Life-Arc 流年 (Cross-Tradition Year-by-Year) (流年人生軸（跨系統）)

Click Any Year of Your Life and Read What It Holds

Overview

Most year-by-year readings are thin: a year pillar, one Ten God, and the same generic sentence every '正財 year' shows to everyone. tian.annual is a chart-AWARE, year-by-year reading for a whole life — click any single year of your life arc, from birth to your late eighties, past years as much as future, and read what that year actually holds for YOUR chart. BaZi 流年 is the spine, because the life arc is a BaZi grid: each year carries its annual Gānzhī and its Ten God against your day master, but also the thing that makes a year eventful rather than flat — how that year's branch and stem talk to your FOUR natal pillars (the clashes, harmonies, punishments and combinations, each tagged to the life area it touches), and the 神煞 (symbolic stars) the year switches on. On top of that sit five life-domain leans — career, wealth, relationship, health and study, each a 0–100 reading — an overall favorability score for at-a-glance colouring, and a plain-language narrative for every year. And because askTIAN also computes the annual layer of five OTHER traditions, each year rides along with a crossLens: the same twelve months seen through the Hellenistic Lord of the Year, the Vedic daśā, the Tajika year-lord, the Western Solar Return and the Zǐwēi 太歲 palace — shown side by side as independent lenses, never blurred into one verdict.

Origin & history

The idea of reading a life one year at a time is old and near-universal: Chinese 流年 (‘flowing years’) walks the sixty-year Gānzhī cycle across a natal BaZi chart; Hellenistic astrology advanced the chart one house per year by profection to name a Lord of the Year; Vedic astrology ran the Vimśōttarī daśā of planetary periods and cast an annual Tajika chart; Western astrology cast a Solar Return each birthday. Each tradition answers the same human question — what does THIS year hold — in its own zodiac and calendar. tian.annual does not pick a winner. It makes BaZi the spine (because that is the system the life-arc grid is built on) and lets the others speak alongside it as complementary views.

askTIAN builds this on engines it already ships and has tested. The annual BaZi pillar, its Ten God and Twelve Stage come from the same 流年 routine used across the BaZi endpoints. The year-vs-natal interactions complete a layer the natal 刑冲合会 engine had explicitly deferred: the annual branch's 六冲/六合/六害/六破/刑/自刑 against each of the four natal branches, the annual stem's 天干五合 against the natal stems, and any 三合/半合/三會 the year completes with the natal chart — each tagged with the palace it touches (year = ancestry, month = parents and career, day = the spouse palace and the self, hour = children and later years). The annual 神煞 overlay reuses the classical anchor tables to report which stars the year's branch lights up (桃花, 驿马, 天乙贵人, 羊刃, 红鸾, 天喜 and more). The five life-domain leans build on the domain engine written for exactly this purpose, with a health lean derived from the year's Twelve-Stage vitality, body stars and any clash to the self palace. The crossLens is computed independently for each year and shown as-is. Nothing is fabricated: a layer that needs a birth time or place it doesn't have is simply omitted, and the BaZi spine remains complete on a birthdate alone.

How it works

Send the birth data and a window — either calendar years (fromYear/toYear) or ages (fromAge/toAge), so you can pull one chapter (a decade) at a time and cache it. For each year the engine returns: the annual pillar with its Ten God, Twelve Stage, elements, animal and 纳音; the interactions between that year and the natal chart, palace-tagged, with the frames the year completes; the 神煞 the year activates; five life-domain leans (0–100 with a note each); an overall favorability score and rating band; and a deterministic two-to-three-sentence narrative in Chinese or English. Alongside the BaZi spine, each year carries a crossLens — the profection Lord of the Year, the running daśā lords, the Varshaphala year-lord, the Solar Return Ascendant and Sun-house, and the Zǐwēi 太歲 palace — for the years those layers can be computed. An optional LLM life-arc narrative ties the decade together; turn it off for a fast, structured, bulk-profiling response and the deterministic per-year narratives still return.

Good for

Use cases

The Year-Detail Panel

Click a year and get its pillar, the interactions against the natal chart, the active 神煞 and a chart-aware narrative — the real content behind a life-arc grid.

Life-Domain Filter

Use the five 0–100 domain leans to rank or filter a whole life by career, wealth, relationship, health or study — not just the coming decade.

Decade Chapters

Pull one decade at a time with fromAge/toAge (or fromYear/toYear) and cache it; the span is capped at fifteen years per call.

Cross-Tradition Read

See the same year through the Hellenistic Lord of the Year, the Vedic daśā, the Tajika year-lord, the Solar Return and the Zǐwēi 太歲 palace — side by side.

Key terms

流年 (Liúnián)
The 'flowing year' — the annual Gānzhī pillar laid over a natal chart, the basic unit of Chinese year-by-year forecasting.
Interactions (刑冲合会)
How the annual branch/stem engage the natal pillars — clash (冲), harmony (合), harm (害), punishment (刑) and combinations — the signal that makes a year eventful, palace-tagged.
神煞 (Shénshā)
Symbolic 'spirits and stars' the year activates against the natal anchors — 桃花, 驿马, 天乙贵人, 羊刃, 红鸾, 天喜 and others.
Domain lean
A 0–100 reading for each of career, wealth, relationship, health and study — a transparent heuristic for ranking a year, with the classical reason returned alongside.
crossLens
The same year seen through five OTHER annual traditions (profection, daśā, Varshaphala, Solar Return, Zǐwēi 太歲) — complementary lenses, shown side by side.
Palace
The natal pillar an interaction touches — year (ancestry), month (parents & career), day (the spouse palace & the self), hour (children & later years).

API

The askTIAN tian.annual endpoint turns a birth profile into a chart-aware, year-by-year reading over any decade of the life (birth → ~90; past or future), requested by year range or age range and capped at fifteen years per call. BaZi 流年 is the spine: per year the annual Gānzhī + Ten God vs the day master + Twelve Stage + elements + animal + 纳音; the annual branch/stem against the four natal pillars (六冲/六合/六害/六破/刑/自刑 and 天干五合, plus any 三合/半合/三會 the year completes, palace-tagged); the 神煞 the annual branch activates; five life-domain leans (career/wealth/relationship/health/study, 0–100 + note); an overall favorability score and rating band; and a deterministic narrative in Chinese or English. A crossLens rides along — the profection Lord of the Year, the Vimśōttarī daśā lords, the Tajika Varshaphala year-lord, the Western Solar Return and the Zǐwēi 太歲 palace — shown side by side, never reconciled. The 0–100 leans and score are a disclosed heuristic, not a measured probability; the BaZi spine stays complete on a birthdate alone, and the crossLens degrades per-layer when a birth time or place is missing. Billing is per call: 15 TIAN with the LLM life-arc narrative, 8 TIAN structured-only. Symbolic reflection for a life reading — not a validated predictor, and not medical, legal or financial advice.

Endpoint: POST /trpc/tian.annual — 15 TIAN Points. See the API documentation and Playground.