Zi · Rat

Meaning

Zi is the first of the twelve Earthly Branches: the branch of the Rat, of the north, of the double hour around midnight and of the eleventh month of the Chinese year, the one that holds the winter solstice. It is Water at its deepest and, in the cycle, yang: the darkest point of the year is also the point where light begins to return. The Han historians read the name as 孳 zī, to breed and multiply: in Zi, Xu Shen’s dictionary says, yang stirs and the ten thousand things begin to grow, still out of sight.

That is the branch’s meaning in every reading: a beginning that has not yet shown itself, potential gathered in the dark, a seed’s quiet intelligence. Zi is read as quickness of mind, resourcefulness, sensitivity to what is about to change, and the ability to start again from almost nothing; the character 子 is a child, and the word also names a master, as in Kongzi, Confucius. Its difficulty is that of the night: an energy turned inwards that can become restlessness, a mind that keeps working when it should rest.

As one of the four cardinal branches, with Mao, Wu and You, Zi holds a single phase, unmixed: its only hidden stem is Gui, yin Water. It stands at the peak of the Water trine and at the heart of winter’s three branches, and across the circle it faces Wu, midsummer and noon, the other pivot of the year.

In practice

• In BaZi, Zi holds Gui alone, so a Zi in the chart is pure Water. A Zi month, from about 7 December to about 6 January, is the depth of winter: Water at its strongest and Fire at its weakest, which is why Ulune’s climate view suggests Fire for winter charts. Zi is the Peak of Ren and the Prosperity of Gui, and the Nobleman of Yi and Ji.
• Its relations: Zi is in harmony with Chou, a pair that leans towards Earth; it makes the Water trine with Shen and Chen, of which it is the peak, and the winter trio with Hai and Chou. It clashes with Wu, harms Wei, forms the “uncivil” punishment with Mao and a destruction with You.
• In Chinese astrology, Zi is the Rat: 2020 was a Metal Rat year and 2032 will be a Water Rat year, both counted from Lichun.
• In time: the Zi hour runs from 23:00 to 01:00 and opens the day in the Zi Ping school, which is why Ulune turns the day at 23:00 by default.
• In Feng Shui, Zi is the middle mountain of the north, from 352.5° to 7.5°, a yin one for the Flying Stars whatever its place in the cycle; in a Rat year Tai Sui sits there.

Across traditions

• In Japan the branch is read ne, the rat; in Korea ja, in Vietnam Tý. The meridian, the north–south line, is the Zi-Wu line, 子午線, in Chinese and Japanese alike.
• The Yi Jing gives each month a hexagram in the Han scheme of the twelve “sovereign hexagrams”, and the Zi month’s is Return (Fu, the 24th), one whole line come back beneath five broken ones: the first yang of the new year.
• Western astrology begins Capricorn at the winter solstice, which falls in the Zi month; the two traditions agree that the year’s turning point lies in the dark.

Origin and history

Zi is one of the twelve branch characters of the Shang oracle bones, which pair it with the stems to name days; Jia-Zi, the first pair of the sixty, still names the cycle itself. Early calendars disagreed on where the year began: tradition held that the Zhou started it with the Zi month, the Shang with Chou and the Xia with Yin, and the Taichu reform of 104 BC settled on the Yin month, as the Chinese calendar still does, leaving Zi as the eleventh month.

The Huainanzi (139 BC) puts Zi at the north and at midwinter; Sima Qian and Ban Gu explained it by 孳, things beginning to multiply, and Xu Shen’s Shuowen Jiezi (c. 100) by yang stirring in the eleventh month. BaZi’s classics, from the Yuanhai Ziping of the Song dynasty to the San Ming Tong Hui of the Ming, read it as the purest Water among the branches. The current sixty-year cycle began in 1984, a Jia-Zi year, and the next will begin in 2044.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune numbers Zi 0 among the branches: a pillar is a Zi pillar when its place in the sixty-cycle counts out to Zi in twelves, as Jia-Zi, Bing-Zi, Wu-Zi, Geng-Zi and Ren-Zi do. The year is a Zi year from Lichun to Lichun; the Zi month runs from the exact moment of Daxue, the Sun at 255°, to that of Xiaohan, the Sun at 285°; the Zi hour is 23:00 to 01:00 on true solar time at the birthplace by default. Ulune counts its hidden Gui as one point of Water in BaZi’s balance, two in the month branch. Its relations are found by the rules on the branches’ places, and its stars by the classical tables: Zi is the Peach Blossom for a year or day branch of the Hai, Mao and Wei trine, and the General for one of its own trine.

Correspondences