The full year table is 144 rows long and hard to read. These ten pages split it into decades — with each year's animal, heavenly stem and element — and add something a flat table cannot show: what each ten-year span contains, and which of the twelve animals it omits entirely.
| Decade | Animal span | Stem elements | Animals not in this decade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950–1959 | Tiger – Pig | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Rat, Ox |
| 1960–1969 | Rat – Rooster | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Dog, Pig |
| 1970–1979 | Dog – Goat | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Monkey, Rooster |
| 1980–1989 | Monkey – Snake | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Horse, Goat |
| 1990–1999 | Horse – Rabbit | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Dragon, Snake |
| 2000–2009 | Dragon – Ox | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Tiger, Rabbit |
| 2010–2019 | Tiger – Pig | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Rat, Ox |
| 2020–2029 | Rat – Rooster | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Dog, Pig |
| 2030–2039 | Dog – Goat | Metal 2 · Water 2 · Wood 2 · Fire 2 · Earth 2 | Monkey, Rooster |
| 2040–2043 | Monkey – Pig | Metal 2 · Water 2 | Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat |
If you know a birth year, the decade page gives you its animal, stem, element and polarity directly. That is the year pillar, which is one of the four positions in a full BaZi chart — the weakest of the four, and the only one the popular zodiac uses.
The pages also note where the year attribution is ambiguous. The popular boundary for a zodiac year is Chinese New Year; BaZi uses Lichun, the Start of Spring, which falls around 3–5 February. Births in January and early February can belong to the previous animal under one convention and the next under the other.
Four pillars, ten gods, five elements and eight ten-year luck cycles — calculated from your exact birth data.
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