I haven’t put all of my thoughts together about this yet but I do have some things to say: I don’t think Chinese astrology is suitable for horoscope columns.

First of all, there’s the obvious—western Sun sign horoscopes takes your Sun and then moves it to the first house. This means that you can read your horoscope for your Sun, your Moon, or your rising. The horoscope column is a staple in magazines that are not about astrology and western horoscopes are accessible for those who only know their Sun sign, which they can usually deduce from their birthdays unless their Sun sign is at the end or beginning of a sign.

The “Chinese zodiac sign” that everyone knows about themselves, however, is not their Sun but their Jupiter placement. This means that everyone born in the same year has the same Chinese zodiac sign. Jupiter is used extensively in Chinese cosmology because 太岁 describes the star clusters opposite Jupiter. This doesn’t mean that Chinese cosmology only considers Jupiter—just that the zodiac describes Jupiter similar to the way that the western zodiac describes the Sun.

There can be a case for a horoscope practice related to Jupiter, of course. There’s significance to the idea that everyone of a certain age will go through different things together. I’m not opposed to the idea of horoscopes for everyone who is in a cohort, age wise.

The other reason I think that Chinese horoscopes are not suited for horoscope columns is that horoscope columns are a western invention. Horoscopes columns are about the publishing industry more than anything else. They advise you about certain things, such as expectations around work or love. Sometimes, they are a little annoying. Often, they’re very neoliberal. I’ve only really begun to see some serious reconsiderations of the horoscope genre in recent times when people are more experimental with them. Now, a lot of horoscopes take up the same function as poetry.

So, it’s not just that horoscope columns are hopelessly commercial. They may have begun as commercial but are no longer expected to be so.

Horoscope columns are not just about Sun signs—they’re about reacting in real time to real events. They’re about timing. Western astrology has monthly or weekly or even daily horoscopes because the West is obsessed with speed. Speed is an invention of modernity.

I don’t know everything about Chinese cosmology but I have never seen it be used to talk about timing in the same way as western astrology. Chinese cosmology is not about time—it’s actually also about space. What Chinese cosmology is more developed for, in my opinion, is on matters of space and not time.

Both time and space are really about orientation, which is about the experience of your body in the world. However, only time can be expressed through the intervals of a month, a week, or a day. There is wisdom in time but there is also wisdom in space and space cannot be expressed by the same units as time.

Chinese cosmology is about placing yourself. It’s about direction. It’s about issues of the north and the south. It’s about issues of where you go in relation to your ancestral home. It’s not about what you should consider over the next month, week, or day.

And I love this! I love that Chinese cosmology simply does not track time in a way that serves western ideas of accuracy! I love that there are so many dates for the start of a new year based on what you observe. I love that Chinese hours refer to units of two hours, which makes things very unpredictable. I love that when Chinese people tell you when you should do something, that there’s a lot of room to fudge.

Chinese cosmology is not suitable for horoscope columns because it does not seek to describe time accurately. It’s not made to create just-on-time industries. It’s not made to serve capitalism. It was discarded when China modernized because it could not help the state in that particular goal.

When you read horoscopes for your Chinese zodiac sign, especially those written by white people, see if you can spot in the language this—if they’re simply exchanging the Chinese zodiac wheel for the western and using western techniques such as aspects to the seven planets to generate a piece of content. You can usually see it if you know what to look for.

Chinese cosmology does not work like this. It’s not about aspects, though there are relationships between different systems as well as different elements within one system. These complex relationships are usually calculated until they can be expressed through one word. That’s also the beauty of Chinese cosmology—it’s complexity and brevity.

Because Chinese cosmology is not suitable for horoscope columns, what you’re actually reading when you read your horoscope for your Chinese zodiac sign is a horoscope for your Jupiter in the western traditions. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with a horoscope system for one age group over one set of Sun signs. However, I wish that people would be honest about these things.