Each month, Nathaniel prepares a comprehensive Chinese horoscope for readers of Horoscope magazine. To find your Chinese birth sign, first search for your date of birth in the table below. Then you can read your Horoscope for the month by clicking on the link next to your Chinese birth sign.

Nathaniel also prepares an interesting article on aspects related to oriental horoscopes and other mystical Chinese arts, which is reproduced below. - The Editor.

The 1st Moon month of the year according to the ancient Chinese calendar, the Holiday Moon, is waxing as February opens. The Full Holiday Moon is on the 7th and the Last Quarter Holiday Moon is on the 14th. The 22nd’s New Budding Moon begins the 2nd Moon month.

The oldest Chinese conception of the universe is the simplest. Much is written nowadays about ‘Tao’ or ‘The Way Of Tao’, but the philosophy of Tao predates the earliest formalised Taoist religious bodies, and is a product of the earliest Chinese thinking. Its clearest voice comes through the channel of the Confucian schools, who taught philosophy and ethics originating from the teachings of their founder Confucius (circa 500BC). Unlike many revered sages and thinkers, Confucius was not a reformer. Rather he formalised and codified traditional manners, customs, philosophies and life-ways, giving them precise utterance to preserve traditional Chinese values.

Interestingly, his teachings have never been more popular. The ‘Tao’ is the original state or order of the universe, and the source of all within it. However, the purity of Tao was disturbed by movement, the division of itself into Yin and Yang, the twin breaths of the universe. Yang emblemises warmth, light, life and the heavens, while Yin represents cold, darkness, death and the earth. Yang can be seen as the exhalation of the universe, just as Yin is the inhalation. They are not permanent states, they perpetually evolve into one another. The balance between Yang and Yin is always kept by this constant motion. From them, all creation, physical and spiritual, emanates.

The Tao is ever present within these two polarities, and is the eternal ‘way of things’. Yin will resolve into Yang, and Yang will resolve into Yin. They are also relative. In a darkened room, a candle is Yang compared to the room’s Yin. Placed next to a fire, the candle is Yin compared to the fire’s Yang. If the fire goes out, it has become Yin and the candle is Yang again. The candle is a finite resource, so it too will become Yin when its flame fades. In the popular imagination it was considered that Yang is the realm of the ‘shen’, the shining ones or evolved spirits, while Yin is the harbour of the ‘kuei’, hungry ghosts, unsettled spirits and demons.

By Nathaniel.