Annual Fortune

Annual Fortune is your luck for a single year, and every year has its own stem and branch. 2027 is the Ding Wei year, the Year of the Goat.

Ziwei Doushu uses the year's stem to give four stars one transformation each. These are the year's Four Transformations. In a Ding year, Taiyin takes Hua Lu, Tiantong Hua Quan, Tianji Hua Ke and Jumen Hua Ji.

In BaZi, 2027 starts at the Start of Spring on Feb 4, 2027. In Ziwei Doushu, it starts at Lunar New Year on Feb 6, 2027.

Each cell of the chart has two characters in its corner, and the second is its branch. Enter your birth time in the free Ziwei Doushu calculator. The cell whose branch is 未 (Wei) is your yearly Life Palace for 2027.

A BaZi year starts at the Start of Spring (Lichun), and a Ziwei Doushu year starts on Lunar New Year's Day. That is the solar term that opens spring, and it falls around February 4. Lunar New Year follows the moon, so it lands between late January and mid-February.

Anything that happens between the two dates may count toward a different year in each system. Say the Start of Spring has passed but Lunar New Year has not: BaZi has moved on, while Ziwei Doushu is still in the old year. People born in that gap may also have a different birth year in each chart.

In Ziwei Doushu, you first find the yearly Life Palace, then see where the year's four transformed stars land.

1. Find the yearly Life Palace. It is the cell on your chart whose Earthly Branch matches the year's branch.
2. Check its Three Directions and Four Squares (San Fang Si Zheng). That means the cell itself, the cell directly opposite, and the two cells four steps away on either side. The stars in these four cells together set the tone of the year.
3. See where the transformed stars land. Find the four stars on your chart, and the palace each one sits in is the area of life that gets amplified.

Say the year's Hua Ji (obstacle) star sits in your Wealth Palace, the cell labelled 財帛 (the chart labels are in Chinese). Then money coming in and going out is more likely to get stuck that year. The palace that receives Hua Lu (wealth) is more likely to bring gains.

Some schools also derive transformations from the stem of each cell. We use only the year's stem.

In BaZi, you read the year by how its stem and branch relate to your Day Master. Your Day Master is the Heavenly Stem of the day you were born. There are ten such relationships, called the Ten Gods.

Enter your birth date and time in the free BaZi calculator to get your Four Pillars. The stem at the top of the day pillar is your Day Master. Each branch also hides stems inside it, and the strongest one is called its main qi.

The year's branch can also clash or combine with the branches in your own chart. A clash is a head-on collision, while a combination ties the two together.

Whether these Ten Gods help or hurt depends on your Day Master strength. The elements that work for you are your favorable elements. A year that brings them tends to go more smoothly, and one that brings unfavorable elements tends to feel harder. A year whose branch clashes with one of yours is more likely to bring change.

Whichever palace your yearly Life Palace falls on, that palace's affairs tend to move to the front that year. For example, if it falls on your Career Palace, changes at work are more likely to become the year's main theme.