What the Monthly General Is: The Step Most Often Skipped in Da Liu Ren
The first time I arranged a Liu Ren chart for myself, I left out the Monthly General.
When I finished, something looked wrong but I could not say what. Comparing it with someone else's chart, I saw I was one character short — and that character sets where the whole chart begins.
What the Monthly General Is
In Da Liu Ren, the Monthly General stands for the "general of the month". It is taken from the palace of the zodiac where the Sun sits, and the medial terms among the twenty-four solar terms mark when it changes (Source 1).
For example: between Rain Water and the Spring Equinox the Sun sits in the Hai palace, so the Monthly General is taken as Hai (Source 1). In Liu Ren it also goes by the alias "the Sun" (Source 1).
So it is not taken by lunar month but by the interval between solar terms. That is where mistakes creep in: assuming "the first month is simply the first month" overlooks that the boundary for changing the general falls on a medial term, not on the start of the lunar month.
How It Works with the Divination Hour and the Void Branches
A chart's time coordinates come in several layers:
The divination hour — the two-hour period in which you cast.
The Monthly General — the result of the change described above.
The void branches — arranged mainly according to the ten-day segment in which the day's stem and branch fall (Source 1).
Tai Sui — the stem and branch of the year in which you cast (Source 1).
Only layered together do all four give the full time background of "this one divination": the Monthly General governs the broad background of the season, the void branches "where things come to nothing", and the divination hour "now".
Why This Step Goes Wrong So Easily
First, the question of standards: the change falls on a medial term, which does not coincide with the start of a lunar month, so checking by lunar month easily puts you one palace out.
Second, tools differ: software writes the reference for the change slightly differently. When you cast within a few days either side of a medial term, checking which reference your tool uses is faster than comparing charts over and over.
So I used a clumsy workaround: I copied the Monthly General intervals I used most onto a slip of paper, tucked it into a book and glanced at it before every chart. It took the better part of a year before I no longer needed it.
These days I still glance at the Monthly General interval before arranging a chart — not because it is difficult, but because it is so easy to skip, and the step you skip is often exactly where the whole chart drifts. While you are at it, check which day your usual tool treats as the change of general; then casting across a medial term will not mean working it out from scratch each time.
Tools on this site (for entertainment)
This site offers an entertainment-oriented process: describe your situation clearly → get a method suggestion → read the chart and the interpretation → export the result if you want to keep it. The content is for entertainment and self-reflection only; it promises no prediction and is not decision advice.
This article was last checked on 19 September 2026. Traditional divination has many schools and a long history, and their formulas and versions do not fully agree; the text relies on publicly verifiable sources, and for dates and calendars please refer to the latest official publication.
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Sources
- "Da Liu Ren" (《大六壬》) — Wikipedia entry (covering the Monthly General, the void branches, the divination hour and other chart elements): https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/大六壬 (accessed 19 September 2026)
- Hong Kong Observatory, "2026 Gregorian and Lunar Calendar Conversion Table" (《2026 年公历与农历对照表》, including the dates of the twenty-four solar terms): https://www.hko.gov.hk/tc/gts/time/calendar/text/files/T2026c.txt (accessed 19 September 2026)
- Method page on this site: Da Liu Ren: https://zhanbumizhi.top/en/methods/liuren (accessed 19 September 2026)