Red Dragon

Kin 1 is Red Dragon with tone 1, the very first day of the 260. The sign comes round again at kin 21, kin 41 and every twenty days after that, each time with a different tone.

The nature of the sign

Imix is the water before anything has taken shape. Every creation story I know starts in a dark sea, and that sea is what this sign carries. It is pure potential, and potential wants to become something.

So Red Dragon is the sign of beginnings. Where it arrives, things start. A Red Dragon person walks into a stale room and within a week there is a new project on the table, a new question nobody had thought to ask, a new direction. They do not always mean to do it. It is simply what happens around them.

The library notes call it the carrier of primordial creative force. I would put it more plainly. Red Dragon is the person who cannot leave a blank page blank.

Who you are

You feel things before other people see them. You sense an opportunity, or a problem, well before it shows on the surface, and you move toward it with a certainty that can look like impatience from the outside.

Your mind works on the big shape of things rather than the detail. Small talk bores you. Procedure bores you more. You want to know what actually matters in a situation and you have little patience for anything that gets between you and that.

People are drawn to you and they are not always sure why. There is a magnetism to this sign, and a little mystery. You are hard to predict, even for the people who love you, because you are following currents they cannot feel.

Strengths

Red Dragon starts things that other people would still be discussing. You have nerve, instinct and a direct line to what wants to be born. When a Red Dragon says "I have an idea", I have learned to listen, because the idea usually has legs.

You also love wholeheartedly. Whatever you give yourself to, you give all of it. Half measures are not in your nature, and that goes for work, for friendship and for love.

Challenges

The shadow of the beginner is the half finished thing. A Red Dragon can have six projects going and none of them done, because the thrill is in the start and the finish feels like someone else's job. In my experience this is the lesson that follows the sign through life: not everything that rises in you has to be made real, and the ones that do deserve to be completed.

Your directness can land as bluntness. You say what you see, and you say it quickly, and the room sometimes needs a moment to catch up. Your intentions are clean. The delivery is worth working on.

And you need space. Anyone who tries to hold you too tightly will find you gone, because a dragon in a cage stops being a dragon.

In love and work

In love you are passionate and loyal, once you are given room to be entirely yourself. You are not possessive, but you will not be controlled either. Give a Red Dragon respect and freedom and you have a partner who will know what you need before you say it. Take the freedom away and you have a fight.

You would rather have three friends who truly know you than thirty who know your name. You are selective and you make no apology for it.

At work you belong wherever something new is being made: a business, a piece of art, a counselling practice, a patch of land brought back to life. Rigid hierarchies and rule books wear you down. Your gift is seeing what wants to exist and bringing it through, and the best working life for you is one that lets you do exactly that.

Your sign across the tones

Every Red Dragon 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 beginner is at the beginning of its own wave. Tone 1 Red Dragon knows exactly what wants to be created and goes straight at it. Tone 2 learns to hold that creative force without knocking things over, and tones 3 and 4 give it movement and then a shape to pour into.

With a middle tone, 5 to 9, the sign has power and is learning to use it well. Tone 6 brings a sense of proportion to the dragon's fire. Tone 7 refines it into something closer to art, and tone 8 asks how each new beginning will ripple out through everyone it touches.

With a high tone, 10 to 13, the sign is ripening. Tone 11 strips away the beginnings that were never meant to last. Tone 12 gathers other people's creative energy into one shared effort, and tone 13 Red Dragon, kin 221, carries the rare gift of a beginner who knows how to finish.

Across the traditions

Red Dragon leads the red family, the five signs that initiate. If you also know your Western chart, you will often find a kinship between this sign and the fire of Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, and the Western Astrology section covers that. The Chinese Astrology section has its own Dragon among the twelve animals, a different creature from a different tradition, and the two should not be confused. The Vedic Astrology section gives yet another view of beginnings through the first of the nakshatras.

What have you started lately that you have not yet finished, and does it still want to be finished?

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

Related pages
Red Serpent · Red Moon · Red Skywalker · Red Earth