Reading The Animal And Element

In Chinese folk astrology a year is read first through its animal and then adjusted by its element. The dragon is the one sign in the cycle with no living counterpart, reserved historically for imperial symbolism, for rain and river gods, and for the eastern quarter of the sky. Dragon years carry the strongest positive reputation of the twelve. 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, 1964 reads in the folk tradition as a Dragon 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 1964 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 Dragon marks a direction and a stretch of the clock in those older systems as well as this year.