Chinese New Year 2012 falls on Monday January 23rd

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It is particularly the year of the Black or Water Dragon

The Chinese have a Year of the Dragon every twelve years and years of the Dragon are considered especially prosperous and dynamic as are the people born in the year of the Dragon. Joan of Arc, Salvador Dali and Che Guevara are Dragon people. Dragon years include 1928, 1940 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012, 2024 and 2036.

Dragon years are good for creative and artistic ventures and ventures involving risk. But beware of health hazards, especially stress related and emotional stresses that can divert or drain your natural fire and creativity.

Dragon people are successful, independent, highly creative and inspire others, but can be arrogant and unable to keep to a routine. The Water dragon has particular powers and was once seen as the symbol of supreme Mother Goddess power.

Water dragon strengths : Inner power to achieve almost anything, deep unconscious wisdom, fertility and belief in the wonders of nature.

Challenges: Being out of touch with the modern world, finding it hard to express deep emotion, smothering others with love, inability to let go.

Dragon as a Power animal:

If you are really timid, the dragon is the creature for you, breathing fire and devouring those who attempt to bully or browbeat you; excellent too for releasing the hidden gold of your potential and for overcoming a stagnant or unprofitable period in your life or work.

Dragon in the office:

Usually female, very fierce and territorial, the dragon will be found guarding someone or something. She is the archetypal doctor’s disapproving receptionist, the Senior Manager’s PA who was his father’s PA before him. Her life purpose is to block anyone who wishes to see her treasure and to enforce the office rule book to the letter. She can recite the rule book backwards. Equal rights legislation was passed on her rare days off and she will blatantly ignore it. Her invariably male boss is God and she is his Mom and everyone else is the enemy. An institution, since dragon slayers are regrettably few and far between, all dragons have a weak spot, so find it (maybe her grandkids that are a route to contacting her subterranean and almost forgotten stores of human kindness).

About the Chinese dragon

The dragon in China has always been considered luck bringing and was associated with the power of the Emperor. The Dragon is associated with the I Ching trigram Chen which means thunder. The thunder is pictured as bursting from the earth in the form of the first azure or green dragon at the Spring Equinox (around March 21 in the Northern hemisphere and September 23 in the Southern) from the womb of the Earth Mother, scattering the seeds of new life.

In the season of drought, the dragons slumber in their subterranean pools or wells. As the dragons rise in the spring and fight or mate, creating welcome rain, it is believed that they scatter pearls and fireballs on to the earth.

At Yuan Tan, the Chinese New Year, on the fourth day of the festival in every land where Chinese or other Far Eastern people from the Orient have settled, a major event is the procession of the Golden Dragon, made of paper, linen and bamboo and worn by a number of people, with a red envelope, called Ang Pao in front of it tied to a pole. This envelope is filled with coins and the procession ends with the dragon retrieving the envelope and scattering them to the waiting crowds which then signifies good luck for the year ahead. People give red envelopes of money especially to the young to transfer the dragon’s’ luck. Store owners on the procession route will let off fire crackers to attract the Dragon’s attention in order to make their businesses prosperous in the year ahead.

The Dragon Boat festival is an ancient summer sun festival, still celebrated in Southern China, in Hong Kong and Malaysia on the fifth day of the fifth moon. Its aim is to procure a rich harvest and health from the dragon gods. It also remembers the death of a famous poet and politician Chu Yuan who lived around 343-279bc. He was disillusioned by the warring Lords of China and drowned himself to bring about reform. Boats decorated with dragons take to the water and offerings are cast into the rivers.

Chinese dragons are often portrayed with a fiery pearl in their mouths, said to give them the power to fly to the heavens, for most do not have wings.

Becoming a dragon

It was considered in China and the Orient generally that to become a dragon was a great blessing; unlike the west where becoming a dragon was considered a punishment for greed, or evil doing. One legend tells of a boy called Nie Lang who lived with his mother in the Szechuan province of China. There was a drought in Szechuan. One day the boy found a dragon’s pearl in the dry grass and he hid it in a jar of rice which filled overnight. The boy used the pearl wisely to give his family and friends enough to eat. However the fame of the pearl spread and a rich man or in some versions his master Lord Zhou tried to steal it. The boy swallowed the pearl and was transformed into a dragon. The thief or Lord Zhou was washed away as the transformed dragon rose out of the river. The dragon protects the province to this day (or so the legend promises).

Another Chinese legend says that any carp that is able to jump over the mythical Dragon Gate will become a dragon. One possible location for this Dragon Gate has been given as a huge waterfall on the Yellow River in Hunan Province in Northern China, perhaps because someone saw a carp who did manage to make it way up the waterfall. For this reason carp caught near waterfalls are said to bring health and long life to whoever eats them.

Different kinds of Chinese dragons

Chinese dragons are generally described without wings and with 117 scales. The Chinese dragon is made up of nine creatures, including the horns of a deer; the neck of a snake; the scales of a carp; the claws of an eagle; the paws of a tiger; and the ears of an ox.

The dragons were seen as central to agricultural life and so Dragon King Temples were created so people could pray and make offerings to the dragons for a good harvest, since the dragons controlled the weather and the seasons. Four Dragon Kings called Lóng Wáng, rule over the four seas.

As well as bringing rain, Oriental weather dragons could apparently divert floodwaters away from towns. The deep pools left by intense storms also caused the growth of healing herbs such as the all-purpose Red Herb. This may be a form of the red Reishi herb, reported in Chinese medicine to help to prolong life span.
However if angered by mortals the dragons would gather all the waters in a basket creating drought. They might even cause an eclipse by swallowing the sun.

Mythical Chinese dragon types include Celestial dragons that live in the heavens and serve the gods, the male air and weather dragons that bring the winds and rain to ensure a good harvest and their earth female counterparts who are responsible for preserving rivers and subterranean waters. There are also dragons who guard subterranean treasures and closest to the westernized dragon and are believed to be responsible for volcanoes and earth tremors and the wise dragons who taught wisdom, writing more than five thousand years ago to the legendary first Emperor Fu Hsi.

Dragons could however be bad-tempered when finding a good home.

More dragon myths

Fom Tongren City, Guizhou Province comes the legend of Nine-Dragon Cave. Once six yellow dragons lived happily on Liulong Hill (Six-Dragon Hill), which is behind Nine-Dragon Cave. They invited three black dragons living in Jinjiang River, which faces the Cave, to come to the cave for a celebration. When the nine dragons entered the cave, they realized what a wonderful home it would make. They all wanted to live in the cave, but there was not room so they quarreled. They are, some recount, thought to be still inside the cave today, though they make themselves invisible when tourists come. The rumbling heard within the earth is their continuing bickering and jostling for space.

Hua Yang Guo Zhi, a book written by Zhang Qu around 300CE described dragon bones being excavated at Wucheng in Sichuan Province, though these could have been dinosaur bones. The dragon is one of the four celestial animals.

A Neolithic grave excavated in the Henan province of China, showed on either side of the buried body, two of the four Feng Shui celestial animals, etched on clam shell, the dragon on the east side and the tiger on the west. There are nine Chinese dragons that control the different universal elements. The Green dragon is the Earth dragon.

The dragon stands in the east or in modern westernized adaptation, to the left side of the house as the practitioner faces the front door. Traditionally the land of the dragon should be higher than that of the tiger in the west the balance between the dragon and tiger is considered an important one in Feng Shui practice. Too powerful a tiger is said to be reflected in disruptive energies and maybe power struggles in the family.
The dragon represents the east, the spring time, the direction of sunrise and associated with thunder and the Chinese element of Wood which signifies health, ambitions and growth. Its energy is called Sheng Ch’i, the power that is believed to stimulate new beginnings, fertility and an increase in everything positive in the home or workplace.

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