Reading The Animal And Element

In Chinese folk astrology a year is read first through its animal and then adjusted by its element. The tiger's reputation runs toward boldness bordering on danger; its image is painted on doors and gates in Chinese folk religion to guard against the three pests of illness, fire and theft. A child born in a tiger year is traditionally read as strong willed and protective. The element modifies that base reading: in the five phase (Wu Xing) system Fire governs the south, the color red, the season of summer and the virtue of propriety. A Fire year is traditionally read as active and transformative, quick to expand and quick to burn out; Fire is held to feed Earth and to be held in check by Water.

Put together, 1926 reads in the folk tradition as a Tiger year with a Fire cast, Fire's heat 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 1926 its Fire 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 Tiger marks a direction and a stretch of the clock in those older systems as well as this year.