This rabbit hole of Chinese Astrology goes much deeper than what the average Westerner has ever imagined. It is a multi-layered Astrological teaching which can help us understand the many facets of our life. It’s major purpose is to enlighten us on our lifestyles emotional makeup based on Heavenly and Earthly principles. It is known as the oldest form of Astrology, dating back to the Shang Dynasty. It has been traced back as far as 2637 B.C. It is based on a sexagenarian cycle of 60 years and is constructed distinctively from two cycles. Chinese astrology is a lot different from the weekly horoscopes that appear in newspapers.
One cycle is the ten heavenly stems. They consist of the five elements in their yin and yang forms. As we go further down the rabbit whole we see that there are 12 earthly branches or 12 year cycles of animals. This is referred to as the Chinese Zodiac. This also operates on cycles of months, moons and hours of the day.
The Chinese Zodiac refers to a pure cylindrical cycle. During Imperial times Astrologers watched the sky for signs of omens to predict the future. An alarming difference from the many proven and unproven methods of future predicting in the new Millennium. The five elements used to determined our personality traits are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Going further down the rabbit whole we find that the 12 animals are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and the pig or wild boar.
The animal signs are used to describe what others perceive you as being or how you present your self to others. We come to a part of the rabbit whole in which we find that animal signs is not the only method of discovering this. There is another method called Inner Animal and is determined by the hour. This method connects to your secret animal. Utilizing this method you could appear to be a dragon by year but might be a snake or ox secretively. The yearly animal sign only scratches the surface of this rabbit whole. Using the hourly Secret Animal there are approximately 8,640 possibilities of compatibility that can be found.