Chinese astrology
Chinese astrology is not a regional offshoot of the Western kind. It has a history of its own, its own way of doing the calculation, and its own idea of what a horoscope actually describes.
What it is not
It does not sort people by their month of birth, but by year — and even that is a simplification. What the West knows as the “Chinese horoscope”, the twelve animals by year of birth, is only the outermost edge of a far larger system.
Stems and branches
The basis is a calendar made of two rows: ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. The twelve branches are the animals everyone knows. Both rows advance at the same time and give a cycle of sixty combinations — which is why a “wood dragon” is not the same thing as a “fire dragon”, and why each of them comes round again only after sixty years.
A complete birth chart — the four pillars, Bazi — is made of one stem-branch pair each for the year, the month, the day and the hour. The hour is part of it, exactly as the time of birth is in the West.
The five phases
Wood, fire, earth, metal, water — and what counts is not the phases themselves but their relationships: each one feeds another and controls a third. Wood feeds fire, fire feeds earth; wood controls earth, earth controls water.
The interpretation works through this web of relationships. You ask which phase dominates the chart, which one is missing, what feeds and what holds back — not what qualities an animal is supposed to have.
The difference from Western astrology
| Western | Chinese | |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | The position of the planets in the sky | Calendar cycle of stems and branches |
| Calculation | Astronomical, depends on the place | Calendrical, independent of the place |
| What is read | Planets in signs and houses | The relationship between the five phases |
| Start of the year | The Sun's entry into Aries | Spring Festival or the start of spring, depending on the school |
Indian astrology falls on the astronomical side of this comparison: it works from planetary positions, as the Western kind does, and reckons with nine grahas, the two lunar nodes among them.
The practical point: a Chinese chart needs no geographical coordinates, because nothing in it is worked out astronomically. It is a different method, not the same one under other names.
A common mistake
The Chinese year does not begin on 1 January. If you were born in January or February, you often still belong to the previous animal — one of the most frequent mix-ups in popular accounts.
Related: the Chinese horoscope with its twelve animals.