Monday 1/10 :: Lunar 12/8 :: Open/The Bow/Deer :: Hexagram 3 Sprouting/24 Return

It’s a beautiful day in a gentle week that repeatedly invokes our origins. (Just watch out for Tuesday.) Relax into today’s gentle swell, and open your heart to what the day brings. When we treat our responsibilities like they’re friends, suddenly we have a team instead of an adversary. I decided I was going to be friends with the acupuncture board exam, gave it props for tricky questions, and came out laughing after 8 hours of “collaborating.” Sometimes I do the dishes like that, too. (Other times I say “fuck you” to whatever my hair gets caught on, so there’s that.) The way we work is the work.

Retracing our steps brings us home today. Observing the natural cycles keeps us calm and clear, and helps be the process without thinking in terms of upward mobility or improvement. Become a means to endlessness. How many winters have you walked through? Which ancestors and lands call out to you? Let cyclical origins visit you today. We can find happiness in simple tasks like cooking and cleaning. Whoever shows up today is here to help. Long term benefit comes when you let people in. Let people help you.

in ancient Ireland
a paleolithic chef
discovers stone soup

Tuesday 1/11 :: Lunar 12/9 :: Shut/The Wings/Serpent :: Hexagram 3 Sprouting/44 Meeting

It’s a day of don’ts. The totemic animals are rams locking horns in confrontation (and/or copulation), and cobras in the grass, waiting to strike. Confrontation and seduction are likely. If we engage any of it, we will lose. Anxiously consulting the oracle makes it worse. Withdraw and cut your losses. Have good manners, respect your difficult family members, and move slowly. Just chill out, let the complexity pass, and you’ll be good to go tomorrow. Ming says “it’s an ideal day for retreat, meditation, and severing ties with everything. Don’t worry—it is not the end of anything! Let go anyway. Feel the freedom, inaction, and disconnectedness because it offers unlimited insight. Focus on your golf swing, and forget about how the kids are squandering their inheritance on cocaine.” Auspicious activities include retreat, burial, bank deposits, writing letters, acknowledging helpers, consulting a doctor, harvesting a garden, and enjoying music.

murmuration
counting the birds I’ve flipped

Wednesday 1/12 :: Lunar 12/10 :: Design/The Chariot/Earthworm :: Hexagram 3 Sprouting/28 Excess

Ox day, Ox month, Ox year. It’s a good day to plow ahead with whatever it is. Oxen are tough and determined with incredible endurance. Combined with the Silkworm, who symbolizes ceaseless industry, we can accomplish a lot today. We may find ourselves in an extraordinary situation that requires strenuous effort. The Ox and the Silkworm perfectly set us up to succeed. Things just fall into place: “A sprout breaks through the soil and turns toward the light of the sun.” The Chariot constellation governs traveling, wind, and wealth, and closes out the 28-day lunar mansion cycle. Auspicious activities include industry, building, remodeling (brings prestige), weddings, funerals, and travel. It’s very unfavorable to procrastinate or postpone.

green hands and a stone
the neanderthal in me
crushes black walnuts

Thursday 1/13 :: Lunar 12/11 :: Divide/The Horn/Crocodile :: Hexagram 3 Sprouting/50 Tripod Vessel

Pause to shed inessentials—skin if you’re a snake, stuff, emotions, habits, and ideas if you’re a person. Children are highlighted today. Let go of your rigid schedule and love them up. Give young people your undivided attention, including the kid in you. The day governs Spring, innocence, and that which is new. Invoke your sense of play, register the return of Spring, plant bulbs outdoors or seeds indoors, be a beginner, take a class, propose to him, initiate anything. When is the last time being bad or good at something didn’t even occur to you? Be that new. Opportunity is abundant, and we are supported by our ancestors.

my children’s first snow
the angels come down to earth
for an afternoon

Friday 1/14 :: Lunar 12/12 :: Full/The Neck/Dragon :: Hexagram 3 Sprouting/32 Constancy

All of the auspices are working together to tell us to withdraw, reassess, and stick with the routine. Prepare, polish, learn, firm up plans, and gather resources. The qi is forming patterns, and asks us not to act prematurely. Anything rushed or forced today causes great loss. Today’s constellation is the neck of an enormous dragon. It’s too strong, and is likely to cause us to overestimate our own strength. Good auspice happens when we withdraw and open ourselves to transformation and reform. Learning, recalibrating, and course-correcting brings good fortune. I just woke up from a dream of exaggerating my abilities to make for a better story. Today I’m looking at all the ways hyperbole undermines my integrity. I recommend we all start doing this to prepare for Tiger year, when we get trounced for any inkling of hypocrisy. The Neck also portends storms in all four seasons, so flights might get canceled. Do not build or bury the dead today. Go with what you know. Routine work, study, art, planning, analysis, reflection, and medical treatments go well.

shoveling first snow
we reshape the narrative
of supremacy

Saturday 1/15 :: Lunar 12/13 :: Level/The Root/Badger :: Hexagram 46 Ascending/Consult the Oracle

Now we can act. “From this position, all things look and are possible.” Today’s constellation, The Root, encourages us to remember where we come from. A plant literally cannot forget its roots, but many of us were encouraged to forget ours by ancestors who were trying to protect us. My Jewish relatives were among hundreds who fled the Ukrainian pogroms to Lockport, NY. Except for speaking a little Yiddish, they hermetically sealed off the old world in which those massacres occurred. If you do not value your roots, ask yourself why. There’s no shame in complicity in the spell of forgetting. The rest of us can take a while to catch up to what our bodies remember. We hold the key to integrating the gifts and grief that live through us. We don’t have to court trauma or linger in it to acknowledge the difficult parts of our past. Looking, feeling, and giving it an avenue of movement is enough. Gratitude, acknowledgement, and offerings are called for. Other auspicious activities include industry and production, moving, planning, medical treatments, finalizing divorce, and composing memorials. Spirits that cause illness are active today, so wear a mask and warm clothes.

muted memories
of grandpa’s socks on my hands
my very first snow

Sunday 1/16 :: Lunar 12/14 :: Settle/The Room/Hare :: Hexagram 46 Ascending/57 Compliance

Part of remembering our roots is belonging where we are. We are surrounded by relatives that want to be known. We can embed ourselves in our ecosystems one bird, one plant, one step at a time. Offerings are highlighted again today. Be the gift, and let the world open you. Maybe your art skills relieve every frustrated artist in your family who never got the chance. Today, I made my ancestors a really good cup of tea. My altar is simple: a picture of family members from my mom’s side, and a picture from my dad’s. They are doorways to everybody else. I have some art, stones, divinatory tools, a small lamp, and an open space in front where I can bring them food and drinks. I figure they like what I like; my preferences come from somewhere. Afterward, I compost the offering, or occasionally eat it, if they tell me to. Today is good for compliance, divination, humility, and all the success that emerges from these attributes. Pretty much everything goes well: industry and production, signing contracts, taking office, moving, feng shui adjustments, making your case, tests, medical treatments, small and large purchases, routine study, weddings, and burials.

first calligraphy
roots mingle in the darkness
of our common script

Thanks so much for reading, and have a great week. If you would like to receive the Weekly Weather as an email, just DM me your address.