Horse 2014
Who is a Horse?
Years: 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014.
Month*: June
Hour: 11:00 am – 01:00 pm
Day: ask us
* Caution: the start of the Chinese month can be as early as the 4th & as late as the 9th, depending on the year. I can let you know this too.
What is a Horse?
The horse is yang fire: the charmer, the extrovert, the seducer of the Zodiac, the Horse is rarely caught out despite his high-risk strategy. He has an ego of course but is better able to laugh at himself than for instance the Dragon. Like the Dragon, the Pig and the Rooster though, he can not work with his own kind. The typical Horse is not a deep thinker and his ego leads him to suppose that no one else is either.
There tends to be a belief in shortage, at work in the Horse. He thinks he must be the first to the trough if he is to eat. In romance the Horse, like the Rooster, can be what Leonard Cohen calls “a thin gypsy thief”. This means his weakness can be a failure to respect boundaries and property. Of all the animals, the Horse and Rooster are typically the marriage breakers and the home wreckers. This is not inevitable of course. If we know this about ourselves we can make wiser choices. Just because today is a good day to die, it is not necessarily a good day to kill.
Predictably the Horse is often not great at commitment. The yin and yang of this by the way is that a self-aware Horse is the most constant partner there is.
Success matters a great deal to the Horse. He is not generally subtle. It is the winning not the taking part that tends to concern him.
The fiery Horse is not keen on water. He experiences this element, whether expressed as a Rat year or as excessive communication, as dampening his enthusiasm. Water slows him down but does not halt him. This tends to make the Water months – November to January – of a Horse year turbulent in all sorts of senses including the meteorological.
Interestingly the Horse’s charisma is best expressed either in a team with the other Plum Flowers, Rat, Rabbit and Rooster or with the Sheep. You will often find Sheep and Horse out and about together, the Horse radiating charm and the Sheep reflecting it. This actually is a good partnership; the Sheep is in awe of the sheer daring of the Horse and the reckless Horse may often need grounding, safety and a short term loan.
The Horse’s home team, all of whom have fire in common, is with the Tiger and the Dog. These are the hunters of the Zodiac: the Tiger kills, the Horse chases, the Dog guards. This support system is the most likely to bring the Horse rewards. On his own he is prone to burn brightly and extinguish early. He’ll have a good time though.
The Horse finds the Ox hard work also. There is metal hidden in the Ox which the Horse can turn to his advantage but the Ox’s preferences are humdrum to him.
The Horse has visual, imaginative and intellectual gifts but is unlikely to value them enough to put them to good use. So many of the words we use about the virtue of work illustrate the unwillingness of the Horse to stick at things: harness, yoke, saddle, blinker etc. Again the yin and yang is that a conscious Horse never quits.
A Horse who works with a Snake may achieve greatness because the Snake understands the Horse just as she understands the Dragon, additionally the Snake will not need to compete. In many ways the Snake is the perfect partner but it is more likely the Snake will recognise this than the Horse. The Snake suffers in the short term and the Horse in the long.
Racing, partying, playing, the danger for the Horse is burnout. The challenge is to defer gratification long enough that there remains a future.
Horse in Wood Horse Year
Stars include: Red Charm Irresistible, Sword Blade rivalry.
In a Horse year, the Horse suffers the so-called self-clash. You are temperamentally suited to dancing on tables but on the average table there’s only room for one dancer. This year expect competition to hot up. This may be competition for work, limelight or relationship. But essentially it’s about attention which is the life struggle of the typical Horse. Only the smarter Horse realises that receiving attention is a function of giving it.
In 2013 you may have felt a bit under-powered. The Snake is yin Fire which is like weak sunlight. The Chinese term is Candle Flame. You need full-on tropical sunshine. And here it comes but you’ll have to share it. You are not the only pebble on the beach. Like Fire Horse David Cameron and Wood Horse Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, expect challenges to your authority and position this year.
Relationship looks stable; that is to say stable in its instability. The Horse often denies a preference for chaos. As long as it’s not boring you’re usually prepared to go along with turbulence. But since about 2007 – the onset of a succession of mainly wet years – you have possibly not risen to the occasion. In the Horse year you’re probably called to step up. Take some risks. It seems you’ve almost forgotten how to follow your heart and the Horse is all about heart as well as skin, eyes and blood. These are the areas where your reluctance will tend to show. Timidity is just not natural to you.
As Jalaludin Rumi wrote: “Let me go on drinking cup after cup of love. Let the wine never run out. Let me never be satisfied.”
It’s risk but you’re all about risk. If you rock the boat you might capsize but you might make landfall somewhere exotic and new.
Health: pretty good. Care of eyes, skin, lungs advised.
Money: not so much about money. July, January and August the most prosperous. Otherwise activate Fortune Virtue at The Rabbit (East 82½°-97½°) from time to time.
Relationship: for you this year is more about glittering peers, role models and nbfs. Success in relationship follows other forms of good fortune.
Feng Shui: activate the Ox at NE1 (7½°) for Dragon Virtue; that is good reputation. You may need it.
Readers’ Digest Version: exhausting for better or worse.