A little late, but happy Chinese New Year! It’s year of the Ox this year (I’m actually an Ox person as it turns out, so ha!)
The Taoist part of me is really wishing we weren’t in quarantine because he’d love to be in NYC’s Chinatown just dorking around and enjoying the festivities. Another year perhaps.
Anyway, if you ever get into Pagan and Taoist thought at the same time, and you do Celtic strands of Pagan thought, you get to celebrate three new year’s celebrations (the standard January 1st one, the evening of October 31st/day of November 1st (Celtic Samhain), and this one, which is this year 2/12/21 right after the February new moon (Chinese New Year)). Madness, I know, but I like my bizarre array of celebrations, and I’m also mentally ill, thus susceptible to madness.
Anyone who’d like to learn a little about Taoism I’ll invite to swing by Derek Lin’s webpage on the topic or pick up one of his books on the topic (or just grab a decent or fun translation of the Tao Te Ching, there’s tons of them, I like Derek Lin’s and Ursula Le Guin’s and go crazy with it; Derek’s is online on his webpage somewhere without annotations but the paperback is worth getting and mulling over those too).
Happy (Chinese) new year!
