Pig

Meaning

The Pig is the twelfth and last of the animals, the animal of the branch Hai: Water, yin, the first month of winter and the late evening, when the year’s work is done and people gather round the table. The pig has been at the heart of the Chinese household for eight thousand years: the character for home, 家, shows a pig under a roof, and the Pig is read as the animal of plenty, comfort and a full house.

Ulune’s portrait reads it as generous, sincere and good-natured: it enjoys life’s pleasures and wishes the same for everyone; tolerant and trusting, it is the friend who gives without counting. Its gifts are kindness, honesty, generosity and a gift for enjoying life. What the tradition asks it to watch is the openness of its heart: naivety and indulgence, trusting too easily and giving too much away.

Its branch closes the twelve and already opens the next round: in Hai, Wood is born, the tree that will grow from the winter’s water. The Pig is read as the animal of contentment that is also a beginning, rest that prepares new life, and its phase, Water, gives it patience and a quiet understanding of others.

In practice

• As the year animal, the Pig is how others see a person and the generation they share: those born from Lichun 2019 to Lichun 2020 are Earth Pigs, from Lichun 2031 Metal Pigs.
• As the inner, true and secret animal: as the month animal, Ulune reads the Pig’s good heart inside, a love of life, of comfort and of honest people; as the day animal, a partner generous and affectionate, who needs warmth and sincerity; as the hour animal, a lover of life’s pleasures who keeps a hopeful, trusting heart.
• The five Pigs: the Wood Pig is the most sociable, the Fire Pig the boldest, ready to work hard for what it loves, the Earth Pig the most patient, the Metal Pig the most determined and outspoken in friendship, the Water Pig the gentlest. Wood came in 1935 and 1995, Fire in 1947 and 2007, Earth in 1959 and 2019, Metal in 1971 and comes in 2031, Water in 1983.
• Its relations: the Pig’s allies are the Rabbit and the Goat, its trine of Wood; its partner in harmony is the Tiger, a bond that also counts a destruction. It clashes with the Snake, harms the Monkey, and meets itself in a self-punishment.
• In time: the Pig’s own years return every twelve, 2031 and 2043; a Snake year such as 2025 or 2037 is its clash year; the Tiger, Rabbit and Goat years are its friendly ones.

Across traditions

• In Japan the animal of the branch is the wild boar, inoshishi; in Korea it is the pig, dwaeji, and dreaming of a pig is said to bring wealth; in Vietnam heo or lợn, of the branch Hợi.
• In Journey to the West, Zhu Bajie, the pig who joins the Monkey King, is greedy and lazy and also warm-hearted and loyal, the most human of the pilgrims; the zodiac’s Pig keeps his good nature and his love of comfort.
• In Europe the pig is the money box of children and a sign of luck in German and Scandinavian lore, and the boar was sacred to the Norse god Freyr, lord of plenty; Western astrology has no pig, but its last sign, Pisces, shares the Pig’s place at the end of a cycle.

Origin and history

The Pig is the animal of Hai in Wang Chong’s Lunheng, in the 1st century, which says that Hai is Water and its creature the pig. Pigs were domesticated in China by about 6000 BC, and the oracle-bone form of 家, home, already puts one under a roof. Its last place in the cycle is explained in the race legend by its slowness: it stopped to eat and sleep, and arrived when the others had taken their places.

The branch and the animal were close even in writing: the Lüshi Chunqiu (c. 239 BC) tells of a scribe who read the day 己亥, Ji-Hai, as 三豕, “three pigs”, because the characters looked so alike. BaZi’s classics read the branch Hai rather than the Pig itself; the Pig’s portrait as it is known now, the generous, sincere lover of life, 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 Pig is the branch Hai: a year, month, day or hour whose pillar’s branch is Hai is a Pig. Ulune counts the Pig year from Lichun and gives the other answer when Chinese New Year would differ; the Pig month runs from Lidong, about 7 November, to Daxue in early December; the Pig hour from 21:00 to 23:00 on true solar time, the last before the Rat hour opens the next day. On Ulune’s wheel the Pig stands at the north-north-west, just before the Rat, closing the circle. Its portraits, with its five phases and its places, are Ulune’s own texts, written from what popular books commonly say.

Correspondences