Is your wealth spirit in bazi really about income? A lot of people think “I have a lot of wealth spirit in my chart so I’m going to make a lot of money” or “I don’t have any wealth so I’m always going to be broke.” I have not found the amount of wealth spirit in your chart or the amount of pressure that wealth puts on you to correlate with your bank account.

What is wealth in bazi? Your wealth is what your day master has control over. Wealth spirit is your need for control. It’s what you take care of and all of your responsibilities. It’s your projects and your promises. That’s your wealth. Wealth is the promises that you keep.

Wealth spirit gives you competency, reliability, and accountability. Having a lot of wealth spirit tells you that you feel the need to have control very strongly but it actually doesn’t tell you whether you’re able to hold that control or not. If you have a strong day master, then you can. If you have a weak day master, then you can’t. You use another strategy for life.

Wood controls earth by gripping it tightly so a wood day master who is born in between the seasons would have strong wealth spirit in their chart since they are wood controlling earth. If you are a fire day master and you’re born during the fall, then you have strong wealth spirit because you’re like fire that is melting down metal. If you are earth day master and you were born during the winter, then you have strong wealth spirit and you’re like earth trying to fence in a flood. If you are metal day master and born during the spring, you’re trying to control all that wood by pruning it. If you are a water day master and you were born in the summer, then you’re like water trying to put on fires.

That’s the experience of wealth spirit—you actually feel as though you’re trying to fight something. That’s why wealth spirit gives you the desire to stay in control.

What is wealth spirit?

The thing to keep in mind about wealth spirit is that it can actually represent your lovers. The reason why wealth spirit represents your lovers is because your lovers are the people who you make promises to.

Wealth spirit represents your sense of social accountability. It represents the promises that you make and your desire to keep them. Wealth spirit is your tasks, those things that you do for people you care about. Wealth is the things that you put effort into taking care of. The reason why we call the thing in your chart you control wealth is because we assume that you are going to try and take care of things that you have control over.

Very often, wealth spirit are the people who depend on you. If you have a lot of wealth in your bazi chart, then a lot of people might be relying on you.

The other thing to keep in mind about wealth spirit is that it doesn’t give you strength. In fact, wealth spirit uses the strength that you already have.

I say this because people confuse wealth with resources. Your resources in bazi is your mother spirit because anything that feeds you and gives you life is a mother. Your wealth doesn’t feed you. Your wealth is something that needs your care. It’s the things that show up for, the things that make you plan and make rules for and exercise self control for.

You can think of your wealth as the work that you choose. I know that we live in an age where we call all kinds of things work—our job, our art practices, our protest, and even the work that we put into our lives and relationships. “I’m working on my relationships right now.” “I’m working on my emotional regulation.” If you call it work, then you have a sense of responsibility over it. That makes it your wealth.

Wealth spirit is something that you clash with. It also gives birth to your official spirit which is something else you clash with. Your responsibilities give you authority. Both of these things take a lot of strength to handle.

Not all day masters like wealth. Wood does because wood needs some soil to take root. Wood people, who are brilliant and inspiring, need some responsibilities or else they won’t build the habits that they need to cultivate their talents. Water likes wealth too because fire helps water circulate. Water people like to be social and they get excited when they’re given responsibilities.

Earth does not like wealth because too much water disperses earth. Too many people relying on earth gives earth too many social influences. Fire doesn't like wealth either because metal represents the sunset hour for Bing fire and it controls the mother spirit for Ding fire. Too much social influence takes away fire’s solitude and fire needs solitude. Metal tends to like Indirect Wealth more than Direct Wealth because metal likes to be challenged.

I think that wealth spirit can represent more than just your lovers. Wealth spirit is basically your sense of community accountability. If you have a lot of wealth spirit, then you have a lot of people around you that you take care of. Those people might be friends or neighbors or coworkers.

What helps us hold wealth spirit is usually our official spirit. Responsibility doesn’t make sense until we understand our shared histories. Wealth spirit grows out of some kind of shared purpose. Having a goal helps us hold our responsibilities. Without official spirit, wealth spirit can overwhelm you.

Direct Wealth

The stereotype about Direct Wealth is someone who likes to save what they have. It’s the person who never turns on the AC and dries paper towels to use them again. It’s the person who works hard at a stable job that gives them a stable income. I’m like…is every immigrant parent a Direct Wealth person? Lol.

But does Direct Wealth actually give someone a stable job? Not always. Does Direct Wealth always make a person super stingy? Also not always.

Direct Wealth is about having control. It’s about having a responsibility and then showing up to take care of that responsibility using your ability. Direct Wealth gives a person a tremendous amount of control. When you trust the amount of control that you have, you put a huge amount of time into honing your craft.

Basically, having strong Direct Wealth in your chart can make you very, very good at the things that you want to do. Direct Wealth can give you competency. That is, if you can hold onto your Direct Wealth.

Take David Lynch as an example. David Lynch has strong Direct Wealth and he dedicated himself to filmmaking as a kid. He exercised an impressive amount of creative control in what he did because he never allowed a movie studio to dictate a single piece of his vision. That’s why his shows and movies look so different from everyone else from his time.

Was he controlling as a director? No, not by reputation. But his relationships to actors he worked with were strong and long term. He built that trust over time. That’s Direct Wealth well handled.

If you have strong Direct Wealth in your chart and your day master is strong enough to hold that wealth, then you’re like that long term friend who still chats with people who you went to kindergarten with. You keep your friends. You’re super reliable. When you say that you’re going to do something, you do it and you don’t compromise your principles due to external pressure.

But what if your day master struggles to control or use Direct Wealth spirit?

Direct Wealth is still going to be demanding control from your bones. You’re still going to strive after competency and longevity in all that you do but you’re going to fear that loss of control. What happens when people fear losing control? They get rigid. They feel overwhelmed and even kind of helpless on the inside so they clench down tighter and tighter.

These are two very extreme examples but, when I looked for people with strong Direct Wealth in their charts I found two people: Richard Helms and Benito Mussolini. Richard Helms ran the CIA for Nixon and ran the MK Ultra program. Mussolini invented fascism.

Obviously, not all Direct Wealth people become fascists. I still wanted to mention this not to be negative about Direct Wealth but to point something out—your wealth spirit is something that clashes against you. It challenges you. Your official spirit also clashes with you but it gives birth to mother spirit which feeds you and helps you. Your wealth spirit challenges you and it gives birth to your official spirit which challenges you further. That’s why some day masters don’t really like wealth, because your wealth spirit actually shows you what you fear.

Control is motivated in part by fear. David Lynch didn’t allow ABC to influence Twin Peaks because he had fears about what it would become under too much studio influence. But he was able to handle that fear and act accordingly, building trust with his team. Helms and Mussolini used their control to invent even more fears not just for themselves but for a lot of other people. Both Helms and Mussolini actually have weak day masters that can’t handle their strong Direct Wealth.

Control doesn’t strengthen you. Direct Wealth people respond to fear by taking on more control. But if that becomes overwhelming for you? Then you need to strengthen yourself first, not look for strength through control. Control on its own doesn’t give you any strength. It actually weakens you. If you have a life structure where you need a strong sense of control, then you need to look for support. You need trust to hold onto control or else control will deplete you.

Indirect Wealth

If Direct Wealth is the planning type, the type to hold onto every paper towel in case they need to use it later on, then Indirect Wealth is its evil twin. Indirect Wealth doesn’t really plan.

Indirect Wealth speculates instead. It takes risks. Indirect Wealth gambles.

You might be thinking, isn’t wealth spirit about control? If Indirect Wealth doesn’t plan and save and discern then is it even a sense of control? Of course it is. The reason why people make bets isn’t because they want to lose control. We make bets because we want more control. In fact, you take the most risks in life when you want control most. That’s why people drop everything to go back to school when they want more control over their goals.

Remember—wealth spirit is about control and control is about how you respond to your fears. People take risks when they’re scared.

Weirdly enough, I found another famous filmmaker whose chart has strong Indirect Wealth. That person is Francis Ford Coppola. If David Lynch is Direct Wealth who was uncompromising in his vision and built trust with his actors long term, then Coppola is kind of the opposite. Coppola bankrupted himself to make Apocalypse Now and had to make a third Godfather movie because of it. He did not cultivate trust in his team. Marlon Brando hated him. The guy who was the male lead had a heart attack and his brother had to do the voice over. A typhoon hit the set and he kept filming. Indigenous people did a ceremony to curse the movie that Coppola actually filmed and kept in the movie.

Chaotic? Yes. That’s Indirect Wealth. Indirect Wealth is not trying to follow the plan. It’s trying to improve upon the plan by staging all kinds of spectacular innovations. This spirit is a gambler.

Funnily enough, Stansfield Turner, the guy who led the CIA under Jimmy Carter also has very strong Indirect Wealth in his chart. Helms has strong Direct Wealth, ran a mind control operation that was responsible for traumatizing a number of people, and was known to be a company man who valued secrecy above all. Turner is very different. He is Indirect Wealth. He came into the CIA, fired everyone, and is blamed for the Iranian Revolution due to the CIA not having as much staff under his leadership. Turner was known as a reformer. He also prosecuted a staff member for writing a memoir about the CIA and passed a law prohibiting this kind of behavior but was later prosecuted for his own memoir about the CIA under the very same law that he had passed.

A planner? Not really.

But let’s talk about some normal people. Enough filmmakers and CIA agents. I just thought that this was interesting.

I always like to think about Direct Wealth as the control that you hold onto and about Indirect Wealth as the control that you let go of. Direct Wealth is like an ancestor who had to take care of a lot of people on their own and they refuse to let go of their plans and budgets because they’re afraid of running out.

Indirect Wealth? Indirect Wealth is an ancestor who shared the responsibility of taking care of people with comrades. Indirect Wealth people are very willing to give everything that they have away. This ancestor believes that, if they drop the responsibility, then someone else will come to pick up the task. They believe that, if they drop one responsibility, then they’ll have room for something else.

These people are very giving, sometimes to their own detriment. Indirect Wealth has the reputation of wanting to show off but they don’t mean to. They’re actually just generous and they want you to feel taken care of. If Indirect Wealth goes out to eat, they’ll probably pick up the check for the table on an impulse. That’s them giving what they have away.

Does Indirect Wealth have a plan? No. They have a gamble. That’s very different. They have a desire or a fear and they’re willing to sacrifice something to either gain something or to cut that fear away. That’s why people take risks, because they’re willing to make a sacrifice for some purpose.

Again, this works if you give your stuff and your responsibilities to people who you trust. Just like Direct Wealth, Indirect Wealth doesn’t strengthen you. How could risk and gambling strengthen you? Indirect Wealth also requires support and trust. You can take risks if you have support. You need to know how to ask for help if you want to use any kind of wealth spirit.

What if you don’t have any wealth spirit?

I’ve met several people who have no wealth spirit in their chart. In fact, I was raised by one. My mother is Bing Fire and has no metal in her chart. No wealth sounds bad but it isn’t that bad. Hear me out.

First of all, my mother has no idea where her stuff is. Every single time she leaves the house, she loses her keys. Her keys might be in her purse, left on a table somewhere, or (one time) thrown on the ground in a parking lot. I’ve seen her try to use a credit card that expired more than ten years prior. Last time I went to Uniqlo with her, she wanted a jacket. When she tried to pay, she realized that she lost her credit card.

If you have no wealth spirit in your chart, you can look for child spirit. Child spirit will give you wealth spirit. First of all, children are responsibilities. Second of all, your creative ideas turn into projects and that teaches you responsibility.

Do I worry about my mom? Kind of. She has no wealth spirit so she has no desire to feel any control over her belongings or her life. That’s why she loses so many important things all the time. She doesn’t pay taxes. She doesn’t pay bills. She has no idea how much money she has and she hates to work. But guess what? My mom’s chart doesn’t actually need wealth spirit. She works for the church and the church pays you regardless of the hours you put in because the church is funded on mission and donations. My mom would make a very poor engineer since she does not plan or track things. But she’s not an engineer. She does spiritual work. Her whole life is built around asking for help and giving help. She doesn’t need that much control or planning.

People with weak wealth spirit can be kind of like this. They’re just floating around. They don’t feel the need to control and they appear to be kind of adrift. These people are good at winging it. They’re used to being in situations where they made a table and a chair but the chair is too tall for the table and now they have to fudge the legs. That’s fine when it comes to any kind of helping profession. That’s not great if you’re building a bridge.

Wealth spirit is about planning, about controlling the outcome. If you don’t have a lot of wealth spirit, then you don’t plan. You don’t try to control the outcome. You believe that fate will provide the answers.

And that might be stressful. Not having a plan can create a lot of problems if you’re an engineer or architect. You might be stressed constantly about not having followed through on what you said you would because you forgot. You just don’t have that anxiety around losing control but that causes you problems because you do things that require you to plan ahead.

Or, that might be fine. You might live a life where your decisions will never be motivated by what you have or what you might gain. You have no desire to accumulate and you don’t gamble either. You don’t believe in planning long term. Instead, you just live in the moment.