Horse 2013

Who is a Horse?

Years: 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002.
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.

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 2013:
Stars include: Tai Yang Success, Tian Yong Void, Xian chi Extravagant.
Underpowered: the danger is that you’ll let the year pass you by. Sometimes things have been too easy and you seem to have done just that: 2006 and 1994 are likely examples. So the fact that there are few obvious challenges this year is not necessarily an unalloyed blessing.

What’s more it’s a very sexy time. It may be easy to get distracted, if you call that distraction. Like your rival the Rooster, you are the Muse, the Goddess, the matchmaker this year. You have at your fingertips an awful lot of power. You always did but you seem to have forgotten this about yourself.

This year you have huge influence to wield: not only does the Horse function as the toe far (or Star of Romance) to the Rooster, Ox and Snake this year, but by an unusual juxtaposition, the Rooster is itself the activating toe far to Dragon, Rat and Monkey. All of these creatures are in for an interesting year socially and you are at the heart of it. You pull the strings. This is no responsibility to take lightly and it will not return again soon. The long term happiness of half the zodiac hangs on your whim.

This is a unisex issue btw. Horses in PR, HR (and even, er, ER) are in a position to do so much good this year.
As a personality you’re likely to favour spontaneity and self-expression, This year you might consider to what extent (if at all) this may inhibit others. Your expression frees others up to express only if it’s done selflessly and with grace.

The Horse is a creature of light and heat, of rapid and uncensored response. In the Snake year there’s ambient light and heat but yours radiates independently. You bring promotion, progress and visibility to others now and incidentally to yourself next year. Seek out the neglected and the under-rated. This year you find diamonds in the rough. You are the talent scout and matchmaker.

But remember although there may be no clear right and wrong there are consequences. One of your few weaknesses is that you can sometimes resist accountability. You don’t get such influence without being accountable. That’s pretty much a universal law.

How did this come about? That’s easy. If we’re smart we learn from our mistakes. And you’ve learned a lot in this regard since 2008.

Are you to be trusted with it? A Snake year is about truth and its converse, falsehood. The Horse typically is not so much economical with the truth as careless with it. This is a life lesson. There will be repercussions if you are even slightly deceitful. Think of honesty as a boomerang. We’re all loaded guns of karma. Hexagram 34 has answers.

Health: You know those moments when the choice to be ill or healthy hangs in the balance? Expect some of those and choose health.
Money: not especially what this year is about.
Relationship: it’s complicated.
Feng Shui: activate S2 (Horse) to step up.
Readers’ Digest Version: great power and influence. Use it well.
Richard Ashworth©2012