Hello, Archie.
I will be 60 on August 30, 2010. An acquaintance of mine, who turned 60 in late February, is a fellow Metal Tiger. His wife is Korean.
He told me that Koreans say the 1950 Tiger will never be prosperous. Is this an actual prediction, or is it simply a response to the beginning of the Korean War (which began on the anniversary of Custer’s Last Stand–June 25)?
Most other 1950 Tigers are like me–artistic, creative, highly intelligent, but not too well off monetarily. I can think of one who’s done all right money-wise, but he’s been married 5 or 6 times.
Have you any insight on this? Maybe it explains why all my awards, publications, degrees, etc. have never made much money for me. Or maybe I don’t really understand or appreciate monetary wealth. There are other kinds of wealth. Just wondering!
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Alice Long, Ph.D.; Metal Tiger
(I’m prouder of the Metal Tiger part!)
I’ll be honest. I know next to nothing about Chinese astrology and I’m not very curious about it. I’m sure it can be useful, if you do an in-depth study of the system, which goes beyond the twelve animals and the five elements, but in its popular form it’s fairly worthless, and it probably doesn’t tell us anything that can’t be gleaned from Western and Hindu astrology.
At least that’s my gut reaction. Though on reflection, the cyclical nature of Chinese astrology is rather appealing. You have an animal for each year, and every twelve years the animals repeat. And there are five types of each of the twelve animals, of the nature of the five Chinese elements – Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. So every sixty years you’ll get the same animal with the same element. This means that 1890, 1950 and 2010 are years that are ruled by the Metal Tiger.
I have already written an article about the relationship between the Metal Tiger and the Korean Conflict. It’s certainly an interesting coincidence that the Korean War started in 1950, and this year, 2010, tension levels between North and South Korea are sky-high.
However the sixty year cycle can be explained with reference to Jupiter and Saturn rather than the Chinese animals. Jupiter takes just under twelve years to go through all the twelve signs, while Saturn has a cycle of around twenty-nine and a half years.
So at the outbreak of the Korean War, on June 25 1950, Jupiter was in Pisces and Saturn was in Virgo, as they were between April 6 and June 6 2010.
This brings me to Alice’s question. She is a Metal Tiger, born on August 30 1950, just over three months after the Korean War broke out. Her Jupiter is in Pisces and her Saturn is in Virgo.
Alice suggests that her lack of material wealth, as well as her creative and intellectual interests, might be related to the Chinese year in which she was born.
She shares her birthday, August 30 1950, with the sculptor Antony Gormley. Anyone living in Northern England will be familiar with his Angel of the North, a huge sculpture, with wings 54 metres across, that was put up in Tyneside. And I assume, given the acclaim that his work has received, that Antony Gormley is reasonably wealthy.
Looking at other Metal Tigers, born in 1950, there are few people who are super-famous. Though I suppose Metal Tiger and entrepreneur Richard Branson is by any definition very rich and very famous, especially in a UK context.
If you go back sixty years, to 1890, there are some very famous Metal Tigers. For example military leaders Dwight D. Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle and Ho Chi Minh. Not to mention Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Which raises an interesting point – to really understand the Metal Tiger, we have to understand how the animal interacts with the times in which it was born. So someone born in 1890 would probably be reaching the peak of their career in the 1940s, roughly at the time of the Second World War.
And I suppose in the context of warfare, you’d expect Metal Tigers to be good tank commanders – fierce Tiger, Metal body. Before the Second World War armour was Charles de Gaulle’s specialisation, and he was indeed a tank commander during the German invasion of 1940. Eisenhower was likewise a tank specialist, at least at the beginning of his career; in the First World War, when tanks saw action for the first time, he was in charge of a tank corps.
However I don’t want to push the metaphor too far. People born in particular years might have some similarities, but in the main these are generational rather than personal. A Metal Tiger can be just as wealthy and just as successful as any other animal, regardless of the element. Though if Metal Tigers want to be successful soldiers, they should consider having as much to do with tanks as possible.
Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop
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