Year Breaker

Meaning

The Year Breaker, 歲破 suì pò, stands across the compass from the Grand Duke: the mountain of the branch opposite the year’s own. In 2026, a Horse year, the Grand Duke sits in Wu in the south and the Year Breaker stands in Zi in the north; in 2027 they move to Wei and Chou.

The classics suggest leaving that side of the home undisturbed by works for the year. Its name says why they watch it: it is the place the year’s ruler looks straight at, the branch that clashes with the year’s, and the almanacs ask that ground not be broken there while he does. Like every affliction it concerns works, not living in the rooms on that side.

It goes round the twelve branches with the Grand Duke, one a year, so that each branch mountain is the Year Breaker once in twelve years, six years after it was the Grand Duke’s.

In practice

• In the Home lens the Year Breaker’s mountain is named in the list of what to leave quiet this year, with the Grand Duke’s across from it.
• In the Cycles lens, when the Year Breaker stands in one of your directions, the counsel is to leave that side undisturbed by works this year.
• With the Three Killings: in 2026 the Year Breaker, Zi, stands inside the north, where the Three Killings also fall, so the north asks for quiet twice; in 2029 it stands in Mao, in the east, where the Three Killings also fall that year.
• The other sides carry the year’s works: the counsel names one mountain, fifteen degrees, and leaves the rest of the home free.
• Facing it is another matter: a desk that faces the Year Breaker has the Grand Duke at its back, which the classics count as steady support; the counsel on this side concerns works alone.

Across traditions

• The zodiac reads the same opposition for people: the animal across from the year’s clashes with Tai Sui, 沖太歲, a year the tradition reads as likely to move things, at home, at work or in habits.
• The almanac’s day officers: among the twelve officers that the almanac gives each day, Po, 破, breaking, falls on the day whose branch stands across from the month’s, the same opposition carried down to days.
• A clash, not a judgement: in BaZi and the zodiac, the clash between opposite branches is one relation among many; Feng Shui gives it to the year’s compass.
• Western astrology reads the opposition of two points across the circle as a tension to hold in balance; the Year Breaker is the year’s own opposition, the point across from its ruler.

Origin and history

Tai Sui was the counterpart of Jupiter that moves one branch a year round the sky, and the branch across from him has long been marked in the almanacs as the place where the year breaks. The idea of breaking, 破, runs through the Chinese calendar, the year’s breaker, the month’s, the day’s; Feng Shui practice took the year’s into its yearly list beside the Grand Duke and the Three Killings.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes the year’s branch from the solar year, which turns at Lichun, finds the Grand Duke on its mountain, and sets the Year Breaker on the branch six places round, across the compass. The two turn together, one branch a year. In 2026 the year’s branch is Wu, the seventh of the twelve; six places on is Zi, the first, and the Year Breaker covers Zi’s fifteen degrees, from 352.5° to 7.5° on the compass.

Correspondences