First we have to know what is the Chinese Lunar Calendar. In this calendar, a year consists of 12 months with the first day of the month at New Moon. For some months, a month consists of 29 days while for the rest, a month consists of 30 days. 1 year consists therefore 354 days. There is a 11.24 days difference between a lunar year and a solar year. This will be compensated by adding a month to a leap year (閏年). The leap month (閏月) is the month without Zhong Qi. The natural outcome makes the lunar calendar very irregular.
If the year, month and day are all described by a stem-branch binomial, then each month will have to change on the New Moon day. How do we assign the stem-branch binomial to the Run Yue (閏月)? No matter what you do, it will be extremely artificial. The year stem-branch binomial is to change on the New Year day which is the first New Moon day of the year. Since the day stem-branch is another sequence, it does not create any problem. Now you can see that such a calendar does not describe the natural flow of qi.
Ever since the Four Pillars of Destiny 四柱推命學was invented by Xu Zi Ping 徐子平, the solar calendar was used. Zi Ping himself did not leave behind any document about his findings. The first collection of his work was found in Yuan Hai Zi Ping 淵海子平 written by Xu Sheng 徐升in the Song Dynasty 宋朝, not too much later than Xu Zi Ping.
However, there is still a difficult and unsolved problem even when we use the solar calendar. It is the placement of the International Date Line. It is unimaginable that we allow the day to change passing this line. However, since this line was chosen to avoid affecting populated areas, it has avoided the singular points (sorry to include a mathematical term here as I cannot think of anything better).
If the year, month and day are all described by a stem-branch binomial, then each month will have to change on the New Moon day. How do we assign the stem-branch binomial to the Run Yue (閏月)? No matter what you do, it will be extremely artificial. The year stem-branch binomial is to change on the New Year day which is the first New Moon day of the year. Since the day stem-branch is another sequence, it does not create any problem. Now you can see that such a calendar does not describe the natural flow of qi.
Ever since the Four Pillars of Destiny 四柱推命學was invented by Xu Zi Ping 徐子平, the solar calendar was used. Zi Ping himself did not leave behind any document about his findings. The first collection of his work was found in Yuan Hai Zi Ping 淵海子平 written by Xu Sheng 徐升in the Song Dynasty 宋朝, not too much later than Xu Zi Ping.
However, there is still a difficult and unsolved problem even when we use the solar calendar. It is the placement of the International Date Line. It is unimaginable that we allow the day to change passing this line. However, since this line was chosen to avoid affecting populated areas, it has avoided the singular points (sorry to include a mathematical term here as I cannot think of anything better).
1 comment:
If the Lunar calendar is so irregular why use it in Zi wei?
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