On January 5, 2026, we enter the Yin Earth Ox month, the closing month of the 2025 Yin Wood Snake year.
The chart at the beginning of the month unfolds as follows:
On January 5, 2026, we step into the Yin Earth Ox month, marking the ending of the 2025 Yin Wood Snake year.
We begin with triple Yin Earth: the energy of understanding, nourishment, maternal care, undiscovered talent, innocence, and naïveté, an energy that simply wants to love. External events may be difficult to accept. (As you can see, the year’s 7K energy, in contrast, signifies the experience of difficulties, teaching events, traumas, and losses.) Yet now we receive supportive energy to accept whatever has happened and even believe that it happened for us, in support of us.
For individuals with a Yin Earth Heavenly Stem, January is especially supportive and helpful, illuminating those areas of life where healing change is now needed.
Yin Earth Ox – as companion elements – everything begins within you
This month, carried by the Ox’s “grave animal” energy, connects you with the incoming energies of the new year. It is a transitional month, one of letting go, where old systems that no longer served you fall away. The fading energy of the Snake year is still palpable; natural rhythm, patience, and the “wisdom of waiting” remain present.
It is as if time itself remembers that nothing meant to mature can be rushed. This after-vibration helps you avoid slipping back into haste (especially the secondary structure’s wealth element tends toward impatience), and instead invites you to observe your inner timing.
If December symbolized birth, January represents the innocent infant: dressed, cared for, and protected in its vulnerability. The child cannot yet provide for itself and needs help and nurturing in every sense. The trauma of birth may still be present: bruises, discoloration, the body and soul adapting with all their strength to “new life.”
This is a psychological process many may experience in January. Analogously, your experience may be similar: whatever has happened, you cannot withdraw from the world or escape into fear. You must once again believe in the pure, childlike love that lives within you, and the only path to it is acceptance.
What is this, if not the Universe’s safety line in January, offered through this triple Yin Earth energy, urging you to accept your situation? This month teaches Love with a capital L true LOVE.
That we cannot possess anyone or anything, because love is a flow. Love does not allow excessive attachment. Love is free and contains no fear. Love exists first within you; it is not tied to another person and is not conditioned.
On a lower level, pain may arise, and this pain can prevent your heart from opening. You may become cold and distant, unable to let anyone or anything come close enough to touch your heart. Pain can only heal through fully embracing love and vulnerability.
When you recognize and accept your own pain, you stop fighting and allow life to flow in its own rhythm. Your inner peace and patience then radiate outward to others. The abundance of companion elements highlights self-acceptance. Do not punish yourself for what happened. It takes courage to say: Yes, this happened. Yes, it hurt. And yes, I am ready to feel.
Any activity that fosters acceptance can help: walking in nature, meditation, grounding, breathwork, supportive somatic group therapies.
January’s true focus is pure innocence, an honest heart, and presence free of expectations. The month teaches you to return to your essence: let hidden games disappear from your actions, connections, and decisions. What is not pure will now be difficult to sustain; what comes from the heart will naturally reorganize itself on new foundations.
The Ox, as friend structure, draws attention to the “self” — to facing yourself and your pain. In 2026, the Horse gives karmic gifts to this Ox. What you wished for or expressed to others in the life area ruled by the Ox will be returned to you by life through opportunities and exceptional new encounters.
January, in this sense, prepares you for the healing energies. It lays the groundwork for what must be addressed within the self: which parts of you are filled with pain and now ask for a new perspective, clarification, and release?
The abundance of Earth energy can feel heavy and grounding; it may be hard to break out of the comfort zone, hard to see and act toward goals. Yet the moment action begins, the Ox can carry you farther than anyone else. Its immense determination, perseverance, and strength provide responsibility and solid foundations, creating reliability and lasting results.
Metal trine between Ox and Snake – Discipline and Integrity
In the Earthly Branches, one triple combination appears: a half metal trine between the Ox and the Snake. It asks you to examine how ethical and correct you have been toward yourself and the outer world, along the axis of your inner goals and desires.
External events act in a calming, supportive way, bringing truth to the surface. Insights and cleansing are likely concerning children, your inner child, and your hidden, authentic desires. January may bring deep reflections, many thoughts, and self-questioning: Did I act correctly here? Where does responsibility and decision now fall on me?
At the same time, this energy can spark ideas that inspire you to write, share, and tell your story. Journaling, writing down thoughts and feelings, can greatly help clean your soul.
Metal elements represent Output element, enriching the abundance of Yin Earth. Conversations, brainstorming, writing, emotional release, and even public expression may arise in January, helping process difficulties. (Eating God structure helps or balance obstacles marked by 7K.)
Yin Earth Rabbit – Limitations: placing life on new foundations
At the same time, the Day Pillar’s Yin Earth Rabbit strongly influences home, personality, love relationships. It highlights where healthy boundaries are needed and where you may still be resisting. In January, you may realize that certain boundaries do not restrict you but instead provide safety and stability, especially in family or private spaces.
On a lower level, this pillar shows only limitations and obstacles. Yet the month’s acceptance energy helps you finally see events as support: what now takes form (whether a breakup, job loss, or other ending) provides a new direction and a framework that supports you.
This pillar carries a lesson: it may seem as if life is unfair, confronting you with walls and resistance, preventing free flow and expansion. Yet this is precisely its gift. Do not judge too quickly, what happened has a deeper purpose. Discouragement only delays growth.
The sooner you allow spontaneity and let go of rigid, boxed-in thinking, the more freely your life can take on new form. It is as if the Universe shapes reality step by step as you move, offering opportunities, new connections, and relationships that carry you forward.
See it realistically, limitations this does not take your desires away — it opens the door to them.
This month asks you, in your relationships, to examine whether you are directing your immense inner power wisely. Is this how you truly wanted to live (in terms of work hours, time with your partner, finances, home?)
If you can honestly admit that this was not your true desire, you will understand what a gift it is to redefine structures. Life does not take away your power or your capacity for love; it reshapes it into a form that brings you greater joy and harmony with yourself.
Yin Earth Snake – Hour Pillar
Regarding goals and direction, the Hour Pillar’s energy is decisive. This is pure life force, the correct use of inner power. It is not about external proving, but about acting when the time is truly right, when energy calls you.
If the purity of the Yin Earth Ox guides your heart, and the boundaries and rules of the Yin Earth Rabbit hold you, then the power of the Yin Earth Snake will manifest naturally and effectively.
Despite its Yin polarity, the Yin Earth Snake holds immense power, pure potential. Paired with stubbornness, it can become forceful overexertion that leads nowhere. On a lower level, you may cling to a job, position, or relationship that no longer serves you, blindly pushing forward without seeing the deeper reasons.
Used unconsciously, this power can destroy; used wisely and with acceptance, it becomes a truly transformative, renewing force and motivation. It is divine power — one that must be aligned with wisdom. Sometimes rest is required (the Snake in Indirect Resource structure: give it time). Calm, timed, wise strength reaches much farther than uncontrolled force.
Reflect on your life: what needs alignment now? What gains greater power if you stop rushing it, give it time, and wait for the right timing? In your vocation and goals, what potential could carry you further if applied correctly, instead of forcing the current path?
What talents lie dormant within you, unnoticed, yet capable of granting divine strength if you paid attention?
I often describe the Yin Earth Snake’s energy through distinction Force vs. Power. Though both means “strength,” one compels at any cost, while the other represents higher, cosmic, or divine power.
“The power of man is not in doing everything he can, but in restraining himself from doing what he ought not to do.”
— Marcus Aurelius
This month, therefore, is about alignment with your inner rhythm, pure intention, new rules and structures, and the wise use of power. What is born now will have true and lasting foundations.
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