大运流年
decades and years — the moving layer
The natal chart is fixed forever — it is the map drawn at birth. But the sky keeps moving, and the tradition layers two moving clocks over the fixed chart: 大运 dà yùn, the decade pillars, and 流年 liú nián, the annual pillars. The natal chart is the terrain; the decades are the seasons; the years are the weather.
Modules 9-11 gave you the strength/pattern/用神 method; this module tells you what to actually watch for as the decades and years move — a 大运 or 流年 pillar that supplies your 用神, or attacks it, or completes a 三合 group, is the tradition's primary timing signal.
起运 — when the decades begin — 起运
The decade sequence does not start at birth — it starts when the chart has "traveled" from birth to the next governing 节 (or back to the previous one, for backward charts). The count is the sect-1 convention: 3 days = 1 year, 1 day = 4 months, 1 时辰 (two hours) = 10 days.
Worked example: born 2024-01-03 at noon, a forward chart. The next 节 is 小寒 on January 6, roughly 2.7 days away — 2 days 6 时辰. 2 days = 8 months; 6 时辰 = 60 days = 2 months; total 0 years 10 months 20 days. The first decade therefore starts within the birth year, at 虚岁 1. A birth farther from its 节 counts more years — the distance from birth to the turn of the season IS the length of childhood before the decades open.
One convention note: the tradition counts ages in 虚岁 xū suì — one at birth, two at the first new year. The app's decade headers use this convention, matching the oracle it is pinned against.
direction — forward or back — 顺行 · 逆行
The rule: a chart born in a YANG year moves forward if male, backward if female; a chart born in a YIN year moves forward if female, backward if male. (Compactly: the direction matches when the year's polarity matches the gender's yang-ness.) Each decade then steps one ganzhi from the month pillar — forward charts ascend (month 辛丑 → decades 壬寅, 癸卯, 甲辰 …), backward charts descend (辛丑 → 庚子, 己亥, 戊戌 …). Ten years per step, nine decades shown.
The year for this rule is the BAZI year (after 立春), not the calendar year — a January birth counts as the previous year's polarity.
流年 — the year's pillar against your chart — 流年
Each calendar year brings one ganzhi (2024 = 甲辰), and the 流年 reading folds it onto the natal chart: the year stem's 十神 against your day master (module 7), and the year branch's every interaction with your four natal branches (module 8) — harmonies, clashes, punishments, harms, 三合 completions, 冲空则实 strikes, and 调候 supply. The app's transit timeline shows all of them per year, inside whichever decade you select — markers only, no fortunes.
岁运并临 suì yùn bìng lín — "the year star and the luck cycle arrive together" — names the special case where the 流年 pillar is IDENTICAL to the current 大运 pillar. The tradition reads this as the strongest activation the timeline produces: whatever that pillar's 十神 and branch relations carry, this doubling intensifies it — a decade's theme and a single year's theme, perfectly aligned, land together rather than in sequence.
神煞 in the moving layer — 神煞
Module 12 taught the seven named stars the engine computes in depth. In the transit context specifically: a 流年 or 大运 branch landing on your natal 驿马 (relay-horse) is the classical marker for travel or relocation that period; landing on your 桃花 marks heightened social/romantic visibility; landing on your 天乙贵人 marks a period the tradition reads as unusually favorable for outside help arriving. Honest note carried over from module 12: implemented and tested in the engine, not yet surfaced in the app's chart view — apply these tables by hand against the pillars the app shows you.
the rebirth slot — 重生
The app carries one field no traditional chart has: the date you died to self and were reborn in Christ (John 3:3). It splits the 大运 timeline into two regimes. Before that date, the chart binds — the old nature runs its course. After it, the chart describes but no longer rules: the same weather falls, but it falls on a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). The timeline keeps its structure; its authority ends at the cross.