Monkey 2013
Who is a Monkey?
Years: 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004.
Month*: August
Hour: 03:00 pm – 05:00 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 Monkey?
The image of the Three Wise Monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil is a mediaeval Japanese summary of the qualities of the metal Monkey who is yang metal and a particularly unbalanced primate. The image is of someone of course who shrinks from involvement. In elemental terms, this is about too much yang metal. What is meant by yang metal essentially is competition. Often the Monkey is so competitive he dare not enter the race. For many Monkeys, a man is an island. He is, like Hugh Grant’s character in About a Boy, “bloody Ibiza”.
As well as competitive, the Monkey is typically charming, loveable, dextrous, logical and quick witted and has a gift for precision. The balanced Monkey uses these qualities constructively and in the service of his fellow man. The unbalanced Monkey (with say an August birthday and a late afternoon hour) 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 mistake. It’s what leads to steroid abuse in athletics and ballet dancing in the penalty box; Metal Monkey John Terry can take a bow here. The metal Monkey may learn this lesson early; it’s what makes him gentle and all Monkeys subscribe to this delusion to a greater or lesser extent.
Just as you’d expect, the pitfall of the Monkey is frivolity. If he can’t win he takes the Mickey. The Monkey’s natural allies are the Rat and the Dragon. This is a pretty heavy-duty grouping, perhaps the most powerful in the Chinese Zodiac. The naturally dominant Rat and the egotistical Dragon are not, as a rule, a bundle of laughs. But they get stuff done; most of the big revolutions of ideas involve this team. The influence of this trio spreads everywhere: Sigmund Freud perhaps the most influential thinker of the 20th Century, Michele Obama possibly the most influential woman in the world, Dragons. Even Jesus if you take AD32 as his birth year.* And somewhere in there if we delve deeply enough, we find unsung Monkeys and Rats making it happen. The Rat plots, the Monkey gets out there and competes. Probably St Paul was a Monkey, the man who sold Christianity to the world. Someone who is a 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.
The Monkey tends to understand engines; he is the grease Monkey. He also tends to understand maths, science and argument. He 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 them apart. So the Monkey should mind his p’s and q’s every February, the month of the Tiger and every May, the month of the Snake.
So that’s the Monkey: argumentative, practical, mischievous, so competitive he can withdraw altogether. But you knew that already didn’t you?
* That’s up for debate of course but presumably he was a Capricorn anyway.
Monkey 2013:
Stars include: Tin Yute Gwai Yan, Sui He Harmonious, Gou Shen Entanglement.
Where do you want to go? You’ve really landed on your feet in the year of the Water Dragon. Most of what matters to you is working now. Just as I told you it would btw. But the only constant is change and we’re all always growing or shrinking. None of us gets to stay in the same place. It’s just not possible. Now it’s a question of where you want to go next.
The joker of the Zodiac, you enjoy the advantage of being the special friend of the Year Snake. But that’s a double-edged sword. Firstly your friendship is ambivalent at best; there’s as much tension as cooperation between Monkey and Snake. Secondly, this Snake of all Snakes is hardly to be trusted. What you see may well not be what you get.
What you have in common with the Snake is Metal. This probably means that business related and commercial objectives will be met at the expense perhaps of personal ones. Best bet is to do a lot of what you do best.
Just to make it fun, the Rooster controls your toe far this year. This means you’re in poll position for relationship but you may be messed with. What you take for sincerity may not be. This could be painful. And it can only happen if you’re not 100% yourself. We live in halls of mirrors. Know yourself, your weaknesses and the strengths that make up for them – and be sure that any intimate knows them too. Any concealment could be expensive.
Last year in among the successes there was the usual heartbreak. You don’t want to go there again. However if you dare to dive back in and complete it, you’ll emerge into 2014 buzzing. By complete, I mean feel the upset that still lingers there. Breathe into it a few times until you’re familiar with it. That’s how experiences are completed. If you hang back, the old upsets may re-emerge. So just open to it. You see, the right answer is usually yes; that’s because we say no in order to refuse the opportunity the universe has in mind for us and yes to embrace it. Who do you think you are?
This is not macho, ditch-the-bitch, just-do-it posturing but an invitation to gently revisit that one place where your world caved in and risk it again. That’s where you start. You’ve done so well; celebrate that but notice where you got stuck.
The Fire Penalty hangs over you too of course. The Monkey of all the animals most invites interference despite his determination not to. Expect a tortuous February and a relatively fraught May. No reason the year should not be full of net gains, personal, emotional, commercial. Hexagram 10.
Health: possible skin, blood, breathing issues February, May, September.
Money: intermittent.
Relationship: breaks for single female Monkeys especially mid-summer. Males best to value what they have.
Feng Shui: place Water in the Rat at S2 for the prestige of Dragon Virtue.
Readers’ Digest Version: count your blessings and learn from what went wrong.
Richard Ashworth©2012