Liu Yue (Monthly Fortune)

Monthly Fortune (Liu Yue) is your Ziwei Doushu outlook for a single month, measured in lunar months. A Decade Cycle (Da Xian) shows the direction of ten years. Annual Fortune shows the theme of one year, and the month narrows it further.

Each month has a monthly Life Palace, which shows where that month's focus lies. The palace of month one is called the Dou Jun. From there, each month moves one palace on, so twelve months pass through all twelve palaces.

Plot your chart with the free Ziwei Doushu calculator; every cell shows its Earthly Branch in Chinese, such as 午 for Wu. Start month one in the cell of this year's branch, count back to your birth month, then count forward to your birth hour. The cell where you stop is your Dou Jun.

You find the Dou Jun by starting at the cell of this year's branch, counting back to your birth month, then counting forward to your birth hour. The year's branch matches its zodiac animal. A Horse year, for example, is a Wu year.

1. Find the cell of this year's branch and call it month one.
2. Move counterclockwise one cell per month until you reach your lunar birth month.
3. Call that cell the Zi hour, then move clockwise one cell per two-hour period until you reach your birth hour.

The cell where you stop is the Dou Jun, your monthly Life Palace for month one. Take someone born in the third lunar month, in the Chen hour, looking at a Wu year:

That year, their month one sits at Shen, month two at You, month three at Xu, and so on. Because the count uses your birth month and hour, two people can start the same year in different cells. Some sources give the directions the other way round, which lands on the wrong palace.

The month's stem decides its four transformations. Every lunar month has its own stem and branch. The first month's stem follows from the year's stem, using a rule called the Five Tigers (Wu Hu Dun).

Each later month takes the next stem in order. In a Bing year, for example, month one is Geng Yin and month two is Xin Mao.

With the month's stem, look up the Four Transformations table to see which stars take Hua Lu (wealth), Hua Quan (power), Hua Ke (fame) and Hua Ji (obstacle). The first leans toward ease and gains; the last leans toward snags and pressure. Month one of a Bing year has the stem Geng, so Taiyang takes Hua Lu, Wuqu Hua Quan, Taiyin Hua Ke and Tiantong Hua Ji.

Any month carries four layers of transformations: birth year, decade, year and month. Some schools also draw transformations from each palace's own stem; Fortune Cloud uses the month's stem only.

Read the year first, then the month's palaces and transformations. A month only rises and falls within the year's baseline; it never overrides the year.

1. Start with the year's theme, so you know which area of life the year is about.
2. Then look at the monthly Life Palace together with its Three Directions and Four Squares (San Fang Si Zheng), the three palaces linked to it.
3. Last, see which palaces the monthly transformations land in. Wealth and power tend to help, while obstacle points to where you should slow down.

When several layers of obstacle stack on the same palace, that month is more likely to feel tense.

The palace holding the monthly Life Palace or the monthly Hua Ji tends to become that month's focus. Each cell on the chart is labelled in Chinese, shown here in brackets.

BaZi also reads luck month by month, but its months change at solar terms, not on the first day of the lunar month. How each month's stem and branch relate to your Day Master decides whether the month helps or presses on you. Your Day Master is the stem of the day you were born.

Your favorable elements are the elements that help your chart. A month whose element is favorable tends to go more smoothly; an unfavorable one is more likely to bring pressure. You can look up each month's stem and branch in the BaZi calendar.