Year of the Monkey
The Monkey is the ninth animal, the one that built the raft. The popular tradition reads it as clever, playful and inventive.
What the postcard says
The popular reading of a Monkey year birth is wit: a quick, inventive mind, a talent for solving the problem sideways, and a humour that keeps everyone entertained. Monkeys are read as curious, versatile and sociable, the ones who can do a little of everything and get away with most of it.
The honest shadow in the same tradition is the Monkey's trickery: a cleverness that becomes cunning, a restlessness that will not finish, and a vanity about being the smartest in the room. The tradition says the Monkey's best trick is fooling itself.
The years, the hours and the month
Every twelfth year is a Monkey year, but not the same Monkey: the year's stem changes each time, so the Monkey years are 1944 (Yang Wood), 1956 (Yang Fire), 1968 (Yang Earth), 1980 (Yang Metal), 1992 (Yang Water), 2004 (Yang Wood), 2016 (Yang Fire) and 2028 (Yang Earth). The year turns at Li Chun, around 4 February, not on 1 January and not at the new moon festival, so a January birth belongs to the year before. The branch also rules two hours of every day, 15:00 to 17:00, and one month of every year.
Inside a Four Pillars chart the Monkey is the branch Shen, whose element is Metal and whose hidden stems are Yang Metal, Yang Water and Yang Earth. It rules the two hours after three in the afternoon and the first month of autumn. In a chart it reads as Metal with Water inside it, the source of the stream; the animal name says none of that, and the element does.
The year animal is the postcard; your day master is the reading
Two people born in 2004 and 2016 are both Monkeys, and the tradition reads them differently before it reads them alike.
The animal is the branch of the year pillar, one of eight characters in a Four Pillars chart, and the tradition reads it last. It reads the day master first: the stem of the day of birth, which is the self the rest of the chart is weighed against, and which the year animal says nothing about. Two Monkeys twelve years apart share a branch and differ in their year's element, Yang Wood against Yang Fire, and differ in every other pillar; the postcard is true, and it is the smallest true thing on the card.
We calculate the whole chart, so the animal is the first thing you see and the day master is the second, and the reading is built on the second. The ten day masters have their own pages in this library, and the calculator says which one is yours.
About 60 seconds · the pillars need your date, time and place · the year animal is the first thing you will see
Questions people ask
Which years are the Monkey?
1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016 and 2028, each beginning at Li Chun, around 4 February, and each with a different element: 1980 (Yang Metal), 1992 (Yang Water), 2004 (Yang Wood), 2016 (Yang Fire) and 2028 (Yang Earth). The calculator works the year out from the date rather than from the year number, so a January birth is placed correctly.
Is the Monkey compatible with the Rat and the Dragon?
The popular tradition groups the Monkey with the Rat and the Dragon, the three branches four apart, and calls the grouping harmonious. That is the postcard's compatibility, two characters out of the sixteen a real pair comparison reads, and it says nothing about the day masters the tradition actually compares. The two-person report reads both charts in full.
I was born in January or February. Which animal am I?
The year turns at Li Chun, around 4 February, so a birth before it belongs to the year before, whatever the calendar says. In some years the festival falls before Li Chun and in some after, which is why two sources can disagree; the pillars follow the solar term, and so does the calculator.
We read charts for pattern and coherence, not prediction. Nothing here tells you what will happen, and nothing here tells you who you are; it shows a structure and leaves the judgement with you.