Born in 2016

What 2016 carries

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

From the year: Strong-willed and persistent; enjoys being noticed and always shines. Passionate, full of energy, dynamic, and drawn to positions of power.

The year's Fire controls the community's Metal. The year holds the community in check rather than the other way round, so the Monkey 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 Monkey Spirit Guardian's page — character, love, work and the communities it is bound to.

All of that is about being born in 2016. 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.

2016 with the years around it

Every year from 2004 to 2028, read against 2016. 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 2016 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.

• 2013— the Snake Spirit Guardian,secret friend
• 2020— the Whale Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 2012— the Dragon Spirit Guardian,three-harmony
• 2010— the Lion Spirit Guardian,opposing axis
• 2019— the Elephant Spirit Guardian,harm

The other Fire (+) year in the Monkey Spirit Guardian's cycle

A community turning every twelve years against an element turning every ten means a signature repeats every sixty. 2016 and 1956 are the two years in this catalogue that share one: the same Monkey Spirit Guardian, the same Fire (+) 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 2016?

2016 belongs to the Monkey Spirit Guardian, the community of innovation, with Metal as its own element. The year's element pillar is Fire (+), which is the part that changes: the community returns every twelve years but the element turns on a ten-year cycle, so 2016 reads differently from 1956 and 1968.

What element is 2016?

Fire (+) — Strong-willed and persistent; enjoys being noticed and always shines. Passionate, full of energy, dynamic, and drawn to positions of power. 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 2016 a different reading from every other year of this community.

I was born in January 2016. 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 2015 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 2016?

2013 (Snake Spirit Guardian), 2020 (Whale Spirit Guardian), 2012 (Dragon Spirit Guardian) — the secret friend first, then the trine. 2010 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.