The Tiger, 3rd sign of Chinese astrology

Meaning

The Tiger holds the third rank among the twelve earthly branches, and its month is the first of the BaZi calendar. That is no detail: the sign stands at the tipping point, where winter yields and spring begins. Its double hour runs from 3am to 5am, the hour when night withdraws without daylight having arrived. The Tiger belongs to those moments when everything is possible because nothing is settled yet.

Its word fits on one line: the drive that opens the breach and refuses supervision. Both halves of the sentence count equally. There is the forward movement, and there is the refusal to be held. With this sign, one does not go without the other.

Initiative is its natural way of entering a situation. The Tiger begins, it does not join. Facing an obstacle, its first assumption is that the obstacle can be crossed, and that assumption is often as good as any other. Courage follows, less as a feat than as an absence of hesitation: the sign does not pile up precautions before acting.

Independence is the social face of the same trait. The Tiger tolerates being framed, arbitrated or corrected very badly, including when the framing is right. It would rather be wrong alone than succeed under supervision, and that is worth knowing before trying to help it.

Then comes impulsiveness, which is the same drive without the checking delay. The sign sets off before counting, and the cost is sometimes considerable. Its authority, finally, comes from no title: it comes from the fact that it moves forward and that its direction is legible. It is an authority of trajectory, one that collapses the moment it stops.

The branch and its element

The Tiger’s branch is Yin, the third of the twelve. Its element is Wood, its polarity is Yang.

That name is a romanisation trap to clear up immediately: the branch Yin has nothing to do with the Yin phase. They are two different Chinese words that the Latin alphabet renders the same way. The Tiger’s branch is Yang, without ambiguity.

Yin shelters three hidden stems, and all three are Yang. Jia, Wood Yang, doubles the surface element. Bing, Fire Yang, adds heat and projection. Wu, Earth Yang, brings the footing without which the drive would not hold. This stem Wu, Earth Yang, must not be confused with the branch Wu, the Horse’s branch, which appears further down in the sign’s trine: they are two distinct Chinese characters whose romanisation happens to coincide.

No Yin stem in this branch, then, and no inner counterweight. The Tiger is a sign turned entirely outward, which makes both its opening power and its lack of brakes.

Alliances and clashes

Three relations place the Tiger among the twelve branches. There are no others.

The alliance, Liu He, pairs it with Hai, the Pig. Together the two branches produce Wood, that is to say the very element of the Tiger: here the alliance feeds what the sign already is.

The head on clash, Liu Chong, sets it against Shen, the Monkey, the branch facing it on the circle of twelve.

The affinity trine, San He, gathers Yin (the Tiger), Wu (the Horse) and Xu (the Dog) around Fire. The Tiger holds the first position, the one that triggers. The Fire produced by this trine is in fact already present in the sign as its hidden stem Bing: what the group makes visible, the branch carried in germ.

These relations describe links between branches, not between people. Reading romantic agreement from the year animal alone is the most widespread misreading of Chinese astrology: that animal is only one character out of the eight in a chart, and the other seven still have to be read.

Key facts

The Tiger’s month opens at Lichun, around 4 February, and it is at that same solar term that the year pillar turns. A January birth therefore belongs to the previous animal year, a point to check before settling into one of these rows.

Keywords

• Initiative
• Courage
• Independence
• Impulsiveness
• Authority