Sign Of The Rat
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
If you are born on a Rat year your good qualities include being idealistic, attractive, dynamic, charming, skillful in your occupation, prosperous and open-minded. People under the sign of the Rat are usually attractive, loving, talented, communicative and community oriented. Because of these qualities you are a good business person and politician. Rat’s negative qualities can include being defensive, addictive, overbearing in their views, argumentative, picky and exploitative. Rat people can be extremely obsessive and possessive in their worst moments. Traditions and lasting cultural symbols will have special powers and meanings for the Rat. As the Rat person, you will be happy showing your outward identity in as many ways as you can. Symbols of yourself and your interests will prove extremely powerful for you. Be as comfortable as possible in your identity, there you will be secure and happy, feeling your own worth.
Legend has it that Buddha called together the twelve symbolic animals for a teaching of the Dharma. The Rat showed up first, and as a reward for this Buddha gave him the starting position of the Chinese Zodiac. Buddha's attribution of the Rat plays out in the Rat quality of being oriented toward winning and leadership positions. The Rat's ambition makes these people intense communicators, engaging friends and strangers alike, with their own idiosyncrasies and whims, aphorisms and anecdotes. Rat people play intensely, work intensely, love intensely and compete vigorously with everyone they meet. Rat people do best when they have an ample audience in which they are the center of attention.
Sometimes the Rat personality can become overbearing, especially when another vies to control the communication dynamic. A conversation with two alpha male Rat people in the room is to be avoided! Spectators will be simultaneously annoyed and bored. Rat people are talkers, loving to speak about daily things wrought with aphorisms of the small incidents of the past. The opinions of the rat are expressed openly and overtly to anyone who will listen, as they can be slightly conflictual, yet intensely social and family oriented people.
Rat people will be directed toward huge amounts of activity and won’t back down, even at the advice of others. They often will cause health risks to themselves after years of constant social and business activity. It is rare to catch Rats sitting quietly; it's as if they do their daily planning and thinking while asleep, and are ready to go the second they wake up. These people are constantly on the move from morning to evening. They will be busybodies prone to drama, and often are overachievers. Rat people can become depressed if their incessant flow of accomplishments is blocked by anyone or anything. Do not suggest that a Rat person relax and stop their endeavors. If this person does stop activity, he or she will sulk and complain, driving everyone to distraction.
The Rat will never let anyone escape from past errors or guilt. The Rat will have people and reasons responsible for blockages and their failures already neatly categorized in their heads along with the corresponding judgments and grudges attributed to every wrong incident. In families Rats are very caring, cherishing their families and lovers. They will be generous to their own, even to extremes. Rats esteem and protect those they love; they take the necessary time to do so as well. They are good at giving undivided attention or creating moments just to please those close to them. Even though people will be annoyed with the Rat person, they are the best ones to have around on holidays.
The social nature of the seemingly self-centered Rat can tend toward a fixation on the mundane as normal or correct. Even though Rat speak can be tedious, they need an audience to feel accepted. When Rat people get older they will talk to themselves, to invisible audiences, if the need isn't fulfilled in life. The Rat person will go on and on about mundane things, lineage, family stories, and little events that make everyone else eventually make for the door. The Rat person will not allow that though, manipulating the communication dynamic in order to keep their captive audience. They can often use flattery in order to gain subtle or not so subtle dominance in a conversation, and in fact will use this tactic in many situations. They often have trouble accepting a receptive or non-dominant position. In group company the seductive and equally aggressive Rat will take over the communication dynamic in clever ways. When the Rat is forced to be out of the position of total control, at work for example, they will be falsely polite and begrudgingly accept their position. The Rat is actually the boss in most cases, however; as mentioned earlier, the Rat nature makes for perfect business sense. The almost tribal instinctual regard for Rat's friends is coupled with an unmatched greed and need for dominance.