Snake, the great mystic of the zodiac, is ruled by the element of Yang Fire. Yang Fire controls Yin Metal, melting and liquifying metal until it loses all form. Because of these opposing elements - Yang Fire and Yin Metal, the Yijing hexagram associated with this month is “kui” 睽, or Contradiction.
“Kui” is also translated as opposition and estrangement. It represents going into isolation, exile, and being outcast. It denotes the act of diverging, deviating, and turning away. It represents those who voyage outside the norms, such as an intermediary, shaman, or wandering sage. This is a journey into the borderlands and shadowlands that develops one’s ability to see through the ancestor’s eyes.
Five months into 2020, estrangement is now the new normal. We have arrived in the hinterlands and we have to figure out how to settle in. Exile is now our new home. The pandemic has made us aliens to our former reality, defamiliarizing what we knew to be familiar. This time is characterized by reality being flipped on its head and we are being forced to face the contradictions that have surfaced as a result.
The Yin Metal Snake teaches us that tension through opposites is more fruitful than easy alliances. The unity created by contrasting forces is more meaningful than easy collaborations. In WWII, the Allied forces consisted of the US, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China. What gives this alliance deep significance is that it was not easily achieved: many contradictory motivations, values, and forces had to come together in order to make their common goal possible. We are facing similar historic times, where we must rely on the forces of dissonance in order to achieve our greater common goals.
There are other ways to interpret this theme. With the death toll climbing due to Covid-19, one could say the planet is populated with many spirits and ghosts at this time. The energy of Contradiction signifies transforming the negative power of the ghost world into creative tension with the living. Symbolically, this is a time of reckoning with the “ghosts” that haunt our living reality. In other words, the subconscious layers of intent and delusion are being met with real impact and consequences.
The broken systems of extraction and exploitation, the fallouts and bailouts perpetuated by greed, the lack of basic safety nets are all coming out of the shadows. Even in the most mundane scale of personal hygiene and public conduct, we are being called to take utmost responsibility for the collective impact of our individual choices. We must decide how to take the negative power of our “ghosts” - what haunts our choices and actions - into alignment and integrity with the living.
This month we are asked to take inventory of the contradictory forces of our lives and seek their creative potential. Remember that all things were created by the primordial dance of yin and yang. In fact, the yin/yang symbol is actually an animation: it shows yin and yang creating each other, which results in the birth of all things in the universe. From the height of darkness (yin) lies the seed of yang; at the height of light (yang) lies the seed of yin. All things are born from their opposites.
Working with the themes of this month:
We must see the forces of resistance in our lives as fuel for creative tension. One example of this is working with the themes of discipline and relaxation. If your home life is your primary environment right now, knowing the difference between self-care and self-indulgence can be difficult to discern. Self-care is not simply about feeling good. True self-care actually comes from discipline; self-discipline then leads to taking accountability. Self-care cannot be accomplished without being totally responsible for yourself.
Sometimes self-care is doing the things that do not feel good. It is going to the doctor, seeing your therapist, making a difficult phone call, taking care of your paperwork, your eating habits, your finances. We’ve bifurcated self-care as an escape from responsibility. But true self-care is being totally responsible for your own health, well-being and happiness. One of the biggest lessons that can be gleaned from quarantine is how our inner autonomy is born from outer self-control.
How have you been navigating oppositional forces at this time? There are too many themes to write about in depth, so here are just a few to reflect on.
Allowing and resisting
Freedom and limitations
Grief and praise
The carnal and the digital
Boundaries and interconnectedness
Opening and closing
Death and hunger for life
How might these paradoxes create, inform and create a dynamic relationship with each other? How do they generate creative tension and deeper meaning in your life?