Happy Lunar New Year! This year’s Spring Festival is here giving us a sort of second chance at hitting those New Year resolutions. I didn’t actually make any this year. In fact I rarely do anymore, preferring to wait until springtime to begin any sweeping life changes. I would always get so frustrated when I would inevitably give in the failure, that it just seemed so pointless. I prefer to set intentions. Those seem to sting less when we lapse back into our old habits. I keep having to remind myself that failing at something doesn’t make you a failure. They are merely lessons that our souls need to learn on this earthly plane.
Dating back thousands of years, the Lunar New Year is traditionally celebrated all over Asia. Julius Caesar switched it over to the solar-based calendar that we use today after he took over Rome. The Church really does seem to hate everything that corresponds to the feminine aspects of our nature. Think about it. Why would a man need to keep track of a 28-day cycle? He wouldn’t, but a woman would.
Year of the Wood Snake
There is a famous Chinese folktale dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) that goes something like this: Once upon a time there was a white snake and a green snake, who through centuries of practice, became immortal. They transformed themselves into two beautiful women, sisters, in order to visit the human world. Lady White Snake fell in love with a mortal man. They married and opened a small herbal medicine shop, which flourished in their small town.
One day a monk by the name of Fahai visited the store and told the husband that his wife was a devil snake. They brewed a concoction that would transform her into her original form, which worked, shocking the husband who fell to the ground and died. Heartbroken the white snake stole a magical herb to bring her poor husband back to life.
He was revived, however Fahai came in and took him away to a temple so that he may never see the white snake again. Furious she called upon the Dragon King of the East and his army of sea goblin to flood the temple and fight for her love. In desperation Fahai asked for help from the heavenly gods and defeated Lady White Snake. Eventually the husband escapes from the temple and found her. She admits the truth, that she is a snake and not a woman, and he tells her, “Human or not, I will always love you.”
There joyous reunion was cut short when Fahai arrived with a heavenly warrior who captured Lady White Snake in a golden bowl. He imprisoned her under a pagoda where she remained for centuries.
According to traditional Chinese culture snakes are associated with harvest, procreation, good fortune, and spirituality as well as cunning, evil, and terror. It belongs to the yin, that dark and damp swirl of femininity. The element of wood symbolizes growth, flexibility, and tolerance. Each elemental animal pairing occurs every 60 years, making 1965 the last Year of the Wood Snake.
1965 was the assassination of Malcolm X, the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, the first American space walk by Ed White, the United States escalation into the Vietnam War, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. This is just to name a few.
Aquarius New Moon
We have our only Aquarius New Moon of the year occurring on the same day as our Lunar New Year. That is a whole lot of second chance energy heading our way. Fixed air sign Aquarius is all about the emotional realm, bringing with it signs of hope for the future. Ruled by both Saturn, the planet of structure, and Uranus, the planet that rules our higher minds, Aquarius allows us to dance between these solar and lunar aspects of ourselves with a little more flow and grace. We all have these polarizing qualities inside us. It only becomes difficult when we try to shove one or the other under the water to try to drown it out. We don’t realize that it takes other parts of us down with it.
If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him.
Zen Buddhist saying
Water bringer Aquarius invites us into the practice of sitting and actually feeling our emotions, rather than bottling them up. Whatever those feelings are that you are running away from, they will eventually come out somewhere in your life. And usually it comes out at the wrong time to the wrong person, or at least that has been my experience.
Most people see the glyph for Aquarius, which is two parallel wavy lines, and they assume it is water. Those lines are actually serpents, symbols of knowledge and wisdom, which brings me to the story of Adam and Eve. The serpent tempted Eve with the sweet fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Knowing that God forbade it, she did it anyway. They were both thrown out of the garden, Adam was cursed, and Eve shamed.
Every year before we plant the corn we sacrifice a virgin to the rain god. Every year he sends us rain in return. Yet you say that this year we must not sacrifice anyone, that the rains will come of their own accord.
Much like those rains, Eve rebelled against the obedience that was requested of her. Not only did that one act spiral into the history of the modern world, it also produced something far more enticing, that of human freedom.
Mad love, Jenna
