Animal Forecast 2015: 10. Game Bird, outlook for the Rooster in 2015

Who is a Rooster?

Years: 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005.
Month*: September
Hour: 05:00 pm -07:00 pm
Days: 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 Rooster?
The Rooster is yin metal, the night bird, glamorous with an eye for presentation and detail. She appreciates an argument and likes to win but has little patience for causes that drag on. She will appreciate jewellery, fine art and good living and create wealth easily. Conversely of course, a dangerous Rooster like Qaseem Soleimani (Iranian General i/c of the Iraqi Army – Google him) can reject such distractions in order to serve a cause that has indeed dragged on for decades. This is yin and yang.

The rule this illustrates (by violating it) is that a typical Rooster is suited to work that involves short decisive arguments such as that of an advocate. Her brief passion is the perfect support for a client. She can defend with enormous commitment and then move on to the next one. That commitment is 100% but it is short lived. If she is in a job that involves holding her peace she may fret and become ill.

Osama bin Laden was a typical 1957 fire Rooster: one big splash and he was off. For you, a car must be fast, a partner challenging and life full of twists and turns. The Rooster is likely to be quick witted rather than profound, with a short attention span.

Her allies the Snake and the Ox are sometimes impatient with her because she can digress so widely and so easily but she brings to the metal alliance the pure competitiveness that the Ox might otherwise misuse and the Snake misunderstand. Think Ed Miliband snatching leadership of the opposition from under his brother’s nose. The Rooster is pure metal – that is determined to prevail at all costs – Snake and Ox are not. They will not win many cases or many contracts without her and they would do well to pay and respect her appropriately despite the fact that she demands longer holidays and a better remuneration package. Conversely if she fails to respect a support system that dots i’s and crosses t’s in order to support the intuitive flashes that s/he can exploit but seldom generate, she will not prosper.

Her pitfalls are sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. She likes to party and her personality may be addictive; the Rooster prefers dusk to dawn and also the small hours.

The Rooster enjoys a powerful alliance with the Dragon in which she, uniquely in the average Dragon’s experience, may hold the whip hand. This is not always entirely healthy. She can bend the Dragon out of shape just as the Ox can bend the Rat. This sway must be employed responsibly otherwise both can be damaged. With that proviso this is one of the strongest and longest-lasting alliances in the Chinese zodiac.

Predictably the Rooster is one of the charismatic Flowers of Romance. Success and glamorous partners come easily to her. Often a Rooster can punch above her weight in this regard. Cinderella was a Rooster and so is Yoko Ono. This effortlessness can make for complacency; bitterness is more common among middle-aged Roosters than any other animal. Not the remarkable Ms Ono btw. Roosters are often long-lived also btw.

With the Monkey she can form a commercial alliance. A business co-run by these two will be irresistibly attractive but may not open on time. It may not close promptly either and may also suffer the cash flow problems that come from poor financial prioritisation. A marriage would risk the same types of problem: great parties, early divorce. The unbalanced Metal creatures – Monkey and Rooster – sometimes know and understand precision but don’t respect it.

The cautious domesticated Rabbit is the nemesis of the Rooster who likes bling while the Rabbit can see no life in a stone. Any such relationship would generally be full of obstruction and passive aggression. The insistent wood of the Tiger is almost as maddening although his fierceness would at least engage the Rooster’s attention. The loyal, consistent Dog risks boring her rigid.

Rooster in Sheep Year.

Stars include: pin kun, man cheung, tin yute gwai yan, sik sun.

This year the Winter Solstice dung gee, coincides with the New Moon. The last time this happened was in 1938, a year which you’ll recall, was followed by some excitement. The man most associated with not noticing a world crumbling around him was 1897 Fire Rooster Neville Chamberlain. And now it’s possible that the world depends on the Rooster rising from the naughty chair and putting attention on the many wrongs that need righting.

If nothing changed in a big way in 2012, you probably still have a couple of years to wait before you feel that you are truly present. But there is a way to make it faster. Below I make some suggestions. 2014 has been a demanding year, mostly because you demanded it be that way. There was plenty of good luck if you had just been prepared to let it come to you. So often the Rooster does not recognise good fortune when presented with it. Your role is to do with the well-being of others this year: family, children, the lost and the puzzled. It’s time to stop wrong-footing the world with cleverness and withdrawal. You are more puzzled than most, if truth were told.

The Rooster is the gambler, the charmer, the player of the odds; very smart, very attractive, very dangerous. Most of the threats now besetting the Earth are due to Rooster thinking; not necessarily to actual Roosters but to a particular mental approach. I avoided the term mind-set because half-digested quasi-psychological sleep-terms like that are typical of this er…mind-set. Workshops on how to steal a march in business are packed with Roosters. They are the masters of quick, that is short-term thinking. They may have memorised the Seven Success Habits but they often lack any idea as to what to do with success or of how to be content. And unless we – and they – wake up, 2015 will just take us twelve months closer to the precipice. The point at which I gave up on transformation by way of business was when I overheard two salespeople discussing how to use a “Win-Win” strategy to win against competition. As Leonard Cohen wrote: “They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom for trying to change the system from within.” Enough.

The Chinese character kun is often translated as “clash.” And just as Horse was kun to Rooster last year, so this year Rooster is kun to at least the wood aspect of the Wood Sheep. The Rooster represents the profit in turning rainforest into pasture and the human genotype into patents. The Rooster can be argumentative and a splitter of hairs. Whether this is virtue or vice depends upon how it is employed. This year the Rooster can advance short term through smarts and charm or long term through wisdom. Similarly this year the Rooster can bank their bonus or question the system. This is harder for you than most because the Rooster is naturally a conservative (small “c”) – which must be tough for 1969 Rooster Ed Miliband – and thinks of common sense as looking after No. 1. Surely everyone gains that way; all ships rise with tide, don’t they? It isn’t happening and you are suffering. Time to wake up and smell the carbon fumes. Get your attention out.

Kun this way round means “man-woman relationship” to the male Rooster. You have romance on a plate in 2015. Whether you’ll actually get to know someone is an entirely different question. Short-lived romance is more probable than eternal love. And this life-long skating on the surface of life is the routine and the trap from which many Roosters never roam. But it’s not where realisation lies nor where you’re likely to find self-actualisation or meaning. That will come with questioning your life-path and re-calibrating. The mature Rooster may be quite lonely but poorly trained for anything else. February, March and particularly April offer you something else. It may just be a bigger bonus than last year and if you employ it to make 2015 like 2014 only more so, you may well find 2016 and the years beyond deeply distressing. If you employ this burst of energy to divert your life in the direction it wants to steer, you will be a different, happier and more fulfilled bird come 2016. And you can’t fake it.

One of the quirks of the year of the Wood Sheep is that you are likely to be sought out for advice. And you’ll doubtless give it, as ever. Your wisdom will only be worth heeding if you back it with example. No one forced you into the jam you’re in and many have offered you a leg-up. Perversely you have blamed some and warned off others for daring to call you on your irresponsibility. You’re not a martyr; consider some other points of view perhaps.

As I said, if nothing changed in a big way in 2012, you probably have a couple of years to wait before you feel that you are truly present. Your attraction to the superficial is likely to have convinced you that’s all there is. And you’re likely to argue for this half-life for a while yet rather than admit error. That would be a terrible pity.

Health: care with mouth and openings of the body.

Money: plentiful but not the point. Not the year for the pursuit of wealth per se.

Relationship: shallow relationship plentiful, marriage unlikely.

Feng Shui: Cautiously occupy the Ox (North East1) and load it with Metal. Don’t dig or drill.

Readers’ Digest Version: another year that leads up a ladder or down a snake. Your call.

Richard Ashworth©, early in the month of the Tiger, 2015.