Course 04
Chinese astrology
Your Chinese animal is one half of a pair. The year is named by a heavenly stem and an earthly branch together, a cycle of sixty that has counted days and years in China for more than three thousand years.
Stems, branches and the oldest calendar
The ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches appear on Shang dynasty oracle bones, around 1250 to 1050 BCE, where they were used to count days. Pairing them gives a cycle of sixty. By the Han dynasty the same cycle was being used to name years, and it still is.
The animals came later. Bamboo almanacs from the Qin period, in the third century BCE, already link the branches to animals, though not all of today's twelve. The famous story of the Great Race, where the Jade Emperor ranks the animals by the order they cross a river, is a folk explanation for an order that was already fixed.
Ten times twelve makes sixty
The stems carry the five elements, each in a yang and a yin form: Yang Wood, Yin Wood, Yang Fire and so on. The branches carry the twelve animals. Both count forward one step a year, and because ten and twelve share a factor of two, only sixty of the possible pairings ever occur. Yang stems always meet yang branches.
So 1984 was Yang Wood Rat, the first year of the current cycle, and 2044 will be the next. When people say 'I'm a Fire Horse', they are naming their year pillar: the stem's element plus the branch's animal.
When does the year turn?
The popular zodiac changes animal at Lunar New Year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February. Chinese astrology proper, the Four Pillars (BaZi), changes it at Lichun, 'the start of spring', the solar term around 4 February. SoulFold follows Lichun, like the astrologers.
Most of the time the two agree. If you were born between late January and mid February, check: you may be a different animal than the one on your restaurant placemat.
The hour animal
The twelve branches also name the twelve double hours of the day, starting with the Rat from 23:00 to 01:00. With a birth time, a reading adds your hour animal, often described as the inner or private animal, the one people meet once they know you.
Each animal also has a fixed element of its own, independent of the year's stem: the Rat is water, the Horse fire, the Monkey metal. Astrologers weigh both.
A year pillar, not a full BaZi
A complete Chinese chart has four pillars, year, month, day and hour, each a stem and branch: eight characters in all, hence BaZi. The day stem is the person themselves in that system. SoulFold reads the year pillar and the hour branch only, the parts the traditions share most widely and the parts most people already know.
What SoulFold leaves out
Readings leave out the full Four Pillars, luck pillars (ten-year periods), annual forecasts, animal compatibility tables and clashes, all of which are about prediction or matching rather than character.
The twelve animals
Each animal has a page with its branch, fixed element, polarity, double hour, gifts and shadow, and its recent years.