The Monkey in the Year of the Water Rabbit 2023

Monkey Pic by @elliespinelli

Who is a Monkey?

Years: 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016.
Month*: August
Hour: 15.00-17.00

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. I can let you know this too.

What is a Monkey?
The image of the Three Wise Monkeys, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil is a reasonable summary of the qualities of the yang Metal Monkey, a particularly quirky primate. This is typically someone who shrinks from deep involvement. In elemental terms, this often amounts to too much yang Metal. What is meant by yang Metal essentially is precision and hence competition. Often the Monkey is so competitive he dare not enter the race.

As well as competitive, the Monkey is typically charming, loveable, dextrous, logical, quick witted and exact. The balanced Monkey uses these qualities constructively and in the service of his fellow man. The unbalanced Monkey (with say an August birthday in the late afternoon) does not clean up behind himself. He is in short a monkey.

The Monkey is often the most acquisitive as well as the gentlest beast but he is above all, competitive. In the extreme this means warfare. In its milder forms it is the ruthless competition that involves the belief that another’s gain is our loss. This is a (painful) mistake. It’s what leads to steroid abuse in athletics and ballet dancing in the Premiership penalty box. A Water Monkey like Spurs’ Son Heung-Min may learn this lesson early; it’s what makes him focus on goals rather than adulation. Pretty much all Monkeys subscribe to this delusion unless they learn not to through hard experience.

As you’d expect, the Monkey’s pitfall is frivolity. If he can’t win he takes the Mickey. Their natural allies however are the more ponderous Rat and Dragon. This is a pretty heavy-duty grouping, perhaps the most powerful in the Chinese Zodiac. Dominant Rats and egotistical Dragons are not, as a rule a bundle of laughs; the Monkey however often is. And together these three get stuff done; so many big revolutions including those of ideas involve this team. Many years of revolution (1776, 1848, 1944, 1956, 1968 & many more) are Monkey years.

2016 of course, the Year of Trump, M.A.G.A. and Brexit, was a Fire Monkey. As was hapless short-lived British PM Theresa May (born 1956, sixty years earlier) who may well not have entirely taken on the life lessons of the Monkey.

Monkey for sure is Karen Armstrong author of a History of God, founder of the Charter for Compassion and arguably the most important thinker of the 21st Century. This is a Monkey who has learned to speak no evil while seeing much. If you want to understand forgiveness, the heart of all healing, read Armstrong.

The Monkey also tends to understand the mechanical: engines and systems; he is the grease Monkey. He often also understand maths, science and argument and so is suited very often to a career in engineering or the law, also accountancy. Unbalanced, he neglects all of the above. The Monkey month of August spans Leo and Virgo and to see him as a hybrid of Virgo control and Leo passion is not far from the truth.

When the Tiger and the Snake meet the Monkey there is trouble. The Monkey both co-operates with and fights the Snake. The presence of the Tiger pushes this competition over the edge. Keep these three apart. The Monkey must take care to mind her p’s and q’s every February (the month of the Tiger) and every May (the month of the Snake). Also a Tiger Day in the Monkey Month is a day to stay off the roads; both Animals are about assertion and travel and of opposing Elements (yang Wood & yang Metal) and it may be uncomfortably warm.

So that’s the Monkey: argumentative practical, mischievous and so competitive he can withdraw altogether. But you knew that already didn’t you?

Tricky: The Monkey in 2023

Early in the year you can’t help making money but technology lets you

down by Autumn. The Mong San Star indicates you don’t get on with the Metal aspects of your nature this year. Often this means war with computers, cell-phones, apps and social media. The solution may be training and the topic may not strictly be technical. You are as likely to find yourself studying music or philosophy as tech. You’ll be learning for sure and it may be the stuff you really want to know about that has been obscured by all the learning you didn’t want..

Serious upset and/or disagreement are possible all year. This may be because you mislay your sense of humour. It may equally be because you have not yet learnt that not every joke needs a butt. Or that silence often fills the air as adequately as idle talk. The Water Monkey (1992) sometimes gives the farm away by blurting. If that’s you be ready, a little rehearsal of moments that can be expected to be awkward works wonders. Worst disputes February or November. The second aspect of your love/hate relationship with the Snake may be the problem.

Money tends to be a non-event in a Rabbit Year. You’re unlikely to make big financial gains under the Rabbit but flow will be steady if you let it: Rabbit is choi, that is wealth, to a Monkey but yin choi, that is small and earned by the sweat of the brow rather than blind fate. The same Elemental reading implies that male Monkeys find a soul mate in the springtime. This applies regardless of orientation.

A typical Monkey has made some attempt to bypass mature leadership one way or another. And so issues with parents emerge in October – probably by way of siblings as proxies. This is not age-related, it may even be most acute for the older (e.g. Wood (1944) and Fire (1956)) Monkeys, particularly if Monkey is your Day Animal. Remember that remorse does not entail guilt although that feeling is often co-present. The feeling is not the fact.

Some Monkeys struggle with self-effacement in the Rabbit Years. This is frankly humbug. Asserting your strengths is not arrogant and in any case arrogance is not a crime especially when justified by ability. Hiding your light is the real offence especially if its light may guide others home.

The Rabbit Year is not your most comfortable but if you concentrate on being just one person, it’ll be pretty effortless.

Lesson: Know what to take seriously.

Best Months: April, August, December

Worst Months: February, November.

Theme: Trusting proper preparation

Hexagram: 40 Hsieh Deliverance .

Health: = Wealth: Relationship:

This forecast is prepared by comparing your own Chinese year Animal with the Water Rabbit of 2023. 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?

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