Five Tigers - 5 Elements Tigers 壬寅，甲寅，丙寅，戊寅，庚寅
The popularity of the annual Zodiac sign predictions reaches its height during the Chinese Lunar New Year period. They are simplified readings to cater to the masses as the whole population is grouped into twelve Zodiac signs; which means that hundreds of millions share the same reading per sign. Too general to be precise, and so it is infotainment. In modern days, the annual Zodiac sign readings serve a largely commercial purpose as many capitalist business entities use the predictions as marketing and promotional events for news and publicity. Temples and religious organisations use them as annual fund raisers. Historically these readings were done by scholars working at temple fairs as a side income while waiting to take the Imperial Examinations in the ancient cities of China.
The annual Zodiac signs predictions are simplified to twelve, which is already quite lengthy to write and talk about. To bridge the gap to the actual 60 Jia Zi pairs of the sexagenary cycle, it is good to learn about the additional Five Elements.
Simply put, take 12 (Zodiac signs) multiply by 5 (elements) and you get 60 pairs.
For example, the year of 2022 is not just the year of the Tiger, but the year of the Water Tiger. The next year of the Tiger in 2034 will be the year of the Wood Tiger, in 2046 will be the year of the Fire Tiger, in 2058 the year of the Earth Tiger and in 2070 the year of the Metal Tiger. It loops back to Water Tiger again in 2082, and so on and so forth.
In the illustration above designed by myself, I use shapes and colours to help you see the elements:
Water drop shape = Water element
Tall rectangle shape = Wood element
Triangle shape = Fire element
Square shape = Earth element
Circle shape = Metal element
For colours, yellow, green and red are easy to apply to design but Water's black and Metal's white are replaced with blue and grey so that they don't disappear into white and black screen backgrounds on the computer and mobile devices, and on paper.
Also, the 地支 / Di Zi for Tiger is 寅, pronounced yín, second sound intonation and not the same as 阴 yīn, first sound, light or rising intonation.
And so, baby steps, learn a little more than just your annual Zodiac sign. The actual Ba Zi birth chart readings are based on the Five Elements Theory, and personalised to the day and hour of birth. So before you start lamenting about how the past year was bad for you because you have self read an annual horoscope booklet based only on your annual sign, please get yourself a Ba Zi birth reading. Sometimes it is just your own mind making the classic "cognitive bias" used by marketers. (Google search "marketing bias" or "cognitive bias" to read up about it).
