Wei

Wei is the eighth of the twelve Earthly Branches (dizhi). Its zodiac animal is the Goat, also rendered Sheep or Ram, its element is Earth, its direction is south-southwest, and its double-hour runs from 1 to 3 pm, the early afternoon. As one of the twelve branches it combines with the ten Heavenly Stems to build the sexagenary cycle of sixty used to number years, months, days, and double-hours in the traditional calendar. The branch names the eighth animal of the twelve-year cycle and the corresponding month and double-hour, carrying the Goat's gentle, artistic associations in the almanac. These are the conventions of the Chinese calendrical and cosmological tradition, in which the twelve branches, paired with the ten stems, structure the reckoning of years and hours.

Wei is the eighth Earthly Branch, corresponding to the Goat (rendered in some English-language sources as Sheep or Ram, since the Chinese term does not distinguish the species as precisely as English does), and to the double hour from 1 pm to 3 pm. Its dominant hidden stem is Ji, giving it the Earth phase, with Ding and Yi present as secondary hidden stems. Wei is a Yin-polarity branch, pairing only with Yi, Ding, Ji, Xin or Gui within the sexagenary cycle, and it governs the sixth lunar month, the last of the traditional summer. Chinese folk demographic patterns show a documented dip in birth registrations in Goat years in some periods, attributed to a folk belief, itself of disputed origin and not supported by any classical source, that people born in Goat years have unlucky fates. In BaZi astrology a chart with Wei prominent is read through the Goat's traditional associations of gentleness, artistic sensitivity and a need for security.

Beyond the animal it carries, a branch enters three fixed sets of relations that the almanac and the fate-calculation tradition use constantly. Wei belongs to the trio Hai, Mao and Wei, one of the four groups of three branches spaced four apart which are read as combining into Wood. It clashes with Chou, the branch six places away, and it forms one of the six harmonies with Wu. These relations are properties of position in the twelve, not of the animal.

The branches also do more work than the year cycle they are best known for. They divide the day into twelve double hours, so Wei names a period of two hours as well as a year and a month; they mark the twelve directions of the compass, Wei standing at south-southwest; and they carry the twelve stations against which the movement of Jupiter was tracked, which is one proposed origin for the twelve-year cycle itself.

The stem-and-branch day count is the longest continuously running day count known. Numbering days by ganzhi begins in the Shang inscriptions and has run without acknowledged interruption since, through every dynastic change and every calendar reform, because the cycle of sixty is independent of any astronomical quantity and therefore needs no correction. Chinese historical dates from the classical period onward can be checked against it.

Wei closes the summer in the month assignment and is the third of the four Earth branches. The animal is given as goat or as sheep depending on the translation, since the Chinese term covers both, and this is one of several places where the English names of the twelve animals impose a precision the original does not carry.

Sources Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the StarsHo Peng Yoke with The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Origins of the CalendarAdam Smith