Chinese New Year of the Dragon and the Daffodil

By Devin Decker

Chinese New Year is the most significant of the traditional holidays on the Chinese calendar, happening on the second new moon after the winter solstice, signifying the end of winter and the start of the spring season. It landed on January 23 of 2012 on our western calendar, hardly the end of winter but the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. The dragon is one of the 12-year cycle of animals and the most powerful and auspicious of the twelve Chinese zodiac signs. It is the most challenging energetically, and most rewarding. Both of my New Year celebrations (Jan 1 and 23) were filled to the brim with energy, and is seemingly picking up momentum; the governing feeling of this unfolding new year is anticipating. What will this year bring? What will happen? Where will we go?

This year coincides with the end of over 5,000-year-long Mayan calendar on the 21 of December, where there is a lot of talk about apocalyptic conspiracies, a dangerous shift in the magnetic pulls of the earth, transformation, revolution... but who knows for sure?   Both the Mayan and Chinese calendars are similar in the way that their foundations are more aligned with the astrological tides of the sun and moon compared to our western (Gregorian) civil calendar. Both lunisolar calendars tell of a fundamental shift in the presiding energy over the year.

A couple weeks prior to the Chinese New Year, a friend and I took a walk up an old logging road through the woods and discovered a forgotten homestead hidden between all the pine and cedar, the bare naked oaks and maples and sweetgum trees. Long abandoned, only the stone chimney and some baseline rubble work still stood but the hillside was dotted with Lilly-like leaves (I thought they were wild leeks) and yellow buds that hadn’t yet blossomed.

                “They look like wild daffodils,” she said.

It isn’t that I doubted her, I just had to know for sure. As an aspiring naturalist, I consulted all of my botany books and singled out its family (Amaryllis, a subfamily away from the Lilly and the wild leek) and then I turned to the internet. It was the Daffodil indeed. Although it is not edible and the potentially medicinal properties of the plant are a bit questionable for a beginner, it has a rich folklore. Its Latin name, Narcissus, is the name of the hopeless youth who, in greek mythology, became so obsessed with his own image in the water’s reflection that he never left it. He either fell into the water and drowned or died of starvation. The gods then took his remains and created the flower as we know it today, thus the reason that in the west this flower is deemed a symbol of vanity. 

It is the national flower of Wales where they grow it commercially to combat Alzheimer’s disease.

In the east, though, the daffodil is the symbol of wealth and fortune and in Chinese culture if the flower blooms on the New Year, then extra wealth and fortune is promised throughout the year. This presumably comes from ancient China’s legend about a poor boy that was brought many cups of gold through this lucky little flower.

 I was excited and kind of anxious; the New Year was just around the corner, again. The flower had bloomed before the actual day but the weather was unpredictable. It had been a very mild winter, even warm, but it was possible that it could freeze anytime and kill the blossoms.

 On New Year’s eve (the 22), a couple friends and I threw a celebration on our homestead in the country, inviting friends, food, fire, music and a particular energy brought by a pretty intense thunderstorm that night. The next morning the storm was gone and it left a beautifully refreshed blue sky and a chilly breeze and I was very, very hungover. But, being no stranger to alcohol and its effects, after breakfast I hiked up that old road to what was left of the stone house on the hillside. I don’t know what I was thinking, or if I even was as I dredged up the mountain but I needed the assurance that the flower promised. I hoped for that culturally mythological pledge that my year will be alright, even prosperous despite the obstacles I knew I’d run into.

 I got up to the eastern-facing hillside out of breath and in a very funny mood from the night before and sat down in front of an array of sunrise yellow and burning orange fireworks of daffodil flowers covering the slope. I was elated. I just sat and soaked up my personal little experience and relaxed. Now, the dragon is considered to be the luckiest animal in the Chinese zodiac, and this little flower was just working as an exclamation mark to highlight this providential new beginning of the year.

I see this year being either very fortunate or very unfortunate, though, the price of being a conscious human being. One will either gain much or lose much. But don’t take my word for it, I am no free will astrologer or zodiac guru, this is only what I’ve been picking up on intuitively. The surest way to know is for one to experience for one’s self. Watch for synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) and feel around for opportunities to either embrace or to avoid. The entire universe speaks to each of us personally all the time and whether or not we can decipher the message depends on our own awareness of everything that goes on around us, and our ability to communicate back.

 But what does one have to lose? I am not a rich man and I try to own as little as possible to get by in my day to day life. What does this mythical promise of wealth and fortune have to do with somebody not totally focused on material gain? It depends on how one may define it all for there are different kinds of wealth. To be wealthy means to have something of value, whether it is physical cash-money, diamonds, and gold or whether it is mental or spiritual growth: wealth in health, in relationships, in experience, or in one’s own personal values. Or to be fortunate in all of those things.

As this year unfolds, this wild flower is still blossoming practically everywhere here in southern Appalachia. The dragon, too, is making its presence known around the globe. This ancient legend is taking hold once again on the present day and seemingly guaranteeing some extraordinary things to happen as this pivotal and controversial year sinks it’s print in on history.