The Water Rat

general summary for a person born in a Water Rat 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 Rat, first of the twelve animals, is read in the tradition through the quick, restless wit its own page attributes to it: the Rat "has long been associated with keen and quick intelligence," a cleverness the founding race shows in practice rather than merely names, since the Rat and the Cat were both poor swimmers but, in the story's own words, "quite intelligent," and it was wit rather than strength that put the Rat across the line first. Water, the element of winter and of stillness turned inward, is read as deepening the Rat's quick wit 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and adaptability, a quieter version of the same quality that runs calm on the surface but can turn elusive or withdrawn.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 Rat owes its place at the head of the cycle to cunning rather than speed. Unable to swim well, the Rat and the Cat asked the good natured Ox for a ride across the river; as the Ox neared the far bank the Rat pushed the Cat into the water and jumped down to cross the line first, winning the year named for it and leaving the Ox, who had done the actual work of crossing, to arrive second. The tradition credits this same trick with the enmity between cats and rats ever since. Water, the element paired with this particular Rat 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 Rat and the Horse 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 Rat with the Ox 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-Rat.