Time Analysis · the Stage scale
The Stage scale — ten years at a time
- How long
- Ten years
- Turns over on
- 1 January of the year you reach the boundary age
- What it returns
- A graded decade
- Sits inside
- Nothing — it is the widest
- Read at
- Soul Bonding, free
The longest reading the board produces, and the only one measured in ages rather than dates. A Stage runs exactly ten years and covers one of the twelve life domains, so it names the part of a life that the next decade is organised around — not what will happen, but what the period is about. It is the layer people recognise afterwards rather than during: the decade that turned out to be about work, or about family, or about starting over somewhere else. Because it is ten years wide it says nothing about any particular week, and reading it as though it did is the commonest mistake made with it. What it is genuinely good for is the opposite — noticing that a run of unrelated-looking years has had one subject the whole time, and deciding whether to spend the rest of the decade with it or against it. A Stage is also the only scale graded on its own scale rather than given a mood, and the grade is a fit between a person and a period rather than a verdict on either.
Where the Stage boundary falls
A Stage is exactly ten years, and it turns over on 1 January of the year you reach the boundary age — not on your birthday. The board works age as a difference of years rather than a count of birthdays, so somebody born in December changes Stage on the same date as somebody born in January, and both change it while still the old age by the calendar. It is the least intuitive boundary of the five and the one worth knowing, because a reader watching for a change around their birthday will be watching several months late.
What the verdict is called
Every scale returns a verdict, and no two scales use the same words for it. The Stage returns a graded decade:
- Brilliant Decade
- Very Good Decade
- Good Decade
- Challenging Decade
- Difficult Decade
A verdict is a weighting on the period, not a prediction of an event. It says which way the span leans, and the finer scales inside it decide where that lands.
The three things a Stage is graded on
The Stage is the only scale graded rather than given a mood, and the grade is built from three separate tests. Each one compares a different pair of things, and a decade can pass one and fail another — which is why the overall reading is a fit between a person and a period rather than a verdict on either.
| The test | What it compares |
|---|---|
| Favorable Conditions | the decade's own group against the group your birth year belongs to — whether the wider period runs with a life or across it |
| Supportive Environment | the element of the domain the decade lands in against the element the chart itself runs on — whether the surroundings resource a person or cost them |
| Conducive Setting | the character of the decade's domain against the character of the palace a chart is read from — whether a person is the right kind of person for these ten years |
These are the app's own three headings, in the order the board shows them. What the tests compare is stated here; the rule each one applies is part of the engine and is deliberately not published, because it is not the textbook rule and a reader applying the textbook version would get a different answer than the board gives.
What the Stage scale will not tell you
A Stage will not tell you what any particular year inside it holds, and it is not a forecast of events. It names a subject and grades how well a person and a period fit, which is a different and slower claim. Nor is the start age something to work out from a table — it comes out of the cast chart, it is one of only a few values, and the direction the decades travel in reverses with birth gender, so two people born the same day can hold mirror-image decades from their second one onward.
The scale below it is the Year, which is where this one's subject actually lands on a calendar.
The Stage reading opens at Soul Bonding along with the other three free scales. Where its focus falls in a particular life needs a cast chart, which is the half the board works out and this page does not. That includes the age a Stage starts at and the direction the decades travel in, which reverses with birth gender — there is no table on this site that would let either be guessed.
One naming note
The board's own scale bar labels this one AGE rather than Stage, so a reader looking for a tab called Stage will not find one. They are the same reading; the landing page uses the longer name and the bar uses the shorter.
Frequently asked
- What does the Stage scale tell you?
- The longest reading the board produces, and the only one measured in ages rather than dates. A Stage runs exactly ten years and covers one of the twelve life domains, so it names the part of a life that the next decade is organised around — not what will happen, but what the period is about. It is the layer people recognise afterwards rather than during: the decade that turned out to be about work, or about family, or about starting over somewhere else. Because it is ten years wide it says nothing about any particular week, and reading it as though it did is the commonest mistake made with it. What it is genuinely good for is the opposite — noticing that a run of unrelated-looking years has had one subject the whole time, and deciding whether to spend the rest of the decade with it or against it. A Stage is also the only scale graded on its own scale rather than given a mood, and the grade is a fit between a person and a period rather than a verdict on either.
- When does the Stage scale turn over?
- A Stage is exactly ten years, and it turns over on 1 January of the year you reach the boundary age — not on your birthday. The board works age as a difference of years rather than a count of birthdays, so somebody born in December changes Stage on the same date as somebody born in January, and both change it while still the old age by the calendar. It is the least intuitive boundary of the five and the one worth knowing, because a reader watching for a change around their birthday will be watching several months late.
- What can the Stage scale not tell you?
- A Stage will not tell you what any particular year inside it holds, and it is not a forecast of events. It names a subject and grades how well a person and a period fit, which is a different and slower claim. Nor is the start age something to work out from a table — it comes out of the cast chart, it is one of only a few values, and the direction the decades travel in reverses with birth gender, so two people born the same day can hold mirror-image decades from their second one onward.
- How does the Stage scale relate to the other four?
- The five nest, widest to finest: Stage → Year → Month → Day → Hour. Stage is ten years long and is read inside whatever contains it, which is why the board never shows one scale alone. The other four are Year (one year), Month (one lunar month), Day (one day), Hour (two hours).
Seat yourself on the board to see which of your twelve domains the Stage scale is pointing at, and what the scales above and below it are doing at the same time.
Open the Bonding Map