Ten Years per Step: Cycles Follow Your Month Pillar
A Major Cycle (Da Yun) is one of a series of stem-branch pairs that follow on from your month pillar, and each one covers ten years. BaZi sets out the year, month, day and hour of your birth as four pillars. Each pillar is one Heavenly Stem paired with one Earthly Branch.
Get your Four Pillars from the free BaZi calculator, then step one pair forward or back from the month pillar: that is your first Major Cycle.
A Major Cycle sets the backdrop for ten years, while the year-to-year changes come from Annual Fortune. Ziwei Doushu has its own ten-year periods, called the Decade Cycle (Da Xian).
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Forward or Backward: Both Start From the Month Pillar
Whether your cycles run forward or backward depends on your sex and the stem of your birth year. Heavenly Stems are either yang or yin: Jia, Bing, Wu, Geng and Ren are yang, and Yi, Ding, Ji, Xin and Gui are yin. Your birth year starts at Start of Spring (Lichun), around February 4, not on January 1 or at Lunar New Year.
| Birth-year stem | Male | Female |
|---|---|---|
| Yang stem | Forward | Backward |
| Yin stem | Backward | Forward |
For example, 1990 is a Geng Wu year. Geng is a yang stem, so a man born that year counts forward and a woman counts backward.
The sixty stem-branch pairs run in a fixed loop. Counting forward walks down the loop, and counting backward walks back up it. The month pillar for June 1990 is Ren Wu, so forward gives Gui Wei, Jia Shen and Yi You, while backward gives Xin Si, Geng Chen and Ji Mao.
Starting Age: Three Days Count as One Year
Your starting age is when your first Major Cycle begins, and it depends on how far your birth falls from a solar term. The year has 24 solar terms, and twelve of them mark the start of each BaZi month.
- If you count forward, count the days from birth to the next month-starting term. If you count backward, count back to the previous one.
- Three days become one year, one day becomes four months, and one Chinese double hour becomes ten days. A double hour is two clock hours.
- Once that much time has passed since birth, you enter your first Major Cycle.
Take a man and a woman both born in Taipei at 10 a.m. on June 15, 1990.
| Chart | Counts to | Cycle starts | First cycle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Male (forward) | Next term, Minor Heat, just over 22 days away | 7 years 5 months 10 days after birth | Gui Wei, from nominal age 8 |
| Female (backward) | Previous term, Grain in Ear, just over 9 days back | 3 years 0 months 20 days after birth | Xin Si, from nominal age 4 |
The same moment of birth gives opposite directions and different starting ages.
Cycle tables usually give ages in nominal years. In nominal age you are one at birth and gain a year at each Lunar New Year.
Reading a Cycle: The Branch Decides
A Major Cycle is read mainly by its Earthly Branch. If the branch's element helps you, the decade tends to go smoothly; if it works against you, things are more likely to feel uphill.
The elements that help you are your Favorable Elements, the ones that hurt are unfavorable, and those that do neither are idle. To find out which are which, start with Day Master strength.
- Find the branch's element, and check whether it is favorable, unfavorable or idle for you.
- Check whether it forms a group with branches in your chart. A group is several branches that together act as one element, such as a fire group. If it forms one, read the group's element instead.
- Check whether it clashes or combines with a helpful branch in your chart. A clash is a head-on collision, and a combination ties the branch up. Either one cuts the benefit.
- Finally, see which of the Ten Gods the cycle's stem is. It hints at the decade's theme, such as money, career or study.
Example: Reading a Cycle Table
Take the same man born on June 15, 1990. His Day Master is Xin, which is yin metal, and his chart is weak with too much fire. So metal and earth help him, fire and wood work against him, and water is idle.
| Nominal age | Cycle | How the branch reads | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8–17 | Gui Wei | Wei joins Si and Wu in the chart into a fire group, so it reads as fire | Unfavorable |
| 18–27 | Jia Shen | Shen is metal | Favorable |
| 28–37 | Yi You | You is metal | Favorable |
| 38–47 | Bing Xu | Xu half-combines with Wu in the chart into a fire group, so it reads as fire | Unfavorable |
| 48–57 | Ding Hai | Hai is water | Idle |
| 58–67 | Wu Zi | Zi is water | Idle |
Wei is earth, which on its own would help this chart. But it joins the chart's fire into a group, so the whole cycle leans unfavorable.
From 18 to 37 both branches are metal, so these twenty years tend to go well and suit taking the initiative. At 38 the cycle turns back to fire, so play it steady and leave room in big decisions. From 48 the cycles are water, and their effect is small.
