The Year of the Fire Horse
We are entering the Year of the Fire Horse on Tuesday, February 17th, 2026, and what it carries feels unmistakable to me: radical self-respect. For too long, we’ve outsourced our power, our intuition, and our sovereignty to others, hoping that will keep the peace, make our lives easier and keep us safe. This reliance on external authority feels comforting at first, but it inevitably becomes too tight and repressive, and so we shed it or we suffocate, atrophy, and quietly wither and waste our potential. There is the final lesson of the Wood Snake, one that asks us to stop mistaking control for safety.
Authority has been pedestalized for too long, and with technology like AI and the abuse of power structures we’ve seen revealed before us in the most obscene ways in the last few weeks, it’s made us question our own competence and sanity. Whether this dynamic is intentional, manipulative, or simply opportunistic, it has felt destabilizing, but overall, I think it’s a sign that we’re growing up spiritually, or at least being given the opportunity to. But as we’ve seen over the last few years, and shown with overwhelming intensity over the last few weeks, that’s no longer an option if we wish to remain free. So, will we allow this Fire Horse to be broken and tamed by external forces, or will we practice radical self-respect and claim this wildness and momentum for ourselves?
This comes after the long shedding of the Wood Snake skin. With everything going on in the world right now, with all the chaos, deception, and distraction that came about in the final weeks of the Wood Snake, it’s natural to gird our nethers from the fireball of intensity the Horse is said to bring. What falls away now isn’t kindness or conscience, and it isn’t empathy or care. What falls away is the habit of leaving ourselves behind. The slow, often unconscious way we learned to set instinct aside to feel safe, to soften truth in order to belong, to offer ourselves up first and hope that meant we were good, or worthy, or enough. Now, this is not technical astrology so much as symbolic orientation, drawing from multiple traditions and lived experience. This is my interpretation and intuition based on what I know, what I’ve read and researched, and what I’m feeling in my blood and bones. So do with that what you will.
Fire Horse is not chaotic or overly forceful in the way many people might think. Fire is often described as uncontrollable, dangerous, and aggressive, with the Horse symbolizing unbridled speed and a wild, untamable spirit. So it makes sense that this may feel like the horse has taken off in some unknown direction before we’re comfortable in the saddle. Fire Horse is direct, alive, and oriented forward. It doesn’t contort itself into shapes just to be understood, liked, or forgiven. It moves because movement is its nature, because staying still after a certain point would be a kind of self-betrayal. Paired with One and Ten in numerology (2+0+2+6 = 10, 1+0 = 1…. #mathwiz), this moment holds both initiation and completion at once, a beginning that can only happen because something else is truly finished.
Across cultures, the snake has always been a complicated teacher. It carries transformation and renewal, often tied to feminine wisdom and cyclical change, but it also carries danger, fear, and shadow. Think of every figure associated with snakes and you’ll see these themes show up. Medusa, Lilith, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Even Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent in Norse mythology, is associated with danger and thresholds, symbolizing containment and the tension between order and chaos. Snakes get a bad rap and are often linked to destructive feminine forces, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, especially if we integrate the shadow aspects in a healthy, thoughtful way. We’ve been living inside that tension for a while now. Some of it has played out quietly, through exhaustion, grief, and private unraveling. Some of it has erupted loudly, through anger, chaos, and real violence that’s been impossible to ignore. None of it appeared without reason.
Snake energy brings discomfort, frankly because it has to. It draws what’s been buried up to the surface, not to shame us, but so it can finally be felt, named, and tended. For many people, that looked like people-pleasing wearing thinner and thinner until the body and heart simply couldn’t keep performing. For others, it showed up as anger rising fast and hot, looking for somewhere to land, somewhere to belong, somewhere to feel seen, heard, or understood.
Fear, anger, and disgust weren’t a mistake in this process. It was a signal. It showed us where something hurt, where something mattered, where something had gone unattended for too long. But this kind of alchemical season isn’t meant to last forever. It’s a crossing, not a home. If we stay there too long, fear stops being a guide and quietly becomes the one in charge. We start circling the same wounds, the same stories, the same reactions, without actually moving forward. What once helped wake us up begins to keep us stuck. Horse years often break stagnation, accelerate events, and force visibility. Add Fire to that equation and you have the ingredients for an explosively powerful year. It’s just a matter of what you do with it.
It doesn’t erase what we’ve learned or pretend the fear wasn’t real. It simply says that we’ve listened long enough. That we’ve gathered what we needed to gather. Now we get to move. Fire Horse asks us to take what fear revealed and stop letting it decide who we are. It invites us to step forward with discernment and intention into the life that’s already asking for us, to stand sovereign in the self even when that means not being carried along by the crowd.
This is where the old line attributed to Miyamoto Musashi lands with this sort of quiet clarity: “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.”
Honestly, I love that quote. It says so much with so much brevity, a trait I’m working on myself, but clearly, not quite there yet, as evidenced by this and my other essays. The idea of being prepared, of being disciplined while choosing peace lands deep in my gut, in my soul. Here, being a warrior is not viewed as threat, brag, or bravado, but as sacred balance. It points to the kind of peace that comes from having strength and not needing to prove it. When strength is acknowledged and integrated, it settles into calm. When it’s denied, it tends to leak out sideways as confusion, aggression, resentment, or collapse. This is where Fire Horse energy and that idea of radical self-respect collide into a beautiful and intentional alchemy. You want life to grow, and you are allowed to protect what you love. You are not required to offer yourself to harm in order to prove your goodness. Compassion that asks you to disappear is not wisdom. It’s fear trying to feel safe. This isn’t about becoming aggressive; it’s about becoming coherent.
Jung once said that “No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” This may come across as extreme, but it isn’t. It’s about become anti-fragile and understanding and working with our shadow rather than being ruled by it in order to live a full, complete life and reach our potential. What we refuse to face doesn’t disappear, it finds other ways to express itself, through burnout, bitterness, rigidity, judgement, projection or any myriad of negative outlets. Alan Watts touched the same truth with his particular blend of softness, clarity, and honesty. When we try to live by rules that cut us off from our own nature, we don’t become better people. We become divided ones, and anything built on division eventually cracks.
Fire Horse doesn’t posture, and it doesn’t perform virtue or live in fear of being misunderstood. Fire Horse energy isn’t loud, and it isn’t cruel, and it isn’t interested in earning approval.
It stands. It moves. It stays true to itself.
This is the year we stop sacrificing ourselves at the altar of our fears. That doesn’t mean we become cold or hard. It means we become honest. It means caring deeply without abandoning yourself, tending the warrior’s garden with love, and trusting that you could stand your ground if life ever asked that of you. That is radical self-respect.
