The Monkey Spirit Guardian

Monkey Spirit Guardian years

The community repeats every twelve years, but the year's own element does not — it turns on a ten-year cycle, so no two of these are the same reading.

Years begin at Lunar New Year, not on 1 January. A birth in January or early February usually belongs to the previous community — the board settles it once you add the date.

Character

Intelligent, witty, innovative, sociable. The Monkey Spirit Guardian sees the shape of a problem quickly and the unofficial route through it even faster, and it is genuinely funny, which it uses as a tool as much as a temperament. It moves easily between groups and is welcome in most of them.

The shadow is mischief that does not always know where to stop. This community will pull at a thing to see what happens, including things that were working. Restlessness is the second flaw — it wants the interesting part and is visibly unenthusiastic about the rest. The third is the hardest: it is capable of managing people rather than persuading them, arranging a situation so that the outcome it wanted looks like everyone's idea. Done for a good reason it is leadership; done reflexively it is the thing that costs the Monkey Spirit Guardian trust it did not mean to spend.

In love

Entertaining, attentive and quick to be interested — and the community most likely to be misread as less serious than it is. The Monkey Spirit Guardian shows care through effort and invention rather than declaration, and it gets bored of routine faster than of people. What steadies it is a partner it cannot fully predict, and one who calls it on the managing when it starts. It commits later than most communities and, once it does, is more constant than its reputation suggests.

At work

Problems, not processes. The Monkey Spirit Guardian is at its best given something broken, ambiguous or nobody else's idea of possible, and at its worst maintaining a system that already works. It is a strong improviser and an inconsistent finisher. Put it at the front of a difficult project and it earns its place several times over; put it in a steady role and it will start optimising things that did not need it.

Bonds with the other communities

The Monkey Spirit Guardian's trine runs with the Whale and Dragon Spirit Guardians — the fast, ambitious, plan-making group, and the one where its cleverness is treated as an asset rather than a nuisance. Its secret friend is the Snake Spirit Guardian: the most mercurial community bound to the most guarded, each holding what the other lacks. Directly opposite sits the Lion Spirit Guardian, and that is the clash. With the Elephant Spirit Guardian there is harm.

On the board this is one weighted layer of four.

Where it sits in the cycle

Ninth of twelve, west-southwest, early autumn, with Metal as its element. Metal is the element of edge and refinement, and early autumn is the season where things must be gathered, sorted and made to keep — the first season in the cycle whose work is judgement rather than growth. A community placed here has to find the efficient path because the expansive one has run out of season, which is precisely the pressure that produces invention.

Frequently asked

Which years does the Monkey Spirit Guardian rule?

1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016, 2028 and 2040. Each carries a different element pillar over the shared community.

Which communities is the Monkey Spirit Guardian most compatible with?

The Snake Spirit Guardian as secret friend, and the Whale and Dragon Spirit Guardians as its trine. The Lion Spirit Guardian is the direct clash and the Elephant Spirit Guardian brings harm.

Is the Monkey Spirit Guardian trustworthy?

It is honest about what it wants and inventive about how to get there, and those two things can look contradictory from outside. The flaw to watch is arranging outcomes rather than arguing for them.

What does the Innovation stage mean?

The point in the cycle where the season stops rewarding growth and starts rewarding cleverness. It explains the community's inventiveness and its impatience with routine.