Yang year plus male: forward Luck Pillars

Luck Pillars, or Da Yun, are ten-year periods that the tradition uses to frame life stages. Which direction they run depends on two inputs: the polarity of your year stem, and your gender as recorded. This case is one cell of that four-cell matrix.

A Geng year stem is Yang, and a male input with a Yang year runs forward. That means the sequence of Luck Pillars follows the same order as the months after your birth month. The paired female case reverses it. The other two cases in this category repeat the exercise with a Yin year stem, completing the matrix.

Readers sometimes assume the direction follows gender alone, or year polarity alone. It follows the combination, which is why the four cases are here. If you have compared two calculators and found mirrored Luck Pillar sequences, the polarity or gender input is usually where they differ.

The reason this is worth understanding rather than just accepting is that direction is fully mechanical once the inputs are fixed. Unlike the interpretive layers of a reading, there is nothing here for a school to disagree about. If your direction differs between two tools, something upstream differs, and tracking it down is usually easier than tracking down a disagreement about meaning.