Feng Shui Your Life #8: The Year of the Wood Snake
A preview of what to expect in 2025-- in the year of the "Little Dragon"
Well, the Year of the Wood Dragon certainly hasn’t let us down, has it?
As I predicted in posts from January HERE and February HERE, 2024 has been a bumpy— and transformative and revolutionary— year for the ages.
And it’s worth noting: the Year of the Wood Dragon isn’t even over yet!
We won’t hit the next Lunar New Year— and Year of the Wood Snake— until January 29th, 2025, meaning that our Wood Dragon friend is going to continue to go full on “Desolation of Smaug” on Saturnalia, materialism, consumerism, and (for lack of a better word) bullshit for several more months.
And, while we might all be in a state of serious change fatigue, eager for a break from the Wood Dragon’s violent undulations, the coming Wood Snake Year isn’t exactly going to be a calming palette cleanser between rounds of intense energy.
The “Little Dragon”
In many ways, the coming Wood Snake Year is going to be a continuation of the themes, trends, and impacts of the Wood Dragon Year. This is why the ancient Chinese referred to the Snake Year as the “Little Dragon”, outlining this key theme in a story about how snake fell from heaven and dethroned the great, big dragon.
The key difference between the 2024 and 2025 Lunar New Years? The Wood Snake Year is all about rooting and grounding the revolutionary changes of the Wood Dragon Year into tangible, sustainable practices. If the Wood Dragon is depicted as a towering, fast-growing redwood tree, the Wood Snake is depicted as a smaller, fruit-bearing tree closer to the earth, like with fig and olive trees:
Said another way?
We’ve had our cages rattled and our perspectives shifted in 2024. Those of us that have done our spiritual work have grown in leaps and bounds, pushing further and further upward to new heights that give us increasingly paradigm-shattering views. It’s been an exiting, but exhausting year marked with exponential personal and professional development for those in sync with the Wood Dragon’s energy.
As we had into 2025, our new task will be to integrate what we’ve learned and put plans in place to consistently execute on our new, strategic initiatives with intelligent, intentional action. In other words: the Wood Snake Year is about rooting the metaphorical tree after so much upward momentum, pruning and nourishing it such that it will bear fruit for human consumption and healing.
So, the Wood Snake Year is going to bring parallels of many of the same themes from 2024. It’s just that in 2025 these themes will be hitting us all at more of a human-scale.
Introduction of the fire element
In Feng Shui and the I Ching there’s a kind of esoteric game of Rock, Paper, Scissors between the five elements of wood, water, fire, earth and metal. The rules of this energetic “game” are as follows:
Earth nourishes metal by creating minerals in the soil.
Earth destroys water by drying it.
Metal nourishes water through condensation.
Metal destroys wood by chopping into it.
Water nourishes wood by helping it grow.
Water destroys fire by putting out flames.
Wood nourishes fire by helping it to grow and giving it a path.
Wood destroys earth by draining it of it’s minerals.
Fire nourishes earth by turning into ashes and feeding into the ground.
Fire destroys metal by melting it.
And, while the coming year is a Wood Snake year— indicating that the primary element is, in fact, wood— it’s worth noting that all snake years bring in a bit of the yin fire element. In this particular case, the first emergence of fire element is a portent of the year coming right after our Wood Snake Year: the Year of the Fire Horse (2026).
So, as wood nourishes the fire element, so shall this Wood Snake Year nourish the fire element within us as individuals, our society, our economy, and the natural world, manifesting in several macro-level impacts across industries, professions, and more, including:
1. Resurgence of herbalism
With all of this fire element permeating the wood element, 2025 is going to be a great year to dig into plant medicine, herbalism, flower essences, and backyard (or balcony, or roof deck, or windowsill) gardening!
Why? Well, because the fire element represents health, vitality, energy, creativity, spirituality, and yes, even our energy body! When this fire element is housed within plants— i.e. wood element— it wakes them up, gives them nourishment, and suffices them with life-giving alchemical power. After all: it’s the fire of our solar system’s sun that activates the latent energy of earth, sparking the growth and vitality of all living creatures— including us and the plants!
We wrote about this fire + wood magic (from a Kabbalastic point of view) in a post from last year (link below):
I personally practice European herbalism and focus much of my work on gentle flower essences, but this herbal renaissance in 2025 will apply to Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda and much, much more. Expect great things to come out of research on plants from the Amazon Rain Forest or other, far-flung ecosystems with microclimates and unique flora and fauna.
2. Transformation of medicine
The snake is our world’s oldest symbol of medicine, often depicted as the caduceus: two snakes intertwined on a staff, often featured on signs outside of pharmacies and physicians. Given this association, the Wood Snake Year is likely to upend our modern Western Medicine framework, urging us (probably via parseltongue) to return to the old ways of doing things.
The oldest of the old when it comes to healthcare? Food is medicine.
We’re already seeing hints of the coming revolution via this past weeks’ Congressional hearings on the health of Americans:
This clip (above) features a Stanford trained surgeon, Casey Means, who shared that, in all of her many years of medical school, including surgical residencies and the like, she was never, ever offered even one nutrition class. So, how is she supposed to make lifestyle recommendations to sick patients if she doesn’t know the first thing about it?
Casey has written a phenomenal new book called Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. The upshot of the plot? Eating whole, organic and non-GMO foods that aren’t filled with pesticides, herbicides, industrial chemicals, food dyes, and added sugar is essential for metabolic health and disease prevention.
Sounds pretty straight forward, but for anyone that has tried to stick to these guidelines knows, it’s hard work to read all of these labels, do this research, and stay up on meal prep when organic food spoils so quickly. To help us, the individuals, many stakeholders are working to change the laws around these ingredients and industrial food producers, reflecting the smaller (but still powerful) human-scaled focus of the coming Wood Snake energy.
3. Awakening of ley lines
Ley lines, often called “dragon lines”, are well-known energy pathways that crisscross the globe, often running through and connecting ancient and sacred sites (indicating that ancient people were aware of these energies and leveraged them for their megalithic structures). These invisible lines are believed to carry a potent energy in the earth— just like the meridians of acupuncture or the nadir from yoga carry our energy within our human bodies!
In Voodoo, these ley lines are called the Simbi: the magical energy serpents that flow like electricity through the earth. Coincidence? I think not.
I mean, just this past year I got a lengthy visit from a Voodoo loa named Ochosi, who rules over the Simbi. When I was on the return flight from New Orleans and looked out of the window over Austin, I saw Ochosi in the landscape, his face comprised of rivers, creeks and other natural features.
(Check out this previous Subatack post for more details on Ochosi and his Simbi).
I expect that the earth’s ley lines are going to activate in a major way in 2025, awakening various nature spirits, fairies, elementals and more as we head into the year of the “Little Dragon”. Manifestations of this phenomenon may include the reclamation and restoration of organic farmland, discoveries of ancient archeological sites, and a healthier, more decentralized relationship to the earth and its ecosystems.
What’s more: the Year of the Wood Snake is a great time to dig into the practices of geomancy and geopuncture— fun but fringe practices to bring about harmony in the earth’s energy centers.
4. Inspiration in architecture and Feng Shui
Wood Snake Years are traditionally associated with efforts to beautify our built environment, often ushering in quantum leaps in architecture, engineering, and even interior design and Feng Shui. However this manifests in 2025, it’s safe to say that humanity is going to start caring about the beauty of buildings and spaces, as well as their sustainable design and connection to the earth grid.
Much like with geomancy and ley lines, Feng Shui also addresses the invisible energy in our homes, offices and other built spaces. In the coming Wood Snake Year, working with this invisible energy— and tuning the vibration of our physical spaces to the most optimal frequency— is going to produce exponential dividends across all sectors of our lives.
Now is a great time to start to build the ground work in your own Feng Shui practice OR start working with a Feng Shui practitioner. As we’ve written about here on Substack many times, it doesn’t take much time or money to make small, manageable adjustments that produce tremendous return on investment. And, if you want to learn more or work with me in a focused Feng Shui consultation, you can book it HERE anytime.
5. Proliferation of “forbidden” knowledge
Ah, yes: the serpent in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
It’s an old and powerful symbol, often indicating the forbidden fruit of esoteric knowledge. Given that 2025 is a Wood Snake Year— reinforcing an intrinsic connection between snakes and fruit-bearing trees— I think our access to occult knowledge and spiritual insight is going to be amplified by orders of magnitude.
It’s going to be a great year to dig into ancient spiritual modalities like tarot, astrology, Kabbalah, and much, much more— not to mention uncovering other “enclosed” (i.e. occult) information about the nature of our reality more broadly.
What is this ball we call earth? What exactly is humanity? What are our spiritual and evolutionary origins?
When it comes to the mystical, spiritual and world-shifting, expect the unexpected in the coming Wood Snake Year. Keep an open mind and dig into whatever topic you want, regardless of how “silly” or “arcane” it might initially seem.
And remember: curiosity is not a crime. Or, at least, it’s not yet;)
Wood Snake Flower Essence
As we’ve previously shared HERE on Substack, we’ve formulated a premium TOTEM Flower Essence Blend just for the Year of the Wood Snake. Encased in a special green bottle evoking the vibe of House Slytherin in the Harry Potter series, this Flower Essence is specifically designed to help us harness the best of the Wood Snake Year— while mitigating some of its challenges.
You can purchase this special TOTEM Flower Essence on our Etsy Shop HERE.
More to come
Whew, boy. 2025 is going to be a fascinating ride, and I’m personally very pumped for the Wood Snake to slither in and help us root the transformative changes and breakneck pace of growth in 2024.
Of course, we’re going to keep writing about the Year of the Wood Snake and about Feng Shui more broadly here on Substack, so keep an eye peeled for additional deep dives into these areas, including a post about which industries/ professions/ investments/ assets are likely to get squeezed in the Wood Snake Year, and which are likely to flourish.
We’re also going to be sharing insights into which crystals, flower essences, and even tarot cards are going to be particularly helpful in the Wood Snake Year, as well as tips and tricks to leverage Feng Shui to harness the power of the Wood Snake.
As always, thank you for being a Substack subscriber and for taking the time to read our work! I put a lot of time and effort into research in order to distill the mountains of esoteric noise into tangible, actionable insights, and it means the world to me that so many of you find value in it!
-Rachel
Geomancy? Geopuncture? Once again you're sending me down another rabbit hole of the esoteric into something I know nothing about. I feel like your substack posts have an Alice in Wonderland vibe of wonder and amazement.
Thank you for this wisdom, Rachel! It's been really challenging for me to track down information on the internet about the Wood Snake Year and all its portents. This was SO helpful and insightful, and I feel so much better prepared (mid way through the year!).