Pig 2017
Animal Forecast 2017: 12. Not so boaring, outlook for the Pig in 2017
Who is a Pig?
Years: 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007.
Month*: November
Hour: 09:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Day: ask us
* Caution: the start of the Chinese month can be as early as the 4th & as late as the 9th, depending on the year. I can let you know this too.
Skip to: Pig in Fire Rooster Year.
What is a Pig?
The weakness and the strength of the yin water Pig is to think they know what is good for them. Generally they do, and the maddening thing is that they are actually right often enough to make advice close to impossible. By extension this means you may believe you know what is right for everybody else.
Versatile and wilful, gifted at whatever they do, the Pig is the sign of the inventor. Edison was a Pig, as is Hillary Clinton and Wikileaker Julian Assange. Perfectly-balanced Pigs can literally do almost anything but they don’t always handle the truth well. They don’t much like reflective advice from others and they often hate not to know for sure. Remember Fire Pig Elton John in “Tantrums and Tiaras”?
But vagueness is also uncomfortable for the Pig: Edison was of course an obsessive patenter, Hillary determined to get Wall Street onside in the teeth of her liberal credentials and Assange, confident that he knows better than anyone else what the world needs to know. This does not make any of them mistaken but the truth can be a moveable feast.
The Pig is communicative because it is a water sign. A balanced Pig (perhaps March birth around mid-afternoon) is a great audience and typically gets the listening/talking ratio just right. An unbalanced Pig can shoot off at the mouth and give (or take) away the farm before she knows it. Does any of this sound like – to pluck a name from nowhere – Earth Pig Simon Cowell?
More likely, you are prone to withdrawing into silence. The Pig can sulk but can also withdraw simply out of disinterest and be perfectly cheerful when challenged on the withdrawal. The Pig child needs just the right mixture of carrot and stick. Too much disincentive and he is suppressed or resentful. Too much carrot and he can be smug. The balanced Pig is the most sensitive of the animals; the unbalanced Pig suffers an empathy bypass. As the parent of a Pig, just remember you are instrumental in this process. Your Piglet does not need to become a boor.
The Pig embodies the wood of creativity so they can be as adept with the written as the spoken word as well as the yang earth that makes them able to concentrate deeply. Many Pigs prefer to study in noisy rooms and many are effortless A-students as teachers of third year undergraduates of 2017 may notice. Bear in mind though that there is a near-epidemic of depression and anxiety among millennials and that Water is the associated element. Don’t ever take a Pig’s good cheer for granted.
The Pig does not tend to like the Snake; one way or another they immobilise each other. The Snake’s intimate, the Monkey, can be a source of annoyance also.
The Pig’s most natural team is with the Rabbit and the Sheep. This is a domestic alliance. Together these three naturally make anywhere home. A perfect family might be Pig father, Rabbit mother and Sheep first-born. Once home, the Rabbit entertains while the Sheep ensures compatibility and the Pig does skilfully the tasks that are beyond her partners.
Traditionally the Pig also enjoys the company of the Tiger as Water Pig David Furnish can attest. You might think she’d be more cautious but she knows that the Tiger is uninterested in conquering anyone he considers easy meat. Of course he’s missing something here but the Pig’s fearless approach often disarms the Tiger before he realises. And by the bye, Pig’s literary ambition may burgeon in a Tiger year and flourish in a Rabbit one.
Although she may herself be more adventurous, the Pig also understands the loyal and consistent Dog. She respects the fact that every home needs its guardian. These two will tend to develop a camaraderie with its own distinctive banter. The Pig respects the Dog’s diligence and the Dog knows the Pig will compensate for his weakness.
The Pig also operates well as factotum for a group consisting of the Snake (whom she can’t otherwise stand for any length of time) the Monkey (see above) and the Tiger. For these she is, interestingly, the peacemaker and setter of standards. Without the Pig this grouping whose common interest is travel and mobility, can’t get off the ground.
One final note: the Pig suffers what is called the self curse. That is to say that she has limited patience with other Pigs. The Chinese character for a house is one Pig under a roof. Just the one.
Pig in the Fire Rooster Year.
Stars include: goo san, tin yute, yik ma
Whose life is this anyway?
The restless yik ma is the key to understanding the Pig’s year. Nothing and no one seems good enough while you cast your net far and wide in search of something that is. This is principally in the realm of creativity but you may be tempted to silence the unease with physical movement; travel and variety as well as job- and partner-changing. Stand your ground and it’s possible you’ll notice it’s all down to you. No one is to be relied upon and everyone is, in this year in which your star ascends.
As long as you realise that you are at the heart of your own life, this will be a year of great progress. Tin yute gwai yan offers help from elders, the experienced and the well-connected from the very beginning of the Solar Year (February). This assistance may itself however come disguised as a cry for help. Notice. Btw: the goo san star implies lgbtq issues.
Because you are clearly winning, competition fair and unfair may be a theme of your Rooster Year. The Pig is essentially Water, the Rooster Metal, Metal supports Water; bingo! You can rely on that support although it’s not central to your needs right now. What you are likely to need is recognition of the light that shines from you and of the darkness you have passed through. Stop now perhaps and consider how much you have done for the benefit of others. You deserve that recognition.
It may be that you’ve recently completed a long stretch of self-questioning. At each crisis the solution was recognising your own agency within it. And the times it deepened were those when you gave in to the twin demons of self-pity and blame. You may have seen the last little while – since the Snake year of 2013, possibly – as an inexplicable game of snakes and ladders; as if progress turning to fallout were a random thing. It’s not; it’s simply ping-pong between your own demons. This is not the mystery you’ve been beefing it up to be. But the Metal of the Rooster boosts all that is within you that is yin.
Water which includes the self-examination and self-doubt. This will pass. That’s the great thing about cycles. Constant emotional disclosure navigating between the rock of self-pity and the hard place of stoicism brings you home.
Your tendency has been to neglect yourself in order to attend to others. And you’ve got out of balance. You are the ministering angel without whom many would have succumbed to the dark. But you’re human. And proximity to darkness can threaten to suck us in. There’s a balance here. The presence of the yik ma Star could easily turn this into an extremely restless year. The big move you’ll be considering by September is unlikely of itself to be the answer because dodging the bullet doesn’t spike the gun.
The question to ask may be this: what is your next task? The answer to that question is within; once you’ve eliminated what sounds good, what would have pleased your parents and what is dictated by duty, it’s what remains. Your best policy this year would be to come clean and pursue this calling.
We all know that blame disempowers but we may not know quite why. It’s kind of obvious actually; we are powerless to recognise our responsibility while we’re giving it away. A soul “in a state of rebellion can not receive grace” is what Oscar Wilde (affected btw by the provocative lgbtq issues brought to you this year by goo san) wrote in De Profundis. And consider what torture and loss he had to go through to get to that realisation. You don’t need to. Self-pity takes us out of the game altogether; it kind of disappears everyone else. What’s also true is that we have to self-maintain.
The Pig’s weakness is generally a failure to communicate deeply. You are so competent that your peers think you have everything handled. Including their stuff. Nobody does. At least not 100% of the time. Because you are essentially yin Water, you may understate. The solution is very often yang Water; that’s deep communication. There’s a balance. Under certain conditions such Water means travel or relocation, personal, professional or other. This year however fresh scenery may be helpful but don’t undertake re-invention lightly. Talk; it’s the year of communication.
Readers Digest version: stick to your guns/follow your Star/trust.
What’s to be done about it: honest self-examination followed by action.Amulet: none. Feng shui advice: yang Water.
Helpful places: North or East2 Rabbit (due East).
Helpful times: February, March, July.
Health: fatigue and depletion possible.
Money: expect to be invested in.
Relationship: generally supportive.