2024: The Year of the Wood Dragon in Chinese Astrology

Listen here:

Soul Level Astrologer Mark Borax & Amanda Walsh explore the astrology of 2024.

On this episode, you’ll learn…
🌑 How the Year of the Dragon invites us to aim for the highest vision and the furthest reach, challenging us to think beyond our current limitations.
🌒 The significance of Pluto entering Aquarius, and how it coincides with the expansive energy of the Year of the Dragon.
🌓 Strategies for structuring your dreams and aspirations, emphasizing the importance of grounding your visions in practical reality.

📚Every day, spiritually-oriented people around the globe turn to Astrology to find Inner Peace & fulfillment, gain a deeper understanding of themselves & others, and navigate the tricky & complex world around them. Join us on the Inner Circle https://astrologyhub.com/ic2023/

Transcript

Amanda Walsh: Welcome to the astrology hub podcast. I’m Amanda Poole Walsh, founder of astrology hub, and your host for our flagship show. We explore the many ways astrology can support you and your relationships, career health, and personal growth. Thanks for tuning in.

Well, hello everybody and welcome. I’m so happy that you are here. Thank you for joining us today. We are going to be taking a sneak peek into 2024, but just covering one specific angle of it with astrologer, author, and poet Mark Borax. Our big 2024 forecast panel event. Where we have a live discussion with five top astrologers, including Mark, is happening tomorrow.

So we have that event. It’s a 90 minute event. We’ll be covering the biggest transits of 2024. But we also wanted to do this 2024 prep series where we could spend a little bit more time with each astrologer and also go into some of the other aspects of 2024 that are important, but not quite as big as those big ones we’re covering tomorrow.

So if you’d like to join us for the free panel event happening tomorrow, you can go to astrology hub. com slash 2024 forecast. That event is free. Even if you can’t join us live, make sure you register. So we know to send you the limited time recording. And if you are an inner circle member, you do not need to register and you will automatically get.

Access to the recording. So inner circle members, don’t worry about it. But if you’re not an inner circle member and you want to join us for that free panel event, you can do so right now. It is happening tomorrow. If you catch this recording and you missed it, then you can still register and you’ll have access to that panel event recording through Sunday.

Um, gosh, I don’t know the date. What is the date of that mark? October 15. Maybe that might be right. Yes, I think October 15. Okay. All right. So today though, we are going to deep dive into the year of the dragon. So 2024 is the year of the dragon. This is going to help us bring in a little bit of Chinese astrology, but definitely filtered through Mark Borax’s unique information soul level astrology.

Um, a little bit about Mark. If you don’t know him, we’ve had him on the podcast recently and everybody loved him. We got such an incredible response to Mark and his work that we wanted to bring him back. He’s going to be an inner circle astrologer for us in 2024, which we’re very excited about. Um, he’s been a nomadic poet.

His whole life. In the late seventies, he traveled the US and Canada performing and selling his poetry. In the mid eighties, mark was befriended by his adolescent idol, Ray Bradbury, who became his literary God godfather. He is now the author of the book 2012, crossing the Bridge to the Future. A cosmic weather report, how to turn around the strange changes of our times.

And also the recently released the Ruby heart of the dragon. So Mark, welcome back to the astrology hub pack podcast. We’re so happy to have you here.

Mark Borax: Thanks, Amanda. It’s great to be back again.

Amanda Walsh: All right. And if you are joining us live and you have some questions about the year of the dragon or any questions you want to ask about 2024, go ahead and put them in the chat.

And if we have time to answer them, we will. All right. So let’s start with that big picture question. the year of the dragon. What does that

Mark Borax: mean? Well, in the oriental pantheon of 12 different animals, the dragon is different than the other 11 because you have a rat, ox, tiger, cat, rabbit, dog, and then. You have a dragon.

And so all of those other animals exist in the mundane world that we know the world of today, but the dragon dwells in a realm beyond the fields we know, which means that if you’re born in the year of a dragon, or. If you’re just moving through the Year of the Dragon, which all of us are going to be doing starting on February 9th, when the new moon in Aquarius launches the Year of the Dragon, there’s an X factor.

There’s something extra, especially in terms of scale. We’re really talking about the animal with the highest vision and the broadest reach. In terms of recent popular culture figures, uh, my favorite example of someone born in the year of the dragon is John Lennon, because John Lennon was always reaching for something beyond, even beyond what the other three band members were reaching for, because for Paul, George, and Ringo, It might have been enough, um, to become the best band in the world.

Uh, not so much for George, maybe later, but for John, he never stopped asking himself, how can I fly beyond just being the best band in the world? That’s a pretty amazing just and what he came up with was that if I’m so popular that every time I open my mouth, all the world’s microphones get shoved in my face to see what I have to say.

Well, what is it that I have to say? What can I say that can uplift this world? And what he came up with was. Um, all you need is love because that was, um, the first satellite broadcast. Ever the BBC had developed the technology to simultaneously broadcast a TV episode all over the whole world at once and they approached the Beatles and said, um, what would you like to do?

And John thought. Well, if I’m going to be one of the first people to speak to the entire world at the same time, what, what do I have to say? And he wrote the song, all you need is love. That’s what he had to say. So in the year of the dragon, we’re all being summoned, um, not to be content with life, the way it is the way it has been, but to be reaching.

Uh, to be pushing and striving for for something beyond and it takes a lot of, uh, self belief and a lot of willingness because when you’re the animal who can fly higher and farther, um, than all the other animals. It takes a special conviction to believe that this possibly crazy idealistic idea that you have, such as John’s idea, all you need is love, actually might be worth saying, might be worth believing in, um, even if nobody said it before.

So there’s a real, um, there’s a real summons for each of us, especially those born in the year of the dragon. But all of us next year to look beyond, uh, beyond the confines and the limits to think very big. Um, we’re not there yet, though we’re still in the year of the cat, which most people think of actually as the year of the rabbit, but certain Oriental countries see this year.

As a cat rather than a rabbit and all my life, I’ve really been a cat person. So, um, I tend to look at these years much more on the cat side of things. It’s the only 1 of all 12 years that can have 2 possible animals in the year of the cat, which is going to continue till February 9th. We’re in a much smaller sphere of energy and influence and attention.

Because a cat is really mostly concerned with its immediate vicinity. Um, it’s a very psychic animal tuned into the intimacies of what’s around it. Especially the other beings that are all around it. Cats are. super tuned in animals. Um, a cat will run right up to one stranger and rub itself against it and will run as fast as it can away from another stranger because they read energy.

They tune into vibe. And so we’re still in the tuned in feline sphere, um, for the rest of this year and the early part of next year. But that is going to expand enormously Because when we go from the cat to the dragon, we’re moving from one of the smallest. To by far the greatest, um, the, the largest energy.

Um, wow.

Amanda Walsh: Okay. He just said so many amazing things there. And one of the things I was thinking about John Lennon and that opportunity that he had the first human ever to have an opportunity to broadcast a singular message around the world, which is profound in and of itself. And I did not know that until right now.

He. You know that he had to carefully consider what that would be. I was thinking about even the dragon, like, yes, they’re soaring the highest and the furthest and all these, but unless they have a compass of where they’re actually going, that’s sort of like a wasted gift in a way. So it seems to me like, of course, the cosmic curriculum is perfectly designed because the year of the cat, we still have some more months to really be internal and to consider.

What it is that is worth broadcasting in a big way, like the dragon does. Like, what is that impossible dream? What is that? You know, unrealistic idea. So we can use this time to really get clear on that for each one of us individually. We can use astrology to help us with that too, right? That’s right. And then we’re ready for this big shift, this big expansion.

I find it really interesting that it’s coinciding with Pluto going back into Aquarius. I mean, I know that’s, that’s not, that’s not the way it is every year when the Chinese New Year happens, but this year it so happens to coincide with that shift into Pluto and Aquarius. How are you seeing that color

Mark Borax: this?

Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s, it’s quite striking. Um, it’s also for me personally striking because, uh, five years ago, I started writing my book that revamps the sun signs, which is called the Ruby heart of the dragon. I had no idea it was going to take that long to complete. And so my book, the Ruby heart of the dragon came out just on the Eve, if you will, of, of the flight of the dragon and Pluto entering Aquarius.

Um, and so We’re really talking about massive forces, dramatic forces, cosmic forces. Um, quite a few of the astrological events that are happening in the cosmic weather of the upcoming year feel striking and dramatic and cosmic. And I think this is because Um, our species consciousness has gotten stuck.

We’re really, um, we’re really in need of a breakthrough that can’t be just a little minor local breakthrough, but a breakthrough for the species. And it’s always a challenge with the year of the dragon to, uh, to believe in yourself because you’re, you’re a mythical animal. So most dragons spend a lot of their lives trying to believe in themselves and.

Um, and at, at that rate, um, we have to, we have to really go the extra distance. Um, you could see this in John Lennon’s life, in the sense of, in one of his most famous songs, Strawberry Fields Forever, he says, um, No one I think is in my tree. I mean, it must be high or low. And he was really saying that he wasn’t quite sure if he was actually a genius.

or an idiot. He just knew that his tree was either higher than everyone else’s tree, or it was lower than everyone else’s tree. This is the dragon in him, not yet fully believing in itself. But, um, there’s that part of each of us who came here from the spiritual realms into the physical world, not to keep everything in place, but to be an outrageous, Demonstration of love and, and truth and magic and, and it takes a lot at a time of, uh, world challenge, world strangeness, world illusion.

It takes a lot to really believe in the part of you, um, that came here to be a, a beacon of love. And all you need is love. So during the cat season that we’re still in now, um, you’re absolutely right. Amanda, this is the chance we have to look at what’s going on around us and take stock of it and know that we’re going to be soaring.

So it’s really good to put your in order.

Amanda Walsh: Mark, maybe this hasn’t always been true for you, but in my interactions with you, I would say that you’re a great example of someone who seems to believe in the magic, who believes in the possibilities and who lives that way. What would you say to people that are like, You know, I, I can, I can sense or see or feel possibilities, but I, I don’t quite believe in myself yet.

I don’t, and, and maybe there’s a part of me that doesn’t even believe those things are possible. How do we work with that part of ourselves, which I think probably every single person can relate

Mark Borax: to on some level. Yeah. In some ways, maybe it’s natural to me and maybe it has come easy in other ways. I really fight, I, I really.

fight to believe in the world that we started to envision in the 1960s. Um, and I think a lot of the reason why I still believe is because I was an adolescent during the time when the entire world went through adolescence. I mean, it was the greatest party on earth. To be a teenager in the 1960s. And I was right there on the front lines.

I was hitchhiking from my home in Connecticut to San Francisco. I was dropping acid. I was going to concerts. I was on the protest lines and, and I got so lit. in those years that I’ve been able to light other people ever since. I’m still, I’m still lit. I’ve never stopped believing, but you know, then I, um, I got older and I became a father.

I had kids, I got married, I bought a house and, and, um, and the world changed and a lot of. The dreams of the sixties got diverted or, um, dampened and it is, it can be very hard to believe in both, um, a dream of love and truth for the whole world and a dream of love and truth and satisfaction for yourself on a personal level.

One of the best ways that I know how to advise people how to do that. Is to take inspiration from others, both personally in your life and the lives of those people who in literature or music or film or drama wrestled with something. They might have been fictional characters, or they might have been real people and they broke through and so either people around you who really have triumphed over adversity have gotten somewhere that maybe they never thought they could.

Um, and that, that has made those people in my life, both the real ones and the art ones have made me feel that I was following the footsteps of dragons. Hmm. God, I love

Amanda Walsh: that. Okay. Anything. Somebody was asking about the element of the year of the

Mark Borax: dragon. I didn’t, I didn’t check that. I’m not sure which dragon it is.

Okay.

Amanda Walsh: Somebody in the chat said wood. And if that’s true, how does that influence how we read the

Mark Borax: energy? I think wood has to do with the element of structure. Um, the, the, I, I’m a wood horse. I was born in 1954. And, um, and I think a lot of my life has had to do with structuring my dreams because I have no lack of dreams.

I have no lack of creativity and inspiration. I’m, I’m a songwriter a book writer and, you know, I’ve been a world, um, traveler, but I have been weak on structure. It’s taken me a long time to really hammer out, um, you know, the business structures, the, uh, um, the real world structures. Um, thank goodness I have a wife who is a Taurus ox.

She’s not only a Taurus, but she’s an ox. And, um, she is really, really good at structure. I’m great at following those structures once we create them. And so I think with the dragon, um, if I’m going to apply the element of wood, I would say it’s time to not just. Clarify your dreams, but bring them down to earth, structure them, set up the structures.

You might say, I don’t know if this amazing thing really ever could happen, but if it could, what would I need in place to sponsor that? And then just do it anyway.

Amanda Walsh: I’ve been thinking about that a lot, Mark, because one of the reasons in our inner circle membership, for example, one of the reasons that we use the lunar cycle as the structuring sort of mechanism as we go throughout the year is because the cosmic curriculum already gives us structure.

Like it already gives us a natural, um, outline for how to navigate. The world. So, so I have found that it’s easiest to just sort of map our actions and intentions and movements in with the cosmic curriculum, which is again, another reason why we do the weekly weather on the podcast, why we do the new and the full moon forecast and the inner circle, it’s, it’s why we do that is because it’s like, okay, you don’t have to think so hard.

You literally can get instructions from the universe as the year unfolds. So, and we’ll be talking about that a lot more tomorrow at the free forecast event. So you’re seeing that wood is inviting us to focus on structure. We’re still in the year of the cat, so we can be asking the questions and being internal about what, what it is that we’re wanting to build.

What is the dream? How does it contribute to a better vision of humanity? And then when we make that shift into 2024, we’ll be getting to work with that completely.

Mark Borax: Yeah. And, and the cosmic structures, the, the seasons of the stars, the seasons of the soul are, are really powerful. Even when I think of China.

If you stop for a moment, it’s kind of astonishing that there’s at least one country on earth who doesn’t begin their new year on January 1st. They don’t begin their new year till the new moon in Aquarius. I mean, the entire nation sets its clock based on when the new moon enters the sign of Aquarius, that there’s still this nation on earth that basically runs on astrology.

And, and, you know, there’s one way to establish a structure just to really tune into not just the man made ideas. Not just clock time and calendar time. Um, but what’s going on deeper than that? Mark,

Amanda Walsh: I, I truly believe that the mismatch in terms of our calendar, like our sort of man made year, the mismatch between that and nature is one of the reasons why we feel confused a lot.

Why, why it’s hard to like anchor stuff in. It’s I mean, when I think about the fact that we do our new year in the dead of winter, like in the end of, you know, December into Jan, it just like doesn’t make sense. But that Aquarius new moon, it is the beginning, the stirring of spring. It is the, you know, the, the.

The beginning of of new life happening, at least under the ground. Right. We’re getting out of the sort of death of winter and beginning to look towards the spring. It makes so much more sense just based on

Mark Borax: nature alone. Yeah, and I think with with the big aquarium energies and the big dragon energies that are coming next year.

It really behooves us to pry ourselves away from, uh, the tyranny of clock and calendar and age, um, that really, um, rules people’s lives, um, slaves to the clock, and when you unbind time, um, pretty much like what jazz did To marching band music, because before jazz came along, uh, in New Orleans, there was, you know, John Philip Sousa and marching band music.

That was very clunky, like, like, um, Dun da dun da dun da dun da dun da dun. And then in that same time, jazz came along and it went like, Dun da dee doo ba ba dee dee dee ba. And it was the same amount of time, but they broke it up differently. And jazz made marching band military time fluid and syncopated.

And that’s what we have to do with our rhythms, with our relationship. To clock and calendar, especially with the big Aquarius energies and the big dragon energies.

Amanda Walsh: It seems like that is literally going to be the invitation of the next, I don’t know, the next decade. It seems like just really re imagining, re in, like, not trying to continue to innovate within a box, but literally blow up the box and innovate.

I’m not even, we don’t even need to blow up the box, just like step outside the box. I was reading this email from someone that I’ve just recently tuned into and he was talking about the diamond industry and how they are totally rethinking diamonds and actually growing diamonds in a lab So that they don’t have to do all of the practices and the ways that they’ve been mining diamonds for, you know, that are very destructive for humanity and earth and everything.

And so they’re like, Hey, well, maybe we could just use technology and actually grow diamonds and just sort of bypass all that stuff that sucks because we all love a beautiful diamond, but do we really want it to get it with the means that we’ve had to in the past? Maybe there’s a new way to do it. So it’s just really interesting to see that, that, that kind of thing is happening across industries, like in every segment of our lives.

And I love this alignment with the year of the dragon. It makes a lot of sense. Mark, one of the things that you are becoming very well known for, and I know this was a labor of love for you for the last four years, is a reinvention of the way that we think about the Zodiac. So take something as like. You know, ingrained as the Zodiac and you’re already doing this.

You’re already, how can we think about this differently? How can we evolve this to where we’re at now as humans? And so can you tell us a little bit about the Ruby heart of the red dragon, and then also how you’re going to bring some of those lessons into your inner circle mastery class teaching when you’re our inner circle teacher.

Mark Borax: Yeah, yeah, I went on quite a journey because I, I had known for, I don’t know, 10, 20, 30 years that I, I was probably going to write a book about the Zodiac, but it scared the shit out of me. I was just so intimidated because I knew. That, um, I had to say something new about every sign, but I also had to work within the truth of that sign.

I couldn’t just fabricate these things. I couldn’t just lay a bunch of. wacky ideas on the signs, but nor could I stay, um, hindered by what everyone else had said about them. And so, um, this, this was a real initiation for me. I had no idea it was going to take more than four years. I wrote seven days a week for four years and three months.

And, and I had to sit at my computer keyboard. And, um, tear down everything I knew about each of the signs and build them back up again from the soul. And then I had to clear away my own, my own clutter, my superficial thought, my own cliches, plus clearing away all the past cliches. And to do that, I ended up having to envision each sign of the Zodiac as its own country.

And I, I wrote the book like a travelogue, where I was taking the reader and I was guiding them into this fascinating, unique country. Of Aries or Gemini or Libra and, and in that country, there are, uh, boundaries and, uh, dangers and revelations and, um, and that was. That was a real challenge. It was like a medicine journey or a shamanic initiation for myself where I had to allow so much of what had been said about the Zodiac, um, to die and then be reborn.

I’d already been doing that in my practice, um, because I created Soul Level Astrology in 1987, and I had apprenticed, um, back around that time to a wild visionary astrologer in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, who taught me a whole other way to use the Zodiac. And then I took that and turned it into my practice counseling people and, um, and writing.

And so I’d already been working a soul level version of the Zodiac, which the Zodiac, which basically means that I don’t presume to know exactly who you are. But I feel that a deep core part of you, your soul, knows exactly who you are, and if I can describe that part of you in words, then I can ignite it.

I can amplify and light up your core. That’s what I aimed at each sign. I gave each sign of the Zodiac a reading, as if they were a person and a country, And, um, when I come to my, uh, master teaching, I’m going to be bringing, um, the, the fruits of that research and, and the, uh, and the craziness of the stories, the, the depth of, of, uh, the journey of each sign, um, to your listeners and viewers and, and, uh, one key that I just want to put out ahead of time is many people look at the 12 signs as fixed states.

Like if you’re a Capricorn, you know, that means, um, you know, that, that means certain qualities, but if you look each sign of the Zodiac as a journey. towards those qualities rather than you should already have them. Like, I’m a Libra, so somebody might say, I know everything there is to know about love, which is just the biggest joke in the world because, you know, it’s taken me like almost 70 years to figure out love and, and if you look at li or any of the signs as a journey toward what the, that sign is about now, it becomes dynamic and interactive rather than static.

Amanda Walsh: Oof. I love that. I love that. It’s like we’re having an experience of the Zodiac qualities. We’re not the ultimate embodiment of them. That’s right. Wow. It’s that’s beautiful. So we tomorrow will be kicking off the our inner circle open enrollment period, which is when you can actually join the inner circle for 40 for 45 percent off.

what it normally is all year round. There’s some bonus mastery classes as part of this. Uh, there’s lots of great perks during this promotional period. So stay tuned for more details about that. Mark is going to be one of our teachers. And like he said, he’s going to be like bringing his book to life. So you’ll get to have a live teaching experience of this book of the Zodiac signs of this journey through the Zodiac signs.

Um, so that is just one of the mastery class teachings you’ll get as an inner circle member tomorrow at the forecast event, you’re going to meet. the four other of your inner circle astrologer guides who will be facilitating the months to come. And the event tomorrow is free. So if you want to check it out, get a taste of the type of teachers that we feature in the inner circle, join in with the community, learn about 2024, get kind of their top practices and tips and reads on the three biggest.

astrological events of next year, you can still join us. It is again, like I said, it’s free and you go to astrology up dot com slash 2024 forecast mark. I’m so happy that we had this opportunity to deep dive into the year of the dragon because we won’t get to talk about that tomorrow. So this has been really, really helpful.

And I, I love these. I love the big picture. I don’t know if it’s part of the Capricorn archetype to just like, I like the big picture vision that I can hold with me throughout the whole year, no matter what, like the little ripple effects that are happening on the energetic waves. I can always like tune back in.

Okay. It’s the dragon. What’s the dragon about the dragons about vision and impossibility. And I actually want to summarize some of the things you said, cause it was so powerful. You said that the, the dragon has the highest vision and the furthest reach. So how can I fly beyond just being the best at my one thing and how can I, what is it that I have to say, like, what is it?

I love imagining that we have the microphone and there’s one message that we’re broadcasting to the world with our voice, with our actions, with our, our life’s work with our family, you know, whatever it is. And if that’s the case, what is that message that we’re broadcasting the question? How? Can I, you, how can we uplift the world?

Um, how to not be content with life the way it is. It we’re talking about pushing and striving to something far beyond. And we have to have conviction that the crazy belief or idea that we have is actual possible, is actually possible. And that you have something worth saying. Like that’s huge. Just alone.

You have something worth saying. So getting ready right now to say that thing, when we get to the year of the dragon, that’s a big, a big calling, a big ask. And I think it’s, it’s exciting for sure. Um, look beyond the confines and the limits think big. Those are some of the things that I just wrote down from everything that you said, Mark, anything you want to say as we close out, as we look forward to the event tomorrow or into next year.

Mark Borax: Sure. Two quick things. One in the system I use, each of the signs goes with, uh, an oriental animal and Capricorn goes with the dragon. Oh, . And uh, and the other thing is, I think John was absolutely right, but he didn’t hang around long enough to add. All you need is love, but it has to go deep and last long.

Hmm.

Amanda Walsh: Okay, so we’re in for the journey mark. Thank you so much for being an incredible celestial navigator for us here on this episode today. Thanks to all of you for being here, for being here live, for tuning into the recording. It’s so amazing to be on this journey with you. Hopefully you’ll join us tomorrow for the live forecast panel event.

It is one of, if not Bye bye. I love you. Absolutely. It’s, it’s a, it’s a toss up, but it’s definitely one of my favorite events that we put on the entire year. This is the eighth time we’re doing it. Like, we like doing it so much. This is the eighth time we’re doing it. It’s one of those events. It’s just like, okay, come with your notebook, come ready to take notes and just absorb and then take away the gems that you can use as you prepare for next year.

Okay. Mark. Thank you. I can’t wait to see you tomorrow. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for making astrology a part of your life. We’ll catch you tomorrow and or on the next episode. Take care everyone.

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