The Monthly General (Yue Jiang) and the Sun’s Position
4 min read·
Updated
Every Da Liu Ren (大六壬 dà liù rén) board turns on a single alignment, and the Monthly General is the piece that fixes it. In Da Liu Ren, the Monthly General (月将 yuè jiàng) is the sun’s position among the twelve Earthly Branches — where the sun “is” in the sky at the season of the question. Place that branch over the hour, and the rotating Heaven Plate (天盘 tiān pán) locks into position. Get the Monthly General wrong and the whole board is wrong, which is why practitioners treat it with the same care a Ba Zi (八字 bāzì) reader gives to a birth’s solar-term boundaries.
What the Monthly General actually is
The classical name is 太阳过宫 (tài yáng guò gōng), “the sun passing through the palaces.” As the year turns, the sun appears to move against the ring of twelve branches, spending a fixed span in each. The Monthly General names the branch the sun currently occupies. It is not a calendar month and not a zodiac animal — it is an astronomical position, tracked by the solar terms.
The branch advances one palace per solar-term pair, moving backward through the ring across the year. Each position also carries a traditional name — 亥 is 登明 (dēng míng), 戌 is 河魁 (hé kuí), and so on down the list. These names appear throughout the classics, so it helps to recognise them, but for casting a board it is the branch that matters.
八字 · Four Pillars
Start with your own chart. Plot your Ba Zi free — exact solar-term accuracy, in your browser. The birth chart is where every reading begins.
Here is the standard mapping. The boundaries are solar terms (specifically the 中气 zhōng qì, the mid-term markers), not the first of a calendar month. A reading cast near a boundary needs the exact term date checked, because the sun changes palace on the term, not on a convenient date. This table follows the arrangement in the grounding reference; before any calculation is trusted in practice, verify it against a current ephemeris or a classical table, since the specific solar-term boundaries are what make it precise.
Solar-term span (after 中气)
Monthly General branch
Name
雨水 (yǔ shuǐ) onward
亥
登明 Deng Ming
春分 (chūn fēn) onward
戌
河魁 He Kui
谷雨 (gǔ yǔ) onward
酉
从魁 Cong Kui
小满 (xiǎo mǎn) onward
申
传送 Chuan Song
夏至 (xià zhì) onward
未
小吉 Xiao Ji
大暑 (dà shǔ) onward
午
胜光 Sheng Guang
处暑 (chù shǔ) onward
巳
太乙 Tai Yi
秋分 (qiū fēn) onward
辰
天罡 Tian Gang
霜降 (shuāng jiàng) onward
卯
太冲 Tai Chong
小雪 (xiǎo xuě) onward
寅
功曹 Gong Cao
冬至 (dōng zhì) onward
丑
大吉 Da Ji
大寒 (dà hán) onward
子
神后 Shen Hou
Read the pattern and it is easy to remember: after 雨水 in early spring the sun sits in 亥, and with each successive 中气 the branch steps one place backward — 亥, 戌, 酉, 申, and around. Traditions differ slightly on how boundary moments are named and handled, so a careful practitioner confirms the term date rather than assuming it.
Aligning the Monthly General over the hour
The hour of the question is the 占时 (zhàn shí), the hour branch at the moment the board is cast. The Earth Plate (地盘 dì pán) holds the twelve branches fixed in their standard ring and never moves. The Heaven Plate is a second ring of the same twelve branches that rotates freely.
To set the board, you turn the Heaven Plate so the Monthly General branch sits directly over the hour branch on the Earth Plate below. That one move places all twelve Heaven-Plate branches at once. From there every other feature follows — the Four Lessons (四课 sì kè), the riding generals, and the Three Transmissions (三传 sān chuán) are all read off this fixed relationship. This is why the Monthly General in Da Liu Ren is described as the key that winds the whole mechanism. The full mechanics of the two rings are covered in the Heaven and Earth Plates of Da Liu Ren.
Why the sun, and not the month
Using the sun’s true position rather than a calendar month keeps Da Liu Ren tied to the actual sky, the same instinct that makes Ba Zi count a year from 立春 (lì chūn) rather than from the lunar new year or January the first. Both arts read the branches as a real seasonal clock. If you are new to how those twelve branches work as an alphabet, the Ba Zi treatment in heavenly stems and earthly branches is a useful companion, and the overview of Da Liu Ren shows where this step sits in the larger casting sequence.
One caution worth repeating: the Monthly General is set by the solar term of the question’s date, while the alignment uses the hour of the question. Two different time inputs, two different roles. Confuse them and the Heaven Plate rotates to the wrong place.
Da Liu Ren answers a question asked in a moment; Ba Zi maps the pattern you were born with. Both begin with the same twelve branches read as a real calendar. To see those branches at work in your own chart first, plot it free with the Ba Zi calculator, then read on through the rest of this Da Liu Ren series.
