Happy New Year!
The New Moon on January 29, 2025 marks the beginning of Chinese New Year. It is a spring festival landing on the second new moon after the winter solstice.
The Chinese celebrate this grand New Year festival for seven days. Iconic red lanterns and red envelopes are everywhere. They spend time at home with family, talking together and enjoying a hearty banquet. In public, they enjoy massive loud firework displays and parades.
Symbolism
Chinese astrology rotates through cycles of 12 animals and 5 elements for 60 different symbol combinations possible for a year. 2025 is the year of the Wood Snake. The Snake’s legendary wisdom is amplified by Wood’s growth energy.
In Chinese culture, the Snake embodies wisdom, intelligence and strategic thinking. Also, elegance, intuition and insight A modern analogy is a master chess player who can think three moves ahead and also works with insight and intuition about the other player.
Wood is associated with plants or vines that can quickly grow and spread. They like sunshine and can endure strong wind. Besides symbolizing growth, the energy of wood is of endurance, flexibility, and expansion. In the mental realm this looks like imagination, innovation, brainstorming and reaching for new heights.
Combine this with the Snake’s innate wisdom, we’re looking at a powerhouse of creative thinking and adaptability.
The snake’s ability to shed its skin represents renewal, transformation, and continuous growth. Snakes can travel fast, representing adaptability, adventure, and efficiency.
Trees will bend in the wind, rarely breaking their wood. This same influence of wood helps us navigate changes with remarkable resilience.
This year offers the unique opportunity to quickly shed skins of the past, creatively express with insight, and move forward covering much ground.
One way it might look to shed your skin is to pare down material goods to your best possessions. Truly clean out to live in a clean, organized space! This opportunity for massive cleaning can result in less stress, less chaos, and the ability to focus without all that stuff!
Another way it might look is making your physical health and body more of a priority this year. If you are dealing with health challenges, then consider what creativity and insight can you put towards your healing. What transformation is needed in your life to transform your health?
If you are mostly in good health, you may be called to develop a more and more healthy lifestyle and ways to support and increase ease in your health.
Look back to 1965
The last Wood Snake year was 60 years ago, 1965.
For those of you alive then, think back to your life and what the world was like then. From political shifts and technological advancements to cultural breakthroughs think of the way things were in the world. If you don’t remember, you can research it.
Yes, the Beatles, hippies, bell bottoms, protests, the conclusion of the New York World’s Fair.
Social welfare, civil rights reforms, voting rights, reproductive rights, immigration act, Medicare and Medicaid, vehicle emissions standards.
Technology like Ampex video tape recorder and satellite TV, but also the Northeast Blackout.
We looked up for weather satellites, lunar missions to photograph landing sites, spacewalks, Gemini spacecraft missions.
War escalation, Vietnam, nuclear bomb testing, draft card burning.
Reflect
What might be similar to 1965 now for personal growth and creative breakthroughs?
What skins are you shedding for exponential growth for a new adventure?
