The Timeline: decades, years and months

Think of your chart as a house that stays put. The Timeline is the weather passing over it: long seasons of ten years, a climate for each year, and the shorter turns of each month. Same house, different light.

The Timeline tab shows whoever is selected. At the top there's a switch with four views, Decades, Years, Months and Calendar. It stays in place while you scroll. The calendar has its own article.

Decades

Here your ten-year cycles line up as arches you can scroll sideways. Each one shows:

• The decade's pillar.
• When it starts, like ≈ Mar 2031, and your age then.
• Its themes, in the same plain role names you see on Today.

The decade you're in is tinted and marked Now. The dates are approximate on purpose. The tradition works out when your first decade starts from the days between your birth and a solar term, so the app gives them as "about".

Tap an arch to open that decade's sheet. From top to bottom:

• Its pillar, ages and dates, themes and rating, with the decade's text.
• Its two halves: the stem leads roughly the first five years, the branch the last five.
• With your chart: how it meets your pillars, like a combination or a clash with one of them.
• What it brings you: what the stem's element and the branch's element are for you.
• Your Day Master in this decade: where it stands in its cycle of twelve stages.
• Stars it switches on, if there are any.
• The change and the years to watch: when it begins, and which years in it the tradition says to take calmly. See in Years takes you to that view.

Each text has a Why? with the classical rule behind it.

The decades depend on the traditional formula, Male or Female, chosen in the birth details.

The life curve

Under the decades there's the Life curve, with a button that says Model layer: on. Tap it to hide the curve. The curve is a line of flat steps, one per decade, with a band for Now. Each step is as wide as the decade really is. There's no smoothing and no invented peaks.

A short line under the curve points out the decade the reading rates highest from now on. A high step isn't luck, and a low one isn't trouble. Read it as a season that asks for more push or more patience.

Years

Years shows two years back and nine ahead. This year is tinted and marked Now. Each row has:

• The year and its pillar.
• A short title and a few lines from the reading, with the themes in small letters under the title.
• A rating: small pips and a word, More aligned, Mixed or More demanding.

Some rows have a note. It may say a new decade begins that year, and roughly in which month. Or it may say the year exactly repeats one of your own pillars, which the tradition always pays attention to.

Months

Months starts with the BaZi month you're in and goes about a year and a half ahead. Each month starts with its solar term, its name and the day and time it begins, because BaZi months don't start on the 1st. Then come the same title, text and rating as in Years.

How to read the ratings

A caption at the bottom names the rating and says it plainly: these are traditional tendencies, not a forecast. More aligned means the period's elements tend to suit your chart. More demanding means they tend to ask more of you. It's a good time to keep some margin in your plans and look after your rest. Neither one decides what happens.

If the hour isn't known well and the possible versions of the chart disagree, the ratings come from the most likely version.

Getting here from Today

On Today, tap the Month, Year or Decade card under What surrounds you now, and the Timeline opens on that view. The Decade card also opens the sheet for the decade you're in. Tap the day's pillar and it opens on the calendar.

A chart made from imported pillars has no Timeline, because it has no birth date to count from.