A year of auspicious dates, released once a year, at the turn of it.
The almanac itself is still being written. It will be an annual release, timed to Lunar New Year each year, gathering the year's good days and its flying stars into one reference you can keep on hand.
What is already fixed is the year it opens on.
丁未 · The Fire Goat
Every year carries a stem above and a branch below, and how they sit together is most of what the year is. 2027 sets 丁 — yin fire, the lamp rather than the bonfire — over 未, the Goat, whose fixed element is earth. Fire feeds earth, so the year spends itself into the ground rather than blazing outward. And 丁 is itself one of the stems hidden inside 未, which means this fire is rooted in its own branch rather than floating above it: steady, banked, slow to go out.
The traditional reading of 丁未 is warmth banked into soil — consolidation rather than expansion, care and craft rather than conquest. It favours the domestic and the made: the house, the kitchen, the studio, the long repair. Quiet diplomacy does better than confrontation. It is a marked turn inward after the Fire Horse of 2026, which was all forward motion.
Two dates, not one.
- Lunar New YearSaturday, 6 February 2027
- 立春 Lì ChūnThursday, 4 February 2027
The festival follows the lunar calendar; the reading follows the solar one. For bazi and the flying stars the year turns at 立春, the start of spring — two days before the new moon everyone celebrates. Anyone born in that gap belongs to the year before.
Four signs meet 太歲.
太歲 Tài Suì is the year’s own governor. Four signs stand in an awkward relation to it in a Goat year — not misfortune, but friction worth knowing about in advance.
Goat
Your own zodiac year, 本命年 — the most intimate form, and the most double-edged. Once every twelve years.
Ox
Directly opposite the Goat on the wheel. A full 180-degree confrontation — the loudest of the four, and the most legible.
Dog
Mutual punishment: internal friction rather than external event. Slow-burning, and usually self-inflicted.
Rat
The subtlest of the four. People and arrangements you had relied on turn out to be less dependable than assumed.
Goat years: 1943 · 1955 · 1967 · 1979 · 1991 · 2003 · 2015 · 2027.
The last Fire Goat was 1967; the next is 2087.
The days around the turn.
Most of the work of a new year happens before it starts. The house is swept out, debts are settled, hair is cut, couplets go up — all of it finished in advance, because once the year turns the same acts reverse meaning. Sweeping before clears the old year out; sweeping after sweeps the new luck out with it.
- 立春 Lì ChūnThu 4 Feb · the reading year turns
- 除夕 New Year’s EveFri 5 Feb · reunion dinner, doors and lights
- 初一 Day OneSat 6 Feb · Lunar New Year
- 初五 Day FiveWed 10 Feb · 迎財神, the restrictions lift
- 元宵 Day FifteenSat 20 Feb · Lantern Festival, the season closes
Before the turn. Clear what you owe — debts settled by New Year’s Eve so the year doesn’t open carrying last year’s weight. Clean the whole house and take the rubbish out while you still can. Cut your hair. Put up the couplets and the 福, inverted, since 倒 dào (upside down) sounds like 到 dào (has arrived). Buy what you’ll need for the first few days, because the shops close and so, traditionally, does your permission to go shopping.
On the first day. Don’t sweep, and don’t take the rubbish out — both carry wealth out of the door. Don’t wash your hair, which washes fortune away. No knives or scissors, which cut the year and invite quarrels. Don’t lend money, don’t break anything, don’t wear white or black. Red, and as little industry as you can manage.
Then it eases. By 初五 the God of Wealth is welcomed in and ordinary life resumes — shops reopen, the rules relax. The season doesn’t formally end until 元宵 on the fifteenth day, with lanterns.
One thing worth keeping straight: the festival begins on the 6th, but for readings the year turns at 立春 on the 4th. Annual flying-star placements should be set from that date, not from the New Year everyone is celebrating two days later.
Good days, and the ones to leave alone.
The almanac gathers the year’s 宜 and 忌 — what each day supports and what it resists — alongside the flying stars for the year, the twenty-four solar terms, and the months where each sign meets friction. Full details go up here closer to release.
If you’d like to hear when it’s ready, leave your email below. The monthly letter already draws on the same almanac tradition every month, if you’d rather start there.
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