Born in 2004

What 2004 carries

From the community: Intelligent, witty, innovative, sociable. Can be mischievous, restless, or manipulative.

From the year: Reserved and upright; tends to live discreetly, avoiding showiness or self-promotion.

The community's Metal controls the year's Plant. This is the pressed position: the Monkey 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 Monkey Spirit Guardian's page — character, love, work and the communities it is bound to.

All of that is about being born in 2004. 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.

2004 with the years around it

Every year from 1992 to 2016, read against 2004. 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 2004 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.

• 2001— the Snake Spirit Guardian,secret friend
• 2008— the Whale Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 2000— the Dragon Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 1998— the Lion Spirit Guardian,opposing axis
• 2007— the Elephant Spirit Guardian,harm

Frequently asked

Which Spirit Guardian rules 2004?

2004 belongs to the Monkey Spirit Guardian, the community of innovation, with Metal as its own element. The year's element pillar is Plant (+), which is the part that changes: the community returns every twelve years but the element turns on a ten-year cycle, so 2004 reads differently from 1956 and 1968.

What element is 2004?

Plant (+) — Reserved and upright; tends to live discreetly, avoiding showiness or self-promotion. That is the year pillar. It sits alongside the Metal the Monkey Spirit Guardian carries in its own right, and the two together are what make 2004 a different reading from every other year of this community.

I was born in January 2004. 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 2003 and to the Goat 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 2004?

2001 (Snake Spirit Guardian), 2008 (Whale Spirit Guardian), 2000 (Dragon Spirit Guardian) — the secret friend first, then the trine. 1998 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.