The traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar dating from the Han dynasty that combines solar, lunar, and other cycles for various social and agricultural purposes. While the Gregorian calendar has been adopted and adapted in various ways, and is generally the basis for China's standard civic purposes, aspects of the traditional lunisolar calendar remain, including the association of the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac in relation to months and years.
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, incorporating lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky. If the sidereal year is used instead of the solar year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In some cases ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, which adds a thirteenth intercalary, embolismic, or leap month.
Chinese astrology is based on traditional Chinese astronomy and the Chinese calendar. Chinese astrology flourished during the Han dynasty.
The ten Heavenly Stems are a system of ordinals indigenous to China and used throughout East Asia, first attested c. 1250 BCE during the Shang dynasty as the names of the ten days of the week. They were also used in Shang-era rituals in the names of dead family members, who were offered sacrifices on the corresponding day of the Shang week. Stems are no longer used as names for the days of the week, but have acquired many other uses. Most prominently, they have been used in conjunction with the associated set of twelve Earthly Branches in the compound sexagenary cycle, an important feature of historical Chinese calendars.
The Horse is the seventh of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. There is a long tradition of the Horse in Chinese mythology. Certain characteristics of the Horse nature are supposed to be typical of or to be associated with either a year of the Horse and its events, or in regard to the personality of someone born in such a year. Horse aspects can also enter by other chronomantic factors or measures, such as hourly. The year of the horse is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 午.
The Pig or sometimes translated as the Boar is the twelfth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in Chinese zodiac, in relation to the Chinese calendar and system of horology, and paralleling the system of ten Heavenly Stems and twelve Earthly Branches. Although the term "zodiac" is used in the phrase "Chinese zodiac", there is a major difference between the Chinese usage and Western astrology: the zodiacal animals do not relate to the zodiac as the area of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun, the Moon, and visible planets across the celestial sphere's constellations, over the course of the year.
The Dog is eleventh of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Dog is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 戌. The character 狗, also refers to the actual animal while 戌, also refers to the zodiac animal.
The snake is the sixth of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Snake is associated with the Earthly Branch symbol 巳.
The Ox is the second of the 12-year periodic sequence (cycle) of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar, and also appears in related calendar systems. The Chinese term translated here as ox is in Chinese niú , a word generally referring to cows, bulls, or neutered types of the bovine family, such as common cattle or water buffalo. The zodiacal ox may be construed as male, female, neutered, intersex, and either singular or plural. The Year of the Ox is also denoted by the Earthly Branch symbol chǒu. The term "zodiac" ultimately derives from an Ancient Greek term referring to a "circle of little animals". There are also a yearly month of the ox and a daily hour of the ox. Years of the oxen (cows) are cyclically differentiated by correlation to the Heavenly Stems cycle, resulting in a repeating cycle of five years of the ox/cow, each ox/cow year also being associated with one of the Chinese wǔxíng, also known as the "five elements", or "phases": the "Five Phases" being Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth. The Year of the Ox follows after the Year of the Rat which happened in 2020 and is then followed by the Year of the Tiger, which happened in 2022.
The Rat or Mouse is the first of the repeating 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac, constituting part of the Chinese calendar system. The Year of the Rat in standard Chinese is Chinese: 鼠年; pinyin: shǔnián. The rat is associated with the first branch of the Earthly Branch symbol 子 (zǐ), which starts a repeating cycle of twelve years. The Chinese word shǔ refers to various small rodents (Muroidea), such as rats and mice. The term "zodiac" ultimately derives from an Ancient Greek term referring to a "circle of little animals". There are also a yearly month of the rat and a daily hour of the rat. Years of the rat are cyclically differentiated by correlation to the Heavenly Stems cycle, resulting in a repeating cycle of five years of the rat, each rat year also being associated with one of the Chinese wu xing, also known as the "five elements", or "phases": the "Five Phases" being Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.
The traditional Korean calendar or Dangun calendar is a lunisolar calendar. Dates are calculated from Korea's meridian, and observances and festivals are based in Korean culture.
The sexagenary cycle, also known as the ganzhi or stems-and-branches is a cycle of sixty terms, each corresponding to one year, thus a total of sixty years for one cycle, historically used for recording time in China and the rest of the East Asian cultural sphere and Southeast Asia. It appears as a means of recording days in the first Chinese written texts, the oracle bones of the late second millennium BC Shang dynasty. Its use to record years began around the middle of the 3rd century BC. The cycle and its variations have been an important part of the traditional calendrical systems in Chinese-influenced Asian states and territories, particularly those of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, with the old Chinese system still in use in Taiwan, and in Mainland China. In India, the Ahom people also used the sexagenary cycle known as Lak-Ni.
In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the vernal equinox. The astrological signs are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The Western zodiac originated in Babylonian astrology, and was later influenced by the Hellenistic culture. Each sign was named after a constellation the sun annually moved through while crossing the sky. This observation is emphasized in the simplified and popular sun sign astrology. Over the centuries, Western astrology's zodiacal divisions have shifted out of alignment with the constellations they were named after by axial precession of the Earth while Hindu astrology measurements correct for this shifting. Astrology was developed in Chinese and Tibetan cultures as well but these astrologies are not based upon the zodiac but deal with the whole sky.
In Chinese philosophy, wood, sometimes translated as Tree, is the growing of the matter, or the matter's growing expanding stage. Wood is the first phase of Wu Xing when observing or discussing movement or growth. Wood is the lesser yang character of the Five elements, fuelling Fire. It stands for springtime, the east, the planet Jupiter, the color green, windy weather, and the Azure Dragon in Four Symbols. Blue and cyan-type colors also represent wood.
Tai Sui is a Chinese name for stars directly opposite the planet Jupiter in its roughly 12-year orbital cycle. Personified as deities, they are important features of Chinese astrology, Feng Shui, Taoism, and to a lesser extent Chinese Buddhism.
The Four Pillars of Destiny, also known as "Ba-Zi", which means "eight characters" or "eight words" in Chinese, is a Chinese astrological concept that a person's destiny or fate can be divined by the two sexagenary cycle characters assigned to their birth year, month, day, and hour. This type of cosmological astrology is also widely used in South Korea, Japan and Vietnam.
Da Liu Ren is a form of Chinese calendrical astrology dating from the later Warring States period. It is also a member of the Three Styles of divination, along with Qi Men Dun Jia (奇門遁甲) and Taiyi (太乙).
The Chinese zodiac is a traditional classification scheme based on the Chinese calendar that assigns an animal and its reputed attributes to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle. The zodiac is very important in traditional Chinese culture and exists as a reflection of Chinese philosophy and culture. Chinese folkways held that one's personality is related to the attributes of their zodiac animal. Originating from China, the zodiac and its variations remain popular in many East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Nepal, Bhutan, Cambodia, and Thailand.
In Chinese astrology, the symbolic stars, also translated as star spirits or calendar spirits, represent beneficial and baleful influences believed to be present during particular times, typically in relation to the specific positions and interactions of the heavenly stems and earthly branches used in traditional Chinese timekeeping and the sexagenary cycle.
The state religion of the Shang dynasty involved trained practitioners communicating with deities, including deceased ancestors and nature spirits. These deities formed a pantheon headed by the high god Di. Methods of communication with spirits included divinations inscribed on oracle bones and sacrifice of living beings. Much of what is known about Shang religion has been discovered through archaeological work at Yinxu – the site of Yin, the final Shang capital – among other sites. At Yinxu, artefacts such as oracle bones and ritual bronze vessels have been excavated. The earliest attested inscriptions were made c. 1250 BC, during the reign of King Wu Ding – though the attested script is fully mature, and is believed to have emerged significantly earlier.
