Just in time for the Year of the Tiger, I saw the most amazing Youtube video of a house cat chasing a bear. As my friend Kate said, “That cat has chutzpah!”

As a shamanic practitioner who teaches about energy work and energetic protection (see my article Energetic Protection in the January 5, 2010 issue of this ezine), the thing I find fascinating about this video is how the cat, who is physically 12 times smaller than the bear, becomes just as big energetically as the bear.

The cat uses an ancient principle of Asian martial arts - she rushes out of the house, charging towards the bear, using momentum to increase her weight for a potential attack. The cat puffs out her fur, and energetically her aura stands out far beyond the physical body. She may be a house cat, but she has a tiger spirit. Perhaps this is where the martial artists learned energy work!

This Sunday, February 14, we move into the Lunar New Year of the Tiger, celebrated in China and other Asian countries. The Chinese have a zodiac identified with 12 different animals, and 2010 is the Year of the Tiger.

The website http://www.c-c-c.org/chineseculture/zodiac/tiger.htm says

The Year of the Tiger falls in 1914, 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998 and 2010. Tiger people are sensitive, given to deep thinking, capable of great sympathy. They can be extremely short-tempered, however. Other people have great respect for them, but sometimes tiger people come into conflict with older people or those in authority. Sometimes Tiger people cannot make up their minds, which can result in a poor, hasty decision or a sound decision arrived at too late. They are suspicious of others, but they are courageous and powerful. Tigers are most compatible with Horses, Dragons, and Dog.

This year, Valentine's Day and Chinese New year fall on the same day, February 14. Not many people realize that Valentine's Day has its origin in the ancient feast of Lupercalia, named after Wolf.

Wendy Brinker at http://www.meridiangraphics.net/lupercalia.htm says:

"Lupercalia is uniquely Roman. The word lupus is Latin for wolf.  It harkens back to the days when Rome was nothing more than a few shepherds living on a hill known as Palantine and was surrounded by wilderness teeming with wolves.

"Each year on February 15, the Luperci priests gathered at the cave of Lupercal. The occasion was happy and festive. Two naked young men, assisted by the Vestal Virgins, sacrificed a dog and a goat at the site. The youths then donned loincloths made from the skin of the goat and led groups of priests around the sacred boundary of the ancient city. As they ran about the city, the young men lightly struck women along the way with strips of the goat hide. It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February gets its name. This act supposedly provided purification from curses, bad luck, and infertility.

"One of the Lupercalia customs was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love - for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer.

"Christianity spread, and in the year 496 AD, Pope Gelasius replaced the festival of Lupercalia with a new festival on the fourteenth of February honoring Valentine as the patron saint of lovers.  The couple’s lottery was changed to a saint’s lottery. One would pull the name of a saint out of a box, and for the following year, study and attempt to emulate that saint.

"But the church just couldn't rid the people's memory of Lupercalia. The lottery finally returned to coupling eligible singles in the 15th century. The church attempted to revive the saint lottery once again in the 16th century, but it never caught on."

At LFAC, we'll be celebrating this wonderful confluence of Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year on Sunday, February 14, with romantic live guitar music, Chinese and Valentine's refreshments, traditional Asian intuitive readings (I Ching, Chinese Lip Reading), and the music of Dreamtime Tribe. Bring your significant other and have a Tarot for Couples reading with Steve Adams.

Strangely, I recently saw a live coyote in downtown Chicago. The Tiger and the Wolf meet this year - may we share their powerful spirits!