The five snakes: what the element of the year changes

Anyone born in a year of the snake has only half the story. The other half lies in the element of the year, and that is a different one for every snake. A snake of 1965 and a snake of 1989 share the animal and not much else.

Why no two snakes are alike

That the Chinese calendar is built from ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches, and repeats only after sixty years, is set out under Chinese astrology. For the snake, two things follow from this that are seldom spelled out.

The first is a calculation that does not add up: ten stems and twelve branches would make a hundred and twenty pairs, and in fact there are sixty. Both rows move on at the same time, and because in each of them an active and a receptive member alternate, an active stem always meets an active branch. Half of the conceivable pairs never occur at all.

The second concerns the snake itself. It stands sixth among the branches, in an even place, and is therefore receptive throughout, yin; so it always takes the restrained form of its element. That is one of the reasons why in all five versions it works inwards rather than outwards.

The last digit gives away the element

Because the ten stems run in a fixed order, the element of a year can be read off the last digit of the year: 0 and 1 stand for metal, 2 and 3 for water, 4 and 5 for wood, 6 and 7 for fire, 8 and 9 for earth. The even digit is in each case the active form, the odd one the receptive. Because the snake is yin, every snake year carries an odd final digit.

One caveat: the rule holds for the Chinese year, not for the civil one. New Year falls between 21 January and 20 February, and some schools reckon from the start of spring around 4 February in any case. Anyone born in those weeks often still belongs to the previous year and does better to look up the exact date.

The five snakes and their years

The branch of the snake itself stands for the fire phase. What is interesting each time, then, is how the element of the stem relates to that fire.

Metal snake, 1941 and 2001. More sharply drawn than the rest, with clear standards and little patience for half measures. Fire melts metal: there is a friction here that is readily read from outside as severity.

Water snake, 1953 and 2013. More permeable, more alert to moods, more flexible in judgement. Water damps down the fire of the branch. That takes the edge off and at the same time makes it harder to draw a line.

Wood snake, 1965 and 2025. More outgoing than the other four, interested in growing and building. Wood feeds fire – of the five combinations the most good-natured.

Fire snake, 1977. Stem and branch carry the same element, and it shows: more warmth, more presence, more impatience than in any other snake. The next of this kind falls in 2037.

Earth snake, 1989. The most down-to-earth of them all. Decisions take longer and last the longer for it; the fire of the branch supports the earth of the stem instead of working against it.

How far this reaches

A year of birth describes a cohort, not a person. Everyone who came into the world in the snake year 2013 is a water snake; they part company only in the pairs for month, day and hour, which are added in a detailed reading.

And ascribing an element describes a colouring, not a determination. It says in which key a pattern is played, not which piece. One more word on the names: the four elements of the Western tradition go by some of the same names, but mean something different – there fixed building blocks of the signs, here phases that pass into one another.