Understanding Hours

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The Fenwick Academy

Daylight Saving

To accommodate the various daylight saving schemes in use worldwide currently and historically, use "off" to manually set the daylight savings off, "auto" to automatically shift to North American daylight savings at the appropriate time and "on" to manually set the daylight savings shift on.

Chinese Hours

Each day is composed of twelve 120-minute time periods, or SHI, each of which makes up an HOUR PILLAR.

Each PILLAR is composed of the interactions of a STEM and BRANCH:
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The Chinese name for the STEM is in the upper right of each PILLAR's box, and that for the BRANCH is in the lower right.
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The associated PHASE associated with the STEM, and the ANIMAL of the BRANCH appear in the left of the box.
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The HIDDEN (or "RULING") PHASE of each HOUR PILLAR is shown between pairs of boxes in the hour column. The PILLAR above the HIDDEN PHASE notation is YANG, the one below is YIN.

Dots indicating the internal QI and auspiciousness of the PILLAR are in the center of the box.

Dots indicating the interaction of the HOUR PILLAR with the DAY, MONTH, and YEAR PILLARS appear to the left of the box.
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Upper Dots show the interaction of the STEMS.
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Lower Dot shows the interaction of the BRANCHES.
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These Dots apply together to the full 120 minute period of the Hourly PILLAR.

Note that though the day changes at 12 midnight (or 1 am, Daylight Savings Time), the ZI Hour (Hour of the RAT) straddles this change-point. It begins 60 minutes before midnight and ends 60 minutes after. The last half of a ZI Hour (at the beginning of the day) is called the "Early Hour", and the first half of the next ZI Hour (at the end of the day) is called the "Late Hour". Because the first and last halves of the ZI Hour occur on different datess, they usually show different values in the Dots at the right of their boxes.

The SHI, or "Hours", are reckoned by the local position of the Sun. Therefore, (for greater accuracy) an adjustment can be made for the distance of the reader's location from the center of its Time Zone. If to the West, subtract 4 minutes for each degree of longitude. If to the East, add 4 minutes for each degree of longitude. This will give the time in Western hours when the SHI changes, and the QI of the next "Hour" arrives.