Chinese zodiac for Ar-Kaïm? part 2

As I mentioned in a prior post, brief rules for the Chinese Zodiac Houses for Ar-Kaïm were introduced in a French fanzine.

In these rules, determining the House and Dominant Ka worked differently from Western Ar-Kaïm. The year of the Ar-Kaïm's rebirth determined their House and thus their favorable and unfavorable Talents. Like the Western Zodiac each Chinese House has eight unique Talents, one for each Ka. Houses weren't linked to specific Dominant Ka: the location of the Nexus they were reborn in determined their Dominant Ka. E.g. a Nexus in a forest birthed dominant Earth-Ka, or a river birthed dominant Water-Ka. 

Also, Air-Ka and Moon-Ka were replaced by Wood-Qi and Metal-Qi due to Feng Shui. The French cosmology was weird.

However, these rules were incomplete. Only two Houses, Dragon and Pig, were detailed with their emotional natures and eight Talents. It wasn't explained how the Houses related for the purposes of learning and exercising Talents. It wasn't explained if they had Decans like the Western Houses: Chinese astrology also links animals to months, days of the week, and hours of the day!

Since then, I've transcribed the Ar-Kaïm Codex and know significantly more than I did then. So what follows are some of my current musings to provide explanations for some of these... This is not a serious post, but just musings!

Planetary Months

The figure below gives a rough comparison of the Vedic/Western astrological months versus the Chinese solar terms, progressing clockwise. Long story short, they overlap by a half-month.

Depending on your groups proclivities, you can represent this by having Chinese Immortals use slightly different dates to calculate modifiers. Alternatively, shift the animals to correspond to Vedic signs, like that given on the image below (the figure below is offset from the figure above by 1.5 months):

Alternatively, you can use the Gregorian months for both as given on the figures below:


There are Chinese constellations, but they don't correspond to the Zodiac. I won't go into those here, but maybe in another post?

For brevity, I provide the elemental associations for Vedic and Chinese zodiacs on the table below:

Gregorian Vedic Chinese Planet Ka
January Aquarius Ox Saturn Orichalc
February Pisces Tiger Jupiter Air
March Aries Hare Mars Fire
April Taurus Dragon Venus Earth
May Gemini Snake Mercury Water
June Cancer Horse Moon Moon
July Leo Ram Sun Solar
August Virgo Monkey Mercury Water
September Libra Rooster Venus Earth
October Scorpio Dog Mars Fire
November Sagittarius Pig Jupiter Air
December Capricorn Rat Moon* Moon

*Starting in third edition and retained in subsequent editions, the French version changed Capricorn's planet to Moon.

There is no planetary month for Black Moon-Ka. This would correspond to the constellation Ophiuchus. For Western Ar-Kaïm, this is House Serpentarius. For Chinese Ar-Kaïm, any House may have Black Moon-Ka as their dominant Ka and they seemingly lack an equivalent House to Serpentarius. Perhaps the Cat?

Decans: Outer, inner, true and secret animals

In Chinese astrology, a person actually has four animals based on their time of birth. The outer animal is determined by the year, the inner animal by the month, the true animal by the day of the week, and the secret animal by the hour.

Outer animal (year of birth)

The year of a person's birth determines their outer animal. Find the year on the figure above to determine the corresponding animal. Note that the start of Chinese New Year is different from that of the Gregorian calendar!

To determine a Chinese Ar-Kaïm's House, use the year of their rebirth into an Immortal instead. Their dominant Ka is determined by the site of the Nexus instead.

Inner animal (month of birth)

The month of a person's birth determines their inner animal. Find the month on the figure above to determine the corresponding animal. Note that the start and end of the Chinese months are different from the Gregorian calendar!

True animal (day of birth)

The day of a person's birth determines their true animal. Determining your true animal is much more complicated: you must calculate the Earthly branch corresponding to the day and then convert it to the Zodiac animal.

I'm not even going to try. I've seen simplified lists presented as so:

  1. Monday: Sheep
  2. Tuesday: Dragon
  3. Wednesday: Horse
  4. Thursday: Rat, Pig
  5. Friday: Rabbit, Snake, Dog
  6. Saturday: Ox, Tiger, Rooster
  7. Sunday: Monkey

For days with more than one animal, either pick one or assume all apply equally.

Secret animal (hour of birth)

The hour of a person's birth determines their secret animal. Find the hour range on the same figure as for inner animal, above, to determine the corresponding animal. 

Point costs for learning and exercising Talents

Ar-Kaïm spend variable points to learn and exercise Talents based on the relationships between Houses. For the Houses of the Chinese Zodiac, these relationships work the same as they do for Western Houses. Use the figure below to determine the opposite House and the distance between Houses.

When trying to cross a sign as part of the Path of the Ascendant, the Ka they must cultivate is given on the figure above. 

Chinese Nephilim and totemic metamorphoses?

All this gave me an idea! Maybe Chinese Nephilim may have totemic metamorphoses corresponding to the animals of the zodiac, especially for those that incarnate as animals? The Dominant Ka for Chinese totems corresponds to the compass direction in Feng Shui, as given on the table below:

Animal Directions in Feng Shui

Wood corresponds to Air-Ka and Metal corresponds to Moon-Ka. Thus, Rabbit, Dragon and Snake are Air-Ka totems, Horse is a Fire-Ka totem, Sheep, Monkey, Ox and Tiger are Earth-Ka totems, Rooster, Dog and Boar are Moon-Ka totems, and Rat is a Water-Ka totem.

This is inspired by how the French version gave Chinese Nephilim four metamorphoses based on the Four Holy Beasts. These were the Azure Dragon (Wood-Qi), the Vermillion Bird (Fire-Qi), the White Qilin (Metal-Qi), and Black Tortoise (Water-Qi). All Chinese Nephilim had the metamorph corresponding to their dominant Ka, and no others existed. None could have Earth-Ka as their dominant Ka.

Research links

Conclusion

Trying to add new zodiacs and elements to the game adds unnecessarily complexity and throws the entire cosmology into question. For simplicity's sake, we can add the Chinese Zodiac as an additional set of Houses determined by years rather than planetary month for those players who want to be snowflakes. They don't have any Talents written for them except the Dragon and Boar in that French fanzine, though.

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