Yin Wood Snake: A Strange Unfurling
To understand Chinese zodiac astrology, we need to study the animals not simply as discrete and separate characters but as a sequence, a flowing river of time. As one lunisolar cycle ends and a new one begins, we move from the tail whip of the Dragon to the tip of the Snake’s tongue.
If you weren’t able to manage the Thunder Dragon’s awesome qi in 2024 with a healthy dose of withdrawal and reluctance, you are likely very burnt out at this time of year. As we emerge into the year of the Snake, we are presented with the opportunity to really hold back - whether or not you take advantage of it is up to you.
In Chinese astrology, the Snake and Dragon are yin and yang counterparts respectively in the House of Spirituality. The Dragon is big yang, representing the magician, the smoke and mirrors show of endless transformation, creation and potential. The Snake is ultimate yin, representing the mystic, coiling inwards, the disappearing act. Being descended from the Dragon, we need to remember that the Snake is very powerful - if you can recognize power that is hidden and shrouded in mystery.
Snakes are at their very best when no one understands them. We all have the 12 animals inside of us at varying degrees and all people have a mysterious side that is obscure and unknown. Snakes represent mystery itself. Their defining characteristic is that they have no characteristic: Snakes possess no extraneous features and yet are still constantly shedding. There is a Chinese saying dating back to the Warring States period (475 BCE), 画蛇添足 (huà shé tiān zú) which translates “to draw legs on a snake.” The idiom means to be superfluous, excessive, to ruin what is already perfect by overdoing it.
Having no legs, hands or feet, the Snake does not have the same capacity for interaction as the other animals. They gain all of their momentum from coiling inwards and conserving rather than externalizing (being superfluous). Without the ability to shake hands with others or kick and fight or run away (no legs or feet) the Snake’s superpower comes from disappearing into their environment. Invisibility also allows them to be like whoever they’re with, which means to not be there at all. They pull the strings on whoever and whatever you imagine them to be, hence hypnosis and trance-like practices are associated with this sign.
To not be noticed and not be accessible is great happiness for the Snake. The mantra for the Snake is “I hide my light and nurture it in darkness.” Our bias towards visibility in our hyper-yang culture is not a given for this totem. Not much in western societies validates the Snake experience because we have little reverence for mystery and have abolished mystical practices in modernity. This forces many Snakes to hide in plain sight by wearing conventional masks, adopting traditional roles and markers for success and achievement. If you force them to explain themselves, to disclose their motivations or who they truly are, it is very painful for the Snake.
This is because Snakes are undefinable, even to themselves. They are the source and inspiration behind magical and alchemical practices. The emperor (Dragon) wears spirituality like a badge, wielding emblems and talismans, holding festivals and conducting rituals. The Snake is the original feeling of mysticism, a discrete and abstract question mark.
The transition from Dragon to Snake is an invitation to mystery. The more you try to understand the Snake, the more mysterious it gets. Mystery does not need to be identified, disclosed or resolved. By definition it resists capture, a refugee in the shadowlands of incomprehension and incognizance. Appreciation for this quality means we do not attempt to drag it into the light.
Representing mystery itself, the Snake is the hardest sign to talk about because we can’t ever know what truly motivates them. They can be easier to understand through association by comparing them to their yang counterpart. The Dragon is an accumulation and maximization of all possibilities and all things. The Snake is the interstices, the hyphen, the minus, subtraction, no-thing. The Dragon is a constantly transforming plurality, so large in scale that we can’t ever pin down what exactly it is. The Snake is a constantly shedding ephemerality, so elusive that we can’t ever find it. If you haven’t gotten comfortable with the unknowns and uncertainty of the last several years, you will be extremely confused in the Snake year.
The Snake is a paradigm for the qi that is available for all of us in 2025. We all have an appetite for mystery and the mystical experience, it is not only reserved for the religious or the initiated. In fact, at the bottom of our everyday experience is the unknown - our existence is fundamentally strange and absurd. We will never be able to grasp all the streams of cause and effect, so what we don’t know is always far more profound that what we think we know. The invitation this year is to wonder, to make room for the strange, for what lies beyond the fringes and frays of the familiar.
The Dragon shows us the hybridity and plurality of our nature. From the Dragon’s view of the amalgam of our potentiality, we can embrace our inner chimera, which is the very strangeness of existence represented by the Snake. We are hybrid beings that are not here to perfect one quality over another. We are never one - we are yin and yang, which means we are at least two things playing with each other. This plurality means that when you see through to who we truly are, we are selfish and generous, yielding and combative, vindictive and gracious, we are honest and we lie. Hybridity is found in the truth of our experience as human beings. The story of the pursuit of perfection found in saintliness and godliness can only breed hypocrisy. There are no gods to be found in the Chinese astromantic wisdom traditions - its view is that you are already perfect because you are naturally arising.
The acknowledgment of hybridity and pluralism is also reflected in the development of Chinese writing. Chinese characters are composite forms, where semantic or phonetic radicals are combined together resulting in multi-bodied graphs. The character for snake 蛇 (shé) over time became the character for “other.” Later, the worm radical was added for the contemporary meaning of snake. The origins of the Snake character is the “other,” that which doesn’t belong, cannot be identified, existing outside the norm, the exiled and the strange.
The image of the Chinese zodiac is a circle of diverse responses to life. The stream of 12 is meant to represent a fluid multiplicity where nothing is left out. In this circle, we include a place for those that don’t belong, even for those not that interested in belonging. This is the Snake.
The gift of this sign is the opportunity to see through to who we truly are. Snakes are uniquely transparent, having a visionary capacity to see through holographic layers of reality. Positioned as the “other” peering in from outside, they function for the rest of us like a mirror. The mirror in this case is not an object but a capacity to reflect. It is an intangible quality, the ability to reveal back to us ungraspable dimensions. What this means for the qi of the year is that all situations will show you what you really are. We are all getting a little naked next year. Remember the Snake’s power is coming from a hidden and inner realm. Everything you try to externalize will collapse backwards and inwards. Whether or not you succeed or fail in your endeavors next year, the end result will be your own revelation.
The Snake is an ambush predator so its primary mode of operation is stealth. If all you want is to make millions of dollars and gain millions of followers next year, you might actually get it because revelation can come in very sneaky ways. The moment you get your fame and riches, you will be immediately dissatisfied. What will be revealed is your bottomless hunger, the ceaseless void of your attachment. So becoming rich and famous in a Snake year will be the same outcome as not getting rich and famous - you will be left profoundly unfulfilled. This is the mirror-like quality that will be available to us all.
2025 has a great potential for reflection, ripening, maturity, and awakening. The Snake enters us into a bardo-like state, suspending us in between realms in a liminal space. The bardo state is where both revelation and illusion can occur - both will become more available. Beware of preemptively lunging into anything this year because the chances of miscalculation are very high.
This year is also characterized by the Wood phase, which is the element of new beginnings and youth. The Yin Wood Snake is in its infancy, carrying the spontaneity and impulsivity of the young. Like an emerging shoot or budding sprout, this unfurling snake can go from shy to bursting outwards in an instant. Wood fuels Snake’s uncanny ability to strike suddenly without warning, so this year will embody the unstable and uninhibited qi of the young, capable of great improvisation as well as wreaking complete havoc… think toddlers thinly veiled as masters of destruction.
The wild imagination of the young also leads to being easily seduced by fantasy and illusion this year. Delusions will be rampant in spring when wood is strongest, whereas revelation will be more available in the fall with the arrival of the metal months. In general cults and conspiracies will regain their popularity, along with magical thinking and government cover-ups, as well as the alluring promises of panaceas, false prophets and snake-oil salesmen. Be weary of being charmed and falling under spells. Trance-like states can lead to sudden awakening as well as our undoing.
In previous Snake years, 9/11 occurred as well as the Boston marathon bombing. The last Wood Snake year was 1965, the year Malcolm X was assassinated. Bloody Sunday erupted in Selma, and the Watts Riots began in Los Angeles. The first LSD tests were conducted in San Francisco. Whether it’s a bullet or an acid tab, the Snake shows us that something very small can do enormous things, opening up worlds or destroying them, often both. It can be incredibly revealing and the chaos it can create can be very far reaching.
The way small can overcome big is by surprise and by acting very fast, not being encumbered or slowed down by its own size. The Snake has this dismantling ability, being capable of complete stillness and then delivering a sudden blow of venom. If you are very fast and very precise, you don’t have to be that strong. And if you have the venom to back up your bite, then you can take big down very easily.
If you have respect for this kind of power, you will not wield it recklessly. With the propensity for delusion and easy miscalculations this year, we would all benefit from hesitation and caution. Invest more in the stillness quality of the Snake and be very weary of sudden advances and reactivity. Reluctance is a quality that will actually become accessible this year. The Snake draws all of its momentum for its surprise attack from recoiling and pulling back. So don’t draw legs on a snake - know when you are being excessive. Reluctance is how we shift out of the hot qualities of growth, expansionism and aggression. This year, consider your reluctance a contribution to off-setting the burning of fossil fuels and the cooling down of AI data centers.
The Snake reminds us of the power of our smallest gestures. Know that everything you do has influence - reclaim this empowered view. Use the Snake’s visionary capacity to see through the spells of ringleaders, promising to deliver you from your powerlessness. In each moment you can choose to contribute to make everyone’s experience a little better. This is what it means to bring healing and it can happen in every interaction - at the post office, the grocery store, even at TSA. Everyone can do it because everything we are is shared. This includes our pains, our grief, our outrage, our suffering as well as our joys, our care, our recovery and our relief. So be a little reluctant to invest in antagonism and despair. Take after the Snake and conserve by withdrawing from the heat of aggression and help us all cool down.
Remember Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz? In the wreckage of the storm, she wakes up and enters the new world. The wicked witch is dead and what does she do? She immediately starts looking for a wizard to replace her. So let’s try something new - no more wizards. We can utilize Snake’s capacity for awakening by saying goodbye to the saviors, the deities and the prophets because we no longer need them. Do not be entranced by the escape fantasies of a heavenly paradise or a god-realm. The Chinese mantic arts are not a tradition based on transcendentalism but rather entering into the experience that all worlds are already here.
So identify the world you want and start living in it. Draw your circle of inclusion to encompass the strange, to reach for the unfamiliar and embrace the others. Remember the “other” also lives inside of us. Get friendly with all inner and outer unknowns, turn towards the question mark. Don’t ask for resolutions as mystery makes no covenants with closure. There are no solutions in the Snake year, only mirrors. All you can ask for is the discovery of the situation that you’re already in.