Dragon

Meaning

The Dragon is the fifth of the twelve animals, the animal of the branch Chen: Earth, yang, the last month of spring, when the first thunder shakes the fields and the rains begin, and the morning hours. It is the only creature of legend among the twelve, and the Chinese dragon is no monster: it lives in the clouds and the waters, brings the rain that makes the harvest, and stands for vitality, good fortune and the power to change.

Ulune’s portrait reads it as confident, ambitious and generous: it thinks big and draws others into its plans. Its gifts are energy, vision, charisma and a generous heart. What the tradition asks it to watch is the size of its own fire: pride and impatience, and expecting others to follow at its pace.

Its branch is a storehouse, the moist spring earth that holds the Water of the year, and the Dragon is read as a gatherer of resources and people, someone who turns a reserve into a movement. For centuries the dragon was the emperor’s emblem, and Chinese people still call themselves, in a modern song’s words, the descendants of the dragon; the zodiac’s Dragon carries that sense of a large and generous force.

In practice

• As the year animal, the Dragon is how others see a person and the generation they share: those born from Lichun 2024 to Lichun 2025 are Wood Dragons, from Lichun 2036 Fire Dragons.
• As the inner, true and secret animal: as the month animal, Ulune reads the Dragon’s fire inside, great hopes, a sense of purpose and a wish to leave a mark; as the day animal, a partner generous and vivid, who needs to be admired without dazzling; as the hour animal, someone who nurses great dreams, and a pride not always shown.
• The five Dragons: the Wood Dragon creates and builds something new, the Fire Dragon is the most commanding, the Earth Dragon builds institutions more than dreams, the Metal Dragon is principled and tireless, the Water Dragon is the calmest, steering things gently. Wood came in 1964 and 2024, Fire in 1976, Earth in 1988, Metal in 2000, Water in 2012, and Fire again in 2036.
• Its relations: the Dragon’s allies are the Monkey and the Rat, its trine of Water; its partner in harmony is the Rooster. It clashes with the Dog, harms the Rabbit, forms a destruction with the Ox, and meets itself in a self-punishment: two Dragons double each other’s strengths and habits.
• In time: the Dragon’s own years return every twelve, 2024 and 2036; a Dog year such as 2030 is its clash year; the Rooster, Monkey and Rat years are its friendly ones.

Across traditions

• In Japan the Dragon is tatsu or ryū; in Korea yong; in Vietnam rồng, of the branch Thìn. Across East Asia the dragon dances at New Year and races on the water at the Dragon Boat Festival, in the fifth month.
• In Europe the dragon is a monster to be slain, by Saint George or Siegfried, a hoarder of gold; the Chinese dragon is its opposite, a giver of rain and of life. Translators sometimes keep the word lóng, or write “loong”, to avoid the confusion.
• The Azure Dragon, emblem of the east and of spring in Chinese astronomy and Feng Shui, is a group of seven lunar mansions, not the zodiac’s Dragon, whose place on the wheel is the east-south-east.

Origin and history

The dragon is far older than the zodiac: a dragon laid out in shells beside a burial at Xishuipo, in Puyang, in today’s Henan, was made some six thousand years ago, and jade dragons are among the oldest carvings of north-east China. Wang Chong’s Lunheng, in the 1st century, already gives the dragon to Chen; its place in the cycle, the month of thunder and of the first rains, suits the creature that rises from the waters to the clouds in spring.

Under the later dynasties the five-clawed dragon was reserved for the emperor, and the dragon throne stood for the state itself. BaZi’s classics read the branch Chen, a storehouse of Water, rather than the Dragon; the Dragon’s portrait as it is known now, the charismatic, ambitious leader, is that of popular books of the 20th century in Chinese, English and French, such as Theodora Lau’s Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (1979).

How Ulune calculates it

The Dragon is the branch Chen: a year, month, day or hour whose pillar’s branch is Chen is a Dragon. Ulune counts the Dragon year from Lichun and gives the other answer when Chinese New Year would differ; the Dragon month runs from Qingming, about 5 April, to Lixia in early May; the Dragon hour from 07:00 to 09:00 on true solar time. On Ulune’s wheel the Dragon stands at the east-south-east, four places clockwise from the Rat. Its portraits, with its five phases and its places, are Ulune’s own texts, written from what popular books commonly say.

Correspondences