Born in 1988

What 1988 carries

From the community: Charismatic, ambitious, pioneering, energetic, lucky. Can be domineering, impulsive, prideful, or restless.

From the year: Kind, sincere, warm, yet private and very honest. Quite introverted, prefers a stable and secure life, feels uneasy when facing change.

The year's element and the community's are both Earth. Nothing in this birth year pulls against itself, which reads as consistency from outside and as a narrow range from inside — the Dragon Spirit Guardian's habits arrive undiluted, for better and for worse.

The community itself is written out in full on the Dragon Spirit Guardian's page — character, love, work and the communities it is bound to.

All of that is about being born in 1988. What a year does to the people living through it is a separate reading on a separate clock — and, unlike the community above, it does not move at the lunar new year. That is the Year scale of Time Analysis, one of five.

1988 with the years around it

Every year from 1976 to 2000, read against 1988. Twenty-five consecutive years contain every community at least twice and never with the same element behind it, which is the clearest demonstration of the thing these pages keep asserting: the community comes back, the reading does not.

These readings are the first of the board's four layers — the birth years alone — and it carries weight 0.30 of the result. The other three read the two charts rather than the two communities, so a strong or difficult year layer is where a reading starts, not where it lands.

The birth years 1988 is bound to

Nobody goes looking for a community. They go looking for the person born in a particular year, so the four relations worth naming are given here as the nearest year that carries each.

• 1993— the Eagle Spirit Guardian,secret friend
• 1984— the Whale Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1992— the Monkey Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1982— the Wolf Spirit Guardian,opposing axis
• 1987— the Cat Spirit Guardian,harm

Frequently asked

Which Spirit Guardian rules 1988?

1988 belongs to the Dragon Spirit Guardian, the community of power, with Earth as its own element. The year's element pillar is Earth (+), which is the part that changes: the community returns every twelve years but the element turns on a ten-year cycle, so 1988 reads differently from 1952 and 1964.

What element is 1988?

Earth (+) — Kind, sincere, warm, yet private and very honest. Quite introverted, prefers a stable and secure life, feels uneasy when facing change. That is the year pillar. It sits alongside the Earth the Dragon Spirit Guardian carries in its own right, and the two together are what make 1988 a different reading from every other year of this community.

I was born in January 1988. Is this still my year?

Probably not. The cycle turns at Lunar New Year rather than on 1 January, so a birth in January or the first days of February usually belongs to 1987 and to the Cat Spirit Guardian. Roughly one birth in eight sits on the wrong side of that line. Add your month and day on the board and it settles the question rather than guessing.

Which birth years are most compatible with 1988?

1993 (Eagle Spirit Guardian), 1984 (Whale Spirit Guardian), 1992 (Monkey Spirit Guardian) — the secret friend first, then the trine. 1982 sits on the opposing axis. Those are branch relations only, which is the first of four layers the board reads and carries weight 0.30 of the result; the other three read the two charts rather than the two communities, so a clash here is a starting point and not a conclusion.