Tai Sui (太歲)

The Grand Duke of the Year — Are You Offending Him?

Overview

Every Chinese new year, one question outdraws all the others: 犯太歲嗎 — am I offending the Tai Sui this year? The Tai Sui (太歲) is the Grand Duke of the year, the presiding star-general of each of the sixty ganzhi years, and the offense check is pure classical mechanics: your birth-year branch set against the current year's branch through five relations. Stand in the same branch and it is your 值太歲 ben-ming year, the year of red underwear and extra care; stand opposite and you 冲太歲 — the clash, the heaviest, the classic eventful year; the punishment groups make 刑太歲, the harm pairs 害太歲, the break pairs 破太歲 — and they co-occur, which most horoscope pages quietly flatten. askTIAN computes the check the way a temple master would: the birth branch taken Lichun-correctly (a February 3rd birthday belongs to the previous year's Tai Sui), every co-occurring offense reported, the year's presiding general named — 2026 is 丙午太歲文哲大將軍 — and a twelve-year outlook flagging every offending year ahead.

Origin & history

The Tai Sui began in the sky: 太歲 is the counter-orbital shadow of Jupiter (歲星, the Year Star), the invisible point ancient Chinese astronomy moved through the twelve branches in Jupiter's twelve-year period — and the direction one did not disturb with groundbreaking or great undertakings. Daoism personified the cycle: each of the sixty ganzhi years received a presiding 太歲星君, a named general — 甲子 金辨, 乙丑 陳材, through 癸亥 虞程 — installed in temples in halls of sixty statues, where each new year the presiding general's altar receives the year's registrations. The offense mechanics are the classical branch relations this catalogue's BaZi engines already carry: 值 (presiding, the same branch), 冲 (the six clashes), 刑 (the punishment triangles 寅巳申 and 丑戌未, the 子卯 pair, and the four self-punishing branches 辰午酉亥), 害 (the six harms) and 破 (the six breaks).

安太歲 — registering oneself with the year's general — remains one of the most-practiced rituals of the Chinese temple year, from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the diaspora; ben-ming-year red bracelets are sold at every temple gate, and 躲春, hiding quietly during the hour the year turns at 立春, still empties living rooms for a few minutes each February. The general lists themselves travelled through temple lineages, and the transmission varies at the edges — the same year's general is 王清 in one lineage and 王濟 in another, 曾光 beside 魯先, 方杰 beside 方傑 — a variance askTIAN discloses rather than hides, following the Taiwanese temple transmission with spot names independently corroborated against the National Culture Memory Bank. The severity ordering — clash heaviest, then presiding, punishment, harm, break — is the common teaching and is labelled as convention, not law.

How it works

Send a birthdate and a target year. The birth branch comes from the same Lichun-aware BaZi engine as bazi.chart — the solar-term boundary is computed, not assumed, so a birthday in late January or early February lands in the correct ganzhi year (the response shows the Lichun year it resolved to). The target year's ganzhi, animal and presiding general are derived from the sexagenary cycle, with the boundary note that the Tai Sui year runs 立春 to 立春 under its label. The five relations are then checked — same branch, opposite branch, punishment groups including self-punishment in the branch's own year, harm pair, break pair — and every offense that applies is returned with its classical note and conventional severity, sorted heaviest first: a 寅-born querent in a 巳 year correctly receives both 刑 and 害; an 午-born querent in the 午 year both 值 and 自刑. The verdict summarizes; the customs block reports 安太歲, ben-ming red and 躲春 as folk custom, never prescription; and the outlook walks the next twelve years, flagging each offending one with its types — the planning view for weddings, moves and ventures.

Good for

Use cases

The New-Year Check

One call each January: the offense verdict with every co-occurring type, the year's general by name, and the customs block — the feature every Chinese-audience app ships in the first week of the year, powered correctly.

The Twelve-Year Planner

Render the outlook as a timeline for weddings, relocations and launches — the years that clash or punish flagged ahead of time, the clear years visible at a glance.

Sixty-General Hall

The full general list with the current year's altar highlighted — a digital 太歲殿 for temple and community apps, with the lineage variants honestly noted.

Birthday Edge-Case Resolver

The Lichun-aware birth branch settles the perennial 'am I actually a Dragon or a Rabbit' question for early-February birthdays — the same boundary the BaZi chart uses, one engine, one answer.

Key terms

太歲 (Tai Sui)
The Grand Duke of the year — originally Jupiter's counter-orbital shadow pacing the twelve branches, personified as sixty named star-generals, one presiding over each ganzhi year.
犯太歲
Offending the Tai Sui — standing in one of the five adverse branch relations to the year: 值, 冲, 刑, 害 or 破. Several can apply at once, and this engine reports all of them.
值太歲 / 本命年
Your own branch presiding — the ben-ming year. Classically transitional and unsettled, met with red accessories and extra care, not doom.
冲太歲
The clash — your branch directly opposite the year's. The heaviest offense: movement, upheaval, the classic eventful year.
刑 / 害 / 破太歲
The punishment groups (子卯, 寅巳申, 丑戌未, and the self-punishing 辰午酉亥), the six harm pairs, and the six break pairs — friction, quiet erosion, and minor breakage respectively.
太歲星君 (The Sixty Generals)
The named presiding generals of the sixty ganzhi years — 甲子 金辨 through 癸亥 虞程 — enshrined in temple halls of sixty; lineage variants in a few names are disclosed, not hidden.
安太歲
Registering with the year's general at a temple when offending — the tradition's standard answer, reported here as folk custom, never prescription.
立春 Boundary
The Tai Sui year turns at 立春, not January 1st — the birth branch is resolved through the same solar-term-aware engine as the BaZi chart, so early-February birthdays land correctly.

API

The askTIAN Tai Sui API answers the new-year question the way a temple master would: the Lichun-correct birth branch (same engine as bazi.chart, boundary-tested both sides), all five offense relations checked with co-occurrences reported and the conventional severity ordering labelled as convention, the year's and the birth-year's presiding generals named from the corroborated sixty-general list (lineage variants disclosed), the customs reported as custom, and a twelve-year outlook flagging every offending year ahead — locked by an eleven-test suite including the full 2025 乙巳 worked example and the outlook gold. Pure deterministic compute, no LLM, 2 TIAN.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/taisui.check — 2 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.