Year of the Snake and Honorable Mentions in the Tarot

                                                 Happy Chinese Lunar New Year!

This year is the year of the snake and while snakes and people sometimes have relationships which are at odds with one another snakes have enjoyed a special place in the world mythology of all cultures for about as far back as we can remember.

The most popular snake in western mythology is going to be “that guy” mister apple tester snake in Eden but if we peer back into Anthropological time we notice that the snake was often a symbol of divine feminine power like the Minoan Snake Goddess.

“In the Sumerian and the Old-Babylonian literary tradition the snake was a wise creature and an expert for miraculous herbs of the eternal youth and immortality. A similar idea is contained in the Cretan myth about Glaukos, where the snake knows the herb of rebirth and resurrection.” (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/minoan_snake_goddess.html) Also, the Egyptians had the snake Goddess Kebechet.

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See, snakes are not so bad! In fact they are very powerful and have lived in human mythology since before we had writing. The snake is so important that she gets her own whole year in the Chinese tradition and the Coiled Power of the Kundalini is often depicted as a snake.

Snake energy is often depicted as feminine, sensual, slow then striking and plumbing the crevaces, the nooks and crannies only to then reemerge and lay sunning herself on a warm rock. My, isn’t this woman’s snake energy just beautiful?

So 2013 as a Water Snake year holds with it the power of curiosity, sensuality, graceful movement and striking when the time is right. How are you going to key into your sensual and curious self? How will 2013 be about exploration for you?

I particularly love how the Thoth deck depicts the snake eating its own tail, called the Ouroboros. “The Ouroboros often represents self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros).

The Tarot’s World card very clearly is the end of a major cycle and usually comes up in a reading when a client has really finished through a particularly long and important chapter in her life, like the snake though this is only a cycle and a new chapter is about to begin with its own lessons, joys and mysteries.

The Wheel of Fortune also can depict a snake which can depict the idea of the cyclical nature of things. The snake can also be seen as a figure 8 infinity symbol known as a lemniscate.

Both of these symbols have a deeper esoteric meaning that I encourage you to research if you are so inclined but the ancients had, I think, a better understanding of cyclical time and cyclical lives than we do in the west with our past present future or beginning middle end story ideas.

And if we look at quantum physics and time, we find that our ancients are in fact, right. Mathematically there is no reason why we perceive time like we do, it is known as the Arrow of Time but it is perception it is not really how time works! Science does not yet know why we perceive time as a linear function. The ancients and many indigenous cultures knew/know this. I have a theory on Tarot built on that idea (a blog post for another time).

But if you don’t care for any of that and just want to get your Chinese horoscope on then I found this lovely little website, have fun!