Dates
When should I do it?
Pick the thing: meeting the parents, proposing, a wedding, a divorce, IVF, a baptism, adopting a pet, quitting smoking, a move abroad, an exam, a tattoo, a business launch, twenty-eight in all, and get five dates, ranked, or put in the date you already have. Every one is read out of the Chinese almanac: its suitable and avoid lists, its Day Officer, whether it falls on a Yellow Path or Black Path day, and whether it clashes your zodiac animal. Everything is shown in English with the original characters beside it.
The five layers this reads
Date selection (擇日) is one of the oldest continuously practised parts of Chinese metaphysics, and it is still normal for a family to check the almanac before setting a wedding date. None of it is invented here; it is read out of the calendar and translated.
- The suitable and avoid lists (宜 and 忌)
- Every day in the Chinese almanac carries a list of what it is suitable for and what to avoid. Marriage (嫁娶), opening a business (開市), moving into a home (入宅), around 114 activities in all. Every one is shown in English with its characters, so you can check any of it against a printed almanac.
- The Day Officers (建除十二神)
- Twelve officers on a twelve-day cycle. Complete (成), Open (開) and Settle (定) are read as constructive; Break (破), Danger (危) and Close (閉) are not. Quitting a job and retiring are the exceptions. Remove (除) and Break (破) days are exactly what those are for.
- Yellow Path and Black Path (黃道 and 黑道)
- Each day is governed by one of twelve day gods, six on the yellow path and six on the black, the Green Dragon (青龍) and the White Tiger (白虎) among them. It is the broadest auspicious flag the tradition carries.
- The lunar mansions (二十八宿)
- The mansion the Moon occupies, one of twenty-eight, each read as auspicious (吉) or inauspicious (凶).
- The clash (沖)
- Every day clashes one zodiac animal. If it clashes yours, the tradition treats it as out, not a lower score, out. That is the part of this reading that is about you rather than about the calendar.
What this will not do
It will not tell you a date is dangerous, and it will not tell you a marriage will fail because you picked the wrong Tuesday. Choose the date that works for the people involved, the venue, the notice period, the flights, and use this to choose between the dates that already work. That is how the tradition is used by the people who use it.
Six of the twenty-eight events touch on health: conceiving, IVF, scheduled surgery, a planned caesarean, starting a diet and quitting smoking. Choosing a date within a window your clinician has already given you is a normal thing to do and this page will help. Moving a delivery earlier, or delaying an operation, to reach a date on this page is not, and each of those four carries a note saying so before you see any dates at all.