The Chinese calendar is made up of sixty-year cycles that are
differentiated according to the combination of each stem and branch. Each year, month, day, and hour is represented by a Heavenly Stem (‘Tien Gan’) and an earthly branch (‘Di Zhi’).
The Ten Heavenly Stems are the Five Elements in their yin and yang states. They are:
Ren - Gui (water), Jia - Yi (wood), Bing - Ding (fire), Wu - Ji (earth), Geng - Xin (metal).
The Twelve Earthly Branches are
the commonly known twelve animals in Chinese astrology being the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster,
dog and pig. Each animal sign is further represented by an element of the Five
Elements.
To know the stem and branch of your birth year, you can refer to the table below. For instance, a person born in the year
1924 would be a wood rat. A person born in the year 2000 would be a metal dragon. You
will see that within each animal sign, there are others born under the same earthly branch but possess a different stem giving a different
reading to their year’s luck.
A reading based simply on the year of birth is very general. We need to know the full date
and time of birth (also known as ‘Ba Zi’ (The eight characters or the Four Pillars) to give an accurate account of one’s share of luck
(both good and bad) in any given period of time or year.
To find out what is in store for you for the
month ahead, please
click here.
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