Rising Sign vs Chinese Zodiac Hour: Find Your Hour Animal

Rising sign vs Chinese hour animal: what is the difference?

Your rising sign, also called your ascendant, is the Western zodiac sign that was coming up over the eastern horizon when you were born. Your Chinese hour animal is the animal that rules the block of two hours you were born in. Both come from your birth time and both change about every two hours, but Western astrology reads the rising sign as the face you show the world, while many writers on Chinese astrology read the hour animal as your more private side.

Why people compare them

Most people know one sign from each system, a sun sign and a year animal, and both of those come from the date alone. The rising sign and the hour animal are the next layer down, the part of each chart that needs the clock. That is why some English books and websites call the hour animal your Chinese ascendant. Others call it your secret animal, because they read it as the side of you most people never see.

Both rest on the same fact: the Earth turns once a day. As it turns, the twelve Western signs rise in the east one after another, and the sun passes through the twelve Chinese double hours. For the wider picture, see our complete comparison of Eastern and Western astrology.

How your rising sign is worked out

Picture the sky at the moment and place you were born. The zodiac is a band of twelve signs that circles the sky along the sun's yearly path, and at any moment one point of it sits exactly on the eastern horizon. The sign holding that point is your rising sign.

As the Earth turns, all twelve signs rise in the course of a day, which gives the rule of thumb of about two hours per sign. The real pace is uneven because the band sits at a tilt. At the latitude of Philadelphia or Denver, Pisces and Aries each rise in a little over an hour, while Leo and Scorpio take about two and a half.

Since the horizon depends on where you stand, a rising sign needs the date, the exact time and the place of birth, down to latitude and longitude. Chart software does the math after correcting for your time zone and any daylight saving time. One check you can do in your head: someone born around sunrise usually has their sun sign rising too.

The rising sign also marks the start of the first house. Houses are twelve sections of the chart, each tied to an area of life. Without a birth time, a Western chart has neither a rising sign nor houses.

How your hour animal is worked out

Traditional China split the day into twelve double hours, called shichen. Each carries one of the twelve earthly branches, the same signs that name the zodiac animals, in zodiac order. The Rat opens the day at 11 pm, the Ox follows at 1 am, and the Pig takes the last block, from 9 to 11 pm.

The blocks follow the sun: midnight sits in the middle of the Rat hour and noon in the middle of the Horse hour. The Chinese word for noon, zhongwu, still means the middle of wu, the Horse hour.

So many practitioners set a full Chinese chart by solar time, the time by the sun where you were born, and that rarely matches the clock. Detroit sits far west in Eastern time, so its sun runs about 32 minutes behind its clocks. Daylight saving time adds another hour, and the sun itself runs up to about a quarter hour fast or slow over the year. A Detroit birth at 7:20 am on a July morning comes out close to 5:45 am by the sun. The clock puts that birth in the Dragon hour, and the sun puts it in the Rabbit hour.

Latitude plays no part. The hour animal depends on how far east or west you were born, while the rising sign needs both directions.

The Rat block crosses midnight, so a baby born at 11:30 pm has the Rat as hour animal before the date turns. Schools differ on whether the day animal changes at 11 pm too or waits for midnight.

In a full chart, the hour animal is half of the hour pillar, the last of four pillars for the year, month, day and hour of birth. The other half is a heavenly stem, one of ten signs that each carry an element, worked out from the stem of your birth day. Our guide to the Energy Chart shows how the four pillars fit together.

The 12 hour animals and their hours

Here are the twelve double hours by clock time, on standard time. Each block starts on the hour and ends when the next one starts, so a birth at exactly 1:00 am belongs to the Ox. Each line ends with the element each branch carries in the Five Elements system, and the Chinese name of each branch is in parentheses.

• Rat (Zi): 11 pm to 1 am, middle of the night. Element: Water.
• Ox (Chou): 1 am to 3 am, small hours. Element: Earth.
• Tiger (Yin): 3 am to 5 am, before dawn. Element: Wood.
• Rabbit (Mao): 5 am to 7 am, sunrise. Element: Wood.
• Dragon (Chen): 7 am to 9 am, early morning. Element: Earth.
• Snake (Si): 9 am to 11 am, late morning. Element: Fire.
• Horse (Wu): 11 am to 1 pm, noon. Element: Fire.
• Goat (Wei): 1 pm to 3 pm, early afternoon. Element: Earth.
• Monkey (Shen): 3 pm to 5 pm, late afternoon. Element: Metal.
• Rooster (You): 5 pm to 7 pm, sunset. Element: Metal.
• Dog (Xu): 7 pm to 9 pm, evening. Element: Earth.
• Pig (Hai): 9 pm to 11 pm, late evening. Element: Water.

These are the same twelve animals, in the same order, as the years of the Chinese zodiac, so your hour animal can match your year animal or differ from it.

How to find your hour animal

1. Find your birth time. Look on your birth certificate, a hospital record or a baby book, or ask a parent.
2. Check for daylight saving time. If clocks were set forward on the day you were born, take one hour off your birth time. Most of Arizona and all of Hawaii have not used daylight saving time for decades.
3. Find your block in the list. That animal is your hour animal by the clock.
4. Look closer near an edge. Within about an hour of a block edge, the solar time at your birth city decides which side you land on. A chart set by solar time works that out for you.

What each system says it reads

The rising sign in Western astrology

Western astrologers read the rising sign as your outward style: the first impression you make, how you come across to people who do not know you yet, and how you walk into new situations. Many also link it to your body and the way you carry yourself. The sun, moon and rising signs are often called the big three: the sun for your core identity, the moon for your emotional life and the rising sign for the way you meet the world.

The planet that rules your rising sign is called your chart ruler, and many astrologers give it extra weight. Some suggest reading your horoscope for your rising sign as well as your sun sign.

The hour animal in Chinese astrology

The hour animal points the other way. Popular writing reads it as how you are at home, off duty and with the few people who know you well. When two people share a year animal but seem quite different up close, many writers point to the hour. In the classic Four Pillars reading, the hour pillar is also tied to later life, to children and to your plans for the long run.

The hour adds two elements to the chart, one from its stem and one from its branch. A Four Pillars reading centers the whole chart on your core element, the element of the stem for the day you were born, and the hour can shift how well supported that core element looks.

Neither tradition has been shown by research to predict character or events. Chinese astrology is a form of fortune telling, and we read it as a map of tendencies and timing, not a fixed fate.

Why both need an accurate birth time

Both layers change about every two hours, so a time that is a little off can give the wrong answer. They differ in how much error they can take.

The hour animal only changes at the edges of its block. A birth in the middle of a block has about an hour of room either way, so a rough time is often enough. Near an edge, a few minutes and the solar time correction decide it.

The rising sign is touchier. Astrologers use its exact degree, which moves about one degree every four minutes on average, to set the houses. A time that is 15 minutes off can move a planet into a different house even when the rising sign stays the same. Recorded times are sometimes rounded, so a time like 8:00 or 8:30 deserves a second look if it sits near an edge.

If you do not know your birth time

Start with the paperwork. The full copy of a birth certificate, sometimes called the long form, often lists the time of birth, and hospital records, baby books and old birth announcements can too. Even a range like early morning or just after dinner narrows the hour animal to one or two blocks.

If you find nothing, both systems lose the same kind of layer, the one that moves fastest.

• Western astrology loses the rising sign and the houses. Many astrologers cast the chart for noon, which places the sun and planets with little error. The moon moves about 13 degrees a day, so its sign stays uncertain if it changed signs on your birthday. Some use a solar chart, with the sun sign as the first house, and some try rectification: working back from the dates of big life events to estimate a birth time.
• Chinese astrology loses the hour pillar and keeps the other three, six of its eight signs. Your year, month and day animals stay, and so does your core element, since it comes from the day. Some practitioners try to estimate the hour from life events, but that stays an estimate.

Either way you still have a real chart with one layer missing, and you can add it later if a birth time turns up.