The Water Dog

general summary for a person born in a Water Dog year of the Chinese calendar; outside astronomy

What the tradition reads

The Chinese zodiac is a calendrical tradition rather than an astronomical one, kept in this corpus as its own labelled system and never folded into a sun sign or a placement it happens to sit beside: it runs on the lunisolar calendar rather than on the ecliptic, and a year's animal and element are fixed by the date of the lunar new year, not by any planet's position. The twelve year animal cycle combines with the five element cycle, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water, each element holding for two consecutive years, to make a full cycle of sixty years before the same animal and element pairing recurs. The Dog's own Wikipedia page states little beyond its years and elements, but the zodiac's traditional naming of the day's double hours credits the Dog's hour with faithfulness on duty, the animal guarding the house through the hours that bear its name. A widely used Chinese astrology reading of the sign describes people born under it as honest, friendly, faithful, loyal and possessed of a strong sense of justice, though inclined, by the same reading, toward stubbornness and suspicion. Water, the element of winter and of stillness turned inward, is read as deepening the Dog's loyalty into reflection and adaptability, a quieter version of the same quality that runs calm on the surface but can turn elusive or withdrawn.

The story

The Dog, which should by rights have been among the fastest swimmers and runners of the twelve, instead spent the crossing playing in the river water, explaining afterward to the Jade Emperor that it had needed a good bath after a long journey. It arrived so late that it almost missed the finish altogether, and was named eleventh of the twelve animals for its trouble. Water, the element paired with this particular Dog year, comes from the Wu Xing, the five phase system used across Chinese thought for cycles of generation and control: Water is placed in the north and in winter, a period of reclusiveness, stillness and consolidation associated with coolness, generated by Metal's collecting and purifying and, in the same cycle, giving rise to Wood, which it nourishes. The Dog and the Dragon stand directly opposite one another in the twelve year wheel, six years apart, and the tradition names that particular pairing one of the six clashes, the oppositions across the cycle it considers most likely to produce friction rather than ease. Against that, the tradition pairs the Dog with the Rabbit in what it calls one of the six harmonies, a match it reads as running more easily than most.

Written from

Corpus key chinese:Water-Dog.