The Chinese calendar works on a 60 year cycle. Every 60 years we will see the same kind of energies. The year 1965 was also a Wood Snake year. Looking back at what happened at that time can give us an idea of what we can look forward to in 2025. So what were the big global events at the time? We were at the peak of the Vietnam War, we saw massive civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther King Jr., the assassination of Malcom X, to name just a few.

The Fire element (We are in a Fire period (2024 – 2043) and the Snake is also a Fire element), generally brings passion, beauty, and creativity – but also tension, aggression, volatility, and instability. We are therefore looking at a year that will be rather unstable, especially from a political and economic perspective. Even if things look stable on the outside, there are hidden currents that can destabilize the global system and will impact everyone. While this may sound rather scary, we need to remember that evolution – and the change to something better – cannot happen without breaking old patterns and norms that are holding us back.

Despite all this, the first half of the year will see a lot of economic activity on a global scale. Fire speeds everything up, so we can expect an acceleration of economic and political developments that can lead to rapid changes. Southeast Asia in particular will benefit from these developments. In the second half of the year, we anticipate a slowing down of these activities, and even some stagnation in some areas of the world.

Snake years are often very turbulent. The Snake is also called a Growth Star – and hence represents evolution, transformation, and rapid movement. If you are generally a person who likes and embraces change, then you have nothing to fear. But, as humans we tend to want to hang on to the old, the tried and true methods, even if they no longer work for us. The Snake year, and, in particular, this Wood Snake year, will teach us lessons that revolve around letting go. This includes our notion of how the world should operate, how governments work, how conflicts are being solved, and so forth.

In addition, the Snake is considered a Traveling Star. This indicates movement and rapid shifts. Since the Snake clashes with the Pig, and the Pig is both a Traveling Star and of the Water element, we are not only foreseeing much more air and sea travel than in regular years, but this will also bring with it more travel-related accidents, mainly in aviation and sea-related travel.

Because of the strong association with the Fire element, we may unfortunately also be faced with more forest fires, volcano eruptions, and so forth; any natural disaster related to the Fire element. On the upside, this will increase the global awareness of climate change action and we will see renewed urgency in trying to tackle this issue.

Given that the Fire element also represents beauty, passion, and optimism, when combined with the Wood element we are likely going to see the emergence of a much stronger need for self-development, healing, spirituality, and so forth. People will begin to look for more meaning to life than just the day-to-day grind and will return to spirituality (or religion) to find answers to existential questions. While this was previously something that mostly women pursued, from 2025 onwards, we will see the male population become much more open to the possibilities alternative and spiritual healing modalities offer.  

The enthusiasm for new tech, AI, virtual reality, and virtual assets will return as well in 2025. And while it will take some time to develop the necessary regulatory framework for these new technologies to become more secure investment tools, we will see the focus turn more and more towards these areas of the economy – and how we can integrate them even on a smaller scale into individual businesses. In fact, business owners should look increasingly into applying new tech and automation into their operations, lest they will be left behind by the competition.

The Water element is traditionally associated with fear, while the Fire element brings hope and optimism. The only thing that can successfully overcome fear is hope and the faith that things will get better. This is something the Snake year will thankfully provide us with as well – the renewed ability to see a better future for ourselves, and the world in general, and the hope that things will get better after an initial upheaval that is brought on by rapid transformation caused by the Fire element.