Lunar New Year 2023: Year of the Water Rabbit…or Cat

Happy New Year! January 22 marks the start of the year of the rabbit in the lunar calendar. The classical Chinese calendar is steeped in natural influences from the twelve animals to the five elements. This is the year of the cat in the Vietnamese calendar, we’ll get to that later.

Now, Chinese astrology is not really the point of this site. On the other hand, there is an aspect of nature and science nested within the traditions of the horoscope. Additionally, the various methods of marking the passage of time give us varying new years. Those are some of the ideas that we feature here.    

The Water Rabbit

The rabbit in the zodiac is associated with a kind, quiet personality that masks confidence and strength. Change seems to be a theme for 2023, according to the horoscope. This year is a time for letting go of things that haven’t been successful and embracing new opportunities in life. I don’t profess to believe in horoscopes of any kind. Even still, it is clever to read the phrasing of the predictions and notice how vague expressions can be interpreted to mean something. In a way, our minds attempt to make order out of chaos.

The water part of this particularly drew me in, in fact, all the elements.  The classical Greek elements fire, water, and earth are represented, but instead of air, there’s wood and metal. There’s a pattern in the grouping of the elements, like a cosmically ordered game of ro-cham-bo.

Wood is burned by fire creating earth that contains metal trapping water, and nourishing wood.

Water is one of the most sacred elements. There is a form of baptism by water in more faiths than Christianity. Water is purifying; it gives life. The power of water can also take life. I have devoted my life and career to water and the fluid dynamics of water are physically amazing.

The Year of the Cat

The Vietnamese zodiac shares 10 of the 12 animals with the Chinese zodiac. The Ox in Chinese astrology is replaced with the water buffalo (an understandable substitution). The rabbit is replaced with the cat. That one is a bit of a head scratcher.

The thought is that the word for cat in Chinese is Mão which sounds like the Vietnamese meo meaning cat. I don’t know how valid that is, but it seems plausible.

As I researched this post, an old song from the ‘70s called “Year of the cat” kept running through my head. I had to find it. YouTube did not let me down!

It was written by a guy named Al Stewart in 1975, the year of the cat, a wood cat, to be precise. The lyrics hint to the movie Casablanca.

The associated elements are the same between the two zodiacs. The cat in this zodiac represents longevity, peace, and prosperity.

The 60-year-cycle

Finally, there is a really wild feature of the Chinese zodiac. The 60-year cycle results from the element/animal alignment. The last time the world experienced the year of the water rabbit was 1963.

I launched a quick search and found some curious things that happened that year :

• John F Kennedy was assassinated in November. That was the biggest thing.
• Alcatraz, the famous maximum-security prison, closed.
• Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space when she launched from the Soviet Union in the Vostok 6 spacecraft.
• The US introduced zip codes.
• The Profumo Scandal in the UK lead to a bunch of resignations because the war minister lied about an affair (this seems tame compared to the present)

The year seemed to be one of remarkable change. My mother remembered that year for a time when the country she grew up in lost its innocence. It will be neat to look back on this year and compare these two water rabbit years.

The take home

We here at team DLP were born under the year of the dog. We’re Dog people all around! The horoscope for dogs always seems to read “lay low, don’t make any drastic life changes.” That fits us, we’re boring, but we’re also dull. We are the ultimate in schedule-aholics living on a rigid 5-week-timetable.

If this year is a year of change, I welcome the opportunities. Hopefully they are positive changes.

Happy New Year, and welcome Spring around the corner!