Happy Year of the Metal Ox

I wish all of my gentle readers here a happy Chinese New Year of the Metal Ox! 新年快樂，恭喜發財，心想事成，牛氣衝天！

I did end up reading some of the Yijing-inspired prognostications for the year, which in the lunar cycle features the hexagrams gen 艮 (keeping still, mountain) and li 離 (the clinging, fire), which when combined form the twenty-second seal bi 賁 (grace). The judgement for this seal is:

GRACE has success.
In small matters
It is favourable to undertake something.

The image associated with this seal is:

Fire at the foot of the mountain:
The image of GRACE.
Thus does the superior man proceed
When clearing up current affairs.
But he dare not decide controversial issues in this way.

Coming out of quarantine, as I am sure many of us will do this coming year, this does indeed seem like a good year for beginning with small ventures. The Yijing here sounds almost Tolkienian, or even more broadly Christian, in its exhortation: to begin with the small undertakings, and to do them with grace. May this new lunar year indeed be a new start, and may God bless the world in it.