The Horse is on Fire: The Lunar year 4724 is gonna be LIT.

The last year of the Fire Horse was 1966.

That year, both Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan and Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys were released. Both would become landmark albums and in some ways signaled that something profound was happening at the time in American pop culture.

Pet Sounds laid the groundwork for albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and is cited by Paul McCartney as the most influential pop album of the modern era. Blonde on Blonde was equally influential and marked the solidification of Bob Dylan as the de facto greatest poet / musician America ever produced.

The Vietnam war was at its height, as were anti-war protests, the swinging 60s, the space race and the Beatles played their last public concert. Change was in the air, both at home and abroad. The post WWII world was radically reshaping itself into the current tri-partite power structure of the US, Russia and China.

Also, that year, Charles Whitman climbed a tower at the University of Texas with a rifle and shot 16 people dead and wounded 30 others. It was the first mass shooting in American history.

The year of the fire horse is known for dynamism, volatility and transformational change. The element of fire and the zodiac sign of the horse only coincide every 60 years. If you want to go further back, 1906 saw the San Francisco earthquake, the Wright brothers airplane patent, the first Ford automobile and the Atlanta race riots, which arguably sparked the organized civil right movement in America.

What does this bode for 2026?

In 1966 I was seven years old. I was concerned with seven year old things and did not know Bob Dylan and The Beatles played concerts in my hometown of Seattle, nor did I know that there were school boycotts. I do remember the earthquake a few months before the new year, and the little plastic model my father gave me of the SST (Supersonic Transport) plane that was going to transform Boeing and Seattle global economic players. The SST never took over long distance travel, but we did get the Supersonics NBA franchise as well that year, so…..

The world today is as volatile and unpredictable as it has ever been. If we add the fire horse to the panorama, it’s hard to say what is going to happen. Suffice to say that there are many situations around us that have felt “on the brink” for a while now, and the unbridled galloping of the fire horse could be the factor that brings things to a head.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that scientifically, fire is not truly and element. Throughout history, cultures have attributed to fire the same natural qualities as earth, wood, air and water. However, fire is actually a reaction; it is a state of transformation, a process, an “exothermic chemical reaction.”

So, the fire horse is a bit of a mystery as a zodiac figure, because if the horse in question is on fire, what exactly is it transforming into?

Remember: a horse will sometimes run back into a burning barn in a state of confusion and terror seeking its “safe space.” That same horse may follow other horses back into the same burning barn because of herd mentality.

Since the beginning of history, we can state with confidence that human beings behave the exact same way, running back into the fires of incredible moments of revelation and terribly tragic events with a predicability born out of thousands of years of simultaneously morbid and miraculous behavior. Moments of enlightenment tempered by incessant habits of tragic inanity.

Who knows if the next work of great art will emerge out of the coming year, or if the violent and chaotic will define it? Most likely, both.

One thing is certain: transformation is in the air because this horse is on fire. Happy New Year!