Luck Pillars大運

Luck Pillars are a run of stem-branch pairs that starts from the Month Pillar and moves one step every ten years. If the Natal Chart is the ground you were given at birth, Luck Pillars are closer to surroundings that shift over it like the seasons. The Month Pillar is the starting point because a month is a season, and tradition sees it as the pillar that best holds the setting you grow up in. Each one's stem and branch are therefore compared with the Day Master to see which themes come forward in that decade.

• 大big, great (Korean reading: dae)
• 運to shift, to carry (Korean reading: un)

A large movement of luck: the long current running in ten-year spans.

Direction comes first. A man with a yang year stem or a woman with a yin one moves forward from the Month Pillar; the other cases move backward. The Luck Pillar number is a day count divided by three and rounded, with zero raised to one. Forward, the days run from birth to the next boundary; backward, from the previous boundary to birth. The first one starts in the birth year plus that number, and ten are listed.

Luck Pillars are read layered over the Natal Chart. Many readings liken the Ten Gods role of a Luck Pillar stem to interests surfacing in that decade, and its branch to shifts in the ground of daily life. Some welcome a decade bringing an element the chart has little of; others suggest easing the pace when a plentiful element grows further. Which Luck Pillar you are in now is marked using the year of today's date.

A man born at 14:30 on 12 May 1990 in Seoul has a yang year stem, 庚 (Geng), so he runs forward. Grain in Ear (Mangzhong), the next boundary, is about 25 days away, giving a number of 8 and a first pillar of 壬午 (Ren Wu). A woman with the same birth runs backward from 庚辰 (Geng Chen) at 2.

• A common idea

  Something big happens in the year a Luck Pillar changes.

  How we read it

  The worry is rooted in readings that name the changeover and advise extra care around it. This service reads the change not as a warning but as a time when the weight of your interests shifts.

• A common idea

  Every almanac gives the same Luck Pillar starting age.

  How we read it

  This service gives the start year as the birth year plus the number. Some almanacs add a year for Korean counted age, so results can look a year apart.

Another method keeps the remainder, turning 3 days into 1 year and 1 day into four months, to date the start to the month. This service uses rounded whole ages only.