Asian Lunar Horoscope, Symbolism of the Four Lunar Phases

• New moon - renewal, birth, sowing and awakening
• First quarter - potency, maturity, full growth
• Full Moon - organization, harvest, collection, storage
• Last quarter - completion, conclusion, hibernation

The Moon, being the closest heavenly body to Earth, has shown its many visible powers to mankind since the dawn of civilization. Its magnetic pull has ruled the rising and ebbing ocean tides as well as all other bodies of water. The Chinese culture has built itself firmly around the lunar influence, believing it to affect humans so immensely because our bodies consist of three-quarters liquid. Likewise, plants and animals are subject to its all-encompassing force.

Would it be too farfetched, therefore, to speculate that even nations will be beneficially or adversely affected, depending on whether they were born under a good or a bad moon? Will the year in which a country is formed have a great bearing on its place in history?

Will the furtive Fire Snake of the Soviet Union (born with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917) be forever eyeing the American Fire Monkey with distrust - and vice versa? Will relationships between these superpowers continue to warm after the Reagan-Gorbachev efforts? Ronald Reagan, born in the year of the Boar, is very compatible with Mikhail Gorbachev, born under the sign of the Sheep. Is it a coincidence that peaceful and fortunate Canada (ruled by the sign of the Rabbit) should choose a Prime Minister, Mr. Brian Mulroney, also born in the year of the sagacious Rabbit? What about Israel, born 1948, the Earth Rat? Can she always count on the help and support of her friend, the American Monkey? So far, Israel has had two Dog leaders to guard her shaky frontiers, Golda Meir and Itzhak Rabin. Will the new Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, born in the year of the Rabbit, have a difficult time keeping the peace with his country’s neighbours?

Was it by chance that the Fifth Republic of France (1958), Dog Year, should have the powerful Tiger, Charles de Gaulle, to head its government? Her present leader, François Mitterand, was born in the year of the Fire Dragon. It is known that dogs and dragons do not get along well. Are postwar Japan and West Germany largely progressive, work-oriented and chauvinistic because they were born anew in 1945, under the auspices of the Rooster? Modern Japan is now headed by a new Prime Minister, Noboru Takeshita, who was born in the year of the crafty Rat.

And, what of the political contenders in the U.S.A. in the election year of the Dragon 1988? George Bush is born in the year of the Rat, Michael Dukakis under the sign of the able administrator, the Rooster, Jesse Jackson in the year of the charismatic Snake and Bob Dole, like Ronald Reagan, in the year of the popular Boar. Chinese horoscopes leave us to draw our own conclusions, after providing the necessary tools.

It is said that astrology is an accurate science, based on fixed formulae and mathematical calculations. Likewise, lunar horoscopes are equally exacting and scientifically evolved.

Yet I hasten to add that in the Orient, it is also considered an art form: the art of recognizing relevant facts in whatever disguises they may appear or be expressed. The Chinese sages of old and the fortune-tellers of today liken themselves to medical diagnosticians of the present, probing, searching and forever interpreting telltale signs of what the future may hold.

The ancient Chinese method of chance reading is never dogmatic or fatalistic. We are never made to feel hemmed in by our weaknesses or inhibited by our deficiencies. Rather, we are encouraged to exploit our resources in varied and imaginative ways.

Having trouble dealing with the Dragon? Get a Monkey or Rat to be your interpreter. Unable to understand the mystical Snake and his mysterious moves? Ask the outgoing Rooster for an appropriate translation. Impatient with the retiring ways of the Rabbit? Send a goodhearted Sheep as your ambassador of goodwill. Vexed by the fiery temper of the Tiger? Ally yourself to a Horse or a Dog for good measure.

Thus, Chinese horoscopes, instead of restricting us, teach us how to plot new courses if our present methods of approach do not meet with success, and how to circumvent the circumstances of birth and other barriers and reach our goals by taking new routes. As they instruct us in self-analysis and in knowing what to expect from situations, we will be able at worst to face, at best to solve, the problems we are most fated to encounter.

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