The Pig

Recent years: 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007 and 2019, with the next Pig year beginning in 2031. The Chinese year begins at Chinese New Year, never on 1 January, and New Year falls between 21 January and 20 February. If you were born in January or the first weeks of February of a Pig year you may be a Dog, and if you were born in those weeks of the year after you may be a Pig rather than a Rat. Check the New Year date for your own year before you read on. The Chinese Calendar and the New Year page explains the rule.

The Pig's own element is Water and its polarity is yin, the inward and receptive side of the pair. Twelfth of the twelve animals, it belongs to the group I call the peacemakers. I say Pig, by the way, never Boar. The Boar sounds like something you would avoid in a forest, and the Pig is the animal you would want at your table.

The nature of the Pig

The Pig is kindness without an agenda. It gives because giving is what it does, and it does not keep a ledger. It is sincere to the point of being disarming. What you see is what there is, and the Pig assumes the same of everyone else.

Pigs love company and the good things of ordinary life: a long meal, a full house, a comfortable chair and someone to talk to in it. They enjoy without guilt.

They are also tolerant. The Pig can forgive what other animals would hold against you for a decade, and it rarely judges harshly.

Strengths

Warmth first. People relax around a Pig. They feel welcome, valued and safe to be themselves, and that is a rarer gift than it sounds. Then generosity, with time, money and attention, given freely and without expecting the favour back. Add loyalty, a plain sincerity that makes real closeness possible, and a talent for building community around a table.

Underneath the softness is endurance. In my experience the Pig is tougher than it looks. It can carry a great deal of difficulty for a long time and still have something left to give.

Challenges

Trust is the Pig's great gift and its great risk. It believes people, and some people are not worth believing. The Pig gets outmanoeuvred by the cunning and tends to blame itself when it happens.

Comfort can become indulgence, in food, drink, spending or simply avoiding anything hard. The Pig hates conflict and will let a problem grow for months rather than name it. It says yes to everyone and then wonders why it is exhausted and, if it is truthful with itself, a little resentful. The wish to be liked can quietly replace the wish to be known.

Framed kindly, the work for a Pig is discernment and a spine. Both can sit alongside the kindness. Boundaries are a form of kindness too, mostly to yourself.

In love and friendship

A Pig loves tenderly and openly. It wants a warm, comfortable, affectionate life with someone and it will do most of the work to build one.

It needs a partner who values that goodness rather than mining it. Pigs do poorly with the cold and the critical, and they can stay far too long with someone who is hurting them, convinced that enough love will mend the other person. They can also smother, and feel wounded when a partner wants a little room. Give a Pig a partner as open as it is, and the relationship will be warm for fifty years.

At work

People, service and a kind culture. Pigs flourish in hospitality, counselling, teaching, social work, the arts, food, farming, anything that puts them in real contact with people who need looking after. They do their best work where cooperation is valued and their contribution is noticed.

They struggle in cut throat or emotionally cold workplaces and they have little appetite for office politics or self promotion. The Pig's ambition is a comfortable life and a useful one, and status is beside the point. Its challenge at work is discipline when the sofa is calling.

The five Pigs

Each animal meets each element once in sixty years, and the year element colours the Pig's own Water. Work it from the last digit of the year, as The Five Elements page explains.

The Wood Pig, 1935 and 1995, is the most generous and the most easily persuaded, kindness looking for somewhere to go. The Fire Pig, 1947 and 2007, is the most adventurous and the most passionate, with a temper the other Pigs lack. The Earth Pig, 1959 and 2019, is practical, patient and the most likely to build something lasting. The Metal Pig, 1971 and 2031, is the strongest willed, with a proper backbone under the warmth. The Water Pig, 1983, is Water on Water, the most sensitive and the most trusting, which is both its depth and its danger.

Friends and rivals

The Pig's two friends are the Rabbit and the Goat, four years either side of it. Together they make the peacemakers: gentle, artistic, more interested in harmony than in winning. The Pig's one clash is the Snake, six years away. The Snake calculates and the Pig does not, and each finds the other faintly unsettling. A clash is friction, never a curse, and a Snake can teach a Pig a great deal about discernment. The old texts also pair the Pig with the Tiger as secret friends. The friends and rivals of the Chinese zodiac post works through all the groupings.

The Pig as a month and a day animal

The Pig month runs from about 7 November to about 6 December, and the boundary can move by a day with the year. As a month animal the Pig describes your private self. Whatever your year animal shows the world, inside you assume the best of people, you enjoy the simple things without apology, and you have more than enough to share, so you share it. Hospitality is your private art form. The Twelve Months page is the reference for every month animal.

The Pig day cannot be read off a calendar. The day animal runs on a sixty day cycle that ignores the calendar month, so it needs a table or a calculator, and my readings compute it. As a day animal the Pig is your truest self: the open handed one underneath every role, sincere, trusting, and in possession of the rare art of actually enjoying a life. The Day Animals page has more.

Across the traditions

The month of the Pig overlaps most with the second half of Scorpio season and the first half of Sagittarius season, sitting almost evenly across the boundary between them, so a Pig month birth may carry either Sun sign. The Western Astrology section and The Signs page cover that sky, and the Vedic Astrology section will add the sidereal view when it opens. Different sky, different question, and I read them side by side.

When did you last let someone look after you, and how did it feel to be on that side of the table?

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.