Reading The Animal And Element

In Chinese folk astrology a year is read first through its animal and then adjusted by its element. The monkey draws on the trickster figure later given full literary form as Sun Wukong in Journey to the West. Monkey years are read as clever and adaptable, the sign favoring wit over force. The element modifies that base reading: in the five phase (Wu Xing) system Metal governs the west, the color white, the season of autumn and the virtue of righteousness. A Metal year is traditionally read as a season for consolidation and firm decision; Metal is held to feed Water and to be held in check by Fire.

Put together, 1920 reads in the folk tradition as a Monkey year with a Metal cast, Metal's firmness 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 1920 its Metal 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 Monkey marks a direction and a stretch of the clock in those older systems as well as this year.