a malaysian abroad

A few years ago, I found out I am not just a Rat, but a Water Rat.

Year of the Rat. Originally uploaded by _e.t

Most of us know that there are 12 animals in the Chinese Zodiac, but I think it’s only recently that the five elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water have started to be tagged on to the animal of the year.  This is probably due to the increased interest in Feng Shui and all things Chinese, not just in Asia, but also in the Western World.

So how do you figure out when which element gets paired up with which animal?

First, you look at the the 12-year cycle consisting of animals in the order of: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, pig.

Then you look at the 10 Heavenly Stems cycle, consisting of the five elements in the order as listed earlier.  Gotta throw in their Yin and Yang aspects too.   For some reason, the cycle starts at the year ending with 4.  All even-numbered ends-of-the-year are Yang, and odd-numbered are Yin (weak).  So 1974 would be Yang (strong) Wood, while 1975 would switch to Yin but keep the same element: Yin Wood.  The following year would switch back to Yang, and move on to the next element, making 1976 Yang Fire.  And so on.

Combine the two cycles, and you get a larger 60-year cycle that starts with Yang Wood Rat and ends with Yin Water Pig.  So this Monday, we usher in a Yin Earth Ox.

To make things easy, you can refer to this chart (thanks, wikipedia!).

So… how is this useful? you might ask.  Well, a knowledge of how these elements interact helps you decipher your Paht chee chart.  Using the four pillars of a person’s birth data (year, month, day and time of birth), the Paht chee chart is now easily generated, producing 8 Characters that form a prediction of luck relating to the heavenly stem (what you’re born with) and the earthly branch (what you make of it) of each pillar.

What on earth is Lynne blabbering on about? you may be asking yourself. No worries, I’ll be making a (very superficial and broad) assessment of a particular individual’s Paht chee chart tomorrow, to give you an idea of how it all comes together.

If you’re curious and would like to play along with this Chinese luck forecasting technique, go ahead and visit this page, and enter your information. Time of birth is your own local time, no need to start adding or deducting hours thinking you need to get it to GMT or anything like that. At the same time (haha) no need to freak if you don’t know the exact time of birth: I think they actually get counted in 2-hr blocks, so if you know you were born at 7-something pm, just enter 19:15, maybe.

Year-of-the-Ox-2009 by bernardoh

Hit calculate, and take note of the window that pops up with your chart. You can take a screenshot, or copy/paste into a word document.

Then come back tomorrow, and I’ll give you an idea of how to interpret it.

By the way, tomorrow the Chinese usher in the year of the (Yin) Earth Ox.  The color of earth is brown, and another animal sometimes used instead of ox is cow.  So tomorrow, after wishing our Chinese friends and colleagues a Gong Xi Fa Chai, we can ask How now, brown cow?, LoL!

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