I am a Wood Dragon in the Chinese horoscope. The year of my birth 1964, was the last time this combination of wood and dragon came together. The world at the time was erupting with change, Martin Luther King was given the Nobel Peace Prize, the Beatles came to America, youth took the streets in the Free Speech movement, while Vietnam burned. It was a time of intense violence and radical cultural expression in the name of Love.
We’ve come back around and are now in the year of the wood dragon again 2024. The wood dragon is a mystical being that heralds a time of compassion and creativity merging with fierce clarity to create radical change. Clearly we need forces of the mystical to heal our society and regenerate the earth. How do we awaken the mystical in ourselves?
Heres a possible path. If you can, go to the woods, or to a park, or journey in your imagination. Walk until you find a tree that calls to you. Lean into it. Stay there and connect with the unseen creatures and plants who have died because of industrialization of the earth and climate change, see the crazed white men whose inner children are destitute, see the millions of people living in tents far from their land of birth, see the children stunned by war, see the damned rivers, the polluted ocean, and cry for yourself and for the future. Know that your tears are feeding the universe. Be generous with them, let them run down your face, taste the ancient salty sea emerging from you. Know that your body needs you to release tears in order to be strong. Lean deeply into the tree with your whole body. When you feel complete, thank the tree. Thank yourself.
Then back at home, write a song about the world you want to see in the future. Sing it loudly, even if the words are changing all the time. Find a group that is taking action on protecting life, bring your body to the table, make the phone calls, write the letters, make the posters, Live into it. Act kindly but with fierce clarity. Like the Wood Dragon.
Then return to the tree and tell it about what you have been doing. Sing your song to it. Make an offering, corn meal, herbs, slices of apple. The tree is supporting you in its stillness, and its generative tasks of turning elements into oxygen and woody carbon. The tree is making homes for myriad creatures, the tree is bringing the heavens to the earth, the earth to the heavens. But it needs your humanness to protect it, to honor it.
You are a dragon, mystical, miraculous. You have legs, arms, hands, heart, mind, and a voice that can bring about change to protect all of life. You can connect with other dragons! This is a special year, you are very special. Dream Big!
My Wood Dragon dreaming is to lean into activist art. I will be performing the “Paper Mache Protest” and “Bells for the Biosphere” this Spring in Western MA and taking my “Pulse for People and Planet” Earth Carriage to the streets monthly. Do something unusual and bring about the mystical!
Join me wherever you are! Let me know what you are doing! www.bethfairservis.com
Groups I love to support: