Annual pillar

Meaning

The annual pillar, 流年 liúnián, “the flowing year”, is the pillar of a year as it passes: the same stem and branch for everyone, Bing-Wu for 2026, Ding-Wei for 2027, read against one birth chart at a time. Where the year pillar of a birth stays fixed, the flowing year moves on every Lichun, and for its twelve months it stands beside the four pillars and the luck pillar of the moment.

Like a luck pillar, it is read by what it brings the Day Master. Its stem is one of the Ten Gods, and Ulune’s readings give each a year’s theme: a year of the Eating God is one of ease and expression, to create, to enjoy and to share what you make; a year of the Direct Officer one of order and recognition, responsibilities and a good name to keep. Its branch’s main qi is another god, and the year’s branch is also its Tai Sui, the ruler the zodiac reads.

A year is read inside its decade. The luck pillar sets the season of a stretch of life; the year is the weather within it, and the tradition reads the two together, what the year brings, what the decade brings, and how they meet.

In practice

• In the Cycles lens, the year shown opens its reading: from Lichun to Lichun, its stem’s god and its branch’s, what it meets among the four pillars, and the luck pillar it falls in, by count; the year before and the year after are one tap away.
• Its meetings: its stem’s combinations and clashes with the chart’s stems, its branch’s harmonies, clashes, harms, punishments and destructions with the chart’s branches, and the trines and seasonal trios it completes with two of them.
• In the full table, this year’s pillar has a row of its own, with every layer: the Day Master’s life stage in its branch, its Na Yin, whether its branch is empty for the chart, and the stars it brings.
• The year’s turn is Lichun, about 4 February: in 2026 it fell on 3 February at 20:02 UT, 4 February in China.
• Its months are the year’s monthly pillars, each opened by a term.

Across traditions

• In Korea and Vietnam the flowing year is the seun of saju, the year’s luck, and the lưu niên of Tứ Trụ.
• In Chinese astrology the same year is read by its animal, Tai Sui, against the birth animals: a year of one’s own animal, a clash, a harmony.
• In Western astrology the nearest idea is the solar return, a chart cast each year for the Sun’s return to its birth place, and the year’s transits, read against the birth chart.

Origin and history

Years have been named by the sixty-cycle since the Han dynasty, and the oldest almanacs already read each year against a person’s birth year. The Zi Ping school read the flowing year against the whole chart: the Song dynasty Yuanhai Ziping and the San Ming Tong Hui weigh it with the luck pillar, and give a name of its own to a year whose pillar is the same as the decade’s, the two arriving together. The Di Tian Sui, with Ren Tieqiao’s commentary, reads a year by what it does to the balance of the chart; the Ziping Zhenquan by whether it serves or troubles the structure.

How Ulune calculates it

The year runs from the instant of Lichun, the Sun at 315°, to the next. Its pillar is its place in the sixty-cycle, counted from Jia-Zi in 1984. Its stem’s god and its branch’s main qi’s god follow from the Day Master; its meetings are found among the four pillars by the same rules as a luck pillar’s, and with the luck pillar running at the year’s middle, for each count.

Correspondences