Born in 1998

What 1998 carries

From the community: Courageous, ambitious, energetic, independent, charismatic. Can be impulsive, rebellious, impatient, or prone to risk-taking.

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 community's Plant controls the year's Earth. This is the pressed position: the Lion Spirit Guardian's character sets the terms and the year's element concedes them, so the traits below run stronger here than in the community's other years, with less to temper them.

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

All of that is about being born in 1998. 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.

1998 with the years around it

Every year from 1986 to 2010, read against 1998. 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 1998 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.

• 1995— the Elephant Spirit Guardian,secret friend
• 2002— the Horse Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1994— the Wolf Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1992— the Monkey Spirit Guardian,opposing axis
• 2001— the Snake Spirit Guardian,harm

Frequently asked

Which Spirit Guardian rules 1998?

1998 belongs to the Lion Spirit Guardian, the community of action, with Plant 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 1998 reads differently from 1950 and 1962.

What element is 1998?

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 Plant the Lion Spirit Guardian carries in its own right, and the two together are what make 1998 a different reading from every other year of this community.

I was born in January 1998. 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 1997 and to the Taurus 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 1998?

1995 (Elephant Spirit Guardian), 2002 (Horse Spirit Guardian), 1994 (Wolf Spirit Guardian) — the secret friend first, then the trine. 1992 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.