巳
The Snake
Understanding faster than explaining
This page is about a birth-day animal, not a birth-year animal. Everyone has a day animal, from the day they were born, and it is often not the year animal they know.
You and I keep more than we let on. The question is whether either of us still remembers choosing to.
The Snake in Korean Saju
You understand a situation faster than you explain it, and you are happy to let others reach conclusions you reached long ago. You are private, precise and hard to hurry. The cost is that keeping things to yourself becomes a habit rather than a choice.
Basic facts about this animal
- Its hours of the day
- 9am – 11am
- Its month
- May 5 – June 5
- early summer
- Element
- Yin Fire
- Yang is the outward, active form; Yin is the inward, quiet form
- Place in the order
- 6th of twelve
If this is your day animal
The Snake is the animal of insight and reserve: a lot going on inside, and little of it shown.
What this animal is like in a chart
A Snake day is someone who understands a situation completely before saying anything. The Snake opens summer, when the heat has started but does not show yet. It suits research, strategy, medicine, and any field where the deciding move happens out of sight.
The cost is isolation that turns into a habit. Inside its Fire the Snake holds Metal and Earth, which add judgement and patience to its insight. That makes it formidable, not just clever. But a Snake day holds back so well that people eventually stop asking, and a silence it chose becomes one it is merely used to.
How it gets on with the other animals
Pulls together — The Monkey
Easy to fall into, hard to leave. The Snake and the Monkey are one of the six pairs that pull together, the closest link two animals can have.
Clashes head-on — The Pig
A pairing that does not let either person stay the same. The Pig sits directly opposite the Snake on the circle of twelve: a head-on clash. That makes it a restless match, not a bad one.
Team of three — The Rooster & The Ox
These three get the most done together. With the Rooster and the Ox, the Snake makes a team of three that pulls toward Metal.
To find your own day animal, enter your birth date. It takes about a minute.