Rat 2017
Who is a Rat?
Years: 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008.
Month*: December
Hour: 11:00 pm – 01:00 am
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: Rat in Fire Rooster Year.
What is a Rat?
The Rat is yang water but with a hidden stem of yin Water, the major Water animal of Chinese metaphysics. All Water on this planet, unless interfered with by outside forces, is connected with and on the same level as all other Water. Sea level at Zeebrugge is the same as sea level at Miami. If I spill my cup of tea here in Surrey and you spill yours in Taiwan, sooner or later they’ll mix. It may take aeons but they’ll mix. This powerful idea may clarify the connection between Water and communication.
Someone said that we have two ears and one mouth for a good reason: that we should listen twice as much as we speak. The issues relating to Water are listening and speaking while keeping the ratios right. The Rat can easily miss this. Some of us are elected primarily to talk and the yang Water of the Rat says it’s you. The Rat is the talker of the Chinese Zodiac. As you know, an unbalanced or distressed Rat tends to clam up or run off at the mouth. Which will it be this year?
The Rat is supreme in the realm of ideas. It is said that when you can tell water from fire, you are a master. The blue of the sky at mid-summer, for instance is not water but fire. Who can identify this consistently? The Rat who is a planner and a plotter and a deep thinker, is the most likely candidate. He thinks ahead, sometimes to the detriment of his awareness of the present. This makes him a good chess player but not so great at poker. He is apt to be too controlling for games that require openness to good fortune. That sort of uncertainty can be painful. Your average Rat wants the credit and to get that he has to be in control.
In conversation you may find that the Rat second guesses in a very distinctive way: typically he gets his correspondent to commit to a position before he states his; a very useful quality in a teacher but not everyone’s cup of tea in a collaborator. The Dragon and the Monkey, even the Ox, may find this reassuring but it drives the Horse and the Tiger wild and to some extent even the Dog.
Being big talkers and travellers, Rats are traditionally suited to work involving communication: sales, oratory and persuasion. In the collaboration with the Rabbit, Rooster and Horse that Derek Walters (himself a Rat) calls the Flowers of Love, the Rat is the talker, the chatter-up if you will, where the Rooster provides the glamour, the Horse the passion and the Rabbit the stamina. A Rat with these additional animals present is effortlessly successful and charismatic. The missing animals indicate his weaknesses. None of them others however is at ease alone in the company of the Rat.
An unbalanced Rat talks too much and listens selectively. A balanced one gets it exactly right; he is fascinating talker and a skilled listener. But this wilful deafness can be a point of pride. Blessed with an orderly mind and excellent retention, a Rat can consider his ignorance of a subject a reflection upon the subject rather than upon himself. This sort of Rat needs to learn to value the convictions of others, especially if they are derived from premises he does not accept.
The Rat is a guardian, a watcher. Sometimes he is self-appointed and the unbalanced Rat has a particular blindness that leads him to believe that his opinion is an absolute. This is more accentuated and less well-informed in his partner the Ox in what some call the House of Creativity (or Cleverness). The relationship between the Ox and the Rat is less that of partners than of pupil and tutor but the Ox can be a particularly obdurate and dominating learner, sometimes drawing conclusions to which he is not entitled and sticking like a limpet to any conclusion he can justify. In these circumstances the Ox is not so much partner or indeed student of the Rat as tormentor. When Ox and Rat are together it is the Ox who calls the tunes.
A very conscious Rat can make good use of his blindness to the value of other people’s positions. She is likely to be able to explain things that baffle others and to derive laws from this gift. To have no explanation however is to open himself up to chaos. If he knows this about himself he can master even the most abstract discipline.
The Rat is versatile and multi-talented though not as notably so as the Pig of whom he is often jealous or the Dragon who can baffle him despite their mutual affinity. Yang water can speak of profligacy with money. The Rat is a brilliant small businessman but often a poor tycoon. In the power triad with the Dragon and Monkey, the Rat may appear to overvalue the hands-on deftness of the Monkey because he finds the Monkey easier to control and may envy the Dragon his magic.
And it is this potential for envy that is the other big weakness of the Rat and lays him open once more to the Rooster of the year who of course shares it. The full-on spontaneity of Fire has always drawn resentment from certain Rats. He can’t admire what he can’t himself master. This can lead to him not getting credit for originality of mind. Consider Water Rat Alan Turing of Enigma fame. And finally the Rat can be a fickle partner but an attentive parent, albeit one who may have favourites. The awakened Rat is absolutely even-handed; that in itself is quite a gift.
Rat in the Fire Rooster Year.
Special Stars: none.
So much to say, so little time.
In the Rooster year, the Rat is an active toe far or “plum flower” that is concerned with relationship and both empowered and empowering in this regard. You may – of all people – be the go-to agony aunt/uncle. Blame the Rooster. So however complicated your own domestic set-up, your help will be sought constantly. My advice is to respond. You are wise and benevolent and as anyone who does this for a living will tell you, condemned to start from a position of hypocrisy.
Our gifts lie under our curses and the thing is that the Rat has a gift for dealing with this stuff. You are able to communicate deep vulnerable emotion better than almost anyone. It’s just that it’s frightening. If neither the Wood of the Wood Sheep of 2015, nor the yang Metal of the Monkey drew you out, you’re a tough nut to crack. But the cracks are showing. Let them. Bliss follows. All you need is courage.
Precocious political pundit Owen Jones is a good example; he was born in 1984, making him a Wood Rat, the originator of ideas. It’s getting close to the time when he will have to step up. Ideas as Joe Gandolfo wrote, are a dime a dozen but the man who puts them into practice is priceless.
Someone said that we are all of us either in bliss or sulking all of the time. And most of us are sulking – bemoaning the tao that took something from us or fearing the future that may yet bring loss. Stop it. The Monkey Year was full of breaks and openings for you and it’s quite likely that you missed them. In any case whether you followed the floodwater to glory in 2016 or not, 2017 will be setting you new tests.
Helpfully you have in your corner this year the house-trained Moon who ensures that things are well-ordered; not a given for the Rat who typically delegates care of immediate surroundings. As (like the Rooster) one of the four toe fars or plum flowers, your energy makes you irresistible. No president or general or great leader gets far without a toe far somewhere in their ba zi. Some authorities consider them the sexiest. However where the Horse has sheer exuberance, the Rooster seduces and the Rabbit gently charms, your gift is that of eloquence. This may be subtle or under-developed but it’s there. Use it. Instead of sulking. The Rooster with whose sometime extroversion and shallowness you are generally uncomfortable, offers you power.
And of course the Rat is the talker of the zodiac. If you aren’t the one to talk there may be silence. As
Keith Reid wrote: “Write it down it might be read/Nothing’s better left unsaid.” This last little while however you may have found that your tongue has struggled for positive things to say. This is partly a function of the Ratty preference for dark over light – the Rats’ natural home is the North and her preferred time midnight at dead of Winter; there is a mordant pleasure in negativity, like touching an aching tooth with your tongue. But it’s also because you naturally favour talk over action.
Not that the fruits of your analysis will not be of great value. But (especially in the Rooster year) you’d do well to recognise the thin line between bemoaning a wrong and identifying it for attention. There are certain things in the world that you’d sooner weren’t there. But they are. Knowing this is not the same as settling for them. If you would raise yourself, this year is one of selfless action. Seek the helpless, the vulnerable and the dispossessed and notice how much harder life is for them.
You may start the year feeling diminished. You’ve been flattered by the Monkey who has now gone. But the diligent Moon sitting due North brings self-organisation. You can rely on that; everything will fall into place.
The unbalanced Monkey that drove you last year can be careless of the feelings of others; a little of this error may linger. So beware of pettiness, it bends you out of shape and wastes your time. And obsession. Yang Water is the Element of morbid obsession. The unwise Rat (whose time is dead of night) sits on the roofbeam and festers. The wise one knows the difference between what he can and can’t change and acts appropriately. Stop talking, act. You’ve internalised quite long enough.
The Rooster may have you feeling pulled simultaneously in more than one direction. Roosters are like that. Is your eloquence simply there to charm? Or is it for some, dare I say it, higher purpose? The Rat’s terror is to say too much and give away the farm. Which she’s likely to do all the time. Relax. Your frank eloquence is a disarming quality; it’s trying to hold back that gets up people’s noses. They know you think it – whatever it is – however discreet you are. And more to the point, what people make of your spouting is their business and their conclusions about you are none of yours. Fyi: you will be especially inspired in April-May and August.
2017 is likely to be a demanding year in which you’ll be overpowered – especially early on – both in the sense of having more charisma than you can handle and of recognising and bowing to higher power. Get used to it, I should.
Readers Digest version: let it go, it’ll happen anyway.
What’s to be done about it: seek more rather than less Water.
Amulet: Ox.
Feng shui advice: Water.
Helpful places: South East, Dragon (ESE).
Helpful times: April, May, August, December.
Health: care of lungs and mouth especially if you insist on remaining schtum.
Money: consistent, no surprises.
Relationship: you’re the duty Flower of Love.