In Chinese tradition the day is divided into twelve two-hour windows, each ruled by a zodiac animal. Fresh daily guidance for every hour window is below.
The Chinese hour system divides the day by the position of the sun, then names each stretch after an animal whose temperament matches that part of the day. Dawn belongs to the Rabbit, the middle of the day to the Horse, and the quiet hours after dark to the Pig. Knowing which window you are in tells you what kind of action suits the moment — starting something, negotiating, resting, or holding back until the next window opens.
Each window below links to a reading written for today specifically. The practical use is timing rather than fortune-telling: if you have a choice of when to send a message, make a call or sign something, comparing two or three windows usually shows a clear best fit. If you have no choice about the timing, the reading still tells you what the window favours so you can adjust how you approach it.
The hour layer sits below the daily layer and above nothing — it is the finest practical division the tradition uses for everyday timing. For the day as a whole read the Chinese zodiac daily horoscope; for the birth-year temperament the pages are built on see the Chinese zodiac animals, years and elements; and for the Western equivalent see everything for today.
Each window is two modern hours long and carries the name of an animal: the Rat hour runs 23:00–01:00, the Ox hour 01:00–03:00, and so on around the clock until the Pig hour closes the cycle at 21:00–23:00. The divisions are astronomical rather than arbitrary — they follow the sun's position, which is why the same hour means different things in summer and winter in traditional readings.
Read the hour you are planning around rather than the hour you were born in. If a conversation or a decision is set for the afternoon, open the corresponding window and check its tone; the birth-hour use is a separate tradition, called the secret animal, used to deepen a full birth chart.
The window is fixed, but the day it falls in is not. The hour guides here combine the fixed character of the animal with the day's lunar pillar, so the Rat hour on a day dominated by Water reads quite differently from the Rat hour on a day dominated by Fire.
Yes — they are the finer layer of the same system. The daily reading covers the whole day for your birth-year animal; the hour guides cut that same day into twelve windows so you can see where the day is strongest and where it flattens out.
It is the same division. BaZi uses the birth hour as one of the four pillars of a chart, while these pages use the current hour as a timing tool — same twelve windows, different question being asked of them.