2026: Year of the Fire Horse
- 3 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 20 hours ago
2026 Fire Horse: 2/17/26 - 2/6/27 (Lunar new year dates based on PST)
Earthly branch: Horse
Heavenly stem: Yang fire
Five-period Qi: Excess water
Synopsis: This is a year of the heart, but also a year of extremes. Since extremes are not so great for the heart, focus on maintaining balance in all aspects of life. Also, consider how you might sustain a quick pace without feeling hurried. Find ways to move quickly and efficiently while remaining relaxed internally. Find a sustainable rhythm of decisive action and rest.
The key phrase of this year: SHINE WITH.
Establish your horse tribe and then blaze together. You'll go farther and faster this way—with less woe, less burnout, and more fun. The year will have both big highs and big lows, and you'll metabolize these extremes more easily and thoroughly in community.
Before you bid the Yin wood Snake adieu, please consider:
What old skins did you shed, and what new gleam has that revealed?
What kinds of networks did you build?
Do you have a flexible long-range plan to apply in the coming months and years?
Did you give yourself ample time for rest, reflection, integration, and spiritual aspiration?
And now…
Are you ready to take decisive and assertive action?
How might you make that action graceful and efficient?
What forms of rest, play, and spiritual practices might balance the worldly actions you intend to take?
Are you ready to shine?
How might your shine inspire, uplift, and support the radiance of others?
Since we shine brighter when we shine together, who do you want to shine with this year?
Welcome to the 2026 Yang Fire Horse!
Fire + Fire + Excess Water =
This year brings us the effects of fire (the horse's native element/phase) within yang fire (the heavenly stem), but also excess water from the five-period Qi (see more below). This combination of influences suggests a tendency to swing between extremes. Picture a flame too high beneath an overfull kettle—the kettle boils over and puts out the fire beneath it.
But if we actively monitor our inner and outer circumstances and make choices that help us maintain balance (lower the flame a little and pour out some of the water), we can use this combination of energies to make a nice cup of tea that permeates the atmosphere with a fragrant and luminous steam.
Fire + Fire + Excess Water + our current Global circumstances =
With the global climate out of balance, this fire-fire-water influence suggests the possibility of both flooding and forest fires, an extremely cold winter and an extremely hot summer, etc.
With the socio-political climates being out of balance, this combination suggests intensification of the pushes and push-backs we are seeing between governments and the people being irresponsibly and unjustly governed.
Since the world around us is so out of balance, one of the most beneficial things we can do for the world is maintain our own personal balance. Use whatever grounding and calming self-care practices work for you to keep yourself steady in the tug-o-war between the classic duos of love (fire) and fear (water), unbridled desire (fire) and long-sighted wisdom (water).
Yang Fire
The climate of the 2026 Horse year is yang fire. We all behave and move differently in various climates. So how might a horse gallop through yang fire?
Personally, if I was in a fire, I would run as fast as I could. Now consider the temperamental nature of horses—if they are freaked out, they will trample anything in their path and not look back. And since we have excess water as the five-period Qi, fear is a major emotion of the year. So that's one layer.
But on another layer, fire is the horse's native phase/element, so the horse won't always feel freaked out. If you think of breaking into a run on a cold, gray day versus a hot, sunny day, imagine how much more responsive your muscles are on that bright, hot day. The horse is a muscle machine, and its muscles are warm in the climate of fire, which means the horse can go far and fast and function efficiently—as long as it is moving from that inner knowing indicated by inner light. If horse is running out of fear, it will run too far, too fast, and in the wrong direction.
Fire, in this system, has two major components—spiritual luminosity and heartfelt connection. In a yang fire context, the tendency will be for fire to move outwards. The negative expressions of this influence are an inflated ego, a competitive nature (trying to out-shine others), and subsuming others' light (i.e., those with greater influence using the light of others to further their own interests rather than uplifting the under-represented). But there are positive ways to express yang fire.
Beneficial ways to work with yang fire as heartfelt connection:
Prioritize love. Even if you're single, how can you bring love to the forefront of your life? Give love—and open your heart to receiving the love of others.
Be generous. Give what you are rich in, whether that's money, time, garden bounty, etc.
Forgive. This is both a way of being generous and a way of unburdening the heart, which is already working extra hard this year.
Hold all emotions (yours and others') in a nest of compassion. Sometimes trying to fix problems is not what's needed. Sometimes pain just needs to be held, known, and acknowledged.
Add your light to communal efforts. Together, we shine brighter.
Co-create joy and beauty. In tense and challenging times, shared experiences of art, music, dance, and celebration are more important than ever. When creativities conjoin, the effect is exponentially more powerful.
If you're shining solo, let your light guide and inspire others. In stormy times, lighthouses are life-savers.
Reach out to people you feel resonance with. Communicate. Collaborate. Connect.
Use your influence and power to support and uplift others with less influence.
Beneficial ways to work with yang fire as spiritual luminosity:
Establish and maintain daily practices that brighten your spirit. Aim low! 5 minutes a day is better than nothing. Once you establish those daily 5 minutes, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to find more minutes.
Establish and maintain daily practices that calm your mind—but for many people, sitting meditation is not the right starting point. With the yang energy of the year, you might find walking meditation or singing/reciting mantras to be more effective. Again, aim low! 5 minutes a day will take you infinitely farther than 20 minutes one day and then no practice for two weeks. Those 5 minutes will grow on their own. Plant the seeds and watch what happens.
If you do these two practices daily (brighten the sprit and calm the mind), you will naturally radiate your own unique spiritual luminosity.
Emotions of Fire:
Fire is famously associated with joy. But it also can show up as a lack of joy, which is felt as sadness (not to be confused with grief, which relates to loss). Joy feels wonderful, and we all want to feel it. But there's the rub: wanting. Reaching towards joy can stimulate longing, desire, striving, and hurrying. All of these states disturb the heart, which houses our shen (the luminous aspect of the spirit), and this disturbance clouds our innate wisdom. To work wisely with joy:
Practice contentment. Be grateful for what's good in your life, even if you're shoveling manure in a lot of aspects of life.
Celebrate the joy that others have.
Choose wholesome, non-harming, environmentally and socially conscious joys. What brings you joy that doesn't harm your body or mind, the environment, other humans on the planet, or other beings?
When you feel longing for what you don't have, remember others who are in worse positions than you (people in Gaza, people held in unregulated immigration detention facilities, refugees without homes, etc.), and send them good wishes.
A lesser-known emotion of fire is rage. Yes, anger is associated with the wood/wind phase, but anger has a sense of justice to it, which places it within a context of past, present, and future; action and outcome. Those are all wood-phase considerations. Conversely, rage exists in a realm beyond time and beyond right/wrong. Rage can lead to actions/speech of decimation without any considerations about equity, outcome, or humanity. This is the destructive aspect of fire. Let's not go there, friends! Calm down. Pause. Breathe. Digest the (albeit gristly) moment and let wise action emerge from inner quiet.
Five Period Qi—Excess Water
This influence brings cold and damp into an otherwise fiery year. If you already run hot, you might want to embrace this cooling influence. If you already run cold, however, you might want to protect yourself from further cooling and strategize how to harness the warmth available this year.
This adds water's emotion of fear to the mix. Water in excess suggests potentials for shock and panic, but also shut-down and avoidance. The word I want you to focus on in that last sentence is potential. Water offers beneficial states of being too! Because it is the elder of the five phases, water engenders great wisdom, depth, and long-range understanding.
Another way you might work with this watery influence is to connect with your ancestors. Another aspect of the water phase is your genetic and ancestral inheritance. Your ancestors lived through famines, wars, epidemics, migrations, and anything else you can imagine. The ability to withstand great adversity is built into your DNA. So remember that you are stronger than you think you are.
Here's a metaphor I encourage you to apply to our current circumstances here on planet Earth: In J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy, an army of the dead was summoned to help defeat the army of darkness. The dead were happy to do this because it freed them from a curse—so it was a win-win situation.
Horse Qi: Rhythmic Action & Grace
Imagine the rhythmic sound of a galloping horse: da-da-dun, da-da-dun, da-da-dun. We animals thrive on rhythm. And, in fact, everything in nature moves in rhythm. When the yin and yang of a rhythm is in balance, it's easy to sustain the rhythm, and that means we can go far with it.
Strong yang emerges only from deep yin. Expressing strong yang necessitates a return to deep yin. Horses aren't constantly galloping. They also rest and enjoy the sunshine as they munch on grass and nuzzle their horse buddies. If you've ever ridden a horse, you might have experienced the long rituals of grooming and care that precede and follow each ride. That intimate and intricate care enables the horse to be the lean galloping machine it is.
What decisive actions do you plan to take this year?
What forms of preparation and self-care will enable you to take those actions more effectively?
What restful recovery will you give yourself after your efforts?
Remember that everyone and everything around you (including the Earth and its climate) is working with fiery horse Qi this year too, so that means a great deal will be moving quickly in both your inner and outer circumstances. So get clear about how and when you will periodically pause to rest, recharge, and reorient.
Horses arrest our attention with the graceful curves and strength of their bodies and the sensitivity and deep knowing in their eyes and demeanor. This, too, is part of horse Qi. Deep sensing in the heart. Deep knowing from the gut. Grace in being as well as grace in motion. How might you utilize these strengths of the horse this year to help you maintain balance?
Mind Your Heart
The horse is associated with the heart channel. This fits nicely with both the horse and the heart being rhythmic. That said, tend your heart this year!
Emotional do's and don'ts for the heart:
Avoid haste. Avoid striving. Avoid rage. Cultivate contentment and calm. Appreciate joy when it emerges, but when it's not present, see what you can at least be grateful for. Cultivate practices of compassion (towards self and others), especially when feelings of impatience or unfulfilled desire emerge.
Foods and herbs to support the heart:
Red foods (beets, raspberries, strawberries, red-skinned apples, red chard, etc.), rose petal tea (pink or red roses), hawthorn berries, mimosa flowers to uplift the heart, motherwort to comfort the heart. Bitter foods and drinks (coffee and chocolate especially) stimulate the heart, so it's best to minimize those if you feel hurried or too full of desire/ambition/rage. If, on the other hand, your heart feels dampened by the excess water influence, you can use bitter foods and drinks to stimulate the heart. Herbal coffees made of dandelion and chicory roots are a great option.
Practices to support the heart:
The heart is connected to the tongue, so mind your speech. Speak truthfully, and with compassion. Also, mantras (spoken or sung or even thought in silence) calm the heart because they are intrinsically rhythmic. The lungs massage the heart when you breathe, so tend your breathing. Heart going to fast? Extend your exhalations. Feeling tired? Extend and intensify your inhalations. And then there's knowing when to hold one's tongue. Silence, too, can be medicine for the heart.
Fire Horse in context
Yin wood (2025 snake) emerged from yang wood (2024 dragon) just as a tree fans out twigs and leaves from its main branches and rootlets out from its taproots. Now yang fire (2026 horse) is able to burst into glorious blossom. How might you flourish this year? How might you co-flourish in community and collaboration with others?
Yang and yin breathe with each other and they breathe each other into being.
In 2026’s yang fire horse, arise from the snake's tunnel and journey forth. Shine together—and take time to rest and nourish the heart with both serenity and joy. 2027's fire sheep will bid you to look even more deeply into your heart.
Thanks for reading, and here's wishing you an abundant, vibrant, and luminous year of the fire horse!
Rae