Animal Forecast 2015: 7. Neigh Sayer, outlook for the Horse in 2015

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 however high-risk his strategy. She 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, she is often not inclined to work with her own kind. The typical Horse is not a deep thinker and ego leads him to suppose that no one else is either.

There tends to be a belief in shortage, at work in the Horse. You may imagine that you must be first to the trough if you are 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 you.
Obviously enough 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 – 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. You’ll have a good time though.

The Horse can find 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 so humdrum.

The Horse has visual, imaginative and intellectual gifts but is unlikely to value them enough to put them to good use. 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 Sheep Year

Stars include: sap gon luk, loy hong.

So your year is over. Except it may not have felt like your year at all. Because of the so-called self clash the typical Horse will have felt quite challenged. And your natural spontaneity may now seem, looking back, more gesture than action. The demanding year of 1954 Horse Angela Merkel could be typical; Germany started 2014 looking like the defender of the European Union and ended it perhaps as one of the reasons that union is threatened with fracture. 1966 Fire Horse David Cameron started the year as an alternative to the knee-jerk xenophobia of UKIP and ends looking liking a reason to vote outside the Westminster establishment at all costs. It is the nature of a year of revelation like that just passed, that illumination falls upon the Horse. And not necessarily in a good way. You have felt constantly exposed and you’ve had enough of that for the time being, I expect.

At home you may have felt lonely or abandoned and at work, out on a limb. Past mistakes may have been raked up. That’s embarrassing to anybody and it’s an especially brave Horse who looks upon error easily. You’re wise and decent and likely to be available 24-7 to dispense loving advice but receiving it? Not so much. You’ve shifted your schedule time after time to give help but often been too busy to let yourself be helped. So often, advice sounds like condemnation and assistance seems to mean you’re helpless. And for you “helpless” probably carries additional meanings of “useless” and “worthless”. And to be fair, reflection reflects the reflecter; some of that advice may indeed have amounted to sabotage.

You are however the secret friend of the Sheep. This means you are favoured. A rest may be in order; certainly some relief from pressure and the Sheep may offer it. Your ambitions are better served by delegation than solo work but what you choose to concentrate upon this year will shine. That is sap gon luk, the star of success through good preparation. Chuck Spezzano used to say that “bonding is effortless success”; not “implies” or “entails”, “is”.

On the other hand the loy hong star that rests over you this year threatens that you could over-reach yourself. The Horse is not generally great at commitment. You’re more immediate than that – often to your loss. You’re better at easy-going, relatively shallow relationship. This year if you are spoken-for, be careful how easy-going you get and with whom. Not that you are in danger of discovery. Your partner may never know. But you will. Such small deceits are scars upon the soul.

Of your soul-mates, the Dog will be in need of assistance. A Sheep year for the Dog is a “break-up”; some sort of parting of the ways is on the cards. And the Dog more than likely turns to you. The Sheep whose loyalty characterises the year, may need a reminder as to why he bothers. These entreaties will tend to fall in the middle of the year. Later on there is serious discouragement for the Horse who claims they never really cared. You have to care. And of course you do; underneath the top two layers of that neapolitan of sensitivities is a huge, empathetic heart.

If you followed that heart last year, opportunities will be opening up about now. February holds a boost to your energy and June. But you’ll have to commit to whatever it is that beckons. Think about it; if you don’t it’s bound to fail. Only if you do throw yourself into it – work, relationship, that huge new opportunity that you have almost talked yourself out of – will you ever know what could be.

So the key to this year is opening up. There are many – family, friends, those you’ve never met – who are desperate to know you better. These people recognise your nerve and your originality and your heart but feel they hardly know you. If you are known, you’ll be found out, won’t you? They will have some sort of power over you, won’t they? Oops. They’ll know you’re fallible and they’ll be able to exploit your weaknesses. We can’t have that canwe?

This year, the South where the Horse lives, is visited by the tricky Red 7 Star. The 7 is the star of intervention. Not such a bad idea but it’s also the Star of interruption and interference. Who’s to say which is which? This year you have to risk interference, and interruption and open up to intervention if you yearn for intimacy. And from then on you’re neither lonely nor put-upon. If you rise to the call, you enter 2016 equipped for the worldwide dramas that threaten. Otherwise you get a rest.

Health: possible weight gain. Care of eyes, skin, lungs still advised.

Money: activate, occupy, face, favour NE3 the Tiger for reputation, E2 the Rabbit for abundance.

Relationship: the toe far due East at the Rabbit ensures plenty of variety if that’s your choice.

Feng Shui: activate the Dog at NW1 (WNW) for the Moon; that is proportion. You may need it.

Readers’ Digest Version: at least restful, recuperative. At best refuelling.

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