The Snake, 6th Chinese sign (branch Si)

Meaning

The Snake at issue here is an earthly branch of the Chinese calendar, Si, the sixth of the twelve. It must not be confused with the Snake of the Petit Lenormand, card 7, which belongs to an entirely different system and obeys other reading rules. The Chinese Snake is read as a portion of the year, with its element, its polarity and its relations to the eleven other branches. What it describes fits in one sentence: the lucidity that watches a long time before cutting.

This temperament looks before it acts, and it looks longer than average. The intuition ascribed to it has nothing magical about it: it comes from a continuous attention to details that others let pass, accumulated until they form a conviction that it does not always explain but that often proves out. Its discretion serves the same end. What is not shown cannot be turned against you, and staying illegible is part of its method.

From there comes its strategy. The Snake does not play all its moves, it keeps some back. It chooses the moment, and when it cuts, it cuts in a single gesture, which gives the misleading impression of a sudden decision when it had in fact been ripening for a long time. Its depth points the same way: it prefers few subjects held to the bottom over many subjects skimmed.

The downside is called mistrust. By dint of looking for what hides behind intentions, the Snake ends up assuming intentions where there are none, and the restraint that protected it isolates it. This portrait describes a tendency, not a person: in a BaZi chart the animal of the year is only one character out of the eight the chart contains, and the other seven can support it as easily as contradict it.

The branch and its element

Si is Fire, in its Yin phase: not the blaze but the held flame, the one that lights for a long time without burning out at once.

Three heavenly stems hide in it, and all three are of Yang phase while the branch is Yin: what the Snake lets others see is more discreet than what it contains. Bing, Fire Yang, puts in it a power that the surface does not betray. Wu, Earth Yang, brings the footing. Geng, Metal Yang, gives the cut and the clean decision.

Watch the name Wu: the one hidden in Si is a heavenly stem, that of Earth Yang. One branch of the cycle carries the same name in pinyin, that of the Horse, but they are two different Chinese characters, and neither can ever be deduced from the other.

Si opens the 4th BaZi month, in May, after the solar term Lixia: the first month of summer. Its direction is South-Southeast, its double hour runs from 9am to 11am, when the heat rises without having reached its peak.

Alliances and clashes

Three branch relations concern Si, and there are no others.

Its Liu He combination ties it to Shen, the branch of the Monkey, and the result surprises: that meeting produces Water. Two branches, neither of which carries that element, make it appear together, a reminder that a combination cannot be guessed from the starting elements.

Its Liu Chong opposition sets it against Hai, the branch of the Pig, Fire against Water. It is the most direct axis there is: two contrary ways of occupying the world, one that lights and one that covers over.

Its San He trine gathers Si, You, the branch of the Rooster, and Chou, the branch of the Ox. That trine produces Metal, the very metal Si shelters in secret with the stem Geng. The Snake holds the opening place in it.

These three relations are read between the branches of one chart, or between a chart and the period it is going through. They say nothing about the agreement between two people reduced to their year of birth, a shortcut that remains the most widespread misreading of Chinese astrology.

Key facts

The nine years of the Snake closest to us, with the heavenly stem that opens each one. All carry a Yin stem, like the branch itself.

Keywords

• intuition
• discretion
• strategy
• depth
• mistrust