Born in 2013

What 2013 carries

From the community: Intuitive, analytical, mysterious, strategic, charismatic. Can be secretive, distrustful, possessive, or vengeful.

From the year: Always calm, gentle, and tender, with an introverted nature. Careful, composed, and principled in all actions.

The year's Water controls the community's Fire. The year holds the community in check rather than the other way round, so the Snake Spirit Guardian's excesses get governed early. It works, and it takes effort that never quite becomes automatic.

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

All of that is about being born in 2013. 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.

2013 with the years around it

Every year from 2001 to 2025, read against 2013. 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 2013 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.

• 2016— the Monkey Spirit Guardian,secret friend
• 2009— the Taurus Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 2017— the Eagle Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 2007— the Elephant Spirit Guardian,opposing axis
• 2010— the Lion Spirit Guardian,harm

The other Water (-) year in the Snake Spirit Guardian's cycle

A community turning every twelve years against an element turning every ten means a signature repeats every sixty. 2013 and 1953 are the two years in this catalogue that share one: the same Snake Spirit Guardian, the same Water (-) behind it. What separates them is everything they are read against — the people either year is likely to be seated beside were born sixty years apart.

Frequently asked

Which Spirit Guardian rules 2013?

2013 belongs to the Snake Spirit Guardian, the community of illumination, with Fire as its own element. The year's element pillar is Water (-), which is the part that changes: the community returns every twelve years but the element turns on a ten-year cycle, so 2013 reads differently from 1953 and 1965.

What element is 2013?

Water (-) — Always calm, gentle, and tender, with an introverted nature. Careful, composed, and principled in all actions. That is the year pillar. It sits alongside the Fire the Snake Spirit Guardian carries in its own right, and the two together are what make 2013 a different reading from every other year of this community.

I was born in January 2013. 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 2012 and to the Dragon 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 2013?

2016 (Monkey Spirit Guardian), 2009 (Taurus Spirit Guardian), 2017 (Eagle Spirit Guardian) — the secret friend first, then the trine. 2007 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.