Chinese New Year Overview
Year of the Earth Rat~2008

Find out YOUR ANIMAL SIGN in the Chinese/Lunar Zodiac.

Rat

Your logical mind and industrious nature could have you reaching well beyond your balance point as the New Year arrives, causing a bottleneck in your creation stream while you attempt to control the cosmic flow. So don’t start this year forcing your creations or you’ll end up washing away your gains with discouraging regularity. Instead, observe your environment and the reflections within it so you can see when you're reinforcing struggle, and then dismantle it in favour of balanced progress.

Potential

You could easily get bogged down in work commitments this year and find that you really have no space or time to enjoy yourself. This could cause work colleagues to interpret your activity as stress and, in so doing, you magnetize less opportunities than you'd hoped. So embrace quality, not quantity, and your progress will appear constant rather than disorganized as you scurry along at an erratic pace.

Apply: Balance

Relationship

Close relationships may become more earnest and intense this year as many around you will be seeking a long term commitment or be asking you to clarify your contribution to their lives. This could be unnerving during late February when you feel you’re being put on the spot and your world temporarily appears to polarize against you. But this is a passing phase of clarification, so don’t fight those around who really have your best interests at heart. Instead, be witty and sensitive and recognize others’ sincerity.

Apply: Allowance

Healing

In many ways you’d expect your own year to be one when everything is made easier. But remember, you’re coming face-to-face with your own nature and this could easily fuel your ego and imbalance. This could be reflected with great surges and ebbs in your own energy. So this is the time to take your own health very seriously and let others show you the way when it comes to winding down rather than winding you up!

Apply: Peace

Ox

You’ll rise and shine this year as your inner truth comes to the surface of self and you’re more confident about your creative vision. Others will take notice as you undergo a profound material and spiritual overhaul which enables you to live through love rather than struggle, and to instigate long term changes that are both self loving and sensitive to your environment.

Potential

Rat will invite you to dance to a different tune in 2008 when work and play overlap seamlessly. Although this degree of ease could be unfamiliar, even unpredictable, there’s no cause for alarm. You’re now establishing a creative foundation that’s supportive, flexible and allowing and it’s only your resistance to ease that stands between you and a cycle of deeply fulfilling creations.

Apply: Ease

Relationship

Rat is only too willing to introduce you to many new faces in 2008. But it's long standing friends and those who’ve offered creative wisdom over the last five years that you’ll seek out, even to the point of rekindling old flames or past associations. Although Ox often tries to bring past contacts into present circumstances, this year you’ll not be able to hang on to the ghosts of your past. What’s gone is gone, and your relationship focus is well and truly in the Now. So pay attention to what’s right in front of you rather than keep looking behind and miss all the action.

Apply: Detachment

Healing

Your health could take a progressive downturn in the second half of the year because you have not heeded your surroundings warning you of your need for rejuvenation. Your stamina levels are not what they used to be so don’t rely on being able to treat yourself badly because all you’ll create is the results of self neglect.

Apply: Self Love

Tiger

Diligent communications and innovations this year will ensure that you remain aligned with the flow of change. Many aspects of your life will not go according to plan in 2008 but this will not mean you’re excluded or fall out with the rest of community. You’re simply learning from your neighbour, Ox, how important it is to speak your inner truth rather than what you think is more important or even dramatic.

Potential

Work is up and down this year when you regularly create the opposite of what you intended, or exactly what you wanted, and you have no idea how you achieved it. Being a strongly intuitive sign, understand that much of your progress this year comes from allowing the chaotic and mischievous flows of Rat. If you try and control them before they’ve arrived at their intended location, they’ll turn back on you and nip your progress in the bud, right there and then!

Apply: Cooperation

Relationship

Discovering new layers of your relationship with yourself could mean friends and family see less of you when they expected you to be the centre of community. Rat year could become too hectic for you by June when you’ll be glad to get away from it all in order to rebalance your inner peace. So don’t wait until July to start this journey or you’ll depart in a very grumpy mood and not return to your social scene until late September.

Apply: Inner Truth

Healing

Your emotional body could easily be overcharged by the comings and goings of 2008 to the point where minor nuisances become major neuroses. So don’t combine the striving Rat with the paranoid Cat and worry yourself into problems that actually become real when they were only ever imaginary!

Apply: Peace

Rabbit

Rat year will seem like a series of mazes which you’ll have to feel your way through. Naturally a patient and easy-going sign, this’ll cause you few problems. But you’re required to leap a lot further out of your comfort zone in 2008 which will require much greater detachment than you’ve experienced previously.

Potential

You’ll be communicating on a whole new level this year when you find that you can combine business with pleasure and many of the personal insecurities that have been troubling you previously no longer affect you. Maintaining your levels of self discipline could be difficult after June, so make sure you aren’t tempted to spring all Summer long and then be left to cram in your workload from September to December.

Apply: Release

Relationship

Certain relationships will have passed their sell-by date and, being a sensitive sign, you’ll find it hard to say your goodbyes. Rat will have plenty of charming fill-ins but you’ll not be looking for light entertainment. The sincere bunny will be looking for unconditionally loving relationships and the courage to be the loving qualities that, this year, you’ll realize are so important to you.

Apply: Unconditional Love

Healing

Rat isn’t short of healing suggestions in 2008. But you could get confused and will find it even easier to postpone healing decisions that the voice of ‘avoidance’ tells you will be simpler later. But resistance will only make your healing changes more complicated. So rebalance each day at a time, and realize that no one else can do this for you.

Apply: Self Discipline

Dragon

New beginnings abound this new year. However, you won’t be able to blame Rat if your ego plays a trick or two on you and leads you up a very familiar garden path called ‘Reverting to Type’. This is a year of many crossroads where you could turn away from logic and into the unknown. You have your legendary Dragon courage, but will you reach for pride instead of acknowledgement when the biggest change of all comes knocking at your door?

Potential

Rat may seem to turn against you in 2008, tempting you with denial rather than truth. To make matters worse, your ego could be caught red handed running away with your abundance and capacity for change. So before you start arguing with Rat, remember he’s one of the biggest problem solvers in the Zodiac. Moreover, you’ll definitely need Rat’s help if you are to unravel the uncomfortable situation you find yourself in during April and this will determine whether you make a success of 2008 or not.

Apply: Allowance

Relationship

You couldn’t ask for a more encouraging and supportive relationship year. But this will only come into being if you’re prepared to go where Rat guides you. Ego will tell you that Rat is conning you into a dead end that’ll make you look foolish. But in truth, this is your way out to a relationship abundance that you’ve been seeking for many a cycle, one which is now within your grasp.

Apply: Openness

Healing

You could wear your patience, your courage and your health down this year by simply being unwilling to listen. So don’t dim your light because you fear being wrong. See that being open to change is the most valuable way to balance your mood swings and to realize that you can only command your legendary power through understanding.

Apply: Transmutation

Snake

You’re seeking to balance your masculine and feminine energy in 2008. However, this also means you’ll be balancing your intuition and your everyday plans. Snake is often seen as the artist or the mystic of the Zodiac, but Rat will challenge you this year to see if there is indeed any method in your madness, or any depth to your considerable personal charisma.

Potential

There is no point in waiting for your world to come to you in 2008. Rat will be quick to remind you that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. So spend the first few months of the new year investigating your creative intentions so you can separate the practical from the fantastical. Anything is indeed possible, but to create a dream, you’re required to work with what’s right in front of you—the cosmic flow of creation.

Apply: Awareness

Relationship

You'll make many intuitive and benevolent connections this year. But, as Rat won’t hesitate to tell you, it’s up to you to follow these up. Your financial situation may appear to be cramping your style but cooperating with the help and suggestions of others is where you’ll make the most progress and learn the most about your relationship with yourself.

Apply: Action

Healing

Rat will give you the runaround this year and this could mean you hide your anger and disappointment until later in the year when it becomes impossible to contain. Although you’re the genteel bohemian by nature, you could find that there are many rude awakenings in Rat year. So find some easy-going, self-care regime so that you’re ready to rise with the flow of change rather than sleep through it and miss out.

Apply: Balance

Horse

You’ll trot into Rat year with high hopes and expectations. Although 2008 is stacked high with potentiality, it’ll only get going when you begin to voice your inner agenda within your outer world. Surrendering to your higher agenda will take lots of courage but, as Rat reminds you, if you don’t trust, you don’t flow.

Potential

The Water influence of Pig and now Rat has meant that in the past year, what you feel has begun to replace what you think. In 2008, no longer will you make choices based on what you can control, you’ll be more inclined to make your choices through cooperation and collective effort. As a result, one of your greatest achievements in 2008 could be letting go so that you can be with the flow.

Apply: Surrender

Relationship

Relationships may appear to churn disruptively in 2008 when you feel you’re confronted with the best and worst of times. In reality, Rat will be showing up your comfort zones and resistance to change. But, come April, you’ll see just how smart Rat really is and will have the insights, incentives and the means to reinvent yourself.

Apply: Inner Vision

Healing

Insecurities and embarrassments will be the greatest source of your healing in 2008. They can be easily recycled into usable fuel if you‘re willing to be honest about the changes that need to be made. Your health will be strongly linked to your level of emotional fulfillment, so invest in joyous change and you’ll go from strength to strength.

Apply: Humour

Potential

Rat promised many changes at the beginning of the year and most of them will be crammed into your working life. This could be a shocking change of pace from February to March but when you review how much has come together in such a short time, you'll be patting yourself, as well as everyone else, on the back.

Apply: Acceptance

Relationship

You’ll have no trouble maintaining relationships and building unconditionally loving contributions to your world. However the one relationship that will give you niggling doubts this Rat year is the one with your Higher Self. But before you start to feel cast aside or out of touch, realize that you’re getting a core upgrade of your intuition which will be the crowning glory of your relationship year.

Apply: Expansion

Healing

There are certain aspects of your health that you wish someone else would take care of but, alas, no one else can. So don’t wait until mid year to balance your self-care deficit as energetic Rat could exhaust your gentle nature. Instead of trying to keep up, why don’t you just keep in balance within yourself?

Apply: Unconditional Love

Monkey

Rat is often a witty and charming companion but don’t listen to the volumes of exaggeration that could easily flow your way in late February. This is a year when heart and mind will cooperate well, even if Rat can’t resist butting in from time to time.

Potential

Wisdom and patience are your most important assets in 2008. Although Rat will give you some helpful pointers, there’ll be no way to speed up your year. Nor will you see that you would have wanted to when you arrive at certain crucial points. Linear projections could disappear mid year but be replaced with much more expansive and exciting horizons. So be prepared to trust.

Apply: Freedom

Relationship

Unconditional Love will play a huge part in 2008 and you’ll be more emotionally fulfilled but also more disorientated than you were in Pig year. Reassessments of how you feel will be much more frequent and supportive to your general sense of well being, even if your ego doesn’t like the interim periods of adjustment. So if you want to feel more deeply and wholeheartedly, 2008 will make your dream come true.

Apply: Willingness

Healing

There’ll be a considerable acceleration in your working and personal life this year and this could put a lot of strain on your nervous system. So make sure you find regular and spontaneous ways to release stress and rebalance your emotional body with the rest of your physical and spiritual nature.

Apply: Release

Rooster

Although many in your life may be ignorant of the fact that you like to spend time on your own, in 2008 it’ll become a significant path of personal growth. Others may think you’re keeping yourself to yourself, but in truth you’ll be working out what you believe so you can apply it with enthusiasm and gentleness.

Potential

You’ll seek a more spiritual approach to work this year as more of the reflections in your world trigger realizations within yourself. This new spiritual dynamic may take others by surprise but as you've always been recognized for your lateral thinking, the leap between lateral and spiritual won’t actually appear all that far and the benefits will be abundantly clear.

Apply: Diligence

Relationship

Rat will encourage you to be more confident in relationships this year when a sudden change in direction asks you to speak your truth. Many Roosters may consider making a firmer commitment in loving relationships but not be aware of the personal changes that will come as a result. However, all in all this is definitely a year to crow about your increased level of fulfillment as you strut your stuff into a new state of being.

Apply: Confidence

Healing

Taking on too much too quickly could have you collapsed in a pile of feathers this year simply because you underestimate the amount of emotional change you’re undergoing. So don’t pile your relationship diary, as well as your working diary, high with commitments or you could miss out on them all, being flat on your back with fatigue.

Apply: Support

Dog

Rat promises to lend a helping hand in 2008 while you lay a completely new relationship foundation. But remember, Rat knows a lot of everyone, including the famous and the infamous. So don’t think that every introduction is going to contribute to turning over your relationship new leaf. You and you alone need to discern the intentions behind their actions and not just accept everything you encounter without question.

Potential

Rat is asking you to be brutally honest about your level of working fulfillment this year. Are you working really hard for something that you love? Are you working just for the money? Are you finding it hard to do anything? If you are willing, Rat can help you revitalize your working equation and support you into new directions and a greater balance between what you want to experience and what you're actually experiencing.

Apply: Rebalancing

Relationship

Every Dog lives to be loved but, as Rat will show you this year, approval or flattery is as close as you sometimes get to love, rather than experiencing the genuine article. If you’re tired of being close but never getting close to the fulfillment that you seek, then take some time to discover love in all its forms and in spontaneous surprises with a little help from your friends.

Apply: Discovery

Healing

Although you can get trapped in glamour and high flying, in 2008 you could decline Rat’s colourful offers so that you can settle into the simple life. You’re never at your best in hectic circumstances and the chatty challenges of Rat could easily leave you cold. So listen to your inner-most calling and you ‘ll find out what’s best for your health.

Apply: Sensitivity

Pig

An optimistic start to the year could become dull if you’re unable or unwilling to follow up on some unusual but potentially progressive opportunities. Rat will appear to punish hesitancy this year when in truth it‘ll be your self doubt, not Rat’s interference, that sends your opportunities packing.

Potential

Your working life appears to be anything but smooth this year. With ups and downs and roundabouts, you may not know whether you are coming or going by August, much less inclined to continue. So make some honest assessments in late February and be prepared to change your working foundation because this willingness is key in allowing past imbalances to pass you by.

Apply: Clarity

Relationship

Don’t be tempted to look into the past for answers to relationship quandaries in 2008. If you try to hold on to what you think is right, rather than feel and understand what's in front of you, your resulting disappointments and even discouragements could be difficult to bare. Rat will be prompting you, even prodding you, to go with the flow rather than drag behind expecting everyone else to feel sorry for you.

Apply: Honesty

Healing

Your appetite and diet of life will change considerably in 2008 and this could be difficult to digest from August onwards. What’s important is that you understand that your health is related to how you deal with the past and, if you hold on to what no longer serves you, your energy levels will diminish considerably. So make a pact with your fellow Water sign, Rat, and agree to support cleansing and the health benefits that come as a result.

Apply: Transformation