Chinese Zodiacs and Astrology

Western Zodiac refers to the twelve zones of celestial longitude during one cycle of the earth's orbiting the sun. It is actually a way of dividing months in a year. The twelve zones are addressed by twelve constellation names:

Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer,
Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio,
Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.

Sometimes using the word "Zodiac" to address the Chinese cycle of twelve animal-years might be a misinterpretation. The so called "Chinese Zodiac" is actually a different concept from the Zodiac in western horoscope. Maybe because both of them have twelve items and many of the items are named after animals, the original interpreter connected them together.

The twelve animals in Chinese horoscope correspond to twelve years instead of twelve months. The twelve animals are:

Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit,
Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep,
Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig.

Scientifically speaking, the "Chinese Zodiac" can be said as a way of dividing "Jupiter Month" because it takes 12 years for Jupiter to complete one cycle of orbiting the sun.

In terms of mapping a Zodiac symbol to a corresponding type of character of a person born in that period, both Western Zodiac and "Chinese Zodiac" are reasonable and correct, but they are different systems. Western Zodiac talks about people's character basing upon people's birth month. "Chinese Zodiac" talks about people's character basing upon people's birth year. So the mapping process and results are all different.

In Chinese Astrology, there is a fortune-telling method called "Four Pillars of Destiny" that makes predictions about one's life basing upon one's year, month, date and hour of birth. In this method, if only considering the month of one's birth to predict one's fate, then it is nearly the same as the western Zodiac system. This is the overlapping point between Chinese Horoscope and Western Horoscope.