Rat

Meaning

The Rat is the first of the twelve animals, the animal of the branch Zi: Water, yang, the north, midnight and midwinter. In the legend of the Great Race it came first by riding on the Ox’s back and jumping ahead at the finish, and the story says what the tradition sees in it: a quick mind, a sharp eye for an opening, and the resourcefulness to win with little.

Ulune’s portrait reads it as quick, alert and resourceful, charming and sociable, a talent for people and for plans, thrifty and adaptable. In Chinese homes the rat in the granary meant there was grain to eat, and the Rat stands for plenty and for the start of a new cycle. What the tradition asks it to watch is the other side of its alertness: restlessness and worry, and a habit of holding on to things, or to grudges, longer than needed.

Its branch gives the Rat its depth. Zi is the darkest hour, when the next day already begins, and the Rat is read as an animal of beginnings that are not yet seen: ideas gathered in the night, plans made before others are awake, a quiet store of resources for later. Its phase is Water, intelligence and adaptability, and every Rat year adds a second phase from its stem.

In practice

• As the year animal, the Rat is how others see a person and the generation they share: those born from Lichun 2020 to Lichun 2021 are Metal Rats, from Lichun 2032 Water Rats.
• As the inner, true and secret animal: as the month animal, Ulune reads the Rat’s alert mind inside, always planning and noticing; as the day animal, a partner who is attentive and resourceful, the one who thinks of everything; as the hour animal, a quiet collector of ideas, plans and memories.
• The five Rats: the Wood Rat builds and gathers people, the Fire Rat is the boldest, the Earth Rat secures what it makes, the Metal Rat judges quickly and holds its course, the Water Rat reads a room at once. They come round every sixty years: Wood in 1984, Fire in 1996, Earth in 2008, Metal in 2020, Water in 2032.
• Its relations: the Rat’s allies are the Dragon and the Monkey, its trine of Water; its partner in harmony is the Ox. It clashes with the Horse, harms the Goat, forms the uncivil punishment with the Rabbit and a destruction with the Rooster.
• In time: the Rat’s own years return every twelve, 2020 and 2032; a Horse year such as 2026 is its clash year, which the tradition reads as a year that moves things, best met with a change chosen early; the Ox, Dragon and Monkey years are its friendly ones.

Across traditions

• In Japan the Rat is nezumi and the branch ne; in Korea jwi; in Vietnam chuột, of the branch Tý. In Japan and China a folk tale and its New Year prints tell of the rats’ wedding, a mouse bride carried in a tiny sedan chair.
• In India, Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, rides a mouse, the small creature that gets through anywhere; the Rat of the Chinese zodiac shares that gift.
• Western astrology has no rodent among its signs; the nearest in spirit to the Rat’s season is Capricorn, whose sign the Sun enters at the winter solstice in the Rat’s month.

Origin and history

The Rat is already the animal of Zi in the Lunheng of Wang Chong, in the 1st century, which gives Zi to the rat and Wu to the horse while arguing about the phases’ animals. Why so small a creature heads the twelve has been explained in many ways: by the race; by its toes, four on the front feet and five on the back, odd and even, yin and yang together, fit for the hour where yin turns to yang; or simply by the midnight hour when rats are about. None is old enough to be the reason, and Ulune gives them as stories.

BaZi’s classics, from the Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty to the San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming, read Zi rather than the Rat. The Rat’s portrait as it is known today, clever, charming and thrifty, comes from popular books of the 20th century, in Chinese and then in English and French, of which Theodora Lau’s Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (1979) is among the best known.

How Ulune calculates it

The Rat is the branch Zi: a year, month, day or hour whose pillar’s branch is Zi is a Rat. Ulune counts the Rat year from Lichun, about 4 February, as BaZi and Feng Shui do, and says so when Chinese New Year would give another animal; the Rat month runs from Daxue, about 7 December, to Xiaohan; the Rat hour from 23:00 to 01:00 on true solar time, which is why a birth at 23:30 has the next day’s pillar by default. On Ulune’s wheel the Rat stands at the top, at the north, and its portraits, with its five phases and its places, are Ulune’s own texts, written from what popular books commonly say.

Correspondences