Mid week astro break (updated w video)
Sprouting & Lurching
Today’s tongshu indicates the hexagrams for today, tuesday jan 27 2026, a yin Metal ox day in a yin earth ox month in a yin wood snake year.
this is part of my experiments to see how i should or should not proceed as a write/content creator/daoist practitioner in 2026.
video reading of the article with bonus commentary:
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The weekly hexagram and its changing line.
#3 sprouting - third line changing
“Hunting deer without a guide. Lost in the forest. Not letting go brings harm. Compulsion, unbridled desire and selfishness lead to calamity. Consulting the Oracle without a wise interpreter bodes badly. Consulting the Oracle when you are desperate leads to miscalculation and confusion. A seed sprouts and rots.”
Balancing this Hexagram by taking the changing line to its conclusion would lead to hexagram #63 already across.
63, jiji, is about the continuity of change and questions the notion that is possible to be truly finished or complete. When we start out, the goal is to cross the river, when we get to the other side of the river, we realize that there is still more to do. The obvious end of efforts and the accomplishment of a goal, are, more often than that, the beginning of what must be done next. 63 is change, but like a Dynasty is a series of reigns that create a continuity of leadership.
This speaks to generational legacies and momentums of causal forces.
The auspices of 63 are about recognizing that all things decline and that the disorder and chaos of decline is inevitable. (the chaos of changing rulership)
Perhaps we should not hurry or press for completion.
The goal we seek may bring more trouble than we can imagine.
And yet, the river rolls on and on. No end is an end of itself. Things merely change, transform. The world of red dust is thus.
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The daily hexagram is number 43 Lurch.
this indicates a divisional fork in the river, the moment when things naturally take a turn for the worst. early warnings inspiring flight. A goat about to be sacrificed escapes. It is the last ditch effort. Though the sacrifice does not proceed, there is still an omen. The goat Lurches with all its strength to avoid the sacrificial knife blade.
knowing when to abandon plans is an important aspect of success. success will include a timely cutting of losses and decisive departure. (DEFEND & RETREAT)
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My commentary:
Sprouting & Lurching — don’t break the baby with your cortisol addiction.
So, we are still in the final days of the yin wood snake year in the 12th moon, which is a yin earth ox moon. This month is traditionally the most difficult month of the year because it is the most stagnant while also that stagnation is transforming slowly, diligently under the surface of the earth. (Damp cold, earth month in water season)
It is the coldest month of the year as well and there is so much going on politically and emotionally that we are overwhelmed, but we also do not have any extra energy from the environment to really do anything about it.
We are looking forward to energy that is not here yet and we are using our reserve energy, our ancestral energy, our storehouse energy to essentially prop up our aggressive actions to try to make progress when the world/nature is actually saying this is not the time for that kind of progress.
this year we will have essentially two beginnings of the fire Horse year: spring begins qi node happens around February 4 which is the beginning of spring and the other beginning happens at the lunar new year proper which is I believe the 14th or 17th of February (off the top of my head I can’t remember right now).
Even so, the beginning of spring, the beginning of lunar new year is always very tender. You have to think of it like a little tiny sprouting seedling that is actually very vulnerable.
It’s like a little baby and it’s not yet demonstrative of its power, but because it’s a fire horse year very quickly it will try to run, and that will be this kind of endless summer quality which may seem great in comparison to what we are dealing with now, however, this energy does not have an innate moral compass, so it is about using momentum to carry on and grow that momentum in a very hot, very fiery very emotional way so summertime is probably going to feel extremely exhausting and busy for a lot of people and there’s probably gonna be a lot of burnout. (Galloping for the sake of galloping, because expressing galloping feels like self-actualization and “value”)
Remember that things tend to beget themselves, so extremism in any form promotes extremism in all forms.
be prepared for a lot of political, mental and emotional appeal (horses after all are extremely social creatures) and upheaval— and just a lot of people riding their emotions and desires even more exaggeratedly than we have ever seen. (It boggles my mind to be honest.)
But back to the present moment!
In this moment, it is completely normal to feel stagnant and almost desperate, lonely, sad, cold/frozen, and to want to try to solve that from a colonial point of view.
Unfortunately, this will lead to disaster.
Keep in mind: national general strike on Friday jan 30th. This is actually pretty great for the ox moon. No school, no work, no shopping, etc. Be kind, stoic even, clean your house or bake food, organize but don’t spend money.
embedded video in case ig platform is blocked