Own year

Meaning

The own year, běnmìngnián in Chinese, is the year whose animal is one’s own year animal. It comes back every twelve years, at twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six and so on: a Horse born in 1990 or in 2002 lives its own year in 2026. Its name joins “root” and “life”: the year turns back to the branch a person was born under.

The tradition reads it as meeting the Tai Sui face to face. Each year has its ruler, the Tai Sui, the counterpart of Jupiter that stands in the year’s branch, and in one’s own year that ruler sits on one’s own animal. Popular belief has long treated such a year as a delicate one, a year to go gently. Ulune reads it as a year of renewal that asks for care with big changes: a person meets their own beginnings again, their gifts and their habits alike.

Every fifth own year is more than an animal’s return. At sixty the stem comes back as well as the branch, and with it the whole pillar of the birth year: the sixty-cycle has turned once, a return celebrated across East Asia as a second birth.

In practice

• Ulune’s reading: in the year ahead, when the year’s animal is the reader’s year animal, Ulune names it an own year, 本命 běnmìng, and reads it as one of renewal, with care for big changes; many people wear red through it as a friendly sign.
• The other animals: the year can also bring back the month, day or hour animal, and Ulune lists that too, as an own year for that side of the life: the inner self, the self with those closest, or the secret self.
• Twice over: for the Dragon, the Horse, the Rooster and the Pig, the tradition also counts meeting oneself as a self-punishment, and Ulune names both: the animal’s own habits come back to it, the good and the less good, to be looked at kindly.
• Its months: within any year, the month of one’s own animal comes back too, and Ulune reads it as a good time to take stock and renew.

Across traditions

• In Japan the return of the whole cycle at sixty is kanreki, celebrated with a red sleeveless jacket and a red cap, the colour of a newborn; in Korea hwangap, the sixtieth birthday, is one of the great family feasts of a life; in Chinese, the age of sixty is called huajia, the flowering cycle.
• In Western astrology Jupiter comes back to its place at birth about every twelve years, a Jupiter return read as a new cycle of growth: the own year is its Chinese cousin, since the Tai Sui began as Jupiter’s mirror.
• Red is the colour of joy and of protection across the Chinese world, at weddings, at New Year and in the own year, when a red belt, a red thread or red clothes, often a gift from the family, are worn through the year.

Origin and history

The own year comes from the oldest way of naming years. Jupiter, the year star, takes about twelve years to go round the sky, and astronomers imagined a counterpart, the Tai Sui, moving the other way through the twelve branches; the Erya, in the 3rd century BC, keeps the old names of the years by the branch where it stood. In the 1st century Wang Chong, in the chapter of his Lunheng called “Questioning the Year”, was already arguing against the taboo on moving house towards the Tai Sui: the tradition has always had its sceptics, and its gentler readers.

Over the centuries the Tai Sui became a deity, or rather sixty, one for each year of the cycle, and by late imperial times many Taoist temples gave them a hall, where people in their own year still look for the general of their year. The imperial almanacs, such as the Xieji Bianfang Shu of the 18th century, set out the Tai Sui’s place year by year. The red worn through the own year is a popular custom rather than a teaching of the classics, and the own year as a chapter of popular astrology belongs to the 20th century.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune counts years from Lichun, the start of spring: a year is an own year when its branch is the branch of the year animal, which happens every twelve years from the birth. The year runs from one Lichun to the next, about 4 February to 4 February, not from New Year to New Year, so an own year can start some weeks before or after the Chinese New Year. The same test, against the month, day and hour animals, gives their own years, and the month whose branch is the year animal’s, in any year, its own month. When the Dragon, the Horse, the Rooster or the Pig meets itself, Ulune also names the self-punishment, as the tradition counts it.

Correspondences