2023, Around the Rabbit Burrow, Outlook for the Year of the Water Rabbit

I made a mistake straining to identify the events and trends of 2023. Not the first of course; this annual process is often long and lonely, part calculation, part intuition, imagination, hallucination, what you will. And sitting here listening to Jackson Browne and looking out at the buddleia, I made an important error.

The key information any year is:
The ruling Pillar: in 2023 the Water Rabbit.
The numbered Star at the centre of the lo shu or “magic square”: (4)
The Hexagram that telegraphs the themes of the year: see above.

I impose certain rules on myself:

1. I don’t generally forecast disasters, plagues of boils, war, famine, cup finals or plane crashes as predicting is so close to creating. Sometimes there’s little choice but I hate to be right about events I’d sooner didn’t happen. I called Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2016. The wind tunnel humanity is hurrying into is hard to assess optimistically.

2. I’m as specific as I can manage. There’s little value in announcing baldly that “people will resent government” or “the weather will be changeable”. In 2008 I forecast financial meltdown for 2020. I didn’t see a pandemic coming so I guess I must try harder but that was a pretty precise hostage to fortune. There are indeed going to be rockslides and marine disasters. Depressingly these things happen every year. And the weather is going to be especially changeable. You don’t need me to tell you that. When and how might be useful, bald assertions not so much.

3. A forecast differs from a prediction in that it has to be 70% accurate. This restriction which Joey Yap, polymath that he is, has been retailing for a while now, he may well have got like me from Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise.” The purpose of a forecast, Silver suggests – take a weather forecast for instance – is to prepare for the 70% and to do what we can to alter that aspect of the 30% with which we are uncomfortable. Apologies, Joey if you came by that number some other way.

4. It’s a good idea to have read a couple of books that have nothing to do with Chinese Metaphysics, conspiracy theories or the world of woo-woo (How could I forecast for the world usefully if I’m not in it?) as well as some newspapers that are not 90% pictures.

5. To pay attention to the fact that the universe is always talking to us if we are listening, sometimes in the most perverse ways. And mistakes like mine are often in this category. Too much thought, too little awareness.

The mistake was that I identified the above Hexagram wrongly. It’s Gui Mei, “Marrying Maiden”, one of the most patriarchal of the sixty four. It outlines the rules that bind the order in which daughters must marry in such a literal Confucian way that I can only ever take it as ironic. The notes added by Confucius and/or his successors dictate that the younger daughter marries only with her father’s permission and then only after her elder sisters are fixed up. King Wen (c 1050 BCE) who gave the Hexagrams names was far too smart to think that Confucian strictures of this sort would last forever but too familiar with human nature to expect them to expire quickly. But they very much represent the wrong turnings we seem as a race to be making.

The one I had mistaken it for was Sui “Following” which is almost opposite in meaning. I usually think of it as connoting something like mindless obedience. A change is gonna come.

So we start to construct a picture: the indicators of the year are Water Rabbit, 4 Lo Shu and the correct gua Marrying Maiden.

The Water Rabbit like every Pillar carries certain themes: 2022’s Water Tiger is/was one of the so-called “Station” Animals whose common nature is movement, motion and transport, stopping and starting. When Tiger, Snake and Monkey coincide as they did of course frequently (especially in the Tiger, Snake and Monkey Months of February, May and August respectively) movement becomes a chancy thing. With strikes among air traffic controllers and railway staff and nations paralysed by fuel shortages, it’s easy to see how that has applied. And of course this pertains equally on a more metaphorical level: so many careers, projects and strategies have been stalled by the unholy confluence of Brexit, Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As a sidenote, the aggressive Water Tiger lives at the Eastern extreme of the North East of the compass and Year Tigers generally (1914, 1938, 1998) have a bit of a track record in this regard. The Cuban Missile Crisis when fortunately for the world, Russia blinked and backed down fell in the last Tiger Year of 1962, the central issue being whether both sides would drop nuclear bombs or neither, much like the NATO/Russia standoff we are currently living through. The winter is not looking good for Ukraine and next year worse.

This year’s main theme may be what is known as the “Ingratitude Penalty” which pits Rabbit against Rat. Someone born in a Rat Year but on a Rabbit Day may question their upbringing, authority, even their entire understanding of the world. The same multiple questioning may occur to any of us in Rat Months, Days and Hours during a Rabbit Year. Without diving down the er…Rabbit Hole of conspiracy theory and flexible truths, I suspect we can all see that one coming.

Consistently, one born in a Rat Year may find themselves the authority being questioned. This dynamic is ultra-visible in the House of Windsor, now ruled by a 1948 Rat and less obviously, in the turning of electorates all over the world upon entrenched leadership: quite likely expressed in multiple strikes and protests. Again no prizes for perceiving that.

The 4 Azure Star at the heart of the 2023 lo shu stands for Soen, otherwise known as “Wind.” She is of Yin Wood and reckoned to represent curiosity, invention and study. The Yi or Book of Changes calls her “gentle and thorough but ultimately adamant.” Feng shui Masters being the excitable group of middle-aged men they largely are, often focus on her association with sex scandals and 1963, the previous Water Rabbit Year, you may recall, was the year of the archetype of the modern political sex scandal: John Profumo, Secretary of State for War was outed in a triangular relationship with a sex worker and a Russian spy. He was invited to resign in disgrace and spent the rest of his life in obscurity. The past is another country, today of course he’d be elevated to the House of Lords.

Soen however stands for a great deal more than that. She is the Eldest Daughter, the career woman and the woman-of-a-certain age, neither crone nor maiden. Which is where my mistake is so instructive: the patriarchy that Gui Mei bends too (“A lady bearing a basket not filled” – Wu Jing Nuan) is at the controls of our current headlong rush into chaos. Men are in control of most nations, most big companies, banks, media, armies and places of education. Men have made most of the stupid decisions from the Nixon Shock to the strangling of George Floyd. Men run the energy companies that have been greenwashing eco-vandalism since Rachel Carson woke us all up to the despoiling of nature in her book Silent Spring published in 1963. It was mostly reversible then but may not be now and they’re still doing it.

Sui counsels trusting middle-aged men especially those in white coats or uniforms (“Confidence in excellence. Good fortune. Hooked and connected.” – Wu Jing Nuan); Gui Mei suggests a re-think. Broadly women are smarter than men and most of the worst actions perpetrated by human beings were hit upon by small groups of men without adequate supervision.

Finally, the other key confluence in 2023 is the combination of the Rabbit and the Dog which turns both to Fire. Fire is the choi (that is success, wealth or mate) to the Yin Water Stem of the Year. Its effect depends of course on how an individual ba zi responds to Fire: could be wealth (if you have a strongish Water Day Stem) or disaster (a weak Wood one).

That’s it for now. See you in 2024.

Richard Ashworth is probably best known for introducing authentic Chinese Imperial Feng Shui to BBC tv’s Housebusters and for his book The Feng Shui Diaries which apart from anything else, may be the funniest on the subject to date. Respected widely for his innovative approach to classical ba zi & feng shui, many professionals have studied with him. He has studied with a series of masters over a period of decades including attending Huazhong University in Central China. His direct, authoritative and humorous approach has changed lives for the better from Poland to New Zealand.  He is a wise an masterful educator.

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