A zodiac annual fortune puts the branch of your birth year against the branch of the year in question, while a full chart has four pillars and eight characters. This piece sets out what that single layer can and cannot tell you, and the order in which it is worth using.
Every twelve years the zodiac animal of the year matches your own, and that year is called a ben ming nian. This piece looks at where the Tai Sui idea actually comes from, what the red underwear custom is doing, and why such a year is better treated as folklore than as a risk warning.
Tai Yi is one of those names that carries several meanings at once: a star, a deity, an ancient philosophical idea, and the title of a divination method. This piece sets out which layer is in play where, and why the astronomical background behind the name still shapes the way the method is read.
Tai Yi Shen Shu stands beside Qi Men Dun Jia and Da Liu Ren as one of the Three Styles, yet it circulates far less widely than the other two. Thin documentation, differing conventions and a large framework push the entry cost up; a useful first step is to see what each of the Three Styles is for.
The twenty-eight mansions divide the circuit of the sky into twenty-eight regions and are grouped by the Four Symbols. The eastern Azure Dragon covers Jiao, Kang, Di, Fang, Xin, Wei and Ji; each mansion carries an animal image and a corresponding name in the modern constellations.
Qi Zheng Si Yu, also called the Five Stars method, reads the dignity of the twelve palaces held by the sun, moon, five planets and four hidden luminaries, together with the degrees they occupy in the twenty-eight mansions. It belongs to China's old stellar-fate learning and is traditionally divided into three schools.
What is called "a straight rush in from the door" means the step from the front door into the living room has no buffer. This page sets out what tradition says about the door and the entrance, which modern living problems correspond to the same observation, and what can be done when the walls cannot move.
A phone compass gives a rough answer on which way a home faces, provided you stand at the main daylight face. The praise for south-facing homes comes from daylight and ventilation, while orientation in the Feng Shui sense is taken from the whole building with a compass — a different measurement from the angle the sun comes in at.
A compatibility reading is not two charts layered on top of each other: each chart is read through on its own first, and only then are the two compared. Who is reading whose chart is settled by who asked the question, and deciding that early clears away much of the argument.
A Zi Wei compatibility reading puts two charts side by side, and the pairing used most is the Life Palace against the other person's Spouse Palace. The pairs describe what each side expects of a relationship rather than whether the two will fit, and the useful part is the differences they surface early.
The twelve zodiac animals are paired in order with the twelve earthly branches, and those branches relate to each other through six combinations and three combinations as well as clashes and punishments. Folk custom makes a great deal of a zodiac clash, while in a complete chart-reading system it is only one relationship among many and has to be read in context.
BaZi compatibility reading sets two people's Four Pillars side by side and looks at the combinations, clashes and punishments among the branches, together with whether the five phases complement each other. Six and three combinations describe a type of relationship rather than a score for marriage quality: plenty of combination does not mean smooth, and plenty of clash does not mean impossible.
