Month Command (月令)
The season, which sets the strength of everything else.
In short
The month command (月令, yuè lìng) is the earthly branch of the month pillar. It records the season a person was born into, and in most schools it carries more weight than any other single character, because the season decides which element is in charge.
| Characters | 月令 · 月建 |
|---|---|
| Pinyin | yuè lìng |
| Group | Building the chart |
令 means a command or a decree, so the month branch is the part of the chart that gives the orders. Spring commands wood, summer commands fire, autumn commands metal, winter commands water, and the four transition months around the solstices and equinoxes command earth. Everything else in the chart is either supported by that or working against it.
The month pillar does not turn over on the first of the calendar month. It turns at the jie solar terms, which fall near the 4th to the 8th. Start of Spring opens the Tiger month, Awakening of Insects opens the Rabbit month, Clear and Bright opens the Dragon month, and so on through the twelve.
The gap is not academic. Start of Spring 2027 falls at 09:46 Beijing time on 4 February, so a birth on 3 February 2027 sits in the Ox month and a birth on 5 February sits in the Tiger month. Those two charts differ in season, in the day master's strength, and in the ten gods, from a gap of two days.
Because the month branch decides strength, it is also the branch the luck pillars are built from. The first luck pillar steps forward or backward from the month pillar, which is why the same birth details give a man and a woman different luck cycles.
2027-02-04 09:46
| 2027-02-03 | 丑 chǒu · Earth |
| 2027-02-05 | 寅 yín · Wood |
Definitions get you through a chart. Something has to be done with it.
The audit walks the nine areas of a home in the order that matters, with two or three changes per area. It is the practical half of what these terms describe.
Questions people ask about this term
What is the month command used for?
Mainly to judge the strength of the day master. A day master whose element is in season is supported by the month and reads as strong; one whose element the season drains reads as weak. Most of the rest of a reading depends on which of those two it is.
Why is the month pillar not the calendar month?
Because the chart uses solar terms rather than the civil calendar. Each month pillar runs from one jie term to the next, near the 4th to the 8th of the month, so the chart month is offset from the calendar month at both ends and can begin in the previous month entirely.
Which month branch am I?
Whichever solar term window your birth falls in, not whichever calendar month. Someone born on 3 February 2027 is in the Ox month because Start of Spring has not arrived yet, and someone born two days later is in the Tiger month.
This page has no affiliate links and nothing to sell. The tables here are fixed by the tradition and you can check any of them against a printed almanac. What a chart means for a person is a reading of that tradition, not a finding, so treat it as a way to think about a situation rather than a prediction.