A Discourse On Yearly Lord (也谈太岁)

In places where Chinese community congregates, we can find various magazines on Chinese horoscopes (运程书) starting from the 4^th quarter of every year flocking local newspaper stalls. Needless to say that these types of publications bring lucrative profits to the authors while increasing their fames and exposures to general public.

 

There is a magazine stall just downstairs and the owner is my acquaintance. Once he asked me to recommend a good forecast magazine but I only smiled and replied him that: “I can’t comment as I never read such stuffs!”

 

Despite my lack of interest, at the beginning of every Chinese New Year, the Chinese people will want to know if he/she is ‘in conflict’ with the yearly lord (犯太歲) and if he/she does, what kind of amulets to wear and what kind of ritual to perform to alleviate ill effects if any. To say this honestly, I never believe in this type of thing as there are many factors affecting the luck of a person.

 

According to original teachings, one is in conflict only with the yearly animal when his/her year of birth (生肖) is directly opposite (冲太岁) to current yearly lord; such as the rat is in conflict with the horse (子午冲); and when his/her year of birth is same as current year, then it is termed ‘at the back’ of the yearly lord (伏太歲).

 

No one knows since when other unrelated issues were added to this conflicting aspect with the yearly lord until such a stage that nearly a third of our Chinese population is in conflict in any given year. The unrelated issues I meant are simply: hurt (刑), union (合) ，harm (害) and break (破).

 

Perhaps those ingenious businesses minded folks wanted to market their amulets for profiting… on second thought, if such gadgets can make people happy; so be it.

 

Feng Shui also makes use of yearly lord to determine if one should perform renovation at a particular location. There is a saying that goes:

 

"太岁可坐不可向。"

"It is alright to sit on yearly lord but never face it."

 

Having said so, for the experienced; one can certainly temper with yearly lord to get a quick profit. This can be done by choosing one’s auspicious date to counter ill effects of tempering with this yearly lord.