Year of the Ox

Blackboard art by one of my employees

I've never really paid that much attention to the Chinese zodiac (which approximates the cycle of Jupiter in the same rough way that our calendar months approximate the cycle of the Moon), but this year it feels significant.

The year just ending (Jan. 25, 2020 - Feb. 11, 2021) is the Year of the Rat (or of the Mouse; Chinese doesn't distinguish between the two), which strikes me as a singularly appropriate designation for 2020. A rat is a quisling, an informer, or just generally an unpleasant person. A mouse is proverbially quiet and timid, often unfavorably contrasted with a man, and is also of course a computer input device. And let's not forget Mickey Mouse -- icon of the global mass media, and also a way of saying something is shoddy, substandard, or not to be taken seriously. Any of that sound familiar?

On 2/12 -- which, for those who notice such things, also happens to be the 212th birthday of both Abe Lincoln and ape-linkin' Charles Darwin -- we begin the Year of the Ox (or Bull, or Cow; the Chinese really aren't big on these fine zoological distinctions).

February 12 happens to fall on a Friday this year; 2/12 F = 212°F = the boiling point. Our word boil derives from the Latin root bull-, as in ebullient. This symbolism of reaching a boiling point is reinforced by the proverbial rage of bulls. What clearer contrast to quiet as a churchmouse than bull in a china shop?

The only point of agreement between the Chinese and Western zodiacs is that the second sign is the Bull. In the alphabet, however, the Bull comes first -- "bull/ox" being the literal meaning of the letter name aleph or alpha. I always think of aleph as being connected with the Greek elaphos, "deer," and elephas, "elephant," though the similarity has no known etymological basis.

The Bull is one of the Four Living Creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation -- the only one to figure in the Chinese zodiac -- and as such appears on the 21st Tarot trump, the World. (The Quenya word for "bull" is the Spanish word for "world," mundo.)

The two letters of the word ox represent, in East Asia, "yes" and "no." On TV talk shows in Taiwan, the members of the studio audience are often given a pair of signs marked O and X, which they can hold up to show agreement or disagreement with something.

This fits with the Western tradition of describing a dilemma as a beast with two horns. And of course in the famous Japanese koan, one un-asks an impossible question by saying mu -- or, to English the spelling, moo.

Most importantly for me, though, bovines symbolize slow, deep thinking (St. Thomas Aquinas was called "the dumb ox") and impassiveness. The cow ruminates -- chewing and swallowing the same food again and again to extract every bit of nutrition from it -- and this behavior is part of what qualifies it as a "clean" animal under the Mosaic code. In the Discordian Deck, each suit includes a Cow card, which "may symbolize someone in the midst of whatever [the suit represents], but not actually affected by it."

In the coming year, it will be necessary to slow down, think more deeply, and minimize our reliance on, and responsiveness to, external stimuli.