The Pig in the Year of the Wood Dragon 2024
Pig Pic by @elliespinelli
Who is a Pig?
Years: 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007, 2019.
Month*: November
Hour: 09:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Day: you’ll need a Chinese Calendar..
* Caution: the start of the Chinese month can be as early as the 4th & as late as the 9th, depending on the year. We can let you know this too.
What is a Pig?
The weakness and the strength of the Pig (who is predominantly yin Water and therefore often reluctant to communicate) is that they think they know what is good for them. And they are right often enough to make advice close to impossible. By extension this means you Pigs may believe you know what is right for everybody else.
Technically the Pig is a cocktail of Water, Wood and Earth. This makes for extraordinary versatility. But this combined with the Pig’s weakness at emotional disclosure, can mean that they lack a support system just when they most need one. Consider Fire Pig Hillary Clinton and her rogue email account; the story goes that she simply could not master her Blackberry and could not bring herself to seek appropriate help. That’s a Pig.
Versatile and wilful, gifted at whatever they do, the Pig is the sign of the inventor. Edison was a Pig and Elon Musk, as is recently deported Wikileaker Julian Assange. Perfectly-balanced Pigs can literally do almost anything but they don’t much like reflective advice from others and they are liable to hate uncertainty. Remember Fire Pig Elton John in “Rocket Man”? And Elon Musk’s social media tiffs?
Vagueness is uncomfortable for the Pig: Edison was of course an obsessive patenter, Hillary determined to get Wall Street onside while retaining her liberal credentials. And Assange, confident that he knew better than anyone else what the world needed to know – and he was mostly right btw. Brexit and the Trumpreich might have fallen differently but for some of these guys. This does not mean they were mistaken but the truth can be a moveable feast.
A balanced Pig (perhaps March birth around mid-afternoon) is a great audience and typically gets the listening/talking ratio just right. An unbalanced one can shoot off at the mouth and give (or take) away the farm before she knows it. Does any of this sound like – to pluck a name from nowhere – Earth Pig Simon Cowell?
More likely, you are prone to withdrawing into silence. Sometimes the Pig sulks but more commonly withdraws out of pure disinterest and can be perfectly cheerful when challenged on the withdrawal.
The Pig child needs just the right mixture of carrot and stick. Too much disincentive and he is suppressed or resentful. Too much carrot and he can be smug. The balanced Pig is the most sensitive of the animals; the unbalanced one has undergone an empathy bypass. As the parent of a Pig, just remember you are instrumental in this process. Your Piglet does not need to become a boor.
The Pig harbours the Wood of creativity so they can be as adept with the written as the spoken word and indeed the yang Earth of deep concentration. Many Pigs prefer to study in noisy rooms and many are effortless A-students as teachers of brilliant 2007 Pigs may notice. Bear in mind though that there is a near-epidemic of depression and anxiety among millennials and post-millennials and that Water is the associated element. Don’t ever take a 1995 or 2007 Pig’s good cheer for granted or their call for help as crying wolf.
The Stevie Smith poem “Not waving but drowning” is about a Pig. They look so competent. And they are. Until they’re not. If you care for a Pig beware of their apparent endless confidence. There are crucial gaps.
The Pig does not tend to like the Snake; one way or another they immobilise each other; there are mutual issues of trust, truth and sincerity. And the Monkey, the Snake’s intimate, can be a source of annoyance also. The Pig’s most natural team is with the Rabbit and the Sheep. This alliance is quintessentially domestic; together these three can make anywhere home. A perfect family might be Pig father, Rabbit mother and Sheep first-born. Once home, the Rabbit entertains while the Sheep ensures compatibility and the Pig performs the tasks that are beyond the scope or interest of her partners.
Traditionally the Pig also enjoys the company of the Tiger as Elton John’s husband Water Tiger David Furnish can attest. You might think a Pig would be more cautious but they know that the Tiger is uninterested in conquering anyone he considers easy meat. Of course he’s missing something here but the Pig’s fearless approach often disarms the Tiger before they realise. And by the bye, Pig’s literary ambition often burgeons in a Tiger year and flourishes in a Rabbit one.
Although she may herself be more adventurous, the Pig also understands the loyal and consistent Dog. She respects the fact that every home needs its guardian. These two will tend to develop a camaraderie with its own distinctive banter but it will probably never be a meeting of souls as each is technically the other’s gip sat or force of obstruction. The Pig respects the Dog’s diligence and the Dog knows the Pig will compensate for his weakness.
The Pig also operates well as factotum for a group consisting of the Snake (whose company she can’t otherwise stand for long) the Monkey (see above) and the Tiger. For these she is, interestingly, the peacemaker and setter of standards. Without the Pig this grouping whose common interest is travel and mobility, can’t get off the ground. Taron Egerton interestingly who impersonated Elton so effectively in Rocket Man, is a 1989 Snake as is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
One final note: the Pig suffers what is called the self curse. That is to say that she has limited patience with other Pigs. And as Rocket Man illustrates, a huge capacity for self-loathing. The Chinese character for a house is one Pig under a roof. Just the one. Approach them gently and listen.
Richard Ashworth © 2024 www.imperialfengshui.info
Pig in The Wood Dragon Year 2024
Mong San Partial Star
Yum San Bonding
Seek help; success is a team game.
Pigs are generally thought of as Yin Water. Being actually made up of three Elements (Earth and Wood as well as Water) they are also inherently creative. Many different avenues of creativity are open to them: many obvious and glamorous, some neither. But they will insist on going it alone.
The Pig who is writer, musician and visual artist is not that unusual but nor is the one who takes on the simplest supportive tasks without recognition or reward. Very often the Pig is multi-talented – even when their gifts are well-concealed or more typically, wrapped up in complication. This year you will have the opportunity to express many aspects of your creativity. Towards the end of the year you may be noticed in a way that you might have thought impossible. Be ready and open. You will need help.
Yin Water often speaks of loners, those who prefer to work on their own and the Pig, drawn in many directions all at once, sometimes only overcomes that preference at the price of anguish. The co-operation they need in order to achieve is often hard-won, unlike the Rat whose Yang Water makes for chairing meetings, groups and organisations.
Build – perhaps recognise – your system now before you need it. Under the (largely positive) pressures of the later months, you will need it. There are many out there who love and care for you and know what you bring to the world. Some of them know that sometime when you seem most in control you are out to sea. Gather them now. Brief them if you can.*
The Pig may be more comfortable writing than speaking. It’s the written word I would tend to categorise as Wood – the word “book” is itself derived from “beech” the tree whose bark may have formed the earliest writing material. A Dragon year like this one, carrying a great deal of assertive Yang Wood may make creative demands that are hard to satisfy. The Pig will need extra Water; that is to say talking, discussion, disclosure and openness as well as remaining hydrated. Water is likely to be plentiful from April (when the Rat of the Year meets the Dragon of that month, most helpful on the 16th & 28th) but January and February could be sticky. Ice is not Water, so seek collaboration especially with Rats (even better if an Ox tags along to keep you on point). This of course applies equally to those less celebrated Pigs whose creativity does not show on their sleeve.
All of this is made more demanding by the Mong San referenced above, a Star which specifically relates to the Yang Earth aspects of your activity. Yang Earth is hard to move; I take this to mean that you can not afford wilfulness this year. You need to be able to tell when you are avoiding certain paths out of self-righteousness rather than discretion: judge such choices on their value and appropriateness not on whether they require you backtracking or eating humble pie. Many such wrong turns may be, as they often are for the rest of us, concealed within what you may dress up as rational decisions.
But you do know that. Those who have failed to recognise their debt to you to date may never do so. But you can fly anyway. Don’t brood. There’s little worth in believing your own nonsense. Feel what you feel and aim to drop the connection with your thoughts.
There’s plenty of Water available in April but also in August, the Month of the Monkey who combines with Rat and Dragon to form Water. That month is a peak for you. Whatever your vocation is, it is well lubricated in August. If you have a boat to push out, this is the time. Most promising days: 10th 14th 22nd 26th August plus 3rd September. There is a support system there for you.
Most of my consultations gravitate eventually to bonding issues and the consequent forgiveness. While the Rabbit Year just past featured the sometimes bitter “Ingratitude Penalty”, this year offers you a salve to that, if necessary, in the form of the Yum San: an opportunity to notice where you have been cut loose and re-attach. Typically under the Ingratitude Penalty, a Rabbit child blames parents for a poor upbringing while a Rat parent responds by branding offspring ungrateful – King Charles III’s complex relationship with Prince Harry is a good example. Yum San (more properly Yuen Zhen) is the bonding Star. Or rather the un-bonding Star.
When we are bonded we can be ourselves. Yum San which consists of characters that can be interpreted to mean “Dragon” and “chopping block” suggests a time when we come unstuck from our natural state of being bonded, responsive and real. 2024 may for some Pigs recall such a time.
Which is a huge opportunity. Because highlighting the trailing edge of a historical resentment allows it to be healed. Such a grudge may be about educational choices, favouritism, neglect, abandonment or pretty much anything. You get the picture. But those characters suggest that it is ultimately self-harm. Seek resolution if only for the power it brings.
And therefore you have a choice: broadly you can choose to blame and stay awkward or let go and find your true power. The key to this is forgiveness. And most of my work completes there. Elementally Water, that is to say deep truthful communication and especially emotional disclosure is the healer. You have some times for this set out above but consider this: if you are damaged, logically someone probably a parent, by activity or default, damaged you. If you are not they didn’t. It’s a simple choice: if you decide they did you no harm, you get to be whole and vice versa. That’s the opportunity that Yum San presents.
Oscar Wilde wrote that “he who is in a state of rebellion can not receive grace”. It follows that those of us who move on from rebellion receive grace. If you take that on, this may be your most powerful and satisfying year to date. Destiny awaits you if you want it.
Romance: low priority
Wealth: growing
Health: skin.
Hexagram: 62 Hsiao Kuo Little Impact
* Stevie Smith’s poem “Not Waving but Drowning” expresses this brilliantly.
This forecast is prepared by comparing your own Chinese year Animal with the Wood Dragon of 2024. Your Year Animal is just one of the four that make up your Ba Zi or Four Pillars of Destiny. A fully-drafted ba zi can indicate possible futures and probable pasts as well as moments of decision. Knowing these moments can heal and prevent heartbreak as well make success and happiness more easily achievable. What is a ba zi?
© Richard Ashworth 2024