Reading The Animal And Element

In Chinese folk astrology a year is read first through its animal and then adjusted by its element. In the story behind the cycle's order, the rat won the Jade Emperor's race by riding across the river on the ox's back and leaping off first at the finish. Rat years are read as favorable for starting new ventures, the animal standing for resourcefulness, the hours just before dawn, and the direction north. The element modifies that base reading: in the five phase (Wu Xing) system Wood governs the east, the color green or blue, the season of spring and the virtue of benevolence. A Wood year is traditionally read as a season of growth and new initiative; Wood is held to feed Fire and to be held in check by Metal.

Put together, 1924 reads in the folk tradition as a Rat year with a Wood cast, Wood's growth tempering the animal's own temperament rather than replacing it. The same twelve animal cycle, adapted with local variation, also orders the traditional calendars of Vietnam, where the rabbit is usually read as a cat, and of Japan, where the pig is usually read as a boar; the underlying stem and element layer that gives 1924 its Wood cast specifically is a Chinese addition that these neighboring traditions do not all keep in the same form. Older reckonings also put the same twelve branches to work outside the calendar of years: the same order once named the twelve double hours of the day and the twelve compass points, so Rat marks a direction and a stretch of the clock in those older systems as well as this year.