Understanding COVID-19
We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse.But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives.
-Gary Zukhav-
by Sarah Kim 4/20/2020
Could It Be Just a Coincidence?
I woke up earlier than usual this morning on April 4, 2020 (having managed four hours of sleep despite gluten related indigestion symptoms) and was compelled to write about the COVID-19 phenomenon that is presently sweeping across the globe. Just yesterday, a close friend who knows of my work in saju reading and research asked me, "Can this phenomenon be explained by the saju principles?" I immediately answered, "Yes."
I said to my friend that we--the 7.6 billion citizens of the world--haved approached the dead center of Earth's winter phase in this year of the White Rat 2020. Things freeze during the winter, just as the world, since the onset of the pandemic, has entered the "freezing" mode with stay home orders and mandatory lockdowns around the world. As a result, human mobility drastically decreased, wrecking local economies all over the global village, but giving Mother Nature a break with clearer skies and lessened pollution.
According to the Ten-Thousand-Year Calendar (aka lunar, or stem-branch calendar) the Rat Year comes around every twelve years. The twelve years are divided by four, symbolically representing the spring, summer, autumn, and winter phases. The three consecutive years represented by the animals Pig, Rat, and Ox represent the winter phase, with the Year of the Pig (2019) as the beginning of winter, the Rat Year (2020) as the dead center, and the Ox Year (2021) as the receding period. The Rat in general is associated with the Greater Yin, symbolized by the water element and the color black; as such, it evokes notions of stillness, silence, frigidity, darkness and death. (On the brighter side, it symbolizes fertility and life--who knows how many COVID-19 babies will come along next year--getting things ready for the impending spring.)
What is unique about the Rat Year 2020 is that it is the Year of the White Rat that comes around every 60 years. The color white, symbolizing the Yang Metal element, apparently serves to greatly bolster the Rat Year's freezing water properties. What this means is that year 2020 is one of those harshest winters that occur once every 60 years. When you take a look at other White Rat years such as 1960, you will notice the escalation of Cold War between US and USSR, US entering war in Vietnam with its first 3,500 soilders, and proliferation of nuclear bomb technology in the West. It is not far-fetched to say that the Rat Year 1960 also loomed with frigidity, imminent violence, and death.
I'd been reflecting on such history until my friend asked me the question. I thought it would be worthwhile to share this thought out loud--with anyone interested enough to view the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of saju studies. The predictive wisdom of saju principles tells us that the pandemic situation will not go away quickly. The infection counts might decrease when summer comes (as the White Rat is prone to weaken in a hot environment), but we must continue to exercise caution, especially when temperatures begin to drop again in autumn and winter. But hope is looming in the year 2021.
We know the number "19" stands for the year 2019 when the novel coronavirus first emerged. This happened in December (in Wuhan city) which is the Month of the Rat--could this be just a coincidence?
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