A question, answered the Chinese way

Should I quit my job?

Chinese astrology will not tell you whether. It has never had an opinion on your rent, your manager or your savings, and a reader who claims otherwise is selling something. What it has, and has had for about a thousand years, is a precise vocabulary for when. Every year arrives with a heavenly stem, and that stem stands in one of ten fixed relations to the stem of your birth day, the character a bazi chart treats as you. Some of those relations are read as years of leaving. Some are read as years of rising where you already are. And one star, the travel horse, is read as the year you move, full stop.

The one to know is the Hurting Officer. The Ming compendium the rules come from, the Sanming Tonghui, sketches the person it describes as talented, proud and "always taking everyone under heaven to be beneath them," and it warns in four characters about what happens when that year meets authority: "Hurting Officer meets Officer, a hundred kinds of trouble." If you have ever known with total certainty that you could not work for this person one more month, the book has a name for that year. Put your birthday in below and the table prints yours for the next eight years.

A hand setting a blank sealed envelope on a dark wooden desk beside a closed thread-bound almanac and a steaming cup of tea, a dark jacket draped over a chair behind in morning window light. — The letter is yours to write. The almanac only knows what year it is. Illustration.

Your years, from your birthday

Your day master, the ten-god table and the travel horse come from the same tables as the calculator; years turn at Lichun, the start of spring. Nothing you enter is stored.

Five kinds of working year

The ten gods come in five pairs, and each pair is a kind of weather at work. The finder names the one the year's stem brings to your day master. The ten gods page derives all ten.

The year brings	Relation to you	How it is read at work
Output: Eating God, Hurting Officer	What you produce	Your own work, your own voice. The Hurting Officer is the walking-out star: the book says a run of it is "turning your back on salary."
Influence: Direct Officer, Seven Killings	What overcomes you	The post, the title, the boss. The Direct Officer is "first of the six patterns"; the Seven Killings is the same authority without the manners.
Resource: Direct and Indirect Resource	What produces you	Backing, credentials, study. The year to retrain, or to be carried by someone senior.
Wealth: Direct and Indirect Wealth	What you overcome	Money and trade. Pay, a side business, a deal; the Indirect Wealth is the windfall and the gamble.
Companion: Peer, Rob Wealth	Your own element	Peers and rivals. Partnerships, competition, someone else going for the same seat.

The travel horse, and the year you move

The second thing the finder marks is not a ten god but a star. The travel horse, yi ma, is named for the relay horses of the imperial post, and it is placed mechanically from the animal of your birth day: Monkey, Rat and Dragon get the Tiger; Tiger, Horse and Dog get the Monkey; Snake, Rooster and Ox get the Pig; Pig, Rabbit and Goat get the Snake. A year of that animal is your horse year. The branch relations page shows the derivation.

The Sanming Tonghui gives the star a long chapter, most of it a catalogue of twelve kinds of horse, several of them lame, and one plain sentence that matters here: when the decade or the year reaches the horse, it brings "the joy of office and of moving." In the Ming that meant a posting, which for an official meant packing up the household for another province. In modern terms it covers both halves of this page: a new job and a new city. The finder also flags the year whose branch clashes with your day branch, which the tradition reads as a year things will not sit still.

Will I get the job?

Same table, other column. The years the tradition marks for getting a post are Officer years, when the year's stem is the Direct Officer or the Seven Killings to your day master, and horse years, for the reason above. A year that carries both is the one a practitioner circles. A Resource year is the secondary mark: it is read as backing, which in hiring terms means a reference, a credential or someone on the inside.

There is a catch, and it is the reason the tradition sells full readings rather than tables. Whether an Officer year is a promotion or a squeeze depends on how strong your day master is. For a strong day master, authority is a use for all that energy; for a weak one, it presses. The book's line on the Direct Officer is that it wants the self to be "healthy and strong" to carry it. Strength is judged from the whole chart, the month above all, which is what the chart reads.

What the tradition can say, and what it cannot

It can say

Which kind of working year each coming year is for you, by a fixed rule you can check.
Which years carry the travel horse or clash your day branch, the classical marks of movement.
That the restlessness has a name. That is worth more than it sounds.

It cannot say

Whether you can afford to. That is arithmetic, and it comes first.
Whether this job is the problem. A Hurting Officer year follows you to the next desk.
How a year lands inside your decade. That needs the month pillar, which the calculator does.
A plain yes or no. For that, temples throw two wooden blocks, and so does the yes or no oracle.

Questions people ask

Can Chinese astrology tell me whether to quit my job?

No, and a good reader will not pretend it can. What bazi does have is a vocabulary for timing. Each year brings a heavenly stem, and that stem stands in one of ten fixed relations to the day master in your chart. Some of those relations are read as years of leaving, some as years of rising where you are, and one branch, the travel horse, is read as the year you move. That is a calendar of pressures, not a decision, and it cannot see your rent, your manager or your savings.

What is a Hurting Officer year?

A year whose stem is the element your day master produces, with the opposite polarity. The Sanming Tonghui gives it a whole chapter and a character sketch: many talents, proud, "always taking everyone under heaven to be beneath them." It is the classic star of walking out, and the book's best-known warning about it is four characters long, "Hurting Officer meets Officer, a hundred kinds of trouble": the year you can no longer stand the boss is also the year the boss can least stand you.

Will I get the job this year?

The years the tradition marks for getting a post are Officer years (the Direct Officer or Seven Killings on the year's stem) and travel horse years. The chapter on the travel horse says that when the year arrives at it, it brings "the joy of office and of moving." The finder marks both. Whether the post is a promotion or a squeeze depends on how strong your day master is, and that needs the full chart.

What is the travel horse in bazi?

A star placed from your day branch. The twelve branches fall into four groups of three, and each group has one travel horse branch: Monkey, Rat and Dragon get the Tiger; Tiger, Horse and Dog get the Monkey; Snake, Rooster and Ox get the Pig; Pig, Rabbit and Goat get the Snake. A year of that animal is a horse year. The Sanming Tonghui calls it "a spirit of celebration," and reads it as promotion, transfer and relocation.

Is 2027 a good year to change jobs?

It depends entirely on your day master, which is why the finder asks for a birthday rather than a sign. 2027 is a Ding Wei year: a Ding (yin Fire) stem over the Goat. For a Jia (yang Wood) day master that stem is the Hurting Officer, the walking-out year; for a Geng (yang Metal) day master it is the Direct Officer, the year of the post. The same year, opposite readings. Put your birthday in and the table prints yours.

Keep going

Cast your chart reads day-master strength and the decade you are in; the written reading has a chapter called "The work that fits you."
The ten gods derives every relation in the table above, with the classical names.
Where should I move? is the other half of the travel horse: the directions the tradition gives you, and the year.
When will I get married? is the same finder pointed at the spouse palace and the peach blossom year.

Sources

The finder's tables are the calculator's own, exported at build: the sixty pairs, the ten gods for all hundred stem pairs (checked against the book's own examples), and the travel horse map. The readings are from the chapters below.