Tai Sui 2027: where not to break ground this year
Published 2026-08-19
For 2027 there are five compass arcs the almanac tradition says to leave alone, and each is 15° wide, not 45°. Tai Sui is at 202.5°–217.5° in the southwest. Sui Po is at 22.5°–37.5° in the northeast. The three Sha are at 232.5°–247.5°, 262.5°–277.5° and 292.5°–307.5° — three separate arcs landing in three different palaces.
The restriction is narrow and worth stating before anything else: it applies to breaking ground, demolition and structural renovation. It is not a rule about which room to sleep in, which corner to sit in, or which door to use. Overstating that is the most common mistake made with this topic.
The five positions in 2027
2027 is the Fire Goat year, 丁未 (Ding Wei). The year’s branch is Wei, and every position below is derived from it.
| Position | Mountain | Arc | Palace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tai Sui (太歲) | 未 Wei | 202.5°–217.5° | Southwest |
| Sui Po (歲破) | 丑 Chou | 22.5°–37.5° | Northeast |
| Robbery Sha (劫煞) | 申 Shen | 232.5°–247.5° | Southwest |
| Disaster Sha (災煞) | 酉 You | 262.5°–277.5° | West |
| Year Sha (歲煞) | 戌 Xu | 292.5°–307.5° | Northwest |
Tai Sui is the position the year itself occupies. Sui Po (“year breaker”) is the point directly opposite, 180° away, and is treated the same way. The three Sha are a run of three positions worked out separately, below. Together that is five arcs of 15°: 75° of the circle is marked, 285° is not.
What the restriction actually covers
The tradition asks that these arcs stay still for the year. In practice:
- Do not dig foundations, dig a pond or plant a large tree there.
- Do not demolish a wall, knock through, or take out a window in that arc.
- Do not run a structural renovation in that part of the building — structure, not paint.
- If the work is unavoidable, the usual advice is to start from an unmarked direction and work towards the marked one, rather than beginning at the marked wall.
What it does not cover, and what you will nonetheless see written:
- It does not say avoid the room, avoid sleeping there, or move your desk.
- It does not say block the direction off, or stop using the door in that wall.
- It does not predict anything about the people living there. It names a position and asks for stillness. It promises no result either way, and neither do we.
If your bathroom sits at 265° in 2027, nothing here asks you to stop using it. It asks you not to rip it out this year.
Why “the three Sha are in the west” is misleading
The compass here is divided into 24 mountains of 15° each, not the eight palaces of 45° each that most feng shui uses. The annual positions are named as mountains, and 2027 shows why that matters.
The southwest palace runs 202.5°–247.5° and holds three mountains:
- 未 Wei, 202.5°–217.5° — Tai Sui.
- 坤 Kun, 217.5°–232.5° — not named by any 2027 position.
- 申 Shen, 232.5°–247.5° — Robbery Sha.
So the center of the southwest is the one part of it the rule says nothing about. “Tai Sui is in the southwest” would put the whole 45° off limits and get that backwards. The west palace is the reverse: it runs 247.5°–292.5° and only its middle third, 酉 You at 262.5°–277.5°, is marked, with 庚 Geng (247.5°–262.5°) and 辛 Xin (277.5°–292.5°) unnamed.
And the three Sha do not sit in one palace at all: Shen is southwest, You is west, Xu is northwest. That is not a 2027 quirk — the twelve branch mountains are spaced 30° apart, so a run of three always spans 75° and always crosses palace boundaries.
What the rule does not settle is the gaps. It names three mountains, leaving Geng and Xin unmarked between them, while a source that summarises it as “the west” treats the whole 232.5°–307.5° run as one block. Both readings exist in practice, and knowing which one you are applying beats a summary that hides the question.
How the three Sha position is derived
The three Sha are not a lookup table, and transcribed tables are where this goes wrong. Three steps:
- The twelve branches split into four groups of three, and each group has a peak — the branch at its cardinal point.
- Take the branch directly opposite that peak.
- The three Sha are that branch plus its two neighbors.
Wei belongs to the Hai–Mao–Wei group — Pig, Rabbit, Goat — named for wood, and its peak is Mao, the Rabbit, in the east at 82.5°–97.5°. Opposite Mao is You, the Rooster, in the west at 262.5°–277.5°. You plus its neighbors Shen and Xu gives the three arcs in the table above. That is why a wood-group year puts its three Sha in the west.
All four groups, so you can do any year:
| Group | Animals | Peak | Three Sha arcs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shen–Zi–Chen | Monkey, Rat, Dragon | North (子 Zi) | 142.5°–157.5°, 172.5°–187.5°, 202.5°–217.5° |
| Si–You–Chou | Snake, Rooster, Ox | West (酉 You) | 52.5°–67.5°, 82.5°–97.5°, 112.5°–127.5° |
| Yin–Wu–Xu | Tiger, Horse, Dog | South (午 Wu) | 322.5°–337.5°, 352.5°–7.5°, 22.5°–37.5° |
| Hai–Mao–Wei | Pig, Rabbit, Goat | East (卯 Mao) | 232.5°–247.5°, 262.5°–277.5°, 292.5°–307.5° |
When 2027’s positions start
They turn at the start of spring, not at Chinese New Year. The two are different dates and 2027 is a year where they are unusually close: spring begins 4 February 2027 at 09:46 UTC+8, and Chinese New Year is 6 February 2027.
For those two days the directions above are already the Wei year’s while the zodiac animal is still the previous one. Both are true at once; they answer different questions. If you are scheduling building work for the first week of February 2027, use 4 February. The zodiac page for 2027 sets out both boundaries and where each is used. That date is an astronomical moment rather than a fixed one, so it is not 4 February in every year.
This layer is not Eight Mansions
This site runs Eight Mansions (八宅, Ba Zhai) for its placement work — the Kua directions, the house sectors, the bedroom generator. Tai Sui, Sui Po and the three Sha are not part of it. They come from the stem-branch calendar, appear in almanacs that take no position on schools, and are used alongside whichever school you follow. So “is 202.5° a good direction in 2027” has two independent answers: what your own chart says about that sector, and whether the year has marked it for stillness. Those can disagree — a sector can be one of your four favourable directions and hold Tai Sui in the same year — and no arithmetic merges them.
To check your own house you need a compass bearing taken from inside — the arcs above are too narrow to eyeball. The full home report marks which of your sectors the 2027 positions fall in, at mountain resolution rather than palace resolution, and says which layer each finding came from. What we compute and where we stop is in method and assumptions.