The Lunar/Solar Bazi Calendar Discrepancy

[creekist]

Many people are worried about or confused the difference between using a Lunar or Solar calendar in Bazi to calculate your birth chart.

Let me make it very clear, there is no Lunar or Solar calendar there is only one calendar the "Xia Calendar" or "Hsia Calendar".

This calendar is lunisolar meaning that it incorporates both the elements of a lunar calendar and a solar calendar.

Basically the Chinese calendar has 354 days in order to incorporate the Lunar cycles and moons while at the same time being a Solar calendar where the revolution around the sun is being recorded. A real solar year has 365.24 days in it. Because the Western solar calendar bases itself solely on this it keeps the calendar date very accurately next to the real date even though the Western calendar has 365 days.

In order to remedy this every 4 years a leap day is added, ie. an extra day. This makes up for the 4 0.24s missed over the last for years. Although it's slightly off.

The problem is the Chinese calendar has 354 days and over the course of a few years the deviation form the normal solar calendar because big enough for an intercalary month to be added. ie. an extra chinese month taking up the name of the previous month.

So really what the calendar is saying is that the time of that extra intercalary month is when that month should have been occuring and previous month should have been a different month. <-- I'm most likely very wrong about what I said here.

Basically what I'm saying is this: Between the times the intercalary months are added the dates of those times are extremely inaccurate because between those times the deviation or difference from the normal calendar builds up and the deviation is not taken into account when entering your birthdate into the calculator. Or when the calculator calculates your birth chart from your birthdate and does not take into account the deviation.

The problem is only fixed when it's big enough to add an extra one whole month which is actually when that real month should be occuring but the few years before that intercalary month there was deviation from a real solar year starting from the very beginning (right after the intercalary month) and it was growing every day, so most like your date of birth moved a few days or maybe some hours.

I'm not sure how the precession of the equinoxes is related to this if at all.

On the other hand maybe it was the intention of the Chinese for the calendar to be that way when using Bazi and it didn't matter if it deviated from the Solar Year but what mattered really was the Lunar Cycles.

There's been some weird thing where people claim there is a Solar Calendar or Hsia Calendar or Agricultural Calendar or Xia Calendar like this:

February 4th to March 4th is Spring Season or something and it is Yin Branch or Yin Wood Branch or Yin Wood Tiger Branch or Yin Tiger Branch.

Basically this is untrue this Xia Calendar or Hsia calendar is the only thing that every year is consistently marked up or synced up with the seasons or synchronized with the seasons but this only determines the seasons based on astronomical observations of the sun so this only determines the seasons or counts the seasons or counts for the seasons.

It does not determine month pillar or it doesn't determine the month pillar.

[creekist]

In order to explain very clearly the Chinese calendar has 4 different cycles of stem-branch combinations. This cycle is called the sexegenary cycle and there is an hour cycle, day cycle, month cycle and year cycle.

They're all independent of each other so no matter whether is an extra month or 0.24 of a day the cycle still continues because as like what someone said before you can't have 0.24 of a day.

But after the discovery of the Jie  Qi you could divide the year into 24 solar terms. They were never really months but terms with fixed dates when seasonal events would happen. This is not even applicable to the rest of the world where seasons occur two or three months later in the southern hemisphere.

Nevertheless someone noticed that you could divided the year into 12 terms by adding two solar terms together and thus have kind of a month and they affixed stem branch combinations to those. They also noticed you could also keep track of solar years as the Jie Qi which were a long time later around 1645 or something kept track of astronomically and thus kept in track with a full cycle or rotation around the sun.

All of which were never the original purpose of the Jie Qi which was to keep track of seasonal events and certain astronomical events which happened at fixed dates because they were astronomically correct and thus the year was also 365 days, I'm not sure about leap years or if the chinese used them. If they didn't the calendar would be way off by now.

Anyways because you/they could technically make the months and years solar and the days still remained solar or the same length of a day and the hours still remained the same length of an hour or still solar then technically you could use all solar items and calculate a birth chart. But this was not normally done.

Back then the chinese used the lunar part or lunar aspect of the lunisolar calendar they had to keep track of dates and months.

As to or for the month cycles, year cycles and hour cycles etc. They were not all started around the same time, different emperors stopped and started them and before people only used these cycles to keep track of years or days and eventually someone else started hour cycles and eventually month cycles.

But basically the Jie Qi were used to assist farmers because they were astronomically correct and the lunar months were erratic but that's why they call months moons, the term month was derived from the word moon.

However every 3 or 2 or so years the calendar was once again solarly corrected with the intercalary month. The main concern of the chinese was to make sure it stayed lunarly attuned.

The only months in the chinese calendar were lunar months as far as I know the Jie Qi were never used to name months. Normally the months actually have some kind of astronomical correspondencation and they are normally just named 1st month 2nd month etc. But it's possible some person or some guy started a stem-branch cycle for the months. And the months are not entirely out of tune with the Jie Qi as the intercalary month puts it back on track every 3 or so years or 2 or so years.

So basically what I'm saying is that no where in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping does it say that we should use the Jie Qi as solar months and the Jie Qi to calculate Solar Years and use Solar Years.

Back then they used lunar months for moons and lunar years for years and of course or but of course days remained days and hours remained hours.

But when Xu Zi Ping asked us to use months and years in to calculate our birth chart he was probably referring to lunar months and years as that's what people meant when they said months and years before.

And he does not specify other wise in his paper.

[creekist]

There is of course the issue of this quote from this website:

"

Solar Calendar

To plot the four pillars, most people correctly use the Solar Calendar. Some incorrectly use the Lunar Calendar. To support what I am saying, refer to the work of Xu Xing. The following is from a page of his book [Yuan Hai Zi Ping].





On top of the page, there is an annotation. It says, "If one is born on the first day of the first month at noon, and if the "Beginning of Spring" is in the Rabbit Hour, then he is born in the first month of the year. If he is born in the Tiger Hour, then it is before the "Beginning of Spring", and he is considered born in the previous year.

It is obvious that the year is supposed to begin on the "Beginning of Spring" at the precise moment. A Lunar Year does not begin on the "Beginning of Spring". Only the Solar Year begins on the "Beginning of Spring". It is solid proof that the Solar Calendar is referred to. If you are not using the Solar Calendar, then it is not Zi Ping Four Pillars of Destiny

"



from this website:



 newbielink:http://www.geocities.com/fourpillar/ziping.html [nonactive]




If one however searches up the full Yuan Hai Zi Ping on the net and searches Li Chun or 立春 in the text it only appears once. And in that one times it says something like: "If some were born in the Li Chun time and if there are Three Bing Fires in his Four Pillars then there will be a great fire (in his Four Pillars I'm assuming)" Which I later assumed was the basis for a person being a "Transformation into Fire chart" In the Danny Vandenbergh program.

But if you search Li Chun or 立春 again within the text no where else does it occur.

The annotation above I'm assuming was most likely made by someone else because it could have been anybody. I don't know how many copies he made and that was a long time ago around 177-228 BC or AD.

Maybe people copied the text or memorized it.

Anyways what I'm saying someone else most like made that annotation to clear things up maybe he thought using Solar Calendar was better because the Sun has more influence.

But it was definitely not made by Xu Sheng. <-- Not sure about this,

As people don't annotate their own papers, other people read great papers and text and annotate them and make commentaries on them. But I'm pretty sure people don't annotate their own texts.

[creekist]

Please, take this very seriously, I know it's easier to use Jie Qi to determine Solar Month and Year but as far as I know this practice is unheard of.

Jie Qi is Jie Qi or Solar Terms based and derived on or from Astronomy. They are not used for Months, the terms are not added two by two together to make months. And the full cycle of Jie Qi is not used to derive a year, I mean it can be used to denote a True Solar Year but in the Chinese Calendar it's not.

The Chinese calendar was lunisolar, they brought it back to the true solar cycle every fews years with an intercalary month to keep it from drifting off too far.

But their primary focus or concern was keeping with the cycles of moon, so the calendar was primarily lunar and there is only one chinese calendar.


To support what I'm saying read this quote:


"


The Chinese Lunar/Solar Calendar

The traditional Chinese agricultural calendar is primarily lunar, in that the lunar cycle (a lunation) between new moons is a principle part of the calendar. This cycle averages 29.53 days, but can vary by several hours for any given time of the year. A Chinese year normally consists of 12 months where a month corresponds to one lunar cycle. Each month starts on the day of the new moon. Since the cycle is not an even number of days, a month in the lunar calendar can vary between 29 and 30 days and a normal year can be 353, 354, or 355 days.

The Chinese agricultural calendar is also partially solar though because 7 times in a 19 year cycle, an extra leap month (runyue) is be added to the year to bring it back into line with the longer solar year.

To explain the basis for determining when leap months are added, one must first understand the Chinese system of solar terms. 24 dates, made up of 12 principle terms and 12 sectional terms, divide the solar year into 24 periods that are based on the earth's position around the sun. These include the equinoxes and the solstices. According to the Chinese calendar, the winter solstice must occur in month 11 of the year. A lunar month in which a principle term does not occur becomes a leap (or intercalary) month and is assigned the number of the month that preceded it but is designated as a leap. If this happens to occur twice in one year, only the first month in which it occurs in a leap month. The Chinese new year itself starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice.

Chinese years, months, and days are also assigned a name based upon the Chinese system of the heavenly stems and earthly branches. In this cyclical system, each year, month, and day is associated with one of the 10 heavenly stems and 12 earthly branches. Each successive time period will have a new stem and branch, until going through the stems 6 times and the branches 5 times, to give 60 unique combinations. In the case of years and dates, this gives a continuous cycle for thousands of years. This is similar for months, but in the case of a leap month, it is assigned its previous month's branch/stem combination with the leap designation added. This is why the combination is so easily calculated for years and days, but requires tables or complicated astronomical calculations to find months.



"



From this website:



 newbielink:http://www.mandarintools.com/calconv_old.html [nonactive]




Seriously try searching for Chinese Lunar or Solar calendar or just Lunar or Solar calendar on the net from China, you want find anything except things from Bazi sites. The only mention of a distinction between a Lunar and Solar calendar is only ever mentioned on Bazi sites.


If you search for Chinese calendar on researched websites such as wikipedia and other ones there is no distinction between a Lunar and Solar calendar, there is only one calendar that is the "Xia Calendar" or "Chinese Calendar". Which is a lunisolar calendar but primarily lunar or more so lunar or lunar more so.

There is no mention in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping of using the Jie Qi in such a way to determine years and months the only thing I get for Li Chun in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping is something like this:

"If one is born in Li Chun and he has Three Bing Fires in his Four Pillars then there will be a great fire"


Other than that I can't find Li Chun mentioned in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping at all.




Oh by the way Xu Sheng was born in Song Dynasty so not born in like 177-228 BC or AD, lol.

[creekist]

Uh this a very serious problem, what I've written here is literally earth-shaking.

Can anyone comment on what I've written here or at least tell me why I'm wrong.

I can't find an origin for the practice of using a purely Solar Method or Time for Bazi.

True there is a distinction between Lunar and Solar year as said in Wikipedia about the Chinese Calendar, but not Lunar and Solar Calendar.

It's not even in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, save Joseph Yu's website and his quotes.

I don't even think the Yuan Hai Zi Ping tells you anything about getting dates and derving the birth chart so I assume use the Lunar date because that's what people most commonly used.

They most commonly used Lunar date before his time, during his time and in general now, except for this Solar practice of Bazi that I've found.

Can we explain why or contradict me?

[creekist]

There are some sites that go against me, read these and you'll find out why:

 newbielink:http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/chinese_cal.htm [nonactive]

 newbielink:http://www.senses-asia.com/content.aspx?Id=92 [nonactive]

 newbielink:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_astrology [nonactive]



But for the most part people all around the world claim that the Bazi or Four Pillars is supposed to be read with Solar Dates. The only ever site I've ever found explaining why are these two and they are the same and by the same person Joseph Yu:



 newbielink:http://www.geocities.com/fourpillar/ziping.html [nonactive]

 newbielink:http://www.astro-fengshui.com/astrology/fourpillar_intro.html [nonactive]


And yet he speaks about this annotation which allegedly clears everything up in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, the annotation says that if a person were born after the Beginning of Spring on that day on the Rabbit Hour or something then he is born on the first day of the first month of the year, I don't know about hour.

But I can't find this annotation in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping at all, the only thing I get for LiChun is that thing I've posted so many times about the Three Bing Fires and it has nothing to do with dates at all.

I can't even find a pdf facsimile of the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, I thought I found one before but maybe not.



Anyways the point is this: Somebody originated the practice of using all Solar Dates in the practice of Bazi and now everyone accepts blindly. It's true whenever someone searches this up, "Lunar or Solar date" for Bazi or just "Lunar or Solar Calendar" people will blindly follow the Solar calendar because EVERYONE says for Bazi we use Solar calendar and we always have or something.

But no one knows why, in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, Xu Sheng THE CREATOR of Bazi does not even specify that you use the Solar Calendar at all.

Joey Yap allegedly claims a Xu Xing wrote the Yuan Hai Zi Ping or Xu Xing compiled from  information from  Xu Sheng the guy who created Bazi but I can't find evidence of this claim anywhere. Maybe that book he has is fake.

Anyways the online Yuan Hai Zi Ping still doesn't have any evidence of saying you must use Solar Calendar for Bazi, it doesn't even have anything on deriving dates (I think).

I'm beginning to think you're all 江湖派 people, who don't understand the history or theoretical basis of Bazi. In a way it's an art that should be appreciated and studied even by Scholars, people should write books on the history of this subject.

People like Joey Yap, Joseph Yu, Peter Leung, Alvin Yap, David Twicken come out of no where and

charge a lot of money for their [c~!@#$%^&*_+?].

And they all use Solar Calendar.


Anyways the point is none of you know why we use Solar for Bazi and the only reason why you accept it is because everyone else does.

Even one of those sites I posted up there says you should use Solar Calendar but the text is a direct copy from Joseph Yu's site, it's a sense-asia one, Danny Vandenbergh uses Solar calendar, but he learned from Joseph Yu.

This is stupid, the only site that explains why and there is no theoretical basis, and there is no evidence behind it.

I can't find the origination of that annotation at all.




 newbielink:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_pillars_of_destiny [nonactive]

[creekist]

Can someone comment on whwat I've said, is it correct?

[creekist]

Is what I've said here accurate?

Basically for a summary for anyone who didn't read I said this:


There is no evidence for Xu Sheng or the Yuan Hai Zi Ping every saying that you must use Solar Calendars and Solar Time to calculate Birth Chart.

There is only one calendar the Xia Calendar, it was Lunisolar and it would be what you referred to as the "Lunar Calendar", this Calendar was used literally for all things. And the notion that there is such thing as a Solar Calendar is largely unfounded, this phenomenon of Chinese Solar Calendar is only found among Astrologers, aka Chinese Astrologers.

True there are Separate Cycles for the Hour, Day, Month and Year but all these Separate Sexegenary Cycles used for Astrology followed the Lunisolar Calendar aka the Xia Calendar aka what Chinese Astrologers would refer to as the Lunar Calendar for calculation.

Basically that's it, there is a little more in my head that I haven't put down yet at all in my thread or this thread, but I might add that later.

Anyone care to refute or comment on that?

Maybe with some proof?

[cnyelie]

Wah..such a detail account about the history of lunar and solar calenders. I guess not many people are interested in history but are more interested in the practical side
 

[jerrylew]

Hi Creekist

In Qi Zheng Si yu you have 3 of the 7 stars in yin house ( taiyang,shui xing and tu xing in yin house) with the he position of taiyin in wu house.
May be it is this condition which gives you an eloquent mind in your early age.

I'm also studying the calendar in order to find the ju of a day in qmdj teaching. In the next few days maybe I could speak something about it.
In order to know more about the basic of bazi I think you need to study qi zheng si yu and classic theories of bazi. I ever met an unknown daoist who intepreted bazi using classic theories and most of his predictions of the future events are usally correct.

Salute to you, young in age but eloquent in wisdom !

         Regards

[Alexey]

creekist, I think you can ask Manfred Kubny about this rule to use Solar calendar. He is not only a "blind follower", but also an astronomer and a researcher.
Please share with us if you get some info.

[Banned: seer]

[
But for the most part people all around the world claim that the Bazi or Four Pillars is supposed to be read with Solar Dates. The only ever site I've ever found explaining why are these two and they are the same and by the same person Joseph Yu:



And yet he speaks about this annotation which allegedly clears everything up in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, the annotation says that if a person were born after the Beginning of Spring on that day on the Rabbit Hour or something then he is born on the first day of the first month of the year, I don't know about hour.

But I can't find this annotation in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping at all, the only thing I get for LiChun is that thing I've posted so many times about the Three Bing Fires and it has nothing to do with dates at all.

I can't even find a pdf facsimile of the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, I thought I found one before but maybe not.



Anyways the point is this: Somebody originated the practice of using all Solar Dates in the practice of Bazi and now everyone accepts blindly. It's true whenever someone searches this up, "Lunar or Solar date" for Bazi or just "Lunar or Solar Calendar" people will blindly follow the Solar calendar because EVERYONE says for Bazi we use Solar calendar and we always have or something.

But no one knows why, in the Yuan Hai Zi Ping, Xu Sheng THE CREATOR of Bazi does not even specify that you use the Solar Calendar at all.

Joey Yap allegedly claims a Xu Xing wrote the Yuan Hai Zi Ping or Xu Xing compiled from  information from  Xu Sheng the guy who created Bazi but I can't find evidence of this claim anywhere. Maybe that book he has is fake.

Anyways the online Yuan Hai Zi Ping still doesn't have any evidence of saying you must use Solar Calendar for Bazi, it doesn't even have anything on deriving dates (I think).

I'm beginning to think you're all 江湖派 people, who don't understand the history or theoretical basis of Bazi. In a way it's an art that should be appreciated and studied even by Scholars, people should write books on the history of this subject.

People like Joey Yap, Joseph Yu, Peter Leung, Alvin Yap, David Twicken come out of no where and

charge a lot of money for their [c~!@#$%^&*_+?].

And they all use Solar Calendar.


Anyways the point is none of you know why we use Solar for Bazi and the only reason why you accept it is because everyone else does.

Even one of those sites I posted up there says you should use Solar Calendar but the text is a direct copy from Joseph Yu's site, it's a sense-asia one, Danny Vandenbergh uses Solar calendar, but he learned from Joseph Yu.

This is stupid, the only site that explains why and there is no theoretical basis, and there is no evidence behind it.

I can't find the origination of that annotation at all.




_destiny

[/quote]

actually only senses-asia seems to be against you. Ignore Wikipedia. It`s normally written by Westerners.

[Banned: seer]

Many people are worried about or confused the difference between using a Lunar or Solar calendar in Bazi to calculate your birth chart.

Let me make it very clear, there is no Lunar or Solar calendar there is only one calendar the "Xia Calendar" or "Hsia Calendar".

This calendar is lunisolar meaning that it incorporates both the elements of a lunar calendar and a solar calendar.

Basically the Chinese calendar has 354 days in order to incorporate the Lunar cycles and moons while at the same time being a Solar calendar where the revolution around the sun is being recorded. A real solar year has 365.24 days in it. Because the Western solar calendar bases itself solely on this it keeps the calendar date very accurately next to the real date even though the Western calendar has 365 days.

In order to remedy this every 4 years a leap day is added, ie. an extra day. This makes up for the 4 0.24s missed over the last for years. Although it's slightly off.

The problem is the Chinese calendar has 354 days and over the course of a few years the deviation form the normal solar calendar because big enough for an intercalary month to be added. ie. an extra chinese month taking up the name of the previous month.

So really what the calendar is saying is that the time of that extra intercalary month is when that month should have been occuring and previous month should have been a different month. <-- I'm most likely very wrong about what I said here.

Basically what I'm saying is this: Between the times the intercalary months are added the dates of those times are extremely inaccurate because between those times the deviation or difference from the normal calendar builds up and the deviation is not taken into account when entering your birthdate into the calculator. Or when the calculator calculates your birth chart from your birthdate and does not take into account the deviation.

The problem is only fixed when it's big enough to add an extra one whole month which is actually when that real month should be occuring but the few years before that intercalary month there was deviation from a real solar year starting from the very beginning (right after the intercalary month) and it was growing every day, so most like your date of birth moved a few days or maybe some hours.

I'm not sure how the precession of the equinoxes is related to this if at all.

On the other hand maybe it was the intention of the Chinese for the calendar to be that way when using Bazi and it didn't matter if it deviated from the Solar Year but what mattered really was the Lunar Cycles.

There's been some weird thing where people claim there is a Solar Calendar or Hsia Calendar or Agricultural Calendar or Xia Calendar like this:

February 4th to March 4th is Spring Season or something and it is Yin Branch or Yin Wood Branch or Yin Wood Tiger Branch or Yin Tiger Branch.

Basically this is untrue this Xia Calendar or Hsia calendar is the only thing that every year is consistently marked up or synced up with the seasons or synchronized with the seasons but this only determines the seasons based on astronomical observations of the sun so this only determines the seasons or counts the seasons or counts for the seasons.

It does not determine month pillar or it doesn't determine the month pillar.

Thers only ione way to know which calendar is right. Check the world yearly events against the chart for W. solstice, for Li Chun and for New Moon