Yin Water Rabbit: Drawing Down the Moon
The year of the Water Rabbit is best understood by its position in the zodiac cycle. The sequence of 12 animals is alternating movement and stillness, output and reflection, yin and yang. Rabbit sits in between Tiger and Dragon, two powerhouses of the zodiac, providing a much needed third option. It is a reminder that constant growth and productivity is not possible.
For last year’s 2022 astrology forecast, I wrote about Tiger being characterized by the path of the warrior. In this next chapter of Rabbit, the warrior is coming home from the battlefield. We now have the opportunity to heal wounds, repair our relationships, realign our values, and do the work of integrating back into village life. After the carnage of Tiger, the annual qi shifts to peacemaking, recovery and rest. If you relax, you will be supported this year. Yin Water Rabbit will facilitate going inwards, engaging in reflection and contemplation, and scaling down to empower the small and marginal. We are creating the environment for new leadership - the Dragon to emerge.
Right now, during the 12th month of the lunar calendar, the largest human migration on the planet is occurring. Millions of Chinese are crammed into the overflowing rail system in order to rush home for New Year’s Eve. The day before the new year marks the symbolic end of all work and relationships. The next day on the new moon, all doors reopen and all relationships are renewed. For 15 days, everyone in your village visits your home and no matter your history, you feed them. For 15 days, you visit other people’s homes and you are fed. All past grievances, resentments and debts are forgotten. The significance of this tradition is very important for our transition into Yin Water Rabbit.
No matter who you are, you have accumulated karma in the Tiger year. This is inevitable on the battlefield. This accumulation of karma is actually very important, because it sets us up to practice how to apologize and forgive. Rabbit is the opportunity to be refreshed, to start anew. The beginning of this year is a ripe time to acknowledge your role in any dynamic that led to hurt or harm. Use the qi of Rabbit to help you apologize to others as well as forgive the trespasses made against you. Both on a personal and global scale, this year supports making alliances, treaties, and practicing peacemaking.
If past grievances are not acknowledged or aired out by the later half of the year, the backlash of resentment, vitriol and revenge can be astronomical. Yin accumulates power by debt and when unpaid, becomes toxic and disordered yin. When allowed to ferment, Water Rabbit’s medicine will turn into poison.
So take advantage of the spring of this year. As the Yijing tells us, it’s the right time to gather medicine. Therapeutic work will experience a surge as Yin Water highlights Rabbit’s intuitive and healing powers. Both Water and Rabbit are governed by the moon, the very embodiment of yin power. According to legend, the Rabbit lives in the moon, pounding the elixir of immortality (you can see Rabbit’s silhouette in the shape of the dark craters of the moon). In our last Yang Water Tiger year, we were caught in the crashing waves of the ocean. This year, Yin Water is evaporating, dispersing and rising into mist. We can all travel to the moon this year by riding clouds into the moonlight.
What this means is that we all have the opportunity to practice internal alchemy, which is symbolized by making the elixir of immortality. Immortality is not about you living forever, it is the medicine that allows all of nature to continue. Immortality is sustainability, renewal and regeneration. Rabbit is the intelligence of nature that digests and rests. It’s the wisdom of not constantly volunteering into the sun: living the myth of nonstop progress, exertion, ambition and expression. The medicine of internal alchemy comes from reflection and receiving, not going out and wearing out.
This year, don’t attempt to gain power by recreating the old paradigm of climbing to the top. The most powerful position will be the second position. If you find yourself in a subordinate role, you hold all the power this year. If you want to create changes in any organization, go to the assistant and not the leader. The exalted status is not the emperor’s throne, but the throne behind the throne. This is where the emperor’s teacher sits, whispering into the emperor’s ear. True power this year will not be found in the limelight.
The hexagram for this year is Marrying Maiden. The oracle bone script shows knives used for sacrifice and a kneeling woman with her head filled with spirit. Marrying Maiden is the second wife, the concubine, the younger sister and damsel who is in a coerced role from which she has no direct influence. It is the image of the ultimate second position, one that we can all relate to whenever we are forced into an undesirable role or insecure situation in which we have no control.
This year affords us the opportunity to work with the wisdom that can be gained from this position. Marrying Maiden means to collaborate with your circumstances by being subordinate to them. We are learning that power can come from withdrawal. It is time to save your energy and strengthen your inner vision. Wait for the right opportunity, don’t try to force it. We are learning the power of the weak to shape the hard and strong. Water can sculpt whole landscapes over time. Even the slightest infiltration can carve mountains and canyons. The small and flexible seeps in unassumingly and dismantles the structure from within. Water Rabbit is the classic story of an entire empire crumbling down from the influence of a concubine.
This also means we will see the strategy of playing victim in order to gain social or political power gaining popularity. The second position naturally leads to nervousness, which Rabbits are famous for. Relying on intuition rather than brute strength means you have to be very wary of what everyone around you is thinking and feeling. In a Rabbit year, this intuitive tendency can express as anxiously needing to arrange the world around you and manage other people in order to feel safe. But rather than trying to control everyone else, being subordinate means a willingness to receive and be flexible. It’s knowing your freedom comes from the discipline to submit to forces larger than yourself. Because the second position tests your spiritual core and strength, this is the right time to fortify it. The qualities we have developed in Rabbit will stand up in the Dragon year with incredible confidence. So be sure you have cultivated your intuition this year, not your paranoia.
Marrying Maiden also shows us that great transformation can occur when we look to relations outside the mainstream. This year we will recalibrate our notions of big and small. Small groups will have power over large conglomerates. This is an acceleration of a trend that we have seen over the last several decades. The resurgence of the small is a rebound from globalization. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the success narrative has been about growth: the bigger the better. Now, central governments and large institutions are losing their traction. Because of their size, they are too slow and cumbersome and no longer functional. Small groups have local and felt impact. They are not only growing in popularity but also going after the big. Local economies as well as cults and militias will all be gaining strength and popularity.
Working with the power of the small means we scale down. Whether its wealth or status, insisting on accumulation and expansion will not get you far this year. Scaling down also means getting together with your friends. Real change is coming out of how we relate to each other. If the troubles of the world are overwhelming you, stay in your immediate experience, meaning what has felt impact. Water Rabbit will help us repair our social fabric and reinstate our local communities.
One of the dangers of Marrying Maiden is falling into the trap of salvation. The damsel in this case is waiting, not to build their inner strength but waiting to be saved. The maiden has bought into the story of their weakness and disempowerment. The salvational paradigm extends to viewing the world as something needing to be saved. We are in a never ending search for the solutions and saviors that can save the whole world, creating a very deep despair. The salvational paradigm breeds false prophets, misleading teachers and artificial leadership, all of whom feed off of your desperation. Salvation is very disempowering because it means your individual conduct doesn’t matter. It’s the narrative that the small, being so very alone and inferior, has no impact against big.
The practice of scaling down provides us with an alternative story. When you work with what is closest to you, in your intimate sphere of influence and power, you can actually impact the whole world. This is because the whole world is made up of communities within communities. Do not buy into the story of your inferiority. We are more powerful than we realize because everything we do lives in reciprocity. A one-sided worldview is a savior promising salvation to the masses. A reciprocal worldview is one of intimate connectivity: everything we do goes back in to the whole. Our aloneness is an illusion.
The way to realize the power of our intimacy is to emanate health, friendship, care, and stability. You do this by leveraging what is already closest to you, by treating your body with respect, showing care to your family, being kind to your roommates and neighbors. Many of us are unconsciously emanating despair, paranoia and rage. In a reciprocal world, you must conduct yourself very carefully and appropriately every moment, because we all share all hardships and comforts. The year of the Yin Water Rabbit can bring accountability and a great deal of satisfaction if we know where to look - not in the usual channels mediated by politics, corporations and media, but in each other.