THE TWELVE ANIMAL ZODIAC SIGNS IN CHINESE ASTROLOGY

Once I visited a bookshop with this lady. Quickly we moved to the astrology shelves and she zoomed in on a Chinese zodiac booklet basing on the animal sign of my birth year, written by a famous female Fengshui celebrity from KL. Flipping the pages, she began nodding on agreement with the descriptions in the booklet about my personality.

As she was getting more and more excited in indulging on the descriptions, switching her sights between the pages and me, and smiling in contentment with the discovery that I was well described by its contents, I cannot help but felt a need to point out to her that it was a book on the wrong animal sign. I am of an ox sign, but she was reading a booklet for the pig sign.

There are many books on using animal signs of Chinese zodiac to do profiling and predictions, but these readings can only be general in nature. Somehow, you would find the descriptions on any animal zodiac sign in these books fittingly depicting your personality.

When ancient Chinese used the unique symbols of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches (Tiangan and Dizhi) to denote time, our birth date and time can be written in four sets of Tiangan and Dizhi (hence, Four Pillars). Twelve animals were associated with the twelve Dizhi so that it was easy for everyone to understand the system of denotation. And when the Tiangan and Dizhi were accorded with the Five Elements, the Four Pillars School of destiny study was created.

In the beginning, the study of the Four Pillars was centered on the year pillar. This old school of thought was found to be lacking in precisions. The methodology was later refined by Master Xu Ziping in the Yuan Dynasty when he advocated the use of the day pillar as the centre of study. Xu Ziping has realised that the day pillar is the actual representation of our Bazi. Since then we call the Tiangan of the day pillar as the Day Master (Rizhu), and the Four Pillar study was also named after Master Xu.

The animal signs we commonly use are only referring to the Dizhi of the year pillar, which is only part of, but not the focus of the Bazi studies. Therefore, the use of zodiac animal signs basing on the birth year cannot be accurately pin pointing the luck trend in any prediction.

In fact, it has also made some people adopting the wrong Five Element. The Day Master represents the element of a person, but some have thought that if they are born in a Fire Dog year, their element is Fire, wrongly basing on the year element.

The next time you want to pick up a book on Chinese zodiac for reading interest, do make sure that you are getting the book on the right animal sign, to avoid becoming a laughing stock.