Shedding One’s Skin in the Lunar New Year

Last Tuesday, the new moon marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year. I grew up intrigued by what we called the Chinese New Year with its celebrations featuring parades, lanterns and dragons. Even more interesting to me was the idea that each of our personalities is influenced by one of the 12 animals of the Chinese, or Lunar, Zodiac. I am a snake.

I like being a snake now, but at first I was really disappointed. A tiger, dragon, or horse felt much more exciting. Snakes, going all the way back to Genesis and the Garden of Eden, elicit fear and even loathing in most people. Picture Medusa, the once beautiful woman rendered hideous with snakes for hair who killed with just one look. So gruesome was Medusa most people remember little else from the myth of Perseus.

There’s also the more recent myth of St Patrick. As children we were led to believe one could be declared an actual Saint if one had the ability to rid a country of snakes. Also as children many of us were introduced to Kaa in Walt Disney’s “The Jungle Book.” Kaa was an evil, old but powerful snake. He could hypnotize his prey with his piercing, glowing eyes. But it turns out Kaa was one of Mowgli’s trusted friends and mentor in the original Jungle stories by Rudyard Kipling. Disney changed him into the fearful stereotypical bad guy when he animated the stories in his children’s musical in 1967. Oh, we snakes are so maligned and misunderstood!

I became determined to learn more about snakes, and I now believe great snake legends are woefully under-represented in society. The Egyptians had multiple snake gods and goddesses. There’s Quetzalcóatl, the feathered serpent god of Aztec mythology. The Hindus have the Nagas, serpent deities. And there’s Mucilanda, the Buddhist Naga, a giant cobra sometimes depicted with multiple heads. Mucilanda emerged from the ground during a storm and, with his immense cobra hood, sheltered the Buddha who meditating under the Bhodi tree, from the rain.

I like these stories. But what I like most about snakes is that they literally shed their skin two to four times each year, slithering into the future shiny and renewed. Yes, I’m a sucker for symbolism.

But back to our Lunar Zodiac. There are also five elements within the Zodiac-- Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water—which, simply put, are interconnected and form the fundamental components of all life in the Universe. We are part of that cycle and as such we are each born “under” an element, which. like our animal sign, affects our personality and even our destiny.

I only learned this recently and so I looked up what my element is and discovered it’s Wood. I like this; it makes me think of trees: The Tree of Life. The Tree of Knowledge. Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Johnny Appleseed, sowing seeds to grow into apple trees, “for everyone in the world to share.” The giant Sequoias. Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

2025 is the Year of the Wood Snake. “My year,” and one that is primed for transformation, rebirth, and personal growth. The Lunar Zodiac says Wood Snakes are creative and intelligent, but that we can be impatient, critical and, although adaptable, might give up too easily when we are challenged. Self-awareness and determination will be key going forward.

The snake in me is ready to symbolically shed the skin of my past and slither forward into an era of new growth and excitement. But I am also a procrastinator and so while I can easily lose myself in the philosophical romanticism of symbols, I have been forced to reckon with the fact that I am often lacking in the discipline to actually make the symbolic become reality. Stories, inspiring, uplifting, and romantic, are the means by which we can escape our lackluster or even troublesome past. They can also provide hours of daydreaming, planning and delaying action. Stories can blur the reality that actual life-changing journeys take precious time. They’re hard. And often boring.

“Brick by brick, my fellow citizens,” Hadrian is said to have told the masses while encouraging them to rebuild Rome. ”Brick by brick.”

And now memory pulls me on a detour, backwards in time, to another new year.  My dear sidekick, Adam, was there too, over 10 years ago. I awoke on New Year’s Day to find he had spent days, unbeknownst to me, meticulously folding 108 origami butterflies, which he then hid throughout the apartment. I found them that morning. Brightly colored butterflies sat on shelves, on pillows, atop books and on the refrigerator. They were inside drawers and behind closed cabinets. They sat amongst potted plants, on a tube of toothpaste, and amongst the coffee cups.

I could not and still can’t imagine a more perfect way to begin a new year; I loved the symbolism! The transformative journey of caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. It felt magical and that anything would be possible going forward.

I took many of those butterflies with me to the yoga studio where I was teaching.  I was co-hosting a yoga mala that new year’s morning. A yoga mala, named for the string of 108 meditation beads, is a ritual involving the yoga asana sequence known as Sun Salutations. 108 of them done consecutively is often called a moving meditation and is seen as a celebration as well as the opportunity to be fully present in the moment. After the salutations were completed, I placed a butterfly at the feet of each student while they lay resting, eyes closed, perhaps meditating on their own coming journeys of transformation. I still have several of these butterflies, wings spread, magnetized to my refrigerator in a different town, and in a very different place in time.

And so here I am once again at the start of a New Year. A Wood Snake awakening to the Year of the Wood Snake. I’m ready to symbolically shed my skin, but this year I’m focusing on the individual bricks my journey will need, and not being distracted by visions of Rome.