This past New Moon marked the beginning of the Chinese Lunar Year. We have entered into the year of the Wood Snake which lasts until the New Moon in February 2026. For these next few weeks until the next coming Full Moon, Chinese all over the world will be celebrating this new year phase, which is the coming of Spring in the Northern hemisphere, with food, drink, fire-crackers/works together with family and friends. This is the time when all the astrological predictions and anticipations for the new year start to get thrown around. The Snake is not one of the most “popular” versions of the 12 animals. The Dragon or the Tiger are especially popular years, if one is not female; Tiger female children are/were often considered undesirable as they are said to be proud and willful. But why would the Snake not be well liked?

In western Judeo-Christian-based culture, the Snake is considered vile and is loathed, as it is the being responsible for the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Most humans and mammals possess a possible evolutionary-based fear of Snakes, with an estimate of one third of humans having a fear and only 3 to 4 percent have actual ophidiophobia (Snake phobia). The ancient Chinese and many other traditional cultures around the world however have honored this animal; the fact that the Snake is one of the 12 animals on Chinese horoscope is one proof of this.

In Chinese mythology, after the Universe and the Earth were created, the goddess,
Nǚ Wā  女媧  descended to the Earth. Mountains, rivers, trees, plants and animals already existed, however humans did not. It is said that she felt lonely and as she knelt down by a river, she saw her own reflection and decided to create human beings out of clay, in her own image.  Nǚ Wā is described as having the upper body of a human and the lower body of a serpent. The Chinese creator of humans is half Snake and half human. Why would Snakes be revolting to the Chinese if the Mother of human beings was half one herself? I believe the repulsion of the Snake comes not from the Chinese themselves but the syncretizing of Eastern with Western belief systems. This is a common occurrence in the modern world, where there is often a merging of traditions and ideas from across the globe, as cultures collide with one another.

In fact, if we look at many cultures from North and Central America, to Africa, to Asia, to Australasia and even to Europe we will observe that the Snake is a creature that is traditionally honored. It is often associated with fertility, renewal, wisdom and are protectors as well as messengers of the Divine. Even the Greek God of Medicine, Asclepius, carries a staff with a serpent entwined on it, which was later adopted by Western medicine as the symbol of medicine and is still in use to this day. In ancient Egypt, Greece and India, the Ouroboros, the symbol of the snake eating its tail, is a representation of the unending cycle of life, death, rebirth. The Snake, as it physiologically sheds its skin, represents the ability of life to transform.

The Snake exists on every continent on the Earth except Antarctica, in dry desert environments, tropical, humid ones, flatlands as well as mountains. There over 3000 different species of Snakes, of which 600 are venomous but only 7 percent can actually kill or wound a human. Maybe instead of fear or loathing of the Snake, we can appreciate it as a living being on the Earth and give it its due respect for its remarkable abilities. For this year of the Snake, let us learn to embody the Snakes qualities of flexibility, resilience, to learn to shed our skins by letting go what has not served us, so that we may transform our lives as well as our world around us.



Image Year of the Snake by ICM
Image Tutanchamun from Wikicommons
 

We will soon be experiencing the second new moon after the Winter Solstice; it is the Chinese New Year. We will enter into the year of the Metal Ox. It is a Spring celebration, the returning of life after the death of the land in winter. There are many symbols used in this celebration; the animal that the year represents, the color red, the plum blossoms, fish...this got me thinking. Why fish? Some believe that it has to do with the sound of the word in Mandarin; the word for fish, "yú," is also the sound used for the word "abundance." Hence, the fish is often pictured as a pair or more, double or more abundance, and is eaten for the new year. I believe that it goes even deeper than that and it is not just in the Chinese culture but across cultures of the earth. The fish is a symbol of life, abundance, fertility. Part of the reason for this is that fish live in water and water is the medium for life on earth, as I discussed a few posts ago. 
 
For a long time now, I have been interested in finding out more about evolution. What most of us know as evolution is based on the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection; it is often summarized as "Survival of the Fittest;" pictured as a few figures moving/ progressing from left to right, ape to primitive human to upright Homo sapiens of today. However, there are other theories of evolution not just the Darwinian one, which proposes that an organism that best adapts to its environment will survive and reproduce. When Charles Darwin published his work "The Origin of the Species" in 1859 he was doing so after Alfred Russell Wallace, a younger, less experienced and less financially-stable naturalist/ geologist, among other things, had written Darwin to describe similar ideas of species evolution in his travels in the Amazon and South-East Asia a year prior. Darwin and his associates decided to publish Darwin's work before someone else, such as Wallace did. Hence, we associate evolution with Darwin, not Wallace. In fact, there are other ideas of evolution that pre-date Darwin but were not accepted by society or the scientific community of the time. One such individual is Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French zoologist, who published his findings and hypothesis almost 60 years before Darwin, but was ridiculed by the French scientific community of his time for his bold hypotheses. One of his suggestions was the "inheritance of acquired characteristics," which states that an organism can acquire and pass on to its offspring characteristics or adaptations which it acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. Lamarck was not given credit for his work, even ridiculed and forgotten until now, about 200 years later.

"One reason some scientists are taking another look at Lamarck is that evolutionists are reminding us of the invaluable role cooperation plays in sustaining life in the biosphere. Scientists have long noted symbiotic relationships in nature." (Lipton, 2015)

New ideas and perspectives are emerging in science as well as in society. For so long, we were exposed to the idea that "only the fittest survive." Currently, more are realizing that the reason we humans have survived and thrived till this day is because we learned to cooperate with each other; banding together to stay warm; pitching our resources together to feed more over a longer period of time. We learned to live in symbiosis with other humans as well as other living beings and our environment, which one may dispute with the current state of affairs on the earth.      
 
My interest in evolution has revealed to me how everything on this planet, if not the universe, is related to one another. It has shown me how all vertebrates including humans were once fish. Click the link to watch a fascinating documentary on our inner fish ancestry. These creatures lived in oceans and over hundreds of millions of years, evolved to have limbs, that then transformed to hands with opposable thumbs which we have today; that allows us to create the reality we live in today. So maybe the Chinese are celebrating Chinese New Year with symbols of the fish not just as the beginning of a new year, but also as an honoring of the roots of our existence on earth.    
 
 
 
Reference
Lipton, Bruce H. (2015): The Biology of Belief - Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. Carlsbad, USA: Hay House Inc.
 
 
 
Image Koi by endri nana nana on pixabay 

The Chinese New Year begins today. So much of Chinese culture, whether medicine, astrology or cooking, incorporates the philosophy of the five-elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Each element has its characteristics and follows 2 cycles of interaction, the generating (clockwise circle in diagram) as well as the controlling (pentagram in diagram). Even each season is related to an element: spring to wood, summer to fire, late summer to earth, autumn to metal and winter to water. This year is the year of the Earth Pig. The Chinese revere this animal as a symbol of wealth and abundance.  

The Chinese follow parallel to the regular (Gregorian) calendar a traditional lunar-solar calendar. The Chinese New Year lands either on the second or third new moon after the winter solstice. Each year is associated with an animal, 12 altogether, and with one of the five element that changes every third year. So the same animal and element comes by again in 60 years. There is are many stories associated with the order of the animals. As a child, I recall seeing a calendar with a picture of the animals in the order of the years arriving to greet Buddha. I have heard of another one with the same animal order coming to greet the Jade Emperor. I imagine this is the Daoist version as opposed to the former, a Buddhist version. The animals obviously possess their strengths and weaknesses, affecting how the year will turn out. Depending on your element and animal, which also has its own related element, these also determine how your year unfolds. Personally, I do see some correlations to the traits of the animals and elements on the year's events, but my belief is that we create our own reality with our actions.
 
This is the beginning of spring for the Chinese. I remember going to the market with my parents as a child to the get new year decorations and food imported from China, as we do not have four seasons in Malaysia. Cherry tree branches with buds was a standard, symbolizing the start of spring, which I could never really understand in the scorching heat and constant growth of plants in the tropics. I don't think I really understood spring until I moved to the west and experienced it for myself. Right now, looking outside with snow flurries still falling or frost on the grass, the feeling of spring hasn't really set in here, yet if you really look deeper you will notice that some plants have already begun that springy action of breaking through earth to manifest its destiny to blossom, like the daffodils in my garden. They are just waiting for the most perfect moment to blossom their delicate blooms of golden. This happens just when the light and temperature are ideal. Something I learnt from planting and reading about Narcissus is that their leaves need to be left alone till they wilt and become brown, which you can then cut off, as these allows bulbs to store enough energy for the next year. For such a short time in the year, for maybe 2 to 4 weeks, these blossoms are at its fullest and then spend the majority of the year storing under the earth in a kind of hibernation.

​So different it is with us humans in our day. We spend little time sleeping or having time to contemplate. We give a lot of energy for action but little for quiet, self-reflection. We wonder then why we are often so tired or rundown. Maybe it's time we learn something from the plants around us and take time for quiet reflection and storing, go to bed a little earlier and spend time during the day doing calming things such as reading or even just breathing. So that when spring officially hits, at the vernal equinox on March 21, with bright sunshine and blossoming plants, we can manifest our life blossoms with a feeling of powerful strength and be able to maintain this all season long.

Photo by user:Bru-nO pixabay
Diagram by Elaine