Two main factors dominate the cosmic weather of the new year; one occurs every twelve years, and the other about every 250 years.
Let’s begin with the more frequent: the flight of the dragon.
Oriental animal years are based on commonly-known beasts such as rats, oxen, tigers, cats and so forth, except for the exception to the rule, who this year takes flight February 9th, which launches The Year of the Dragon.
During a Dragon year each of us are put to the task of uncovering our uniqueness, our larger-than-life mystical identity; the great mythopoetic quest our soul signed up for when it chose to return from spirit to Earth during this Crossroads of the Ages.
Humanity is being given the choice between Love and Oblivion. If you were born in a Year of the Dragon (those people currently around 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84 and 96 years old) this goes double for you.
Last January, we entered a year some Oriental countries see as Rabbit and others as Cat. I know cats much better so that’s how I see it. Cats are the animals that stay poised in rapt attention, with very sharp senses that tune into all movements in their environment. The cat in you has been summoned to drop out of your mind into your senses, tuning into your surroundings with keen acuity, asking What’s going on here? Who is this other one? What are they bringing me? But in February that tiny catlike domain will explode into the huge soaring expanse of the Dragon.
Around the world a great battle is being waged for a tremendous prize: the future of humanity.
In the 1960s at the dawning of the Aquarian Age, a burst of love consciousness erupted, recruiting teenagers like me to leave the homes we’d known and hitchhike to San Francisco to get in on the new world busy being born then. Politics, art, fashion, religion and politics were infused with the sense of freedom from tired and stale ways of relating. More than anything else it was the songs of that time that carried the revolution, as for a few years many albums that came out didn’t just offer new music but portals to whole new worlds through their vibrations, lyrics and cover art.
Pluto in Aquarius during the Year of the Dragon demands that you strip off your disguise and use dragon fire to burn up the parts of you that are inauthentic or obsolete, and get nakedly down to essence.
The big hulking shadows of our time can be countered by one small, simple, constant, ongoing practice from you: Presence.
Where we are tempted to check out we must learn to check in.
Where the world’s strange changes steal our soul we must muster dragon power to realize that love is always stronger than hate and your presence is the antidote to billions of people tuning out, turning off and going numb.
If we each come back to center, feel what we truly feel, and join forces here, the human race may pull off the impossible during the next two decades, and finish the Revolution in Consciousness we began so long ago, when so many songs, even on AM radio, carried banners of love and freedom. Please join the flight!
