Rat Diary: what to expect in December 2014. The Rodent less travelled.

The Rodent less travelled.

Rat Month opens: December 7^th 14:11pm.

The Rodent less travelled.

The Rat by contrast with the Pig, is yang Water. The Rat is the communicator and the keeper of secrets, so this frantic year will have been a challenge. The Rat is uncomfortable with the spontaneous, extrovert Fire of the Horse. Rat achievements are a slower burn. This month’s Fire Rat however brings the sort of invention and innovation that takes courage to be true to; the Fire that moderates this particular Rat is an inventive spark, almost as if it were a hybrid Horse-Rat. The month is full of opportunities for originality but they may not run along safe paths.

By way of illustration, two of the season’s big movies are The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. The first concerns Alan Turing, the genius who fronted the Enigma team, saving an estimated 14 million lives and shortening World War II by years. He has been a fascination of mine since I studied the proto-AI of Turing machines as a Philosophy undergraduate in the 70’s. No one knew he was a hero then though it was common knowledge that he had died in disgrace. As it turns out, he was convicted of the victimless crime of being gay. He was, just to make my point, a 1912 Water Rat.

Stephen Hawking by contrast is a Water Horse (a hybrid Rat-Horse, if you like) who has had to cope with increasing debility as his mind has groped to embrace the entire universe. But again his career might be summarised as the tension between genius and its expression. Like Turing and like this month. Use it wisely.

A similar tension as it happens, informed my friend, shaman and healer Maurice Willmott who died last week. He was a very special, gifted and good man whose cause of death read “motor neurones disease” but who had, by his account given up on a venal world that had disappointed him. Bless him wherever he may be.

The Rat in the Rat Month.

Rats (1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008) are the talkers of the Chinese Zodiac and the keepers of secrets. In the Rat month we gather round the fire and catch up. At this time a young Rat may give away the farm by over-emoting (more battle-scarred ones let you do the talking). Typically the Rat forms a team with Monkey and Dragon for whom individually he may actually have little time; he needs an outcome if he is to consort with them. So December finds the otherwise often frivolous Monkey focused and the Dragon holding his own ego in a looser grip. The Rat has a rather one-sided affinity with the Ox who will tend to boss him around. Who’d have thought a Zodiac Animal represented by Margaret Thatcher, Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama and Napoleon Bonaparte might have ideas about their right to rule?

The Rat is not generally comfortable with the Horse but this is the frank antipathy of introvert for extrovert. The Rat’s difficulty with next year’s Sheep however comes under the category “covert”. If all of this forms the right cocktail, the Rat presides over a calm culmination to a turbulent year. If not, things could be explosive all the way to the Spring Festival.

Rat Month, Animal by Animal.

During the Rat month:

The Rat chances his arm.

The Ox takes charge.

The Tiger bides his time.

The Rabbit may nurse grievance

The Dragon chills for once.

The Snake holes up.

The Horse is wrong-footed.

The Sheep is distant.

The Monkey sobers up.

The Rooster runs out of words.

The Dog is in the manger.

and

The Pig opens up.

Rat Pillars; know your Rat rating.

Birth in the Rat hour (23:00pm-01:00am): voluble, articulate children.

Birth in the Rat month (December*): work in communication.

Birth on the Rat day#: articulate, communicative.

Birth in the Rat year: loquacious heritage.

* Caution, the Chinese month generally starts and finishes a few days after ours.

# Just ask.

Where to do what, when and why.

This month’s lo shu is the intrusive 7. In a 4 year, the theme of a 7 month can be tolerance or the lack of it. Consideration for our neighbours is the answer.

Here are a couple of dates that may help with that. They are calculated using the T’ung Shu or “Farmers’ Almanac” and take account of a variety of esoteric criteria including the Twelve Officers, Mansions of the Moon and the calculations of the 13^th Century diviner Dong Gong.

27^th December favours : Monkey, Dragon, Rat, patient Snakes.

Do make a firm irrevocable start.

26^th December challenges : Ox

Don’t: invest deeply in the way things are going.

Richard Ashworth©, early in the month of the Fire Rat, 2014.