Year of the Horse 2026 Predictions: Three Forecasts Shaping What Comes Next
For those already walking a path of practice, this is not a year for vibes-only mysticism, aesthetic intention-setting, or borrowed affirmations. It is a year that tests what has been integrated versus what has only been used as buzz words.
Before speed and expansion, there must be clarity and discernment. Especially now, spiritual rigour means more than being able to feel what is happening. It means being able to track mechanism, consequence, and the way our own beliefs shape what we can and cannot see.
In my recent newsletter, I mentioned that when we refuse to examine our own assumptions while directing all scrutiny outward, we cultivate intellectual fragility and reproduce the very dynamics we claim to oppose.
What follows are prompts for all of us to ruminate on in anticipation of the arrival of the Fire Horse. For occultists, witches, seers, and magic practitioners who understand that our work is a discipline of perception, one that can hold contradiction and competing priorities. The tools we work with come with responsibility, and this is the terrain where discernment matters most.
Common Questions and Answers about the I Ching
How is the I Ching different from Tarot, astrology, or other oracles?
The I Ching is not primarily symbolic or intuitive. It is a structural oracle that maps how change actually unfolds. Rather than centering personal story or archetype, it describes the configuration of a situation and what that configuration tends to produce if it continues. This can be disorienting at first, because it pulls us out of the narrator’s seat and into a logic closer to mathematics and natural law. Like patterns found in weather, crystals, or cells, the I Ching works through binary relationships and line structures that exist independent of an over-emphasis of needing spirituality to make us “feel good”. Instead, it helps us understand.
Is it appropriate to study the I Ching as a non-Chinese person?
You do not need to be of Chinese ancestry to participate in the I Ching series. The I Ching is a classical text and living system that has traveled across cultures because it speaks to universal patterns of change and decision-making. What matters is how it is studied and from whom. As someone of Chinese heritage, I am explicitly inviting you into this work. This series is taught within a culturally grounded, lineage-aware framework that honours the I Ching’s origins rather than abstracting or diluting them. Participation is not about ancestry, but about respect, responsibility, and relational learning. This series welcomes those who engage with care, rigour, and integrity.
Change Your Life With Spells
Change your life with spells!
Practical, folk magic is often about making life smoother, more fluid, and less unnecessarily difficult. What feels stuck in your life? The solution might not be in pushing harder, but in weaving the right kind of spell.
If you’re desiring to learn how to cast spells, I’m an experienced consultant sorceress and 3x presenter in Salem Witch Fest. Join me in my spellcasting series, Crafting The Arcane,
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SPIRIT AND A GHOST?
On the contrary, 'ghosts,' epitomized by the Mandarin term 'Guei,' signify spirits of the deceased, especially those in a transitional phase between the earthly plane and the ethereal realms. Once transitioned to the Otherside, they then assume a more interconnected energy, and take on the title 'spirit'. Beings described as ghosts are often entities who linger due to unresolved issues, unfulfilled desires, or a lack of acknowledgment regarding their transition from the mortal realm to the beyond-life reality. Ghostly apparitions might be rooted in unfinished business, unresolved emotions, or a reluctance to depart this 3D plane.
What the Year of the Horse Means for 2026
When aligned, the Fire Horse is visionary and unstoppable in the most grounded way. It becomes a companion for destined movement, a total contrast to chaotic motion.
An oriented Fire Horse often looks like:
pacing its power and using speed consciously
sensing the field before taking action
letting courage rise from clarity, not adrenaline
choosing aligned companions who strengthen the path
pausing or rerouting without shame
directing fire where it can nourish instead of scorch
staying loyal to what is sincere, instead of what is flashy
translating vision into sequenced, doable action
letting joy guide without relinquishing discernment
being adventurous without self-abandonment
choosing connection over admiration
traveling toward places that can truly hold them, or creating new worlds that will!
This is the potential inside the Fire Horse Chinese Zodiac year.
How January and February Shape the Year of the Fire Horse in Chinese Astrology
Within Chinese Astrology, January & February do different work.
If you’ve been feeling unsettled yet longing for purpose, this is the reason.
The purpose is coming; the timing is just different than the Western calendar implies.
January is the final clearing and last preparation month of the Wood Snake cycle.
February begins the rearranging, reorganizing, and early shaping for the Fire Horse year.
The seasonal and elemental mechanics are different for each month, and so are the invitations.
THE TIGER CURSE
My paternal grandmother (whom I refer as Nai Nai, paternal grandmother in Mandarin) grew up in Keelung, Taiwan. When she was born, her mother (whom I referred to as Ah Zoh, great grandparent in Hokkien) celebrated exuberantly by announcing a feast complete with a slaughtered pig. This was highly unusual, counter-cultural and was seen as extravagant, as Chinese tradition in the 1930s did not particularly value the birth of a daughter, and certainly not with the life of precious livestock, which during those modest economic times, meat would be reserved only for seasonal festivals and other significant milestone celebrations.
Part 3: Dark Clarity: Divination and Spirit-Work During Exhaustion
People think clarity is a feeling, calm, focused, bright. And while that may be true from a Yang perspective, classical Daoist texts describe another kind of clarity as a counterpart:
bright clarity (明, ming): sharp, directional, upward
dark clarity (幽, you): diffused, subterranean, dreamlike
Most Western practitioners only know (and trust) the first. The the second is the one that appears when you’re in a Yin season, whether that is reflected through Winter, are in a liminal space, or are simply spent and exhausted. Yang is associated with knowledge; Yin is associated with knowing, or what is oracular and peripheral.
Part 2: Yin Magic: How Rituals, Divination, and Protection Change During Exhaustion or the Winter Season
How does magic change with Yin energies?
Continuing on from my blog post about exhaustion and magic, while there may be some truth to this, working in Yin is not simply just “doing less” or “slowing down.” It is adopting the formats of magic altogether as a different set of spirits are involved, along with their mechanics. Below is an overview of what the magic looks like, what actions belong here, and what forms are no longer viable under Yin governance. (I elaborate MUCH more in Finding I Ching Clarity, a 24 part series on understanding the spirits of Yin and Yang, and how their lines interplay within the hexagrams of the I Ching, the oldest oracle still in use).
1. Magic shifts from “casting” to “conduction.”
The idea that magic begins with projection, intention, and will is largely a Western formulation. It emerges from Renaissance ceremonial magic, Enlightenment-era notions of individual agency, and the belief that the practitioner’s mind is the primary instrument of power.
Part 1: Magic When You’re Exhausted: A Change in Spirit Governance
The assumption that magic relies on clarity and elevated mood is largely a Western inheritance, an artifact of the idea that power should be linear, solar, upward. But in animist and Daoist cosmologies, exhaustion and depression are not “blocks” or something “wrong”. They are transfers of jurisdiction. Your field is being resonating with a different set of custodians, entities or energies who specialize in depth, slowness, dark clarity, and the intelligence of submerged or subconscious-making.
To work magically in these seasons, you must work with the spirits, elements, and hexagrams that govern this terrain. Any other approach is simply the old problem: trying to perform Yang inside a Yin moment.
Low Mood as a Change in Cosmic Jurisdiction
There are phases when your rituals stop responding the way they did during your bright seasons. It’s not because the spirits “left,” and it’s not because your energy is “low vibration.” It’s because your field’s governance has shifted. (Arthur Edward Waite discusses the hierarchy and governance of spirits in The Occult Sciences).
In bright seasons, you’re under solar, upper-world or Yang influence: spirits of fire, breath, clarity, forward movement.
In depleted seasons, you fall under the care of Yin’s jurisdiction…
Field Notes on the Meaning of Yin
This first, introductory piece sets the stage for better understanding and relating with the Yin principle in Daoist theory and practice. It will help you see that Yin is not simply rest or collapse, but a distinct way that magic, spirit, and matter move. It also opens a three-part blog series:
Across the series, I explore how depletion, exhaustion, and winter alter our relationship to spirit work and map the actual behaviours of Yin in the world. Below are my field notes gathered from mediumship, ritual practice, working with the I Ching, and the lived mechanics of Yin governance: how she moves, how she influences, and what she requires. Rather than a definition, what follows is the sensorial, relational, and often hidden architecture of Yin magic.
Before AI, There Was Divination
The I Ching and the Search Engines as Parallel Languages of Knowing
Long before the I Ching (the Book of Changes) was read as a cornerstone of Confucian ethics, it was used as a practical, inspirited / ensouled / necromantic method for decision making. People cast yarrow stalks or coins, recorded six lines, each either solid (Yang) or broken (Yin), and read the resulting hexagram as a snapshot of how conditions were moving. According to archaeological evidence, early hexagram divination served to consult the dead and other spirits. Over time, it became a way to study how the universe’s force also called the Way (Dao) behaves in order to determine one’s proper place within that larger order, and thereby avert catastrophe, make strategic decisions, or garner good fortune. (And if you’re looking to learn i ching online, this is the approach we’ll study: practical, animist, and strategic).
Why Vampires Show Up In Homes When Ancestor Work Stops
Are Vampires Real? Across cultures vampire lore survives because it diagnoses concrete problems, be it neglected graves, missed offerings, and the frictions of family memory. Vampires also tend to suggest ritual remedies.
Monsters point us to failure. They gather around a household where obligations have not been fulfilled. Perhaps offerings stopped, stories untold, burials hurried or omitted, seasonal observances let go… often they dramatize the imbalance in ways we cannot further ignore. The vampire, the revenant, the restless ghost… these spectral figures (three dimensional or apparitions) function as alerts, telling a community where to look and what to fix. And they may not necessarily be vampires or ghouls. If you consider it, Medusa’s story sits beside these traditions, as her “monstrosity” covers over a violation. By turning the violated into the terrifying, the myth lets a society avoid naming its own culpabilities. Reading these tales as diagnostics shifts the response from fear and banishment to attention and repair.
How NOT to Spiritual Bypass: A Practical Guide to Avoid “Love and Light”
Following my critique of ‘love and light’ spirituality that has become so prevalent in New Age communities, I also wanted to offer some actionable suggestions.
Critiquing “love and light” doesn’t mean rejecting care. It means refusing sentimental shortcuts and committing to the full work: the luminous practices of compassion and clarity and the difficult, necessary labour of shadow work and death work. Shadow work asks us to notice what is hidden, such as rage, grief, structural harm, and to sit with it until it can be transformed. Death work teaches endings, ritual closure, and how to make space for what must be released. Both are essential if compassion is to be accountable and real.
These are behaviours and habits you can adopt personally, in groups, and in ritual spaces to make sure compassion isn’t merely performative.
1. Slow the sentiment; act the responsibility.
Before offering a platitude, ask: what concrete step can I take right now to address this harm or need? Say that first, and follow through. Feeling warm and fuzzy is not a substitute for labour.
Wait, Are We Talking About “Love and Light” Spirituality or White Supremacy?
“Love and light” pairs two shorthand ideas—love as compassion or goodwill toward others, and light as clarity, healing, or guiding energy—and is commonly used as a benediction in spiritual contexts. You’ll hear it in New Age and online spiritual communities, in ritual send-offs, in entire ideological tenets, and as a quick way to offer positive intent. Its true meaning depends on usage and user: for some it’s a sincere invocation, for others a polite, albeit vague phrase.
When the phrase turns from offering into an instruction or lacks concrete care or practice, it can function as an avoidance of reality, insisting on a performance of positivity that erases pain, shadow, imbalance, and systemic injustice. It becomes a tool of spiritual bypassing, often wielded by those with social advantage to shame or silence expressions of anger, grief, or truth: be high-vibe or be silent.
How Can a Clear Witchcraft Definition and a Deeper Witchcraft Meaning Lead to Better Results?
I’d like to offer a different, and more embodied definition of witchcraft:
Witchcraft and spirit work are not just wands, herbs, moonlight, and psychic sensing. They’re not limited to the confines of altars, spell surfaces, mirrors, and cauldrons. Witchcraft and spiritwork can, and I will argue, should, be approached with anything and anywhere.
Witchcraft and spirit work are ways to engage with the Seen and Unseen, where responsibility, respect, consent, and agency are approached with both intent and impact in mind. They’re about observing truths that simply are, and resisting falsehoods that have been forced into so called “truths”.
The History and Practice of Having Sex with A Ghost, Spirit, or a God
Can Spirits Have Sex with You? The idea of sex with spirits, gods, and even sex with ghosts is ancient and widespread. Greek myths speak of Zeus taking mortal lovers in many guises. Daoist alchemy tells of adepts who reported having sex with a ghost in dreams as initiatory encounters. In Tantric texts, yogis unite with dakinis to attain awakening. Christian mystics like Teresa of Ávila describe ecstasies that are unmistakably erotic.
Yet the notion continues to provoke curiosity and unease: what does it mean for a human to have sex with a ghost, a god, or other spirit non-physical entity? Contemporary occultists who report such encounters are not anomalies; they stand within many long lineages of mystical eroticism.
What does Zìrán (自然) mean? & How does it relate to animacy?
Zìrán (自然), literally “self‑so” or “what is so of itself,” is one of Daoism’s core principles. It’s made of two characters—zì (自), “self,” and rán (然), “so” or “thus”, and points to the idea that everything has its own innate way of being.
Zìrán, also translated into English from Mandarin as ‘natural’, describes how things unfold when left to their own accord: rivers carve their courses, plants reach for light, birds migrate without a map. There’s no forced drive or contrivance; each phenomenon simply follows its inner nature.
Where wú‑wéi (無爲) teaches “deliberate action through non‑action”, zìrán shows us what that looks like in practice: behaving as the world behaves, moving with its rhythms instead of against them. It’s magic without applied force; power born of alignment rather than manipulation.
The Meaning of Wu Wei (無為)
Wu Wei is often translated as “non-action” or “effortless action,” Wu Wei (無為) is far more subtle and alive than these terms suggest. In the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi, it’s not about passivity or withdrawal, but about deep attunement, moving in accordance of the seasons, cycles, arcs, and other patterns rather than imposing upon it.
I’m particularly interested in how Wu Wei shows up in witchcraft, particularly spellworkings that utilizes the Yin aspect. This is also essential in understanding how to cast spells in a way that feels sustainable for the practitioner and the materia magica.
Wu Wei isn’t the absence of doing. It’s action that arises from alignment with nature, with timing, with spirits. Sometimes this means waiting. Other times it means striking at the precise moment, with clarity and grace. It’s a practice of discernment, restraint, and responsiveness that is rooted in trust so one does not waste energy resisting what is already in motion.
It’s not always comfortable. Wu Wei asks us to release control, to trust emergence over agenda. It challenges our conditioning around productivity, certainty, and force, in fact, Wu Wei challenges white supremacy and the Empire in every way. It unravels and leverages the binaries: active/passive, speaking/silent, intervention/withdrawal and invites presence, timing, and relational awareness. As I shared in my blog post on witchcraft and extraction, if we haven't done the deep work, it's almost guaranteed we will approach activist magic with the same extractive mechanisms we are resisting.
Is Your Magic Extractive?
Signs of Extractive Spirituality
Approaching spirits, deities, planets, or plant beings only when you need something
Casting spells solely to gain without offering thanks, tending, or relational presence
Treating spiritual allies as utilities or energetic tools rather than beings with agency
Summoning deities in times of crisis and forgetting them afterward
Asking for support without asking what you might offer in return
Neglecting to ask for consent from spirits or spaces before entering or engaging
Assuming access to all spirits or entities without relationship or permission
Using animal parts, herbs, or ancestral names without offerings, humility, or context (including having regard for tradition)
Collapsing the Unseen into a service role for your will or outcomes
Failing to acknowledge what spirits, ancestors, or the land might need or carry