Born on February 29

The pattern of your day

February 29 exists one year in four, which makes yours the rare birthday somebody had to author rather than simply inherit.

Your birthday exists in one year out of four, and it is the least interesting thing about you.

You know that better than anybody, because you have been performing delight at the same joke since you were about six. Somebody does the arithmetic out loud, announces your real age, and waits. You give them the face. You have given that face several hundred times and you will give it again this year.

Here is what nobody notices about the arrangement. Everybody else's birthday is a fact they were handed. Yours is a decision you have had to make.

Three years in four the date simply does not arrive, and at some point you had to settle whether your year turns on the twenty-eighth or on the first. You settled it, probably young, possibly alongside a parent, and you have kept to it since without much discussion.

That is an unusual thing to have done. Almost nobody has ever had to decide when their own year begins.

The cost is that very little about you is automatic. You have had to construct things other people are simply issued, and you started before you had any words for what you were doing.

Find your year

Birth hexagrams for February 29, by year

February 29 exists only in leap years, so its table skips the years that never held it. Rare day, honest table.

What is a Birth Hexagram?

Your Birth Hexagram Triad is three things at once: a Primary Hexagram (who you are), a Changing Line (your growth edge), and a Resultant Hexagram (who you are becoming). It is computed, not guessed, from the Chinese lunar calendar via the Plum Blossom method.

Read more about the Birth Hexagram Triad, or see how we calculate for the arithmetic shown openly.

Questions