What Chinese Zodiac Is 2014? Year of the Wood Horse

2014 Lunar New Year: start and end dates

Lunar New Year opened the Wood Horse year on January 31, 2014, and the year ran to February 18, 2015. So a birth date of Jan 31, 2014 or later counts as Wood Horse, and so do early 2015 birthdays through Feb 18; births in 2014 before Jan 31 still belong to the Water Snake. That moving boundary comes from the lunisolar calendar, in which the new year starts with the second new moon after the winter solstice in most years, so its Gregorian date shifts by up to a month from one year to the next. Look sixty years either side and the pairing repeats: 1954 are Wood Horse years too. That Friday new year arrived with the Sun in Aquarius in the Western zodiac.

What the Wood Horse is like

A Horse with a team spirit is the classic picture of this year. Since Wood generates Fire, readings describe lively, hard-to-tire people who care how their choices affect others. Travel and collaborative creativity suit them. A day's pause before committing to new plans, and friends steadier than themselves, help their idealism find lasting outlets. Group trips, shared causes and lively debates tend to bring out the very best in them.

In the five-element scheme, Wood belongs to the east and to the green energy of early spring, and that seasonal image shapes how it colours an animal sign. A Wood stem tends to soften sharp edges and add warmth, curiosity and a cooperative instinct. Traditional texts associate it with benevolence, growth and the wish to build something that lasts beyond the self. People born under a Wood stem are often portrayed as principled, open-handed and hopeful about others. The caution usually attached to Wood is a habit of spreading energy thinly, saying yes to every request and feeling quietly hurt when generosity is not returned in kind.

2014 in the animal cycle and in numerology

In numerology the year reduces to 7, the number of reflection, analysis and inner work, giving a 7 year a quieter, more searching character. The digits of 2014 add up to 7. The Horse holds the seventh place among the twelve animals and its fixed element is Fire. Set beside the year's Wood stem, wood generates Fire, which readings use to describe how settled or stretched the combination feels. The year before was the Water Snake and the year after is the Wood Goat.

Chinese almanacs name 2014 Jia-Wu, pairing the Wood stem Jia with the branch Wu. Both are Yang, as stem and branch always share a polarity, so of the hundred and twenty possible pairings only sixty ever occur, and each one names a single year in every cycle.