Red Serpent

Kin 5 is Red Serpent with tone 5, and the sign returns every twenty days through the count, each time with a different tone.

The nature of the sign

Red Dragon began the count with pure potential. Red Serpent begins the second group of five with something far more physical: life itself, felt in the body, moving.

Chicchan is the snake. In the old understanding it is the force that coils at the base of the spine and rises, the raw energy of being alive, the creative and sexual power that makes new life and remakes the old. It is also the creature that sheds its skin and comes out new. Both of those belong to this sign.

So Red Serpent is the sign of vitality. Where other signs think about life, this one lives it, in the body, in the moment, with the volume up.

Who you are

You experience the world through your senses before you think about it. Taste, touch, movement, warmth. You are grounded in your own body in a way that other people envy and occasionally find a little confronting.

You are charismatic without trying. There is a heat to this sign, and people feel it when you walk in. You are driven by passion, and you cannot do work that your heart is not in. You will try, and it will make you ill.

You live in the present. Tomorrow's consequences do not weigh on you the way they weigh on more cautious signs, which is a strength right up until the moment it is not.

Strengths

You bring life into dead places. A stagnant office, a tired relationship, a project that has lost its spark: put a Red Serpent in it and something stirs. You wake people up. You remind them they have a body and that the body is good.

You also know how to shed a skin. When a chapter is finished you can leave it, whole, and walk out new, and in my experience that is one of the hardest things for most people to learn. For you it is nature.

Challenges

The shadow of Red Serpent is appetite with nothing to serve. Desire is the engine of this sign, and an engine with no road to drive on just burns fuel. Chasing sensation for its own sake, one thrill after another, leaves you hollow and the people around you exhausted.

The other shadow is using your heat to steer people. You know you can. The work is choosing to connect rather than to control, every time, and being just as alive when the other person has all their clothes on.

And the present moment, lovely as it is, has a tomorrow attached. A little planning makes the aliveness last.

In love and work

In love you are passionate, attentive and wholly present. You love with your whole body and you expect a partner who is not frightened of desire. Relationships that ask you to keep a lid on your feelings, or that treat the physical side as a chore, will not hold you.

You can look unfaithful or unsteady to a more conservative partner. In my experience a wandering Red Serpent is nearly always an unsatisfied one, and the real question is "what is missing here". Answer that and the snake stays home. Your friendships are lively and a little dangerous, in the best way, and people come to you to remember how to take a risk.

At work you need to move. Sport, dance, medicine, bodywork, healing, anything that works directly with the living body or with raw energy. You are a compelling teacher because you show rather than tell. Desks and emotional silence wear you down fast.

Your sign across the tones

Every Red Serpent also carries one of the thirteen tones, and the tone changes how the sign is lived. The Thirteen Tones page covers each one in full.

With a low tone, 1 to 4, the life force is just waking up. Tone 1 Red Serpent knows exactly where its energy wants to go. Tone 2 feels the pull between appetite and restraint and has to learn to hold both, and tones 3 and 4 get the energy moving and then give it a channel.

With a middle tone, 5 to 9, the snake is fully awake and learning to drive. Tone 6 Red Serpent, in the library's own example, learns to spend its tremendous energy in balanced and fitting ways. Tone 7 is the sensualist with an artist's touch, and tone 8 thinks about where the heat lands and who it warms.

With a high tone, 10 to 13, the sign is ripening. Tone 11 sheds whatever skin was only ever for show. Tone 12 lends its vitality to a group, and tone 13 Red Serpent, kin 65, has lived every appetite through and come out the other side calm, which is a rare and beautiful thing to meet.

Across the traditions

Red Serpent sits in the red family, the five signs that begin. If you know your Western chart, you will find kinship with Mars and with Scorpio, and the Western Astrology section covers both. The Chinese Astrology section has its own Snake among the twelve animals, a cooler and more watchful creature than this one, and the two are worth reading side by side. The Vedic Astrology section carries the serpent too, in the nakshatras ruled by the naga.

Where in your life is the energy going that your heart did not choose?

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

Related pages
Red Moon · Red Skywalker · Red Earth