The Lunar New Year has always felt like a true beginning to me.
Years ago, I lived in China and arrived just as the country was preparing for Spring Festival- the Lunar New Year. I remember the migration of people traveling to be with family, the weeks of celebration, and the constant firecrackers echoing through the streets day and night. It was more alive than any holiday I’d experienced at home in the US. I could tell that it was a collective recalibration, a major shift in rhythm from the energy of one animal to another, one element to another.
That memory returns to me now as we step into the threshold of the Lunar New Year, which starts next Tuesday, February 17th. When I was in China, we were transitioning from the rooster to the dog. This year, in 2026, we’re moving from the energy of the Wood Snake to the energy of the Fire Horse. And I think that it goes without saying that this Lunar New Year is not arriving quietly.
Not only are we shifting from snake to horse, wood to fire, but this Lunar New Year opens under a solar eclipse in Aquarius, where the sun and moon are both activating Human Design Gate 30: the Gate of Feelings or Desires. And, it’s followed just days later (on February 20) by Saturn and Neptune conjoining in Aries through Gate 25: The Gate of Universal Love.
So, this is not just a new year. It is a complete reorientation.
Tune into the podcast above or read on- because this upcoming week is a serious turning point- for 2026, and for the rest of our lives...
A New Year Under an Eclipse
Lunar New Year always begins on a new moon. A solar eclipse is also a always a new moon, when the moon comes between the earth and the sun. So these two thresholds naturally intertwine. But when they coincide exactly, the symbolism deepens.
Eclipses are not ordinary lunations. They are interruptions in the usual flow of light. moments when visibility drops, our pupils dialate, and our awareness widens to whatever the universe is showing us that lies beyond our conscious minds. In astrology, eclipses often correspond with course corrections, sudden realizations, or the quiet closing of storylines that can no longer continue unchanged.
I like to think of eclipses as moments when the lights go out briefly, and when they come back on, the furniture has been rearranged. Nothing dramatic may have happened, but your perception has shifted. Your eyes have adjusted. You notice different things.
When an eclipse opens the Lunar New Year, the invitation is not to set intentions or rush into action. It is to attune to the field where the year ahead will be lived.
The Fire Horse and the Shift in Tempo
The Fire Horse is an archetype associated with momentum, courage, and speed. The Horse represents life force in motion. It is instinctual and embodied. The element of Fire intensifies that motion, adding heat, visibility, and acceleration.
Compared to the Wood Snake year we are leaving behind, this is a dramatic shift. Snake energy moves close to the ground, listens to subtle pulses, slithers along on it’s belly. Fire Horse energy lifts its head and runs, the wild stallion that it is, toward the horizon.
Historically, Fire Horse years have carried a reputation for volatility. As a brief aside, the last Fire Horse year was 1966, and in places like Japan and China, birth rates dropped sharply that year. There was a cultural belief that Fire Horse children would be too strong willed, too disruptive for traditional structures.
Whether or not one takes that belief literally, what interests me is the collective response. A culture sensed a threshold and hesitated to initiate lightly.
Although it’s yet to be seen what will happen with the birth rate this year, times have changed. Myth no longer shapes behavior so explicitly. And yet the body still recognizes thresholds. This Fire Horse year is not asking whether anything should be born, but how consciously it is carried.
Gate 30: Clinging Fire in the Emotional Solar Plexus
The eclipse activating this lunar new year occurs in Aquarius, in Human Design Gate 30, often called the Gate of Feelings, the Gate of Desire, or the Gate of Passion. In the I’Ching, this corresponds to Hexagram 30, Li, fire over fire- traditionally translated as Clinging Fire.
If we think about fire itself, we know that fire cannot exist on its own. It must cling to something, burn through some kind of fuel. It reveals the inner workings of whatever it touches, and it is reciprocally shaped by the quality of its fuel. When the fuel is not of good quality- some chemical or unnatural compound- fire burns erratically. When the fuel is solid, fire can be a warming, light-giving hearth.
In the Gene Keys, Gate 30 carries an evolutionary arc from the shadow of Desire, to the gift of Lightness, to the siddhi of Rapture. The work with Gate 30 is not about eliminating our shadows of desire, but instead refining our relationship to desire. Desire that is unconscious becomes insatiable hunger and suffering. But desire that is witnessed within us without desperation can turn into participatory devotion.
In the Human Design Bodygraph, Gate 30 lives in the Emotional Solar Plexus, a center whose intelligence unfolds over time. As anyone with emotional authority knows, feelings are not meant to be acted on instantly. Emotional clarity arrives after the wave has passed through. Emotions are energy in motion, and it’s important to give your feelings a space to move up and out- they don’t like to be pushed down.
This fundamental notion about emotions and feelings is especially important during eclipse seasons. This eclipse in Gate 30 is asking “What has your emotional fire been feeding?”
This is part of the broader evolution of the Solar Plexus itself, a mutation that is (according to the Human Design system) happening currently, as we approach 2027. Humanity learning how to feel deeply and use the solar plexus as an awareness center, without mistaking the intensity of feelings for absolute truth in the moment. Collectively, we are learning how to let desire inform experience without letting it dictate fate, and this eclipse/Lunar New Year activation is a milestone on that evolutionary journey!
Containment, Not Suppression
As we have seen, Fire Horse energy moves fast, and Gate 30 amplifies our desires. Without containment, this combination can exhaust the nervous system.
With that in mind, I’ll remind you that this year asks for rhythm. Instead of thinking about suppression or pouring water on our fire, we can think of containment as creating a vessel, or a rhythmic pattern, for fire to exist within. Stones around a campfire ensure that errant flames cannot escape and spread without restraint. Tuning into the energy of the year, we can remember that horses move rhythmically, whether they’re trotting, galloping or running. This year of the fire horse, breath matters. Sleep matters. Regular meals matter. Creative and physical practices that involve repetition, heat, and movement can help metabolize this large amount of emotional energy that is flowing through the field.
I also suggest fire-adjacent practices this year. Sitting by a fire. Candle gazing. Working with charcoal, pigment, cooking, heat. Fire reveals so much, so this year work with the element to let it reveal what is true without consuming everything in it’s tracks. Similarly, our desires can be felt fully, but like a fire in a hearth, they can be witnessed safely, without being urgently followed.
A Threshold Into the Heart
Just days after the eclipse, Saturn and Neptune meet in Aries through Gate 25, the Gate of Innocence or Universal Love. This is a profound convergence that I will explore more deeply in a separate episode.
Briefly, Gate 25 bridges the end of Pisces and the beginning of Aries. It carries the tenderness of emergence. Like a sprout breaking through the soil, a baby lamb being born, an infant taking its first breath after separation from the womb space.
Saturn in this part of the wheel will bring responsibility to our innocence, and Neptune will bring a dissolving and imaginative quality to what Universal Love could possibly mean for us all. Together, they will ask us to imagine a pure, deep love that comes from the space before birth- one that can be embodied and used as fuel for the fires and desires of the horse year.
Moving Into the Year
Despite the sensation of speed of the Horse starting it’s year in the Gate of Passion, this is not a year to rush. It is a year to listen carefully to the embers that stay alive after the initial spark lights the fire.
This year, protect your nervous system. Choose fewer, truer commitments. Let beginnings be beginnings, and trust rhythm over adrenaline-fueled urgency. Most of all, remember that fire does not need to be extinguished to be safe. It needs to be tended to.
I go much deeper into these themes in this week’s podcast episode, including the Saturn–Neptune conjunction and the longer arc of emotional evolution we are living through.
May this Lunar New Year bring clarity through attention and reverence for your unbridled feelings.
Happy Fire Horse year, everyone.
xoxo,
Alison
Connect with me:
Follow me on Instagram @hearthandspiral, or see my current offerings at hearthandspiral.com.
If you’d like explore how to survive and shine brightly through these upcoming transits, my books are open. 🌞
(Bonus: Here’s a song about feeling your feelings for this Lunar Eclipse in the Gate of Feelings. This jam has helped me raise my daughter through some high-frequency times. Great for kids but adults can benefit too! Enjoy!)
