巳
Year of the Snake
sì · 6 of 12 · the hours of 09:00 – 11:00
Says a third of what it knows, and knows more than it says.
Years of the snake
1941 · 1953 · 1965 · 1977 · 1989 · 2001 · 2013 · 2025 · 2037
Each one begins at that year's new year, not on 1 January — so a January birthday in one of these years belongs to the animal before.
The snake is the sign of the closed hand. Perceptive, private and unhurried, it is credited with wisdom rather than cleverness — the difference being that the snake waits, and the rat does not.
Western readers often import a distrust that the Chinese sign does not carry: here the snake is elegant and deep rather than treacherous. What the tradition does warn about is the reserve becoming a habit, until nobody is allowed close enough to help.
In Japan the same branch is read mi. The twelve are the eto there, and they still name the hours, the directions and the years.
Which animal you actually are depends on the day you were born rather than the year on the certificate — work it out exactly, free, from the real lunisolar boundary.