Tai Sui

Meaning

Tai Sui is the year’s ruler: the branch of the year, and so its animal, seen as a presence that presides over the year. In 2026, a Horse year from Lichun, Tai Sui stands in Wu, the Horse; in 2027 it moves on to Wei, the Goat, and so round the twelve branches, one a year. The name means “great year”, and English often calls it the Grand Duke, after the title the year’s spirit came to carry.

It began in the sky. Jupiter, the year star, takes about twelve years to go round the sky, and astronomers imagined a counterpart moving the other way round, in step with the branches, and named each year by the branch where it stood. Jupiter’s true period is a little shorter than twelve years, so the star and the count drifted apart; the years came to be counted by the sixty-cycle alone, and Tai Sui stayed on as the year’s own branch.

The tradition reads every year through it. Each person’s year animal meets the year’s ruler in one of the tradition’s ways: as their own year, when the two animals are the same; in a clash, a harm, a punishment or a destruction; or in harmony or a trine. None of these is a sentence passed on the year. The tradition reads them as the year’s weather for that animal, and Ulune says them so.

In practice

• The year ahead: Chinese astrology’s Cycles lens names the year’s Tai Sui and says how each of the reader’s animals meets it, the year animal first. An own year is read as one of renewal that asks for care with big changes, a clash as the year most likely to move things, a harmony as a year of support with help close at hand.
• The names of the meetings: the tradition has a word for each, clashing with the Tai Sui (沖太歲), harming it (害太歲), punishing it (刑太歲) or breaking it (破太歲), and Ulune’s texts give them with their characters.
• On the compass: Feng Shui places the Grand Duke in the mountain of the year’s branch, Wu in the south in a Horse year, and the Year Breaker opposite. The classics suggest not facing him for the year’s new beginnings and not breaking ground there, and hold that having him at one’s back is steady support.
• Two people: the year’s ruler meets each person’s animal on its own, so two people can live the same year in two ways, one in harmony with it, the other in a clash.

Across traditions

• In Western astrology Jupiter is the planet of growth and of the twelve-year cycle; its return to its place at birth, about every twelve years, is read as a new start, much as the Chinese own year is.
• In India the sixty years of the samvatsara cycle, each with its own name, were first counted by Jupiter too, five rounds of twelve years: the same planet set the rhythm of years on both sides of the Himalayas.
• In Japan the almanacs of onmyōdō counted Taisai-jin, the year’s deity, among the eight generals who move round the compass from year to year, and marked the directions to favour or leave quiet.

Origin and history

The oldest names of the years come from it. The Erya, in the 3rd century BC, gives each year a name by the branch where the counter-Jupiter stood, Shetige for Yin, Danyan for Mao and so on round the twelve; the Huainanzi, in 139 BC, explains its counter-motion and calls it Taiyin, “great yin”. By the Eastern Han the years were counted in the sixty-cycle without looking at Jupiter, and the year’s branch kept the old name.

Tai Sui also became a spirit, to be respected rather than feared. 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 it. Over the following centuries Taoism gave each of the sixty years its own Tai Sui general, and the imperial almanacs, such as the Xieji Bianfang Shu of the 18th century, set out its place year by year with the other spirits of the year.

How Ulune calculates it

Tai Sui is the branch of the year pillar. Ulune counts the year from Lichun, the Sun at 315°, about 4 February, and the branch from the Rat in 2020, twelve years round. Each of the reader’s four animals is compared with it by the tradition’s relations, all computed from the branches’ places: the same branch is an own year, branches six apart a clash, and so on through the harms, punishments, destructions, harmonies and trines. Feng Shui’s Grand Duke is the mountain of that branch among the 24, fifteen degrees wide, and the Year Breaker the mountain six branches away.

Correspondences