Chinese Astrology Basic Concepts Part 1 🌸
& Usual Disclaimers
🎶 Let’s start from the very beginning…a very good place to start! 🎶
Here are some basic concepts to make sure everyone understands my references when the luck forecasts drop this year, as well as some disclaimers:
If you don’t know your Chinese astrology sign, check here. If your birthday is in January or the first half of February, it’s especially important to verify because those dates tend to straddle two years.
These are not my predictions because I’m not actually an astrologer - surprise! 🙈 I am merely a hobbyist who reads and reviews the work of many astrologers; I synthesize their work, and then I put it all together in a hopefully coherent and fun-to-read way.
As I always say, this is all JUST FOR FUN! Don’t take it too seriously, and as Mama Laforêt always says, don’t believe anything that sounds bad to you. And never let superstition run your life.
Just like for Western horoscopes, entire-sign forecasts are generalizations - individualized birth charts based on your birth date and time are supposed to be the most accurate. So if some things don’t seem right any given year, it can just be your individual circumstances coming into play.
Something else I always say is that good luck is closely intertwined with karma. Doing good and helping those in need will both improve/protect good luck and make a dent in bad luck. It’s all about not being a piece of shit. Does that mean bad things don’t happen to good people, or that good things don’t happen to bad people? No. But it’s important to try to live in a way so that you don’t exclude yourself from deserving good things.
Clash/Compatibility
You’ll see me referring frequently to clashes and compatibility . Every year brings its own energy, which can affect the luck of each sign and consequently, each individual. Luck is usually rockier when it’s your own animal (i.e. for Horses in the Year of the Horse) and for opposite signs (6 signs away from yours in a cycle, e.g. the opposite of the Horse is the Rat - see the wheel below). But when your sign is compatible with the year’s energy, you will have better, smoother luck that year - if that is the case, your forecast will say so. Note that the energy of the year also fades in and fades out - it doesn’t change at the strike of 12 on New Year’s Eve. So if you had shitty luck last year and are due for a good year, things will gradually improve into the spring. Similarly, if you had a good year and are due for a bad one, your luck slowly declines. By summer, the tone of the year is set.
People who have a direct clash with the year may want to go to their place of worship to ask to be blessed, and ideally, make a donation. In Hong Kong, where my family’s from, people might go to a local temple (Buddhist, Taoist, doesn’t matter) to make a new year donation. I’ve never done it myself - I’m not religious at all and am only mildly superstitious by Chinese standards - but for many people, it makes them feel better and more optimistic for the year.
Another way to protect yourself during clash years is to carry around charms or imagery of signs that are lucky and compatible with you - if applicable, more specific instructions are in each sign’s section.
Some astrologists say that clashes tend to hit people harder when they had reasonably happy childhoods. If in early life you had to deal with family disharmony, poverty, persecution/war that your family had to flee, or (heaven forbid) abuse, etc., clashes tend not to affect you quite as much.
Most astrologists advise people to avoid going to places where there’s negative energy or sadness - usually that means visiting the ill (especially in hospitals) or attending funerals/wakes/shivas/celebrations of life. The way I interpret this rule is, if it is someone important to you, you should definitely go, because you will regret not visiting them when they were unwell and not attending their funeral. But if you get invited to something for an acquaintance, a distant relative, or someone you didn’t know that well because you might be accompanying someone who knew them better…skip it if you can.
This post is getting very long - I will post a part 2, before the forecasts drop at the end of this month! :)