What does offending Tai Sui mean?

It means your year animal stands in one of a few set relationships to the current year's animal, most commonly directly opposite it. The relationships are fixed positions in the twelve-animal cycle, so they can be worked out in advance.

Why does the BaZi year start in February?

The BaZi year turns at the solar term Lichun, around 4 February, not at Chinese New Year. Someone born in late January belongs to the previous year's pillar.

Does the year pillar decide my year?

No. It is one of four pillars, and annual readings that ignore the other three are the most common error in this technique.

One year pillar standing ahead of the other three

The year ahead

Your BaZi year ahead

Whether you clash with Tai Sui this year, and the two layers the January lists leave out: what the year is about for your Day Master, and whether its elements are ones AsterNym’s balancing method reads as supportive to your chart.

The six ways a year can meet you

Tai Sui (太歲) is not a property of your animal. It is a relation between the year’s branch and yours, and there are six named ones: 值 meeting, when the branches match; 沖 clashing, when they sit opposite; 刑 punishment; 害 harm; 破 destruction; and 六合 harmony, which is the one nobody puts on a poster because it does not sell talismans.

The clash is the strongest and it reads as movement rather than misfortune. Moves, job changes, relationships beginning or ending. Somewhere in the retelling that became bad luck, and then became something to buy protection from. The tradition says disruption.

Why the year turns in February

The BaZi year begins at 立春, Start of Spring, around 4 February, not on 1 January and not at Chinese New Year either, which moves. A forecast that switches over on New Year’s Day is reading the wrong pillar for about five weeks a year, and anyone born in that window is given the wrong animal for their whole life.

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Tai Sui, and what people do about it

Tai Sui is the year's presiding influence, tied to the animal of the year and to Jupiter's roughly twelve-year circuit. When your own year animal clashes with the current one, Chinese practice calls it offending Tai Sui, and there is a whole observance built on it: 安太歲, going to a temple early in the lunar year to register your name and settle the year.

Four relationships get singled out, and they are arithmetic rather than opinion. Your own animal, the one directly opposite it six places round the cycle, and two others at set distances. Which ones apply to you falls out of your year pillar with no interpretation involved, which is why almanacs can print the list before the year starts.

What the practice is for is worth stating plainly. It is a ritual response to a predicted difficult year, it is enormously widespread across Chinese-speaking markets, and no study has shown that the years it flags go worse than any other. The year pillar is also one of four in your chart, and reading the year in isolation from the other three is the commonest mistake in annual forecasts.