Monkey

Meaning

The Monkey is the ninth of the twelve animals, the animal of the branch Shen: Metal, yang, the first month of autumn and the late afternoon, when the harvest begins. Every Chinese child knows the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, born from a stone, who learns every magic, defies heaven and ends by protecting a monk on his long journey west; the zodiac’s Monkey has the same quick wits and the same gift for finding a way where there seems to be none.

Ulune’s portrait reads it as clever, playful and inventive: it solves problems quickly, learns anything and enjoys a good joke; curious and adaptable, it is never short of an idea. Its gifts are intelligence, wit, versatility and optimism. What the tradition asks it to watch is the other side of its quickness: restlessness and a taste for shortcuts, and cleverness that turns into mischief.

Its branch gives the Monkey a beginning in a season of endings: Shen opens the autumn, and inside it Water is born. The Monkey is read as the animal that adapts to change rather than resists it, picks up a new skill when the old one no longer serves, and turns the harvest’s work into a game. Its phase is Metal, sharpness and skill.

In practice

• As the year animal, the Monkey is how others see a person and the generation they share: those born from Lichun 2016 to Lichun 2017 are Fire Monkeys, from Lichun 2028 Earth Monkeys.
• As the inner, true and secret animal: as the month animal, Ulune reads the Monkey’s quick wit inside, a need for puzzles, play and new things to learn; as the day animal, a partner funny and inventive, best with someone who keeps up and keeps them curious; as the hour animal, a clever strategist who enjoys finding their own way round the rules.
• The five Monkeys: the Wood Monkey tries every new idea, the Fire Monkey is the boldest, the Earth Monkey the most reliable and studious, the Metal Monkey masters whatever it takes on, the Water Monkey is the most subtle and diplomatic. Wood came in 1944 and 2004, Fire in 1956 and 2016, Earth in 1968 and comes in 2028, Metal in 1980, Water in 1992.
• Its relations: the Monkey’s allies are the Rat and the Dragon, its trine of Water; its partner in harmony is the Snake, a bond that also counts a punishment and a destruction. It clashes with the Tiger, harms the Pig, and belongs to the ungrateful punishment with the Tiger and the Snake.
• In time: the Monkey’s own years return every twelve, 2028 and 2040; a Tiger year such as 2034 is its clash year; the Rat and Dragon years are its allied ones.

Across traditions

• In Japan the Monkey is saru, and the three wise monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil, carved at the Tōshōgū shrine at Nikkō, belong to it; in Korea wonsungi; in Vietnam khỉ, of the branch Thân.
• A painter’s pun: 猴 hóu sounds like 侯 hóu, a marquis, so a monkey riding a horse wishes “to be made a marquis at once”, promotion without delay; the Monkey is an animal of good wishes for careers.
• In India Hanuman, the monkey god of the Ramayana, is loyal, strong and clever, and some scholars have looked for his traces in Sun Wukong; Western astrology gives the wit and the trickery of the Monkey to Mercury, the messenger and the god of quick minds.

Origin and history

The Monkey is the animal of Shen in Wang Chong’s Lunheng, in the 1st century, which says that Shen is Metal and its creature the monkey. The great novel Journey to the West, published in 1592 and attributed to Wu Cheng’en, made the Monkey King the best-loved figure of Chinese fiction, and Peking opera, comics and films have kept him alive; the zodiac’s Monkey has borrowed much of his character.

BaZi’s classics read the branch Shen, where Water is born and Metal prospers, rather than the Monkey itself. The Monkey’s portrait as it is known now, the clever, playful inventor, 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 Monkey is the branch Shen: a year, month, day or hour whose pillar’s branch is Shen is a Monkey. Ulune counts the Monkey year from Lichun and gives the other answer when Chinese New Year would differ; the Monkey month runs from Liqiu, about 8 August, to Bailu in early September; the Monkey hour from 15:00 to 17:00 on true solar time. On Ulune’s wheel the Monkey stands at the west-south-west, opposite the Tiger. Its portraits, with its five phases and its places, are Ulune’s own texts, written from what popular books commonly say.

Correspondences