🐯 It’s a Tiger Year. Sow what? (Issue 001)
Introducing Five and Nine, a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice.
This is Five and Nine, a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. Welcome to our pilot.
In these upside down times, it’s time for a new perspective on the classic “9 to 5” (and yes, we’re Dolly Parton fans). In tarot and astrology, reversals and retrogrades matter, because they shed light on our situation in new ways. Five represents turning points and change, and Nine represents a coming to completion.
What does it mean to build a career amidst the daily existential questions around the very health of our planet? How do we create a meaningful livelihood amidst the ups and downs of our COVID world?
Five and Nine aims to bring the tools of intuition, tarot, and a variety of other practices to career issues through an ongoing critical discussion using readings, reflections, conversation and debate.
For the next few months, we’re publishing “moonthly”— a newsletter every new moon 🌚 and occasional podcasts on full moons 🌝 —, and all the content is free. After this pilot period, we’ll start publishing more regularly, with paid and free options.
It might seem strange to combine magic, work and economic justice, but it’s the Year of the Tiger, after all, a time for bold moves and big decisions—or maybe a much-needed cat nap. We welcome the Tiger starting today, February 1, and our striped friend will be roaming through our lives until January 21, 2023.
🐅 🐅 What is the Tiger Year? 🐅 🐅
What are the 12 animal signs of the Chinese zodiac and where do they come from? If you dig deeper into the archeology and history of Chinese time-keeping systems, the 12 animal signs as "zodiac", possessing predictive personality traits and determining compatibility between people, is simply a contemporary phenomenon, as scholar Haiwang Yuan has pointed out. 1
The Chinese zodiac years are tied to the Chinese Lunar Calendar which follows moon cycles — 28 days, unlike the Gregorian calendar’s 28-31 day months. The 12 animals are a subset of 28 animals and mythical creatures that divide the sky. These divisions of the sky allowed ancients to track detailed movements of the moon throughout one lunar cycle.
In ancient times, astrology was closer to astronomy. Within China, the Lunar New Year is more commonly referred to as the "Spring Festival", harkening back to these agricultural roots of the lunar calendar, for the lunar new year is always the second new moon after the winter solstice. These complex, astronomically anchored, timekeeping systems were deeply tied to the practicalities of survival— when to plant, when to harvest, when to rotate your crops.
The Chinese lunar new year should hardly be called Chinese, as Yuan has argued. After all, China as a unifying national identity is fairly recent compared to its long history of cultural exchange. The country has an enormously diverse population, with 55 state recognized ethnic minority groups, alongside many other cultural and ethnic groups. Only 29 of these ethnic minority groups celebrate the lunar new year, and many have their own new year — for example, the Dong people in Guizhou celebrate their new year in autumn, during harvest. Others, like Tibetans and Mongolians celebrate a lunar new year with very different traditions than the Han Chinese majority.
What about the zodiac and animal traits? Can you act ‘like a tiger’? Historians document that the ancient culture that the zodiac animals emerged from was deeply shamanistic, with many practices of animism. Such a culture believed spirit is manifested in places and living creatures as well as ancestors. Rather than trying to embody or claim the traits of a tiger, it was about the practice of ritual, animal worship and awe, as your grandparents could be the tiger and you’d best pay due respect.
Say what you want about a tiger year being auspicious, aggressive and strong, but just remember: tigers are some of the laziest animals out there, sleeping up to 20 hours a day. We could all take a cue from a tiger if anything, knowing when to hibernate, and skillfully deciding when to be on the prowl and when to just call it a day and go to sleep.
Besides, with traditional Lunar New Year practices for the next 15 days designed to be celebratory and essentially anti-work (no cleaning, no sweeping, no lending and borrowing money), rest if you can.
🌾 A Spread for Sowing Your Roots This Year
In the spirit of the tiger and knowing when to rest and when to take action, we created a three card spread: SEED, ROOT, and GARDEN.
In the first card, your seed, focus on what needs to be planted in your life. What needs to be placed into water and allowed to root before its place into the soil? Whether it is wanting to learn a new skill to taking the first step into a much needed conversation, identify the seed.
For the second card, consider the root that has sprouted. Imagine the timing of when to plant the root, what has sprouted, into the soil. Have you done your homework on what is needed for the root to then grow even further?
With the final card, think about the environment for which your root will be grown. How will the rhizome spread and affect neighboring roots? What is the necessary environment in which your root will not only grow, but be sustained?
With this spread, it’s also important to take into account the time and effort it will take for the seed to grow into what you envision because nothing happens overnight.
In terms of the “shape” of this reading, we wanted to offer two ways of laying your cards. This spread might be laid out either as a triangle or a vertical spread or sprout.
Want to learn more? Subscribe to Five and Nine, and in our next email we’ll be sending a podcast where you can hear the spread in action.
🎙️ Preview the Five and Nine Podcast
Subscribe now to get our podcast, which comes out with the Full Moon 🌝 (February 16). As a podcast newsletter, Five and Nine brings the conversation to text and sound. All podcasts are fully transcribed to encourage accessibility.
In our first Five and Nine podcast, we’ll be talking more about the Seed Root Garden spread, why it’s important to get 20 hours of sleep like a tiger, and, of course, what our mothers taught us about, well, everything.
Listen to a preview of the first episode here:
📜 🌊 Scrolls and Streams
What we’re reading and listening to at Five and Nine headquarters.
Spirit
In Jozen Tamori Gibson’s talk on mudita (loosely translated as joy), Gibson talks about a moment where someone is crying and a wise teacher says to taste the tears rather than wiping the tears away. A very strong analogy for our moment.
On making offerings to ancestors from a Buddhist perspective by Soto Zen priest Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
“Like fungi and plants, we are co-becoming with our ecosystems,” writes author Sophie Strand.” Ecosystems that are ruptured, polluted, and confused by our culture’s deracinated idea that you can live without a root system.”
How to establish a daily meditation practice? Celebrate the small accomplishments and be gentle with yourself.
Céline Vidal, a geographer who found homo sapiens may have evolved 30,000 years earlier than expected: “these fossils show just how resilient humans are: that we survived, thrived and migrated in an area that was so prone to natural disasters.”
Mind
Social anthropologist James Davies: “By sweeping the social causes of distress into the private corners of self, our mental health sector has helped stifle collective and community action.”
Speaking of emotions, how do they influence decision making? By helping us prioritize some sensory data over others.
“There’s what we call a lifetime,” says composer Vijay Iyer on time and grief, “ and there’s the way that someone’s afterlife continues to matter, and the way they become part of other people. Time becomes a very fluid, almost reversible thing.”
“Sometimes emotional spending happens, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person. I'm choosing to cope with kindness.” Intuitive budgeting principles by She Spends.
Labor and Justice
No more fake food poisoning: “Gen Zers will tell you that they’re too stressed to work that day, citing mental health as if it were food poisoning.”
On Asian Americans and Asian names: “Newer generations of immigrants are not entertaining a name change at all.”
Three ways remote work can change US society: climate, politics and housing markets. The climate impacts remain murky—on the one hand, we’re commuting less; on the other hand, less urban density isn’t great for limiting the impact of emissions.
Six problem solving mindsets for an uncertain world, including embracing imperfection, adopting multiple perspectives and assuming the smartest people aren’t in the room.
🙏 In Memoriam
bell hooks passed away in December and Thích Nhất Hạnh (aka Thay, or teacher) passed in January, and this conversation between hooks and Thay continues to be enormously nourishing and relevant. We honor both as teachers on our paths.
Here’s a snippet of their first-time meeting in 2017, where they talked about building a community of love:
bell hooks: I kept trying to share with people that, yes, I would like to meet you some day, but the point is that I am living and learning from [Thich Nhat Hanh’s] teaching.
Thich Nhat Hanh: Yes, that’s right. And that is the essence of interbeing. We had met already in the very non-beginning [Laughter]. Beginning with longing, beginning with blessings.
bell hooks: Except that you have also taught that to be in the presence of your teacher can also be a moment of transformation. So people say, is it enough that you’ve learned from books by him, or must you meet him, must there be an encounter?
Thich Nhat Hanh: In fact, the true teacher is within us. A good teacher is someone who can help you to go back and touch the true teacher within, because you already have the insight within you. In Buddhism we call it buddhanature. You don’t need someone to transfer buddhanature to you, but maybe you need a friend who can help you touch that nature of awakening and understanding working in you.
Five and Nine is a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — a newsletter every new moon 🌚 and occasional podcasts on full moons 🌝 — , and we provide an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate. In this new world, we’re all rethinking the meaning of work and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability.
During our pilot period, every issue of Five and Nine is free, and after the pilot, we’ll publish more regularly, with paid and free options. Learn more about us here.
Directors of Magic. Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang
Creative Director. Xiaowei R. Wang
Producer. Ana Mina (aka An Xiao)
Subscribe now to get our podcast, which comes out with the Full Moon 🌝 (February 16). As a podcast newsletter, Five and Nine brings the conversation to text and sound. All podcasts are fully transcribed to encourage accessibility.
Haiwang Yuan, “The Origin of Chinese New Year,” SMS-I-Media Tourism Express, 1 (2016): 1. Available at https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=dlps_fac_pub.