Luck pillars, years and months
Your four pillars are fixed at the moment of birth, but life moves on. BaZi follows it in three layers of time: the luck pillar (大运), which changes every ten years; the year (流年), every year; and the month (流月), every month.
Luck pillars: ten years a step
Luck pillars are counted on from your month pillar, ten years each. Whether they run forwards or backwards depends on your gender and on the polarity of your birth year’s stem: men born in a yang year and women born in a yin year count forwards; men born in a yin year and women born in a yang year count backwards.
The age your first luck pillar starts is worked out from the days between your birth and the next solar term (counting forwards) or the previous one (counting backwards), three days to a year. So one person starts at three and another at eight.
A luck pillar is like a season: it sets the backdrop for ten years, and the same year feels very different in different luck pillars. riffos works out the stem and branch of each of your luck pillars and the years each one covers, with ages counted in the traditional way (虚岁, where you are one at birth).
The year: a theme for twelve months
Each year has its own stem and branch, its year pillar; 2027 is 丁未. What it brings you depends mainly on three things:
- The year’s ten gods: what 丁 and 未 are to your day master. See Ten gods.
- The Tai Sui: whether 未 meets your year branch as your own year, a clash, a punishment, a harm or a break. See Tai Sui.
- How it meets your pillars and luck pillar: whether the year combines or clashes with your day and month pillars. Someone whose day branch is 午, for example, meets a 午未 six combine in 2027.
The month: by solar term, not by new moon
Each month has a stem and branch too, and it opens at its solar term (节). The twelve that open months are 立春, 惊蛰, 清明, 立夏, 芒种, 小暑, 立秋, 白露, 寒露, 立冬, 大雪 and 小寒. So the first BaZi month (寅) starts at 立春, not on the first day of the lunar year.
The months’ stems follow a fixed rule (五虎遁): in 丁 and 壬 years the 寅 month is 壬寅. The twelve months of 2027 run from 壬寅 (from 立春 on 4 February) to 癸丑 (from 小寒 on 6 January 2028), ending at 立春 on 4 February 2028. For each month’s dates, pillar and flying stars, see the twelve months of 2027.
立春: why the year turns in early February
立春 (Start of Spring) is the first of the 24 solar terms, the moment the sun reaches 315° along the ecliptic. It falls between 3 and 5 February. BaZi changes year and month at that moment, so anyone born before 09:46 on 4 February 2027 still has a 丙午 year pillar.
Reading the three together
The luck pillar sets the backdrop, the year the theme, the month the timing. The riffos 2027 Year Ahead report lays all three over your own four pillars and reads each of your eight directions month by month.