What This Is
A year that stands in full opposition to a natal pillar. Where 伏吟 duplicates a pillar, 反吟 inverts it: the year's stem clashes the pillar's stem and the year's branch clashes the pillar's branch, both collisions firing at once. A complete opposition, top and bottom together. The classics rank it alongside 伏吟 as a major-pattern year, but its nature is the reverse — where the repetition pins things still, the inversion drives them apart.
The old texts name the most personal cases sharply: when the year fully clashes the day or hour pillar, it is called 转脚煞, and light cases bring distant migration while heavy ones unsettle home and finances. The essence of 反吟 is movement, separation, and conflict.
When It Fires
It fires when the annual pillar fully opposes a natal pillar — both stem-clash and branch-clash present against the same pillar, simultaneously. The position struck colours it: day-pillar inversion strikes the self most directly; hour-pillar inversion hits late-life and household; year-pillar inversion strikes the root; month-pillar inversion stirs the career structure.
What It Changes
It drives apart. A full opposition produces upheaval and separation — relationships, residences, and arrangements that were settled come under a force that pulls them open. Where 伏吟 was a held, stuck note, 反吟 is collision and scattering: things move, often suddenly, and often away from where they were. The register is dynamic and disruptive rather than still.
The completeness of the clash — stem and branch both — is what gives it its weight. It is not a glancing blow but a full reversal of a pillar's footing.
How To Read It
Read it by position and by protection. The day-pillar inversion is the most切身, the most personal; the hour-pillar variant weighs on the domestic and late-life sphere; year and month inversions strike root and career respectively. The severity depends on what is being opposed and whether the chart is braced: an inversion softened by 印 is carried far better than one striking an unprotected point.
And as with all clashes, the polarity follows the chart — opposition to a favorable element disrupts what the chart needed, while opposition to an unfavorable one can break something loose to the chart's benefit. Never read flat as catastrophe; read as the full opposition against the value of what it overturns and the chart's capacity to absorb it.
Where This Shows Up
A period of this kind is felt as upheaval and parting. Moves, separations, the ending of arrangements, conflict that scatters what was gathered — the stretch has a centrifugal quality, pulling things outward and apart. Depending on the pillar struck, it lands on the self, the household, the family root, or the career, and the more layers of timing that align on the same point, the heavier the year.
When the chart is protected and strong, the same disruptive force can clear away what had outlived its place, the separation making room for something truer. When the chart is exposed, the inversion is felt as loss and dislocation to be steadied through. The texture is motion and severance — a year that does not let things stay where they were.