Your Chinese zodiac year: 本命年 and 犯太岁 in English

Every Chinese year is named by a pair of characters. The second one is a branch, one of twelve, and each branch carries an animal. 2027 is 丁未: the branch 未 is the Goat, which is why 2027 is a Goat year.

That year’s branch is Tai Sui. In folk religion Tai Sui is honoured as the deity who presides over the year. In a chart reading it is simply the year’s branch.

You carry a branch too: the one in your own birth year, which gives you your animal. To “offend” Tai Sui is for your birth year’s branch and this year’s branch to stand in a particular relationship. That is all it is: a relationship between two characters.

If the idea of a chart built from these characters is new, what BaZi is starts from the beginning.

明命｜MING checks five relationships between the two branches. The first is the same branch, which is your zodiac year. The other four are a clash, a punishment, a harm and a break. A break is the lightest, and it counts only when nothing heavier applies to the same pair. Folk tables vary a little in which relationships they count. These five are the ones 明命｜MING declares.

2026 · 丙午 · Horse year
  Horse     your zodiac year, and a punishment
  Rat       clash
  Ox        harm
  Rabbit    break

2027 · 丁未 · Goat year
  Goat      your zodiac year
  Ox        clash, and a punishment
  Rat       harm
  Dog       punishment

2028 · 戊申 · Monkey year
  Monkey    your zodiac year
  Tiger     clash, and a punishment
  Snake     punishment
  Pig       harm

You can work out any year yourself the same way. Take your birth year’s branch, set it against that year’s branch, and ask whether they are the same, clash, punish, harm or break. The table only saves you the counting for three years.

My Season is the part of 明命｜MING that reads your decades and years. It has one line for each of the five, quoted here exactly. Notice that none of them calls the year bad.

Your zodiac year: “your zodiac year comes round: a marker, not a verdict”.

Clash: “it runs against your own year sign: plans may get rearranged; better steady than rushed”.

Punishment: “some friction with your own year sign: small tangles, patience sorts them”.

Harm: “a slight drag this year: minor, worth noticing, not worth worrying about”.

Break: “small upsets in family arrangements: light, confirm plans twice”.

Each line names what is happening and how to walk through it: steadily, patiently, with a second check. None of them asks you to buy anything. A clash is movement, not misfortune, and clashes and combinations explains the four relationships beyond your zodiac year in more depth.

This matters more than most people expect. Whether you meet Tai Sui depends on your chart’s year branch, and that changes at 立春 (lì chūn, the start of spring) in early February. It does not change at Chinese New Year.

Take someone born on 30 January 1990. Chinese New Year fell on 27 January that year, so their family has always said they are a Horse. Their chart’s year pillar is 己巳: a Snake. 2026 is a Horse year, so a Horse is in its zodiac year, but a Snake meets none of the five. Someone sure that 2026 is their zodiac year has, by their chart, not met Tai Sui at all.

If you were born in late January or early February, check this first: when does your Chinese year actually start?

Meeting Tai Sui is one branch meeting one branch. A reading is your whole chart meeting the whole year: eight characters set against the year’s pair, to see whether the year brings what your chart relies on or asks more of it.

Above the year sits the decade. A ten-year luck pillar shapes the ground, and a single year is the weather on it. The decade weighs far more than one branch, which is what luck pillars explains. So meeting Tai Sui is a small input to a reading, not the year’s verdict.

These are the questions people ask most about their zodiac year. Each has a reason it goes unanswered here.

Remedies. A remedy needs a bad verdict to remedy, and 明命｜MING does not give that verdict. With no misfortune to undo, there is nothing to sell.

When to pray to Tai Sui, and whether to light a lamp or get a blessing. These are real customs, and people who keep them do so by their own choice. 明命｜MING does not set the dates, recommend them or sell them, and in its own voice it never tells you to.

Taboos. A list of things not to do this year is a verdict in different clothes. It still assumes the year will go wrong, and 明命｜MING does not accept that.

Wearing red. Red worn for protection is itself a remedy, so the same reason applies.

Good year or bad year. A clash is not a curse. A year may ask something of you, such as going slower or checking twice, and that is not a sentence passed on you.

Can I marry this year? That is your decision. 明命｜MING does not make decisions for people or pass verdicts on dates. It can tell you what a year asks of you, not what a year permits.

This has a cost, because these are the most-asked questions on the subject. 明命｜MING’s yearly guide holds the same line. It may quote what the tradition says, as tradition, and in its own words it only says how to walk through the year.

One thing the yearly guide shows that this page does not. Beside the five relationships above, it prints the year’s traditional twelve-star line — 太岁, 太阳, 丧门 and the rest, found by the distance between your year branch and the year’s — as a quotation, with the tradition’s own 吉 or 凶 and its customs inside the quotation marks. That line is the tradition’s, and it is labelled as such. 明命｜MING’s own reading of a year stays the five relationships, and from the old line it takes the behaviour, never the custom.

What a year means for you depends on how the whole year meets your whole chart, not on one branch. That is what My Season reads. For how clashes, punishments and harms work, see clashes and combinations. How the whole year meets your whole chart is on how a year is read.