The pig: water outside, hidden wood

Each of the twelve earthly branches has one of the five phases stated in its name, and it holds in addition one or more stems that the name says nothing about. With the pig, the twelfth and last branch, the open phase is water, and hidden inside it lies wood. Almost everything the tradition says about how this sign relates to the others follows from those two phases.

Water with wood inside

The pig stands for early winter and for the double hour from 9 to 11 p.m.: the time when the day is coming to an end and nothing new has begun. Its phase is water, the pause. Stored inside it lies wood, and wood belongs to spring. A branch, then, whose visible state is called rest and which already carries something within it that does not have its turn until months later.

The relations that follow hold between calendar signs. They are read between the four branches of a single birth chart, that is, between year, month, day and hour.

Rabbit and goat: why precisely these two

Pig, rabbit and goat count together as wood. For the pig that seems odd at first, since its own phase is water — until the hidden stem comes to mind. That is exactly where the wood sits, and in the pig it sits at the beginning: not yet visible, but present. In the rabbit, at the height of spring, the same wood stands on top; in the goat, at the end of summer, it has been laid aside and stored. What the group describes is therefore a course of development, not a likeness between the three animals.

The tiger, which carries the same thing openly

Besides the groups of three, the tradition knows six pairs, and the pig is paired with the tiger. This relation too comes from inside the branch: the tiger stands at the beginning of spring and carries wood openly, the pig carries it covered. Of the pairing it is said that wood comes out of it — precisely the phase that lies in the pig in any case. What is worth noting is where the two sit in the year: at the beginning of winter and at the beginning of spring, that is, at the two ends of the same season of rest.

The snake on the other side

Six places further on, exactly on the other side of the circle, stands the snake. The Chinese word for this relation means an impact or a collision. Water meets fire, early winter meets early summer, 9 p.m. meets 9 a.m.: two situations that give each other no support. A relation like this is read as movement rather than misfortune — setting out, a change of place, something that does not stay where it lies. And here too the second look inside is worth taking: the snake contains metal among other things, and metal produces water. Even the sharpest of the five relations is not all of a piece.

The monkey, and why the lists contradict each other

Another list brings branches together two at a time as harm; for the pig it puts the monkey there. This pair in particular shows that lists of that kind cannot be derived from the doctrine of the phases. The monkey carries metal, and metal produces water — by the phases, a thoroughly friendly relation. The tradition nonetheless records the two as a disturbance beneath a surface on which everything seems to be in order. Which of the two pieces of information tips the scales in a real chart is decided not by the list but by the rest.

The same branch twice

Four branches count as ones that get along badly with themselves; the pig is one of them. What is meant is not reinforcement but congestion: the same situation a second time, with nothing added that might set it moving. In a sign whose whole picture is holding back, the idea suggests itself.

Where the five relations point

Laid side by side, they show a direction. The group of three makes the pig the starting point of wood. Out of the pair with the tiger, wood comes again. And even snake and monkey touch the same place, because the water of this branch is exactly the stuff wood grows out of. The last branch of the cycle is thus turned throughout towards what comes after it — fitting for a stretch of time in which nothing happens above ground. How the whole is built up from ten stems and twelve branches is described under Chinese astrology.