“The secret to the renewal of life, the development of civilizations and the progress of humanity is in one word, innovation.” – Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
There is no doubt any clearer indication of our evolutionary progress than our collective ability to harness consciousness. The evolution of consciousness is apparent within the structure of peoples over time and the beauty, awe and wonder of our ancestors’ majestic accomplishments.
In 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted the Convention concerning the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage List includes properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having “Outstanding Universal Value. Since then, 1199 sites in 168 States Parties have been inscribed onto the list, 933 of which are cultural, 227 natural and 39 mixed properties.
This means they represent unique and significant aspects of the world’s heritage, transcending national boundaries and serving as a vital link between the past, present, and future for all humanity. These sites are protected and preserved for future generations to appreciate and learn from, and attract tourism and boost local economies while promoting cultural understanding and environmental conservation.
In this month’s Ascension contribution, we explore the astrological and spiritual implications for the Year of the Yin Wood Snake. Guest expert, Aelita Leto – Master of Feng Shui, Chinese Astrology, and Doctor of Chinese Energetic Medicine – supports us with insights into the soul’s development and evolution this year as we focus on the soul’s pilgrimage home as the path of maximum impact, innovation and self-realization.
THE SOUL’S PILGRIMAGE HOME
Around the year 400 AD, Maewyn Succat was born in Wales, and at the age of 16 was captured from his village by an Irish chieftain called Niall of the Nine Hostages. Maewyn was sold as a slave to herd sheep and swine across the sea in northeast Ireland. In his solitude and suffering, he discovered God. After receiving a supernatural message in a dream, promising him freedom and a journey back to his homeland, Maewyn escaped and walked 200 miles to the coast where he boarded a ship, eventually reaching Britain.
After being reunited with his family, following years of adventure, Maewyn received another vision of Saint Victirious, Bishop of Rome, with a letter in his hand reading ““The Voice of The Irish” which he interpreted as a message to return to Ireland as a missionary – his pilgrimage to heal the pain in his heart. Following years of study to become a priest, Pope Celestine fulfilled his wish and commissioned him as bishop to preach the gospel to the Celtic people. Maewyn adopted the name “Patricius” meaning “Father of his People,” as he left behind a legacy as the patron saint of Ireland, credited with delivering Christianity to parts of Ireland.
Saint Patrick is a spiritual icon for perseverance, service and forgiveness – absolute pillars of compassion. There are many myths and legends regarding the mystical powers delivered upon him through faith. The most notable legend is that Saint Patrick miraculously drove snakes and all venomous beasts from the island through the beating of a drum, so well that to touch Irish soil is instant death for any such creatures.
THE YEAR OF THE YIN WOOD SNAKE
In Chinese astrology, 2025 represents the year of the Yin Wood Snake, a year to be grounded in the heat of illumined sense. With your belly to the Earth, and fully alert, as a snake without eyelids, this is a year to be fully embodied in the depth of one’s spiritual self, aware of one’s conscious evolution in the present moment and in attunement with the guiding power of the natural forces. 2025 represents a year of deep alignment with one’s spiritual roots by embodying cultural appreciation for the lessons of our ancestors and adherence to the teachings that guide our senses inwards, detached from the transient nature of the external world.
The wood quality represents initiation, birth, newness, and renewal, as well as ambition and the ability to surrender to the intuitive flow of our inner essence. As a transition from the more explosive Yang Wood Dragon, the Yin Wood Snake represents an evolution of inner perception, or the sprouting of new senses for the welcoming of an evolved consciousness. Similar to the germination of a seed, which evolves through its selfless service to realize the higher celestial forces that have nourished and directed its growth, this year is a time for profound and deep reflection, from which level of consciousness emerges Dharma, our life purpose, our divine birthright, the path to realizing our true and ancient self.
Fire is the snake’s inner element, which is a yang within yang energy. This is an explosive and transformative energy, however, as it is cultivated inwards with the snake’s patience and cunning adaptability, the energy is experienced as rising upwards and blazing internally, not wasted haphazardly. 2025 is a year for true spiritual cultivation and calls for an examination of one’s long-term purpose, spiritual journey, and soul evolution. This is a year to discover your unique blueprint, identify your capacitance, shed distractions and to harmonize your dharma as opportunities are created from within.
Yin is complementary to yang, and is often associated with the divine feminine. This energy is deep, nourishing, intuitive, imaginative, patient and yielding, though highly magnetized. This year also represents opportunities for diplomatic partnerships, and breakthroughs in spiritual service and collective realizations across contrasting polarities. As such, 2025 will herald a year where opposing forces can meet in peace as higher pathways for emotional expression are forged by a driving force of purified intentions, whereby agreements can be matched for power, wisdom and resources to be mutually shared bountifully.
REALIZATION OF THE HIGHER SENSES
As the warmth of our self-awareness expands in the year of the Yin Wood Snake, we will be required to truly slow down and fully dissolve our emotional weights, the drains upon our beingness, the heaviness of our hearts, and the constant distraction of our senses. A year to fully charge our inner Chi by mastering our relationships with nature and the elemental forces throughout every aspect of our lives, 2025 represents a profound evolution in self-perspective, a clearing of the subconscious pain body by restoring the divine flow of awareness within. A year to truly pierce into our deepest gifts with self-love and to harvest our spiritual abundance as we reunite with our spiritual lineages.
Mastering the more subtle, and yet powerful, aspects of our spiritual self, our senses can be liberated from the mundane distractions and fear-bearing tactics of society, as we are now immune to attacks upon our auric field. By continuing to push through our inner evolution, neurologically, emotionally, and physically, we can shed all layers of our multi-dimensional self that resonates with the toxic ego, the limited mind. Wrestling out of our self-constricting behaviors and tendences, we can naturally expand into realms of existence that were previously hidden from our senses – a return to the world of the living and beating heart of universal life.
2025 represents a year of finding strength in one’s spiritual presence, confidence in the invincible subtle force that harmonizes upon contact – the ability to transform from within and to constructively cocreate one’s external reality to empower the unseen benevolent forces that guide our lives. As the soul realizes its higher purpose, the body and mind gradually evolve through both function and acceptance of its own spiritual light. True growth and expansion require ultimate surrender in order for the inner self to fully express its uninhibited brilliance. This radiance is fueled in the year of the Yin Wood Snake as the sacred fire of the heart is amplified by planetary shifts and astrological alignments that are driving humanity’s realization of unity consciousness.
In 2025, time and energy will be cultivated for the realization of one’s highest blueprint, as the naturally expansion of the soul enhances the deep emotional need for truth, balance and purpose – one’s Dharma. It is through this will, this inner fire that is delicately churned that new senses are born, and the body’s natural healing abilities are restored. A deep surrender is required to behold one’s inner light, and it is such mastery of control and release, that supports the soul’s rapture.
COLLECTIVE REALIZATION OF UNIVERSAL DHARMA
Considered the Father of Modern Yoga, Patanjali was an Indian mystic from the Vedic period, commonly depicted as half-man, half-snake, and said to be an incarnation of the thousand-headed serpent-king named Ananta, meaning “infinite.” Patanjali’s serpentine representation depicts the Kundalini Shakti Serpent energy. This symbolism represents the idea that he has transcended duality and attained oneness.
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali classifies Ashtanga Yoga, meaning the “eight limbs of yoga,” as an outer-to-inner process of spiritual liberation. The eight limbs of yoga are: Yama: Abstinences, Niyama: Observances, Asana: Postures, Pranayama: Breathing, Pratyahara: Withdrawal of the senses, Dharana: Concentration of the mind, Dhyana: Meditation, Samadhi: Absorption or stillness.
Through the ancient art of Ashtanga Yoga, practitioners gradually uncoil their neurological system from the spiritual entanglements of the collective psyche by dissolving the physiological attachments to the conditioned self, burning away the pain body to alchemize trauma into enlightened consciousness. Through pranic energizing exercises that clear trauma through the nervous system, thus restoring higher sense faculties, initiates practice this ancient art to clear the pathways for their soul’s conscious birth. By channeling inwards the heart’s fire element to feed the electrical currents of purification, initiates gradually restore the inner light of the chakra system for a spiritually transformative process that gradually restructures the body’s genome, organ and hormonal function. Through the clearing of the nervous system, the Kundalini Shakti Serpent fire is able to ascend the spinal column and charge the senses with intention to align our lives with our true purpose.
As the Kundalini Shakti energy purifies the nervous system, the light of the soul’s awareness is able to penetrate into depths of one’s beingness, for a natural unfold of cosmic radiance to restore the soul by upregulate the DNA’s genetic expression. As such, the Cosmic Sun, the rainbow fire, is unleased as the kundalini serpent energy unfolds the radiance of the heart chakra, for a full illumination of sense and a spiritual and physiological rebirth from one spiritual plane to the next. Yoga is a lifelong inner pilgrimage.
The goal of yoga is liberation from spiritual bondage, to be free from the karmic wheel of death and rebirth, and thus realize an immortal sense of existence. This is achieved by accepting and fulfilling one’s Dharma. One’s Dharma, or eternal nature, unravels itself from within to realize Cosmic Consciousness. It is this radiant cosmic will that has directed our soul throughout its evolution.
As the Yin Wood Snake deepens the cosmic heart’s purification process, 2025 presents a profound opportunity for creative and imaginative expansion as resonant forces collapse into harmonies that are consciousness-guided for the healing of the Earth and society. Furthermore, as the Yin Wood Snake enflames the heart, the soul’s voice and guiding presence will become an overpowering force in overcoming whatever darkness remains in our lives. This is a year of true soul exploration, discovery and surrender, whereby the infinite creative force can truly be realized as the director of your life.
Known as one who is perfect in Dharma, a Siddha masters his numerous spiritual abilities, known as Siddhis in Sanskrit. A Siddha uses these abilities to righteously protect, uphold and spread the teachings of the Dharma throughout incarnations and across the Universe for the liberation of souls and the harmony of natural forces required for the Universal Will to function. A Siddha serves the beating heart of the Universe, the Kundalini Shakti energy, and as a result becomes a living vessel, a conduit for cosmic consciousness whereby Divinity serves at the highest level of resonance through one’s evolved senses. 2025 is an opportunity to accept your inner mastery, and attune to your life to your own heartbeat.
EMERGENCE OF THE ASTRAL SPIRIT BODY
2025 will also present the critical test and challenges that rattle our emotional and nervous systems. Circumstances shall be presented that require that we truly face ourselves, examining with heightened awareness every decision and habit to deter us from our path, as we release all that is necessary to come into our own sense of sovereignty.
The year of the Year of the Yin Wood Snake will require us to be the like the mountain, a ballast in the emotional chaos of our environment. The Kundalini Shakti Energy is a natural purifier, and electrical fire that can raise the spiritual dust, and spark unhealed emotions in those around us to rise. As one’s inner potential rises, so does the need to master the inner forces for the healing of the environment, and guardianship over those awakening. The mountain is a powerful resonant spiritual force that simultaneously works to cool down stress upon the planetary heart, calming the tensions of the planetary ecosystem into stillness.
In Hindhuism, Lord Shiva represents the duality of creation and destruction. As the Adi-Yogi, Sanskrit for original yoga, Lord Shiva teaches us to tame and transform our demons as we master our consciousness as a perfected balance between light and dark, divine masculine and divine feminine.
Mount Kailash, in Nepal, is Lord Shiva’s sacred abode. This sacred site represents the Sahasrara, the Crown Chakra of the Earth, and is believed to be a divine axis between Heaven and Earth. A sacred site in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Bon religion, the pilgrimage to Mount Kailash is considered one of the world’s most holiest pilgrimages and most challenging treks.
Within human anatomy, the crown chakra correlates with the pituitary, pineal and hypothalamus glands, which work together to regulate the entire endocrine system – glands that control many of the biological processes. As such, Mount Kailash may be seen to regulate the balance between the planet’s other primary chakras sites: Muladhara – Root Chakra, Mount Shasta; Swadisthana – Sacral Chakra, Lake Titicaca; Manipura – Solar Plexus, Ayer’s Rock and the Olgas; Anahata – Heart Chakra, Glastonbury Tor & Stonehenge; Visuddha – Throat Chakra, Pyramids of Giza and Mount of Olives; Ajna – Third Eye Chakra.
The planetary kundalini shakti serpent energy is a piezoelectric current that travels through each of the planetary chakras, and finally comes to rest in Mount Kailash. Through the ascension of this fire through the human chakra system, Dharma expands through the awakened consciousness that emerges from the cosmic energy centers that are in resonance with the Earth. Through the realization of Dharma, the body naturally comes into homeostasis with the cosmic order, delivering health, spiritual wealth, purpose and an endless outpouring of joy.
Through the expansion of our Dharma, 2025 represents a year for a complete shed of association with the human self, and a mastered focus on the birthing of the radiant, spiritual self. Each chakra within the human body corresponds to each of the Earth’s cosmic energy centers. These two resonant centers are also in harmony with one another, only our identification with the mortal self, the conditioned belief system, creates resistance from this natural homeostasis between nature and man. Many ancient healing arts including both Yoga and Qigong, work to align and restore the cosmic balance and radiance within our bodies for the soul’s emergence may be birthed into our awareness.
A YEAR OF SELF-REVELATON
The only way to learn, grow, heal and evolve is through experience, and the Earth is calling us to remember our ancient cultural heritage to deepen our capacitance for processing our own spiritual light, wisdom and soul memories. As we focus our attention on our soul’s evolution, the path is provided for our spiritual development.
Planetary gridline energy and meditation work allow us to psychically access the wisdom embedded within the Kundalini Shakti energies of the Earth where the healing power is heightened to enhance our abilities in service of our Universal Dharma. This can be done directly at ancient chakra sites, or at the many temples and megalithic structures that cultivate and continue to radiate this powerful divine energy.
2025 will provide ample opportunities for those who have patiently trained in the inner realms to further pierce into the great mysteries of the Earth and to deliver that potential for innovation across less consciousness industries and economies. This will be a profoundly transformative growth year for mystics that are stepping into the light of fullest service.
For a full recording of the Year of the Yin Wood Snake, or to schedule a consultation with Aelita Leto find more details here.