What Chinese Zodiac Is 1964? Year of the Wood Dragon

When the 1964 Wood Dragon year starts and ends

The 1964 Wood Dragon year began at Lunar New Year on February 13, 1964 and lasted until February 1, 1965, the day before the next new year. Anyone born between January 1 and Feb 13 1964 therefore belongs to the Water Rabbit year that started in 1963, while someone born in early 1965, up to Feb 1, is still a Wood Dragon. The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, which is why the start date moves between January 21 and February 20 instead of staying on January 1. The same Wood Dragon combination also falls in 2024, sixty years apart, because five elements and twelve animals realign only once in each sixty-year cycle. Lunar New Year 1964 fell on a Thursday, while the Western Sun was in Aquarius.

Wood Dragon personality

Creative, curious and inventive, the Wood Dragon has big ideas and the confidence to pursue them. Wood stirs the Dragon's Earth, which tradition reads as cultivation that keeps ambition from becoming rigid. People born in this year are often more open to advice than other Dragons. Finishing what they start is the habit most worth building. Their enthusiasm can carry a whole team through a difficult start.

Wood is the element of spring and of things that grow, so a Wood year is traditionally said to lend any animal a generous, expansive streak. Classical descriptions link it with kindness, idealism and a talent for cooperation: Wood people are often pictured as the ones who start community projects, mentor younger colleagues and believe that most situations can improve with patience and goodwill. The element also carries a strong sense of fairness and a dislike of waste. Its shadow side, according to most readings, is overextension. Like a plant reaching in every direction, a Wood-year person may take on too much, trust too readily or struggle to say no when a cause seems worthwhile.

1964 in numerology and the twelve-year cycle

In numerology the year's digits reduce to 2, the number of partnership, patience and diplomacy, and a 2 year is traditionally read as one for cooperation rather than solo pushes. The digits of 1964 add up to 20, which reduces to 2. In the twelve-year cycle the Dragon is the fifth animal, earthly branch Chen, with Earth as its fixed element and Yang polarity. The year element is Wood, and in the five-element cycles wood controls Earth. The year before was the Water Rabbit and the year after is the Wood Snake.

In the traditional sexagenary count the year is called Jia-Chen: Jia is the Wood heavenly stem and Chen is the Dragon's earthly branch. Stems and branches alternate between yang and yin together, which is why yang stems only ever meet yang animals.