Reading The Animal And Element

In Chinese folk astrology a year is read first through its animal and then adjusted by its element. Sometimes called the little dragon, the snake is read as introspective and wise rather than dangerous. Southern Chinese folk religion ties it to household guardian spirits and to the shedding, renewing quality of its own skin. The element modifies that base reading: in the five phase (Wu Xing) system Earth governs the center, the color yellow, the turning point between seasons and the virtue of good faith. An Earth year is traditionally read as a stabilizing pause after the more active phases around it; Earth is held to feed Metal and to be held in check by Wood.

Put together, 1929 reads in the folk tradition as a Snake year with a Earth cast, Earth's steadiness 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 1929 its Earth 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 Snake marks a direction and a stretch of the clock in those older systems as well as this year.