nag-rtsis · Tibetan astrology
Your Mewa and elemental animal
Tibetan “black astrology” borrows its machinery from China and then runs it on a different calendar, which is the detail that catches almost every calculator out. Your Mewa and your animal both belong to the Tibetan year, and the Tibetan year does not start when the Chinese one does.
Date only. The Mewa and the elemental animal are properties of the Tibetan year, and the only hard part is deciding which Tibetan year a February birthday belongs to.
Losar is not Chinese New Year
They usually land on the same day, which is why the mistake is easy. Both calendars are lunisolar and Tibet took its arithmetic through the Uyghurs from China. But they intercalate differently, and roughly one year in three they part company. In 2022 Chinese New Year was 1 February and Losar was 3 March: a full month. Anyone born in that gap is a Metal Ox in Tibetan reckoning and a Water Tiger in Chinese, and a calculator that reused the Chinese boundary would hand them the wrong animal and the wrong Mewa at once.
Rather than ship a Losar table back to 1900 that we cannot check, this works around the boundary. Losar has never fallen outside early February to early March, so a birthday from 9 March to 1 February has a certain Tibetan year whatever Losar did that year, which is about eight birthdays in nine. For the rest we use verified dates where we have them, currently 2015 to 2026, and where we do not, the page says it cannot place you rather than quietly picking.
- Year boundary
- Losar, the Phugpa lunar new year, which is not the Chinese new year and not Li Chun. The two usually coincide and about one year in three they do not: 2022's were a full month apart
- The safe window
- Losar has never fallen outside 2 February to 8 March, so a birth on 9 March or later, or on 1 February or earlier, has a certain Tibetan year without needing that year's Losar date at all
- Losar dates held
- Verified Losar dates are held for 2015 to 2026. A birth inside the February to early March window in any other year is reported as unplaceable rather than guessed
- Parkha
- Not computed. The eight Parkha run on a nine-year cycle with one trigram doubled, Li for men and Kham for women, and count in opposite directions by sex, but the anchor year and the direction differ between lineages and there is no reference to check against
The nine Mewa
Nine numbers from the magic square, three of them white, counting backwards one per year. Because nag-rtsis is borrowed, this is the same sequence as the Chinese annual nine-star number, which is a useful cross-check rather than an embarrassment: two traditions that share an ancestor should agree about the arithmetic and disagree about what it means.
1 White dkar gcig
Beginnings and openings. Read as a year, or a person, where something starts that had not been there before.
2 Black nag gnyis
Obstruction. The one traditionally treated as difficult, and the one purification practices are aimed at.
3 Indigo mthing gsum
Movement and dispute. Energy that will go somewhere whether or not it is directed.
4 Green ljang bzhi
Growth and learning. The scholarly one, associated with study and with things that take a season.
5 Yellow ser lnga
The centre. Powerful and unstable in equal measure, and the number most often read as a year to be careful in.
6 White dkar drug
Authority and protection. Read as help arriving from someone with standing.
7 Red dmar bdun
Force and conflict. Effective, and expensive to whoever is on the other side of it.
8 White dkar brgyad
Accumulation. Wealth, but the kind that builds up rather than arrives.
9 Maroon smug dgu
Completion and expansion. The number of things reaching their full extent, which is also where they stop.
The eight Parkha, which we do not calculate
The Parkha are eight trigrams, the same eight that Chinese practice calls Li, Kun, Dui, Qian, Kan, Gen, Zhen and Xun. They are the other half of a Tibetan birth reading, and this page does not compute them.
The reason is specific. The Parkha run on a nine-year cycle with only eight trigrams, because one is doubled: Li for a man and Kham for a woman, in what is called the Gu-Mik or ninth spot. Men and women also count in opposite directions. All of that is agreed. What is not agreed is the anchor year the count starts from, and lineages differ. Get the anchor wrong and every answer is wrong by the same amount, which means a calculator can look completely consistent and be uniformly incorrect. With no reference implementation to check against, shipping one would be a one-in-nine chance of being right, so we describe the eight and leave the count to someone with a lineage behind them.
Li Fire · South
Clarity, brightness, and being seen. The trigram that is the doubled one in a man's nine-year cycle.
Khon Earth · Southwest
The receptive ground. Support, patience and what holds other things up.
Dwa Metal · West
Speech and pleasure. The open one, associated with the mouth and with exchange.
Khen Metal · Northwest
Sky and authority. Command, and the responsibility that is supposed to come with it.
Kham Water · North
The abyss. Danger and depth, and the doubled trigram in a woman's nine-year cycle.
Gin Earth · Northeast
The mountain. Stillness, obstruction, and stopping on purpose.
Zin Wood · East
Thunder. Sudden movement, shock, and the thing that starts before you decided.
Zon Wood · Southeast
Wind. Gradual penetration: what gets in everywhere by being persistent rather than strong.
AsterNym explores these as cultural and metaphysical traditions, not scientific predictions.