Welcoming the Year of the Water Tiger

Image: Sagar Paranjape on Unsplash

Happy Lunar New Year 2022 - Year of the Water Tiger! Here, the producer of award-winning Netflix water documentary Brave Blue World, Paul O’Callaghan, reflects on what the year might hold for the strongest element.

As we welcome the Year of the Water Tiger, it occurs to me this only happens once every 60 years. The next one we can mark will be in 2082! In Chinese astrology, water is one of the five elements - metal, water, wood, fire and earth - and when combined with the 12 animals, produces 60 unique combinations.

Despite my own scientific training, I was curious about what the Year of Water Tiger might hold. Water is regarded as the strongest element, even stronger than fire, as it can go around any obstacles in its path and not lose its essential nature.

The Taoist philosopher Lao Tsu wrote that: “There is nothing softer and weaker than water and yet nothing better for attacking hard and strong things”. So far, so good, that all makes sense to me.

According to an expert on the subject, Susan Levitt, author of Taoist Astrology, this year in the Chinese zodiac is "known for its power, boldness and predilection to doing everything big and is all about going big or going home".

"Water is regarded as the strongest element, even stronger than fire, as it can go around any obstacles in its path and not lose its essential nature."

Paul O'Callaghan, Brave Blue World

A key element of Chinese astrology is the concept of yin and yang, which are interdependent and flow into and out of one another. Yin is associated with the feminine life force of receptivity, while yang is male, and associated with action. Water is the most yin of the five elements. Its motion is downward and inward and its energy is stillness and conserving.

Carl Jung believed that water represented the collective unconscious, writing that: "Water is the ‘valley spirit’, the water dragon of Tao, whose nature resembles water - a yang in the yin, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious."

That is heady stuff. It resonates though the expression - water is life and life is animated water, which I explored in my previous article for Make Water Famous.

Plans are underway for BlueTech Forum 2022, a water technology event hosted by my company BlueTech Research. One thesis we will be exploring is that we have been trying to hurry water along. Given that it is the strongest of those five elements, in the Year of the Water Tiger, maybe we should take note of 'what water wants'.

About the author

Dr Paul O'Callaghan travelled the world to identify technological solutions to the water crisis for the Brave Blue World documentary, which is available on Netflix. He advises global water utilities and Fortune 500 companies on their water strategies through his company BlueTech Research.