2014: Year of the Green Horse

2014: Year of the Green Horse    January, 2014Putney Mountain, Vermont As the Year of the Snake culminates a year of shedding, there's a lot of rawness and bruises in the air. The task ending in 2013 is the job of releasing everything that no longer serves the new you that's been struggling to emerge from the skin of the past. January is the final month of the Snake when whatever you've needed to release that you haven't yet, will be exacerbated until you do.                                                On the final day of January the Green Horse takes over from the Snake, and in oriental thought green is the element of wood, which means structure is an issue this year. Numerologically 2014 is a 7 year, a year of Testing, therefore the Green Horse is likely to test your life structures and draw your attention to any gap that exists between the vast fertile fields of your creative imagination and the life you're living.                      The Horse is the most passionate animal, with two main drives: The drive for freedom The drive to claim the object of your passion. By Nisachar The 2014 Green Horse Year will light up your passion (including its obstacles, which the Horse takes as hurdles on a track), and put you through your paces to test the structural limits of your dreams and realities. Where dream meets reality here and now, as well as further down the track, that's what a Green Horse sets its sights on. The Horse is a fiery creature, headstrong and yet sensitive, ultra-relational, yet ultra-free, and this year tests you to learn how both sides of you can feed rather than destroy each other. Where personal freedom enhances relationship you'll be given a horse's go-ahead to speed down the track. Where personal freedom conflicts with relationship you've got some buckling down and cleaning up to do. Horses are also extremely psychic in a way that links them with the main players of their life. The ongoing psychic conversations you maintain with those you bond with are another source of stimulation and transformation this year, because we all engage in these silent dialogs, that have much more effect on the way things go than we normally realize. As you use the Horse's psychic sensitivity to clarify your inner dialogs, you can clear the underlying root of relationship tangles, and lead yourself and others to open territory. Where the underlying dialogs are unclear you've got some work to do. The more you clear the channel of communication between you and yourself, the more you learn the truth of your underlying statements to others. When a Horse bonds with someone in a primal physical way, he or she becomes elated to have finally found someone to run with. If the link between both of you is spiritual as well as physical, and is supported by the mystical union of all things, this year your relationship will go the distance, leaping hurdles into a promised land where dreams come true. But where your love is unsupported by a greater good you'll have to slow that gallop to a trot, and get sober. The same urge the Horse has to run with others makes it hard to settle down into deeper sustaining rhythms that give life structure and meaning, and so a Horse Year is likely to create unsettlement and panic regarding safety, security and stability, and how they relate to passion and freedom. The sheer ardor and driving lust often upends the mature Horse's need to settle down and stabilize all those bright young dreams. But that lust can be expanded to a lust for life, a yearning urge to free so many parts of our stuck existence, and plenty of desire will be on hand for that this year. In 2014 we're being taken for quite a ride by the Green Horse's need to stretch far and wide into the fullest life territory you can rightfully claim as your own. This means issues of boundaries, borders and broad expanses will come up repeatedly, to challenge your ability to run free as well as settle down. How do borders and boundaries combine with freedom and dreams? That's what we must explore in the coming year. Like humans the Horse is a contradictory animal, and must learn to steer a course that is seldom straight and narrow, but more often runs on paradox. Until you gain inner spiritual strength from wrestling with this paradox, you're likely to remain driven by false riders who dig their spurs into your ribs and take you places you don't really need to go. From Spiralmuse The gates of your 2014 gallop will get thrown open to passion, desire, mischief , contradiction and rebellion, as you wrestle with freedom versus passion, bridling at the irony of yourself and others. The test at hand in this 7 Year is to draw you into challenges than can teach you if your rebelliousness has deeper motivation and service in it, rather than just acting out to gain attention. 2014 Sun Signs Aries This already-headstrong sign is even more so in the Year of the Horse. Just remember the person who's most standing in your way is you from a past life that you haven't yet resolved. Until you do you'll keep recreating some new version of a stuck old story. Taurus A bull and a Horse, both barnyard animals, can be each other's allies. Some creative invention is being invited to come out of you, so that you can run free in that new field and grant yourself eternal innocence, which is your great hidden strength. Gemini Both Gemini and the Horse crave freedom and yearn to bring on the bright future, and clear away false visions of our times. You're given the go-ahead to innovate this year, and open clear paths forward for yourself and others. Sometimes everyone is waiting for you to take the first step and open the gate. Cancer Cancer tends to get stuck in habitual thought patterns, and the Year of the Horse is the time to creatively push yourself to determine whether the thought forms you've been carrying are actual realities of the way things are, or obsolete baggage you must let go of. Leo Leo's great danger is playing to the crowd and getting caught in a superficial version of identity, rather than taking the hard path by digging down into your deeper core identity. In the Year of the Horse it's time to dig down deep and find out what makes you you. Virgo Both Virgo and the Year of the Horse are about structure, so this year you enter the Crafts Shop of life to restructure what you're doing. A new approach may be necessary to master this art of life, or else a refinement of your previous approach. Your particular irony is that both life and you are already elegantly suited for each other, even at the times it least seems so. Libra Libra and the Horse crave setting self and other free - it's the deepest passion of both, so this year Libra must face anything in the way of true freedom, and grow stronger and clearer in the process. As usual, this path demands striking a balance between trusting and honoring yourself and others. Scorpio There's residual leftover from last year's Year of the Snake, which Scorpio resonates with more than this year - it's hard to imagine a scorpion befriending a horse! this means remember to clean up your past karma before you follow the equine call to freedom, and don't bypass old relationship patterns that contain the seeds of rebirth in the spring. Sagittarius Since a centaur is part horse, the part of you that relishes life as an adventure journey and ongoing vision quest means don't take ambition so seriously this year that your ego gets stuck there, but recognize the open-ended quality of life as a beautiful endless ride with stages of development along the way. Capricorn The headstrong nature of both goat and horse means watch for debates and disputes this year, and remember that you're so much more deep and magical than any ego-conundrums you get caught in. Goat magic is the place where nitty-gritty passion and desire radiate strongly enough to bring dreams down to earth. Aquarius The time of Aquarius is at hand, where it has to become basic daily truth that everybody on the planet is all one. This is not just a leftover acid dream from the 1960s, but something you must act on this year by seeking out your fellow tribes and councils to put head and heart together and create structures to express that oneness. Pisces This year you'll bridle at family issues that have gotten confining - open your heart in compassion so you can be of true service not just to everyone else but to yourself as well. It's either time to cut yourself loose from the family or take them all with you into that deeper zone you've been poised waiting on the edge of.     Who Are You Really?  What Are You Here for?           How Much Longer Are You Going to Wait?                                       *           *            * Mark Borax is a master Soul Level Astrologer and bestselling author who lives in Vermont and writes the monthly Cosmic Weather Report email newsletter. He offers readings over the telephone and in-person, and classes that catalyze individual evolution.