by Tian Ma, Di Jie and Di Kong. Tian Ji is the star of intelligence and planning: a quick mind full of ideas. Tian Ma, the “sky horse”, stands for travel and constant motion. Di Kong and Di Jie, two malefic stars sitting together in the Life Palace, are traditionally read as a mind that roams free of convention, and also as a life prone to big financial swings. A man who built an entertainment empire on imagination, and who more than once pushed his company to the edge of bankruptcy, fits this palace closely. The Wealth Palace holds Tian Tong and Ju Men, with Ju Men taking the Lu transformation; the Career Palace is empty and has to borrow the stars of the palace opposite. All of this is read 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.

The Sagittarius Sun is in the 3rd house (communication and storytelling). Sagittarius is imagination and adventure, and the 3rd house is about getting things across: telling adventure stories to everyone is exactly what Disney did all his life. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn crowd together in Capricorn in the 4th house, with Mars exalted in Capricorn and Saturn in its own sign. That is the practical force that turns dreams into a company and a theme park, and the 4th house is the home and family; his park was designed as a place for the whole family to go together. Virgo rising, with the chart ruler Mercury in Scorpio in the 3rd house, adds attention to detail and depth. BaZi reads him as weak Ding Fire surrounded by winter water, an emphasis on adversity that runs along the same line as the Capricorn themes of endurance and late success in his natal chart.

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.

What in your chart holds back the pressure?

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 much Officer and Seven Killings you have, whether your Day Master can carry it, and which elements are favorable for you. A weak chart leans on Resource to feed it, on companions to back it up, or on Output to keep Seven Killings in check; the further reading below goes into each of these.