This is a brilliant little film, for the light it casts on the extraordinary construction and complex mechanical thinking behind the Antikythera mechanism – its worth watching just for that. But there are astrological questions that arise with it too, as well as the question of what other uses the device might have been put to.
Where the film, or better said, the orthodoxy voiced within it fails is in accepting that the technology necessary to make this computational device was, in fact, extant in Greece over two thousand years ago – scientific rigor may be the reason for this error, but the people who built this mechanism already had a rudimenatry version of the steam engine, the metalergic knowledge which this device embodies was already thousands of years old, and the observations necessary for the calculations of the planetary movements, to the degree of accuracy built into the mechanism itself, would have, and could have only been made over centuries…
…..in fact, that knowledge was extant millenia before the time of the Antikythera mechanism itself, and was known to astronomers and astrologers alike; it was also integral to cyclical energetics of a much more cosmic and subtle nature, which ran through the Earth, the solar system and our local star, in which the calculation of planetary cycles would have been a great aid in harmonising with those energies; that is, after all, one of the primary functions of astrology……but is also a part of the tradition embodied in ancestral sites, temples and technologies of the ancient past.
This film helps in restoring a sense of sophistication and wonder to our connection with that past, so, please do give yourself a well spent half hour and watch the vid >>>
click on the image below to view The Antikythera Cosmos video
The highest need of re-emergence, when it is time, is to do so within a landscape of realisations which by virtue of their own true nature demand to be grounded in life. This is not a landscape that is pre-packaged and predetermined for us to be accepted without question, or which bears no respect for life. This can no longer happen – that particular genie is well and truly out of the bottle. These are realisations born of our own inner experiences, the ability we have to be self reflective and aware of our own innate conscious reality. They confirm and are confirmed by the world.
It is possible to become enamoured of that inner world, to fall under its glamour too. The way in which our own truths are accepted within the world, the degree of respect they generate, and the degree to which they appear anomalous in the world but are able to find an integral place within it are all part of the intrinsic composting process which gives rise to healthy cultures and societies. We all participate in this.
Some, however will resist, buck against the process, against some of its products and creations, and get well and truly locked into their prevailing mind-set, becoming deeply entrenched in beliefs that they subsequently become convinced they can’t live without. These may well be the foot-soldiers of any NWO that might attempt to establish itself. All the options which they might consider their sacred cows have already been patented.
This is the root of a pernicious bifurcation, is very real, and very tangible. It is also a recipe not only for cognitive dissonance but for chronic polarisation, which is a dis-ease itself and, the degree to which such polarity is allowed to manifest outwardly is very much a part of the current battle. Our own inner explorations are an essential part of maintaining immunity to this disease.
It is an ongoing battle in these times.
You can see it in the most mundane sense in the war thats been raging on political fronts, in conflicts between PC police, censorship and freedom of speech, for example. Social media is one of its major battle fronts, but, at a much more sinister level, it is our minds and bodies which are really on the front line. Being sucked into the virtual vortex is a real danger.
There is undoubtedly a spiritual as well as a mental war going on here and eclipses on the new Gemini Sagittarius nodal axis will bring its tensions, points of conflict and disparity to the fore as we try to extricate ourselves from the worst aspects of the past and navigate towards the future. This too is a part of the clarification process that is underway, and even though it appears to be anathema to a raising of consciousness or inner upgrading, it is a necessarily truthful part of the process.
Many people are aware of the need to change the narrative, to find a new story so to speak. It is an impulse that been with us a long time.
The first wave of this phenomenon in the current era has been building quietly now for more than half a century, ever since the Uranus Pluto conjunction in Virgo its underlying effect has been undeniably present.
The second wave began to come in during the eighties, notably through Neptunian and Uranian influences and technologies activating Sagittarius and Capricorn, essentially grounding non-physical realities within our midst.
The third wave is now coming in to land, fuelled by the entire planetary matrix. We are on the cusp of something both anomalous to the present paradigm and deeply relevant to us as humans, and in the process are activating our electrical nature and energy bodies.
This is a part of the vision, the strange attractor pulling us forwards. It is a far cry from fear of a pandemic, which is being used to do little more than suppress and dumb us down, and attempts to blind us to our own greatness. We should pay heed. The north node’s new emphasis on intelligent perception, meaningful cohesion, connection and communication is where this must first be translated into ‘a story that has legs’.
In opening up the imagistic inner realms, the nodal axis emphasises the undervalued immaterial aspects of ourselves which themselves carry a high degree of immunity to the various forms of pandemic infection that afflict contemporary life. The artistic spirit knows this, and we are all imbued with imagination – just as the ancestors who inspired Jean-Michel Geneste’s words in Chauvet cave were. We are them, and they us.
The dreamers and those who are able to truly ground their connection with the ‘dreamtime’ will be seen to be a new and vital source of power, and empowerment. This is the power that holds the line with all who have come before and will come after us. Our creativity is the sap that flows through this lineage, these roots and feeds the branches through to their tips and the fruit that grows from them. Its a vision that knows its own freedom, carries its own seeds – its time is with us, and we can sense it growing in strength.
The inner qualities highlighted here are a reflection of our personal ability to direct our own energy through consciousness.
It is certain that we will emerge from these times different as a people. They present us with is a golden opportunity, to change our relationship with the past, and to reorient ourselves towards the future. Both past and future change when we do so, and this is the gift of working with the nodal axis.
In Gemini and Sagittarius consciousness and awareness become truly creative powers. They are ours to use in restoring good relations with life and, more importantly, in finally letting the voice of our souls sing. We are gifted with the most remarkable place in which to do so.
Saturn stations retrograde 11th May, 1°57′ Aquarius
Mercury enters Gemini 12th May Mars enters Pisces May 13th Venus stations retrograde 13th May, 21°50′ Gemini Jupiter stations retrograde 15th May, 27°14′ Capricorn
Penumbral lunar eclipse June 5th, 15°34′ Sagittarius
Total solar eclipse June 21st, 0°21′ Cancer
Penumbral lunar eclipse July 5th, 13°38′ Capricorn
Penumbral lunar eclipse November 30th, 8°38′ Gemini
Total solar eclipse December, 23°08′ Sagittarius
Jupiter is now accelerating out of hard aspect with Neptune and we would do well to take notice – Neptune’s square with the giant planet has acted as an internal damper to Jupiter’s influence, but now, with Jupiter entering into an unaspected phase, its growing reach will become a latent backdrop to the field, magnifying the feeling of urgency and immediacy which the remaining phases of the current lunation throw into our midst.
We may feel that we are embroiled in events that extend well beyond our personal reach, a fact of these times which of late has been pushing emotional boundaries and compromising inner balance. The feeling is now becoming sharper and harder edged, demanding a more decisive approach to obstacles and problems when they come up, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture in the process.
Perspective is everything now and this is where Jupiter’s influence can make the coming weeks, through to the end of the month, really count.
The bigger picture can be more easily grasped when we recognise the patterns that have been created by significant events in recent times. It may seem that a veil is being lifted as things come into sharper focus. When we do see the same telltale signatures recurring our perceptions change and a shift becomes tangible. This may feel like things are coming to a head, indeed, by month’s end we might well need to withdraw our energies and reassess. But, its a wave, a preparation for coming events in the coming year.
Between now and the end of the month we will notice weak spots and vulnerable areas of our lives become highlighted; appropriate strategies and care need to be activated, but these are also pre-emptive, calling for the wisdom of our personal experience to be brought to bear – at the full moon on the 13th October, which squares Pluto, the field carries a depth charge which is likely to be reflected outwardly, accompany world events and may well rattle cages.
A reality check will be in order as we head towards last quarter and we’ll revisit this in the run up to new Moon.
Until then, remember it is not only the outer world that is changing, and a much greater vision for our future is undergoing its own transformation – we are all a part of this, no matter our platform or beliefs….be of good spirits and take Jupiter’s benevolent nature to heart…..
This post continues the exploration of Uranus transit of Taurus bringing the focus to ground level within the human and natural environments. Many arenas of change have been left out here in favor of those which are perceived to be predominant, so this is not an exhaustive analysis. It does however offer context and give flavor to the trends discussed last time, in relation to our decision making within the mundane world. This is also the environment concurrent with the more metaphysical aspects of this transit, so it is essential we go there before coming to the next level of speculation, as we will in the final part of Uranus in Taurus.
Cycles and Aspects
Uranus, at the time of writing, is in the midst of a brief recce into the fixed earth sign having recently stationed retrograde. Saturn is currently also retrograde in Capricorn, going direct on September 6th 2018. Uranus and Saturn’s present trine, which has held a close orb since May, will last through to November 2018.
The steady if gradual developments we have witnessed through this time give way to a period which increasingly demands attention and decisiveness. When in March 2019 Uranus enters Taurus for the long haul we see this dynamic sustained throughout the first year until the Saturn Uranus square comes more fully into play in 2020.
During the first year of Uranus transit of Taurus Saturn is busy, a hectic conjunction between Pluto Saturn Mercury and the Sun in Capricorn on January 12th 2020 introduces the first phase of a watershed zone. At that time Jupiter will also be conjunct the Moon’s south node in early Capricorn. As the year progresses, Jupiter will catch up with Pluto and after converging with Mars in the first degree of Aquarius Saturn will retrograde back to form a stellium with Pluto and Jupiter which will sustain through the rest of the year.
This heavyweight combination represents a struggle between opposing forces in which extremes begin to attempt cancelling each other out, a process which will ultimately result in them losing power and from this point will resolve themselves into a new phase of building – this image could also apply to the long term process we are entering.
The stellium closes on the December solstice 2020 with Jupiter and Saturn conjoining, again in the first degree of Aquarius, to begin a new cycle although the polarised standoff highlighted through the entirety of 2020 will continue, conditioning the beginning of the new Jupiter Saturn cycle. That cycle will be highly instructive in laying the ground, and infrastructure for the establishment of a post-political technocratic landscape – we will come to look at the latter in more detail in part 3.
This watershed moment reveals two things, the first being how much of a softening up process has been at work over a prolonged period of time, repeatedly oscillating between growth and forced containment, at times vigorous and intense, at others deceptively placid, but always occurring within recognizable parameters. We are living amidst circumstances which have increased our attention level but which have yet to trigger really major systemic change.
The second is that through this process long held blockages to deep memory and historical truths have been made malleable and porous – a reassessment of the past is underway, a quiet revolution in itself, however, when this initial period of Uranus transit comes to fruition in early 2020 it will not be an understatement to say that ‘the past looms large’. Global circumstances at this time will echo past events which have had universal effect so this Saturn Pluto Jupiter stellium and the time surrounding it will need much closer examination nearer the time.
From mid 2020 onwards when the square also comes into closer orb the choices being faced are not only limited increasingly by ‘circumstance and policy’ but are informed by a deepened and growing understanding of the past. We will find ourselves living in what appear to be very ‘conditioned’ circumstances. The latter will bring deceptions and false narratives to light which reveal how extensively human perception has been subverted and which demand a serious revision of the historical narrative.
At a more personal level feelings raised by major environmental events will carry a familiarity about them, an indication that connections are being made with deep memory. Whether this brings strong and clear recollection will depend on the memory and the individual who holds it; we will return to this experience in the third of these articles, but, there is a sense through these experiences that we are going through a ‘reality shift’, blurring the lines between the ‘real’ and the ‘unreal’.
The square, when it arrives however, tells us we have entered decision time.
This aspect will highlight more of the antagonistic dynamic between Uranus and Saturn – its not going to be a one-off either as the square will reform three times during the period through to the last quarter of 2023, never entirely leaving orb during those three years.
This being the waning square in the current Saturn Uranus cycle this will be a time in which issues first raised through the opposition (2009-11), previous waxing square (1998-2000) and the conjunction which began this cycle (1988) will be brought once more into focus, ultimately to be resolved.
The cycle began in February 1988 with Uranus and Saturn conjunct in alignment with the Galactic center, opposite Chiron and squaring the Moon’s nodes. Portents of what is now unfolding were appearing.
The collapse of the ecosphere was first registered, and even capitalised upon, as a ‘global warning’ within this period. The health of the planet had been on the scientific radar for decades, but, its impact was beginning to come through more clearly within public consciousness as the century came to closure. Our future and its relationship to the human imprint from the past came more into focus.
This was also the year in which the WWW was first talked of at CERN and the ‘Internet Worm’ made history as the first major computer virus; it was the year in which President Ronald Reagan visited the USSR, the year of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’, and the onset of the collapse of the Soviet Union; it was the year in which the first exo-planet beyond the solar system was detected and man-made global warming was declared a ‘reality’; the year in which the Piper Alpha North Sea oil platform was destroyed by explosions and fires to the loss of many lives.
‘Resolution point’ and the completion of the current Saturn Uranus cycle is reached in Gemini in June 2032, when the two planets meet once again exactly opposite their 1988 starting point. The fruits of decisions made during the coming waning square will ‘come home to roost’ at that time – this is a cycle that invariably ends in the sign opposite to the one it began in. It is the polarity which provides closure.
The Symptoms
During the first half of Uranus 7 year transit of Taurus the dynamic between the individual and the masses will change. Humans will have to reconfigure their choices to a much more individual level, in step with the times. There can be no guarantees about what this will look like, the exact effects it will have, but, based upon current trends, the evidence from Uranus short foray into Taurus, and the predominant features of the planetary matrix through this time, we can speculate with a high degree of probability.
At the most superficial level we could be forgiven for thinking this looks like starting off as a seven year ‘love it, use it or loose it’ scenario, but we will soon discover that these are ‘consequential’ decisions, choices ‘on steroids’.
At the very least we can expect to come face to face with the need to revise our material attachments – never a bad thing to undertake voluntarily, this however will be revision demanded of us more by external events and forces. Neither is this an extension of the political agenda manifest in the idea of ‘austerity’ – but, major political change is on the way.
Stepping up a notch, we will see a steady shift towards a more deeply pragmatic sense of how to live life, already a choice for many choosing to ‘opt out’ of the ‘mainstream’ western way of life. Within the seven years of Uranus transit his will increasingly become a reality experienced more through necessity than choice, the result of both human and natural events.
At the next level is an increasing erosion and destabilisation of cultural identity, especially within ‘western’ countries.
Attempts at radical liberalisation and counter-resurgent protectionist defence of national identities and fundamentalist ideologies which we have seen emerging in recent years will continue but will begin to shed their recognisable political clothing as the transit progresses, especially towards the later stages with Uranus approaching the Gemini cusp.
The political identities of the past are in fact heading for extinction.
Where previously within political thought and ideology we had seen a competitive dichotomy in practice, symbolically represented by the ‘left’ and ‘right’ branches of politics, a new interactive duality inherent to the political arena will be defined more by tensions between ideological determinism, which now veers more sharply towards realising the role played by ‘non-physical’ technologies such as the internet, and pragmatic realism, which is defined more by external conditions, both imposed and naturally occurring . The technocratic revolution begins to bear fruit at this point.
By the time Uranus arrives at the cusp of Gemini the understanding will be that ‘political relativism’ is itself an interim stage on the way to developing and embodying a more radically conceived form of human ‘management’.
The shadow of Agenda 21/30 begins to loom large here.
The movement here becomes a longer term process which will see the traditional western notion of ‘politics’ diminish, its basis ultimately giving way to purely ‘functionalist’ philosophy manifest through regulation and governance. Although this might suggest a movement towards bureaucracy, the incline is towards a structurally diverse modular distribution of ‘policy’ based governance in which centralised ‘government’ is ‘function’ rather than ‘policy’ based.
The basis and meaning of ‘policy’ itself will radically change, but, that’s a discussion we will have to come back to in part 3, partly as it focuses on the technological developments which are in process at time of writing.
The seeding part of this process, which we are presently within the first stages of, will feed into and accelerate the breakdown of cultural aesthetics and social mores, a process which will encourage their rebuilding based upon a revised foundation of values. The fulcrum point for initiation of this process is the Venus retrograde in May 2020, but, as a longer term global process this re-evaluation was initiated the last time Uranus was in Taurus in the nineteen thirties, a period of political opportunism, economic instability and propagandist manipulation which signalled the onset of technocratic foundation building, and which very much resembles this time in many ways.
One of the main differences between that time and this will be seen in the impact of ‘natural’ events upon infrastructure. But, the long term impetus here relates more to the influx of a template for living which aligns more fully with the Aquarian ideal. We should always remember that there are two sides to what that ideal might be.
Earth Movements
The impact of large scale natural events, the forerunners of which we are already witnessing, will escalate as the transit progresses. Many of these events will bring unnaturally destructive power to bear on human infrastructures. Some will be induced by human interventions, some of which which have accumulated over time, compounding disruption to natural cycles and interrupting the planet’s own self regulatory systems. Many among them however will be seen to have been caused through deliberate intent, employing frequency technologies like wifi, and weaponising climate systems and bio-energetics, for example.
An increasing proportion of the larger ‘natural’ events will however be driven by sources which are currently barely understood and rarely acknowledged, except perhaps within a fringe minority of engineers, physicists, scientists and cosmologists, a large majority of whom do not operate within the mainstream.
Where we see particularly stubborn Saturnian resistance to change, especially within ‘the orthodoxies’ of the human world, the issues surrounding need for change will become increasingly forceful, and the forms that change takes become more deterministic. In fact, change is not negotiable.
We will see highlighted the intrinsic inadequacy, instability and threat to human and environmental health, which many existing infrastructures present; this will apply especially to those connected with power generation, energy distribution and transport, but also with regard to health risks.
The need to make radical decisions about the future of both solid state fuels and ageing production facilities, such as nuclear power stations, will of necessity become part of a rigorous re-evaluation within the accompanying restructuring process. However, although ‘alternative’ solutions in energy and power production and distribution are already at hand, their general release will only accelerate through the second half of Uranus transit of Taurus, as it approaches Gemini ingress.
We are in a short space of time, barely a few years in fact, heading towards rapid reconfiguration of priorities. The good news is that, for all the disruption, it will pave the way for hitherto unrealisable transformation, the kind of change which will induce the embodiment of a more creative and expansive phase, initiated through the second half of the transit and beyond.
Experimental breakthroughs, for example, will mark the later phase of Uranus transit through Taurus and will open possibilities for a new physics to enter the mainstream. Consequently, new ways of thinking about natural resources, especially those related to energy, its production, how it is accessed and, more especially, how it is used will emerge. Here, it is the thinking which will facilitate the greatest change.
As Uranus traverses the third decan of Taurus and approaches the cusp of Gemini the same impetus will bring an overhaul of commerce and expansion of communication, the latter well beyond our current capabilities. Uranus in Gemini will see this impetus become more manifest as a reality and our understanding of ‘reality’ change with it. At first however, we must go through this process of dissembling and disorienting ‘restructuring’.
Coming back to this side of Uranus transit of Taurus, this ‘restructuring’ will undoubtedly be the driver for radical cultural revision, social and political re-organisation, both through an exacerbation of current issues, such as those surrounding migration and the control of borders, and through a deeper range of controls being set on distribution of resources and a re-ordering of economic infrastructure.
In fact, economic and financial arenas will see some of the most radical changes – one of the longer ongoing trends in global change we will be seeing as Uranus transits Taurus, Gemini and beyond is micro and macro level change brought to economic models, functions, infrastructure and understanding.
Future Economics
In this longer term outlook the flow of ‘capital’ and the form which capital takes in particular will undergo changes which will fundamentally restructure not only the current financial markets at a global level, but, extend change along more novel pathways which have already opened up. We are familiar in current times through e-commerce, non-physical currencies, and tech based credit, with the dematerialisation of finance and capital, but these too will be seen retrospectively to have been a phase shift within a larger process.
In its first stages the process will trigger growth within shadow and hidden markets, non-official which is to say ‘alternative’ currencies, a trend we already see happening. We will see a socially based diversification and resurgence in ‘group’ based and ‘private’ trading schemes which bypass national and globally controlled commerce and economies.
This of course is not a new idea, many such groups have existed in one form or another for centuries, including the exclusive clubs and milieu of the ultra-priviliged and so called ‘elite’, the most influential having functioned primarily as global mafia, but, the idea and its appropriation in this new context is tantamount to a revolutionary insurgence.
In the light of what is to come over the next few decades, the initial surge is however going to amount less to a revolutionary wave of change than a re-arranging of the furniture already existing on deck within these human realms. The more revolutionary import of these processes will begin to be more fully realized around Uranus opposition with Pluto, a generation hence.
The timescale on these ‘economic’ changes is not limited by Uranus transit, but all the above shifts, changes and transformations will inform the process. If fundamental political reform is foreseeable within the medium term, radical economic re-evaluation is a longer term issue. But, it will come, the first real signs taking shape as Uranus ends its run through Gemini, and the form it takes is going to be outside of any current model, thinking or understanding.
During the run up to Uranus opposition with Pluto in 2045 we are heading for a time in which traditional physical notions of currency will lose their predominant influence. In fact, our understanding of value itself will shift so radically that, looking back, we will be able to discern a distinct watershed within history and global civilisation.
Changes in the level of interaction and embedding within infrastructures which humans participate in will include natural as well as human made systems. We will talk more of human integration with natural systems in part three, but, this integrative process will enable the new economy and its modus operandi to emerge.
This technology will evolve rapidly and affect human life radically. The individual’s quota of intelligence and nous will become equivalent to currency, not only in terms of its ‘sociological’ value, but, in relation to the notion of what we now call ‘the market place’ itself.
This is not a new notion, in fact it is very much a part of a sociological hierarchy of value which already exists. It does however become an extension of technological advances which will render existing ‘class structures’ within the economic model redundant; here, individual intellectual property and mental real estate become black market commodities.
The infrastructure for this development is already in place and much of this has been facilitated through the all pervasive installation of surveillance, a global phenomenon which touches every area of life.
Looming behind this process is Ai. A benign threat already present to humans artificial intelligence is often the screen onto which human fears are projected in future scenarios. As an integral part of the technological developments which Uranus transit of Taurus and Gemini will accompany, Ai’s role will be predominantly centered on expanding and evolving the new infrastructure through which the new economy, and politic, will function.
The shift in human values we are seeing here means that the main decision which will be discussed through this time around Ai has more to do with technology in general, is more centered on how much of life humans want to retain authorship and participation in than in whether the latent threat of superior intelligence through technology can be risked.
In the meantime, while humanity is discovering new frontiers, this side of the border the most radical shifts at a planetary scale will be seen more within the realms of nature. Here technology makes its biggest impact. Conversely, the true potential for human development lies not in technology but in nature itself. It is those whose cultural nexus is Nature who will be the true radicals through these times. Their time will also come when Uranus opposes Pluto from Virgo.
Coda
The crucial nature of awareness being invoked in advance of this ‘decision time’ cannot be over emphasized; as the Earth herself will adequately demonstrate, humans need to get things back in perspective. Reconfiguring how we live and showing that we are capable of at the very least letting ‘respect’ lead, and of acting accordingly is essential.
Rather than letting blind ‘progress’ lead us, or those who would lead us do so from a blindly ‘progressive’ platform, without regard or respect for life, this is a conscious choice whose decision is very much in the nature of our collective journey into maturity. It seeks to find the integration of Uranus and Saturn, a core element of the transition which humanity needs to make to both escape the long term behavioral loop it has sunk into and to reach the next levels of maturity it is capable of.
No matter the choices, the dance itself is also one of development into personal maturity, the attainment of which can offer to the individual the gift of natural dignity. In fact the greater process is dependent upon this development within the individual. It is also dependent on both political will, how this is enacted and re-eassessment of true values.
However, where Uranus is involved even though progression and growth can be achieved it involves the challenge of facing the unknown, an inevitably initiatic experience in which Uranus plays an evolutionary role, if met willingly. And there’s the rub – many spurn initiation, for manifold reasons and, even though our decisions may be in Uranus favor, we can never be certain of what that means or what it will bring. Being able to integrate ‘freedom from the known’, which is the initiatic experience, is a measure of such maturity as humans might rightfully aspire to.
Conversely, to respond negatively to Uranus can lead us into shadow lands within our own psyche, resistance to change bringing heavier burdens; this has been, historically, the predominant experience, mostly in the face of forces that seek to stifle and suppress the Uranian impulse – remember Prometheus?
We know what the Promethian gift can give us, but we are beholden in this time to remember the prerequisite respect of power that it also requires. Here, we must be careful to distinguish between ‘power’ and ‘authority’, especially when the latter is synonymous with ‘control’. We have almost exclusively seen use of that gift as the prerogative of the Saturnian, with its emphasis on control and the dictates of the status quo.
We must not forget that the choice cuts both ways and those who choose contrarily will seek different outcomes. Technology has become our antidote to lack of true creativity, in the Taurean sense, and the panacea for the cultural failings which result. It is a compensation for a species specific depression, but, despite the material development of technologies which allow us to ‘escape’ our own shortcomings, as well as extend the reach we have within the cosmos, the shadow cannot be escaped.
The most powerful antidote is within the soul of every individual, where true freedom of choice is found. It is into this realm that we will follow Uranus next through this time of change and exploration of the transit of Taurus.
Images
top : Chernobyl, The Elephant’s Foot
the symptoms : Chatillon Car Graveyard
earth movements : Wheel Martin Rust, Rob Purday 2018
future economics: Sculpture, Emily Young ; photo Rob Purday, 2017
“You need to decide at some point in your life whether you are more in love with what you know or what you don’t know.” (1)
This is the first of three articles which unpack the seven year transit of Taurus by Uranus, ‘the change maker’. The aim is to look unflinchingly at the prospects which this transit holds for us. Being unflinching above all means remaining grounded and allowing the power of the moment to speak to us and flow through us.
With Uranus involved anything is possible. We can expect everything from revelation, inspiration and profound transformation to shock, trauma and extreme disruption so grounding also means acknowledging the objects of our fears without giving way to fear itself.
Taurus is the primary matrix here, Uranus the catalyst – it is our own experience and nature, who we really are at root, which makes the difference.
The nature of our insecurities and the power of ‘attachment’ are among the many things that Taurus can teach us. Through Taurus we learn how love and appreciation can give value to ‘the things’ of life, a primal lesson which helps us to ground in life and goes towards developing a worldly sense of self.
The true test of such value is in whether we are able to change our perspectives and sacrifice the objects of our desire for a higher set of priorities. Through Uranus such ‘values’ and the ability to love and appreciate in which they are founded are taken to another level, re-prioritised regardless our intent.
With Uranus it is not unusual for breakthrough to be accompanied by breakdown. This can arrive fully loaded and uncomfortably ‘up-close’, in fact, rarely with Uranus does the reality we breakthrough to resemble our expectations. But, while Uranus can truly show us what we are made of, it can also push us beyond our limitations and reveal aspects of ourselves which we did not know existed. Uranus challenges us to grow.
So what happens if we choose otherwise, to hunker down with what we already know, so to speak – where growth, or Uranus, is resisted or the need for growth not being met, oppression and depression will often enough flag up the imperative need for change and, until we do, we might well feel as though Saturn is weighing down on our lives.
In our times this test has begun to take on a particular shape.
Initially, Uranus is briefly visiting Taurus, giving us a taste of what is to come, before returning to Aries in November 2018 for five months. The brief reprise of the Aries transit provides an invaluable opportunity for a recap; Uranus then begins its uninterrupted seven year transit of Taurus in March 2019.
Bringing the potential for transformative experiences to the sphere of fixed earth this will be a transit of two distinct halves and the qualitative difference between these two periods is pronounced.
The first period is marked by a sustained square between Uranus and Saturn, the second by an equally sustained trine between Uranus and Pluto with Neptune sextile both at their midpoint.
We must go through the rigors of the square and learn as much as we can from the experiences it brings before we can truly make the most of the trine which follows.
An Overview
We are looking ahead, into a period that begins in 2019 and extends through to 2026. Why does it matter now?
With Uranus in Taurus until November we are in a preliminary zone to Uranus transit proper and also have the opportunity to re-assess Uranus seven year transit through Aries; it will then be 76 years before Uranus visits the cardinal fire sign again – from this perspective alone this represents a unique moment in time which provides us with the opportunity to adjust our thinking, with at least some awareness of ‘what is coming’ to hand.
Consider how the world has changed in the last seven years.
It is a contemporary truism to say that much in the way modern humans run human and planetary affairs suffers from chronic short-termism – the world would look very different were this not the case. Much now rests upon humans ability to change this state of affairs.
If we took ‘the longer view’ more often, incorporating it into our choices and vision of the future could we have been better prepared for that period, made better choices, and if we could, would we be better prepared now for whats coming in the next seven years? These are small timescales, manageable but a microcosm of the longer view we should be taking. It is as if real foresight and preparation were alien to us.
As we enter the first phase of Uranus transit we might find ourselves confronted with the need to decide whether it is better to rely on tried and tested ways of meeting the challenge of these times, or to allow change itself to change us. If it hasn’t been registering on our personal radar already, the value of foresight and preparation will soon become more apparent.
The Saturn Uranus square however brings a deeper alchemy to Uranus transit of Taurus; we must also consider the problem of ‘the meeting and synthesis of disparate forces’, a truly Uranian paradox with, potentially, a surprisingly Saturnian outcome.
Synthesis is not impossible between these two planets, they are after all considered by many to be the co-rulers of Aquarius. Common ground between them reveals that there is, in fact, nothing covetous about astrological Saturn or Uranus. Both involve a stoic disregard for the sentimental, if through very diverse means. Theirs is a curiously abstracted world, for all its physicality and direct impact, and between these two planets a higher level of choice must be consciously resolved.
In synthesizing these common elements a startlingly clear qualitative picture of our future is revealed. As dispassionate as it appears, it seems our future has a clear cut if not razor sharp edge to it. We need to look carefully at this prospect and decide what it excludes that we regard as essential, priceless and most desired. To consider how these elements will be integrated by us into our future, and discern what shape their synthesis might take, is our responsibility.
Would that the choice between Saturn and Uranus were so clear cut. The square will pressure us, challenge us to choose first, ‘pushing our buttons’ in the process. True, one choice leads downward, towards the already manifest world, the other upwards towards a world about to come into being – but this is not unfamiliar territory as there are many times in our lives when we must choose between the security of the known, with all its comforts and seemingly life affirming affiliations, and the outright thrill, the life renewing charge of the unknown, its promise of risk and growth, its innate sense of adventure and discovery. At a micro level we may not even be aware of having chosen one way or the other.
Although Peterson, in the quote at the head of this article, gives the decision a somewhat heroic stature, it is not unusual for the unconscious to be the arbiter in this choice, or to be the place out of which synthesis arises, and Uranus can facilitate direct experience of unconscious content.
Interestingly, a comparison between the predominant relationship that humans now have with nature and that between humans and the unconscious reveals that, to a significant extent, they mirror each other. The contemporary caveat is that whereas the unconscious is the primary field out of which synthesis can emerge naturally, humans suffer the same sense of alienation towards both nature and the unconscious and do not easily identify with the unconscious and its creations. The reality of their existence, like much of nature, for all our knowledge and insight remain a mystery to us.
After millenia of divergence between the mind of nature and human consciousness humans have adjusted to an experience of life which inevitably revolves around the fact of separation and the experience of not knowing. We primarily compensate for the insecurity this evokes with ‘progress’, rather than integration. Technological progress has not only contributed to this state, it has been fueled by it, a vicious circle that has further divided the world, primarily in terms of those who have access to technology and those who don’t. Neither is this simply a reflection of uneven distribution of wealth and resources; much of the technology which arrives in the public arena has already been far surpassed outside of the public realms.
Identifying, perhaps out of need, more readily with Saturnian certainty, such divergence carries pathological weight and humans are, for the most part, in desperate need of reconciliation with the powers of nature. This is a need central to their own well-being, a healing process in which an approach towards synthesis between the unconscious and conscious self is sought, wholeness being symbolic of something resembling their reconciliation. At the core of this process, which we are all involved in, consciously or not, is reconciliation with the shadow, with rejected and denied aspects of ourselves.
In medicine work this is an essential step, intended as an empowering experience as it is a step which once taken remains to be taken, familiarity with our own shadow dynamics being essential to its empowering nature. Uranus again provides ample opportunity for us to develop the much needed familiarity.
Such synthesis does already exist, has been integrated into human culture before, and can yet be found, primarily at an individual level, but humans have lost claim to it as a species. The Uranus transit of Taurus brings a glimmer of hope for its recovery.
Peterson, however, wants us to make a conscious choice first and foremost, to let our passions speak reason, and in so doing, for us to sense the intelligence behind the life force, the direction in which it is flowing in within our lives. Although these are choices which are constantly present, he is suggesting that when pressured into awareness, as when Saturn and Uranus are at odds for example, these are decisions we come to at those critical junctures where we sense a certain irreversibility about the outcome of our choice. They mark watershed moments which affect our lives thereafter. This too reveals the quality of the moment we are now entering.
Lessons In Choice
This quality, of irreversibility, has been building since Uranus first met with Jupiter on the Aries cusp in 2010; coincident with the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, this was a time marked by a Uranus Saturn opposition. Something began to change then, as if a decision had been made somewhere outside of the human sphere – if a line had been crossed, this was its consequence.
If we had seen previous disasters connected with the power generation industry escalating we were still living very much under the shadow of Chernobyl. The human response to what was probably the worst disaster of its kind known of at that time, was to go for Saturnian ‘containment’; in the aftermath, acting as if our knowledge and an exclusion zone was sufficient, we carried on regardless.
At Chernobyl’s Saturn return, some 30 years on, ‘containment’ and the reliability our knowledge was showing its weakness. The concrete casing erected to enclose the stricken power plant was found to be decaying and it became obvious that a new solution would be needed. Once again, however, containment was chosen, and a new ‘improved’ metal shell was devised to attempt cutting the radioactive core of Chernobyl off from the outer world.
If present technology is the determining factor here, ironically it is the lack of Uranian inventiveness and insight that is lacking; a classic example of humans once again showing the limited degree to which they are capable of learning from history, and failing to see the elephant in the room, some would argue ‘deliberately’.
The sealing of fate, as it were, was determined even more indelibly so however when Uranus finally entered Aries for its seven year transit of the cardinal fire sign in March 2011. This time has been irrevocably forged within present and future human history, no less so than through the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima.
A quarter of a Saturn cycle after the event, Fukushima’s devastating impact on the biosphere and human life is still denied for the most part – once again Saturnian thinking has prevailed, this time equivalent to containment of the ‘shocking truth’, truth which has Uranus written all over it. The radiation cannot be contained this time.
This time we saw Saturn oppose Jupiter, suitably mirroring the polarity of the dynamic surrounding Fukushima, and found Uranus squaring the Moon’s nodes, just as it is now doing.
At the time of Fukushima the north node was separating from Uranus; now they are converging, as are we with an inevitably transformative future. In fact, Uranus will meet with the lunar north node in the second decan of Taurus at the midpoint of its seven year transit. Humans are far from impervious to the realities reflected in this subtle astrological factor, however.
In our times we face, and know we face, a great need. If these are rapidly developing times, with focus split many ways, while some issues may appear forced the uncertainty of what each day will bring is considerably ramped up. When there are simple answers, quite often there are no simple pathways to realizing them, especially when dealing with ‘planet sized’ problems.
Which, we must ask, is being reflected most here, Uranus or Saturn, and which would help us most; while our decisions become more crucial, such a foretaste of their dynamic is invaluable to us.
We know that the scale of these problems can no longer be downplayed, or the decisions they demand of us deferred to some ‘more suitable’ time.
Peterson’s choice is similarly based on a such a need; the longer it is not met, the more imperative it becomes – not choosing Uranus does not avoid it, neither can we sidestep Saturn. The lesson that needs to be learned from history here is that ultimately not only are our choices partial when we do make them, but our methods of choosing are not up to the task.
Through making either/or choices we create an either/or world.
Uranus and Saturn do provide some insight here – even though the apparent irreconcilability between Saturn and Uranus can be answered in two very different ways, it too is always about letting go. On the one hand is letting go into sufficiency and security, on the other is letting go of sufficiency and security.
At first glance these appear to be very Taurean issues. If both involve a specious ‘freedom’, the chosen outcome of the one reflects a very ideologically grounded conservatism, almost the epitome of Saturn, while the other reflects an untethered and potentially evolutionary radicalism. In fact, Uranus was famously described by Jeffery Wolf Green as the planet associated with ‘freedom from the known’, and there-in lies one of the psychological and emotive underpinnings of these times.
Uranus will test our insecurities in all their forms through its transit of Taurus, and especially under the square with Saturn, until we allow the values which inform how we meet those insecurities to be determined anew.
It is, at base, a matter of learning respect, at its most fundamental level, not as it has been learned in the past, through force and threat, but, through deeper insight and understanding, the higher level of Taurean love and appreciation. A glimmer of Taurus opposing sign can be seen at work here, but, more on this further down the road.
The Politics Of Experience
Collectively, humans have shown that working with this dynamic of choice presents a major stumbling block; history, distant and recent, tells us that the mechanisms for expressing unified and liberating choice are either brutal, inadequate, blinkered by the demands of the moment or are simply overridden in time, even in revolutionary contexts. There are few exceptions but outcomes are short lived, easily upturned, and often enough are shown to have been underwritten by deception, the shadow side of the human predilection for storytelling, a predilection we have developed, curiously enough, as a way of being more deeply involved in the story of which we are already a part.
That the shadow should so readily enter here is indication of an open or at least ‘latent’ wound, primarily one connected with the delusional consequences of inner division, consequences connected directly with disempowerment and suppression of the free spirit and natural state of the soul.
In this time, and very much in this vein, the shadow can often be seen lurking beneath the agendas of globalism and extremist ideologies of the far left, and right, just as much as it can be seen in the past which surrounds the founding of constitutional rights and ‘the Republic’. The Uranian qualities of the libertarian mask all too often conceal the Saturnian authority of control and hierarchic intolerance.
Nothing, we should realize, is immune from the shadow, any more than it is from challenge or reform, but, in the human world the most powerful defense of values will always be found where individual liberty and choice is undermined in the process.
We should remind ourselves here that the rights of ‘personhood’ are now simultaneously being raised in defence of both Nature and Corporations, a simultaneity which very much fits the Uranus Saturn dynamic. We would also do well to remember that political democracy had its roots not in the casting of votes, but in the drawing of lots, a very Uranian means to deciding Saturnian ends. (2)
Individually, however, the personal power of choice, even under duress, remains. Even in democratic application, and even though it is equally open to falsehood, at an individual level such power of choice is also more readily informed by conscience and awareness. At the same time, whereas the crowd tends to embody consensus, the individual is a lightning conductor for inspiration and the unique.
Such is the nature of the human spirit; it is essentially Uranian by nature, and knows and carries within it the true meaning of freedom, transcending the Saturnian boundaries between death and life – it is no accident that, historically, it has been subject to heavy suppression and dis-empowerment; its innate power will always present a challenge to the status quo.
It is no accident either that Uranus and Saturn are so deeply connected with the changing of the Ages. The dynamic between individual and society will take on new forms and create new structures to abide in under the Aquarian template. Old ways will inevitably fall away in the process – the question here is how much will humans be able to let go into and integrate their own decisions within this process.
Saturn will be in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus through the first half of Uranus transit. The future we can envision may well be limited by the extent to which we can envision it, but our ability to envision it will be dependent upon radical transformations that we will see within the earth sphere. (3)
As above so below, as within so without, risk is at the core of the choices we make and this psycho-emotive reality lives within us, we know it and feel it. It is one of Uranus calling cards.
Even though Uranus is antagonistic to Saturn’s stability, paradoxically the way through Uranus can in fact lead to stability, realised at a higher level; if the choice is left to spirit, it will always choose the path of ‘freedom’. Discovering the ‘how’ of this is a part of the gift these two planets offer at this time.
This will be the focus of the third part of Uranus in Taurus; however, before we go there we must take our diagnosis to where Uranus brings change to Earth itself, and an entirely different form of ‘freedom from the known’.
(1) Quote attributed to the psychologist Jordan Peterson
(2) The drawing of lots, or Sortition, was used to elect the public officials who served within the city states of ancient Greece. Its underlying rational was that it effected absolute equality through its process.
(3) Although I do not give much weight to the planetary rulership of signs in these articles, where it does make sense here is in considering the rulership of Taurus not through Venus but through Earth itself. I have borne this in mind throughout this interpretation; however, in the article following this short series I will be exploring one of the themes arising further, through an astrological example set by Venus which is particularly relevant to the Uranus transit of Taurus, namely ‘initiation and “the mysteries” ‘.
Illustrations
Top : “The Space Between” by Rob Purday, 2015
Second & Fourth : Butoh Theatre, Sankai Juku
Third : “Skeleton Woman And The Hunter“, an illustration
by Rob Purday & Nooshka Storm, 2012
As a full Moon, the high point of this lunation shows us how we are acting out our most worldly aspirations on the stage of the world. We may not however be aware of the extent to which we are doing this, so care is cautioned, especially in dealing with others. In the midst of drama, when the tension and energy is high, all too often the unconscious can and will intervene unexpectedly, but, there are of course many ways in which this can happen.
Seeded in the last decan of Capricorn, while this lunation brings the worldly presence we have to a dramatic point of self expression, there is a twist. Being a total eclipse we are encountering a long term effect, one in which ‘the mask’ falls and the reality of the shadow, or ‘hidden persona’, behind it is revealed.
This is literally like a power cut to the narrative, and we live in a time of conflicting narratives, so this is also a power game, a game of opportunism. Concrete reality suddenly intervenes in a ‘play’ just as it reaches its dramatic high point – the lights go out. This will be a test of both mettle and preparedness.
When the lights do ‘come back on’, not only is the ruse exposed but, in that moment, life and art become cathartically interactive. In a big way.
When encountered in personal life this hiatus can come from untenable situations reaching the point where they have to resolve themselves; their inherent paradox transcended – the tension between two opposites flips, ‘the two’ produce an unexpected ‘third’, so to speak.
The result is a new narrative, perhaps not unexpected, but one which was hitherto unable to manifest. Having been felt but not seen, it now becomes visible, a powerful catalyst to action.
A collision of fact and fiction which reveals some otherwise undeclared relationship between them, the main casualty from this impactful event is going to primarily be in the realm of lies that have been dressed up as truths. We know the world is littered with them. But, check out your own ‘business’ first and start there.
This is the time to make a personal vow ~ to stop fooling oneself, or trying to fool others, and to live in integrity. This does not require us to give up our role playing, but, rather to allow it to become an extension of our soul, fully.
If you are going to play the fool, make sure it is your part to do it. This is a position of true power, and this element, in the guise of the wise trickster and ‘upsetter’,speaking profane truths with impunity, is going to be very much at large in the world. It will hurt, some, not all, but only where there has been denial and deception. Have some compassion.
On the world stage, this is the moment when the ‘green curtain’ is pulled back and the deceptions which have been plaguing society with greatest bearing in our lifetimes come pouring out into the open.
The strongest direct planetary aspect to this Moon comes via Neptune, inconjunct the eclipsed full Moon, so watch out especially for propaganda and media whitewashing of what otherwise might be very real events, events of significance. This is a rear guard action, a defense of the ‘false realm’. Deals will be struck, no doubt, and necks will be saved, almost certainly, but some won’t…..and this is where it could get ‘interesting’.
We know the scenario described above is in fact playing out in the world at the moment, and this will be especially evident where the tension between extremes of political ideology is currently being constellated. But, it reaches beyond this into the social realm as well.
With Mercury in the final minute of the final degree of Capricorn at the exact full Moon, at eclipse height, expect incendiary information to come out around this time and the weeks following, to change the landscape. This information, and the actions it impels, is going to change the face of our social connections, our financial transactions and our ideologies, within the bigger picture.
With Venus in close proximity to the Sun in mid Aquarius the financial basis of these revelations could reveal their darker side, the slavery and degradation which blights the world. The other side of this aspect is that of identity, how this has been and is being stolen, not least of all as this affects the legitimacy of indigenous status.
Legal battles are going to be at the center of many of the actions brought to a head here. Social justice itself is in the spotlight.
However, with all the planets direct but the connections between them and the Sun/Moon and nodes mostly being tenuous at this full Moon, it is the place and role we individually take up following this eclipse that are of the utmost importance. The news, if allowed to get out, will shock, but, it is what is within our grasp to change that matters most. This is where we put that vow of integrity into action.
When we look to the Sabian symbols for the Moon and Sun’s degrees we find this picture helpfully filled out.
12° Leo emphasises the manner in which social status has become a superficial role playing game, barely reflecting the inherent value of each individual soul taking part. This is a product of ‘power’ being the measure of ‘position’ rather than ‘inherent value’. This matters greatly in our present time, for many reasons, but matters even more to our future. Its opposite degree reveals the ‘shadow’ which this superficiality conceals.
12° Aquarius radiates ‘inherent worth’, but, requires the social value of the individual be formally recognised for that energy and its qualities to be consummated, a social responsibility. Here the natural condition of ‘hierarchy’ is expressed, rather than being contrived, as it has become in 12 Leo. This is instinctively hard wired into the human psyche, a legacy of our deepest connections with nature, and such hierarchy is expressed most naturally via the unconscious, no less through dreams and psychic realities. But, this is an instinct that has all but lost its true sociological value, being all too often over-riden by ‘privilege’ and material wealth in the social hierarchies of the industrial age.
This solar/lunar dynamic is almost certainly reflecting a watershed for social values, the eclipse sustaining a clear need to revise how we live according to those values, and this is to describe an atmosphere which will affect much of the mundane world over the coming months. Imposed values will be questioned, as they are being currently in relation to gender identity, and this relates directly into freedom of speech and how it is being both undermined through censorship and directed down ideological pathways. If the 20th century was the century of propaganda, the 21st century is all about the battle for control of the narrative. Narratives are constantly being updated, being relentlessly engineered, through overt if not rampant political correctness, for example. Legislation has already begun ramming it down our throats. But, this is the false face of a much more sinister post-modern shadow. Here too the mask must fall.
The moral here is to not simply take things at face value. Be careful to listen beyond people’s words. In fact, listen to your own, the narrative you are upholding and look beyond it, drop it for a moment and ask ‘what do I really want’ and does my life match up to it, my ‘real’ life. The desire to create impressions, to spin a yarn for the effect, must end – at the same time, it is content that is emphasised here. While appearances can be deceptive and it is best not to judge a book, or a person, by their ‘cover’, as Sam Keen observed, “the authentic life has frequently been pictured under the metaphor of the fool.” Why is this important; because the fool is the risk taker, the arbiter of creative energy and it is creative energy that this eclipse and full Moon is focusing on.
We almost certainly won’t see the full extent of the changes being initiated under this eclipsed full Moon until later in the year, but, do take the opportunity to act in accordance with the times. Many people are frightened to speak their truth in the current climate, but the integral life has great power.
The full Moon early on January 2nd at 2:24am UTC carries an important message for us and for the future of this planet. It also marks the midpoint of the longest lunation of the 21st century!
With the Earth at its closest point to the Sun and the Moon at its farthest point from the Earth at this full Moon, the Capricorn Sun is very energised as it illuminates the Moon in Cancer, so expect feelings that anticipate big tidal forces sweeping through life in the coming year. Begin now to sense out the potential for significant change as a major shift in how the landscape of our lives will look through 2018 is now available. How much of a say in these shifts any one of us has is, as ever, an expression of our own personal dance with the cosmos.
Much in that dance, as this lunation indicates, depends upon whether the current connections that we have, our dependencies and relationships, are feeding us or directing us, a balance needing to be addressed now. But, the astrological imprint of this Moon in particular is very clear when it comes to ‘energy’ and how we use it.
The full Moon in the twelfth degree of Cancer is at the tail of a kite formation. The Kite is a symbolic embodiment of the aspirational creative dance with the cosmos with which we are now engaging – it can also embody a major project or path we are here to bring to fruition in the world this year.
Opposite the Moon, at the top of the kite, are Pluto, the Sun, Venus and Saturn, all in Capricorn. These planets represent the energies of the astral winds holding aloft the ideals which enable the kite to fly and reach its highest levels of expression. These winds, emanating from Capricorn, embodied through the qualities of realism, beauty, illumination and innate power, are all seeking an earthly expression filled with ‘earthy’ magic.
Of particular note here is that both of the new Moons which frame this lunation are in close proximity to the point in the lunar orbit associated symbolically with Lilith, known as Dark Moon Lilith. She is the fecund psychic powerhouse which emanates the ‘magical function’ in life. Deeply fertile with both creative power, insight and knowledge, She has become, in her powerful innate feminine wisdom, deeply shunned in the scientific age – this lunation marks the stepping up of Her return into the centre of our daily affairs and naturally questions our guiding philosophy. How we answer to this is expressed through the way in which we as ‘a people’ work with ‘power’, its public expression; this new phase of feminine re-balancing began in earnest, however, in March 2017 with Venus’ equally powerful initiatic retrograde across the Aries/Pisces cusp, an honouring of the sacred feminine literally coming back to her ‘place of exaltation’. Think back to what transpired at that time, early March to mid May, and consider what you have learned in the meantime in this respect, how this can aid you now.
This aspect of strong feminine wisdom coupled to the full Moon is magnified further by the fact that this lunation began on December 18th with the Sun and Moon conjunct at the Galactic Centre, archetypal in representing the womb of the Great Mother. Venus and Mercury also in Sagittarius were close by at that time, but, the planet Saturn was within orb of the December new Moon and GC and was just about to return home to Capricorn, having spent many weeks anchored in this part of the zodiac. A sense of time being born anew might have precluded this full Moon but, as Mercury was retrograde at that time, the introspective mood we might have been experiencing then is now lifting as Mercury is now moving forwards again in Sagittarius, bringing liveliness and a depth of meaning, extra mental energy and scope to our projects. Saturn’s rekindling of the Great Mother energy into manifest form now finds its mark with his return to Capricorn – we have entered Shakti’s dance of creative power and wisdom.
Together these elements tell us a great deal about both our personal and collective purpose in this time and the responsibilities such brings; as incarnate beings, to be engaged in this dance of life is our fate, no matter what, even if in response we seek ‘a way out’, but, with all the elements involved in this Moon and the way they piece together this now gives our personal projects and their realisation an extra potency and meaning, both in the present and in the long run. Engaging with this potency is the ‘how’ that this Moon brings to turning the tables on the negative elements we might have been fighting in our lives recently – in the process we are turning our fate into our destiny. Great things can be achieved in the coming months if we engage with this energy.
On either side of the kite, at each of its wings, are those powers which we can employ to steer and give direction to the manifestation of our creative dance with the cosmos – to one side are Neptune and Chiron, the visionary and the healer, both capable of bringing uniqueness and transcendent qualities to our plans, tapping into the Dreamtime and other-worlds; to the other side are Jupiter and Mars, both of which encourage growth and give outward direction to our undertakings in the mundane world; the latter are squaring the Moon’s nodal axis which tells us that all must happen in accordance with the balancing of past, present and future. Directed energy and perception beyond the horizon are present here, a reflection of Mercury’s current transit of the Great Attractor – lets not get caught up in the spell of mundane technologies at this time though; this is a special moment, not to be repeated. Make it count, begin now…..
…..the full Moon in Cancer anchors all, bringing that balance to bear through tempering selfish ambition and grounding our aspirations in the realism of right and meaningful relationship. The Moon emphasises that no matter what we are aiming for it must embody caring, nurturing and rightful relationship within the rest of creation to be of lasting value. This is an intensely ecological Moon for this reason. Where we fit into creation and how our presence honors and respects the rights of others, the life which gives us life, is of the deepest importance here; these could be the most important defining elements in not only the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of our plans, but the ‘how’ and ‘with/for whom’. This full Moon carries a strong reminder that we are here to ensure that this balance is central to all our undertakings.
But, don’t let that hold you back or cramp your style – Uranus’ un-aspected wild card in the full Moon chart says surprise yourself, let your dance lead you beyond the known!
Much that is set in motion now will carry its energy into new and original manifestations as the year progresses. As unforseeable as these may be, take time now to look ahead and feel out your place in the bigger scheme of things with the aid of this lunation – by the time we arrive at the next full Moon on January 31st we will need to have navigated the wind at our backs and have a clear destination in mind; that will be a total lunar eclipse, visible throughout the Pacific, especially within the Ring of Fire.
Much needs to be redressed in the balance of power through this coming year, especially when it comes to the use and abuse of sexual energy, of the life-force and of the generative power humans have at hand – such demands that we must all expect a strong element of initiation to be present in our worldly undertakings as the year progresses. Venus showed us the way as she found her path into Chiron’s cave to reclaim her initiatic right. In her exalted state she re-emerged and set about seeding the possibility for new dreams to put down roots within reality now. Her next retrograde will see her station in Scorpio and trace her own steps along the Via Combusta, what will be a lesson in Phoenix medicine and the powers of regeneration through the heart for us all. In a coming post we will look more deeply into her journey and its significance in this time of feminine resurgence; but, don’t delay to redress the balance – begin now!
Think seven generations ahead for perspective if you are feeling ambitious; keep the perspective of what you are giving to others in mind at all times; but, above all, remember we are the ancestors of the future and the gifts you are here to bring into life are those which all our descendants will inherit – what we are living through now provides us with the true perspective we need, if we can look at life clearly and are honest in our perceptions, but, at heart, this Moon’s message is a beautiful and powerful way to begin the calendric year of 2018.
“……the companion Inyan created for himself was the Thunder spirits. Their form was so terrible that they must conceal themselves within a cloud, or people would go insane merely from glancing at them. But their purpose is noble. They are here to rid the world of filth. They are here to wash away the demons, like the ones who destroyed (and are destroying) your mother. Like the ones who want to destroy you…..” (1)
As this article goes to press the deadline to clear the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock approaches – 2.00pm local time. By the time you read this it will almost certainly have passed and the battle for Standing Rock will have reached what may prove to be its crucial turning point. Time will tell, but, we are witnessing a moment in history that could be repeating itself, seeking resolution. The background for this possibility is clearly reflected in the astrology that links Standing Rock with one of the most crucial and well known events in the history of the struggle between the indigenous peoples of North America and the armed forces of the European settlers, the battle which has come to be known as ‘Little Bighorn’.
The onset of Lt. Colonel Custer’s assault on the Sioux nations on the 25th of June 1876 and its eventual bloody conclusion on the 26th give us a timeframe in which to reference the planetary positions then, and the period from 22nd February 2017 to the new Moon/solar eclipse of Feb. 26th give us the relevant timeframe for their position in the present.
The aim of this article is not necessarily to forecast any outcome for the present stand-off at the camp of the Sacred Stone, but, it provides adequate insight and food for thought to alert us to a powerful correspondence between these two events, a heads-up to its signifiance and repercussive nature.
The current planetary backdrop for the 22nd to 26th February 2017 sees a major T-square playing out between Jupiter rx in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries, both squaring Pluto in Capricorn; Mars is within 3 degrees of Uranus as I write, just 4 days from their conjunction in Aries which becomes exact at the eclipse. Alongside this, Saturn in Sagittarius is connecting into the T square through sextile with Jupiter and trine with Uranus.
The release point of this T square is opposite Pluto, around the 16-20° mark of Cancer. Going straight to the correspondences we quickly find that they speak for themselves as Mars is currently squaring its LBH (Little Bighorn) degree – that degree is 19 Cancer. Mars will arrive at this degree on July 4th 2017, American ‘Independence Day’.
We find LBH Saturn in the 9th degree of Pisces, the degree of the solar eclipse on 26th February.
Chiron, presently squaring Saturn, is precisely on the degree of the LBH north node.
Although not necessarily acting as triggers the present transiting positions of the major outer planets reveal some of the qualitative tensions now being played out.
In the LBH chart Jupiter opposes Pluto from Scorpio; Jupiter is now quincunxing LBH Pluto, while Uranus quincunxes LBH Jupiter.
Pluto is also presently quincunxing LBH Uranus.
Mercury, now entering Pisces, is quincunxing LBH Venus. In addition Mercury is also in softer aspect to other luminaries in the LBH matrix, trining LBH Sun and sextiling LBH Neptune, and as the solar eclipse approaches Mercury is transiting the current lunar south node’s degree, activating awareness of our spiritual past and the legacy of events related to this.
In the LBH timeframe the Moon transits the present position of the lunar north node, not a temporal marker necessarily, but a transit that brought it into opposition over June 25-6th 1876 with Saturn. The solar eclipse is effectively activating these degrees across the lunar nodal axis.
This may be a time for closure to be sought, but, our ability to realise this will certainly be founded on more than transient phenomena.
Although the quincunxes suggest the tension underpinning the playing out of the unresolved legacies of Little Bighorn, and the disconnect between the forces now involved, the hard aspects and direct correspondences between the events by transit of key degrees confirms the connection. Mid points are also brought into play and Pluto is also currently applying to the LBH Saturn Jupiter midpoint, directly tieing in the current T square.
But, it is within the present Uranus Mars conjunction that we find the most striking connection and transiting Mars is undoubtedly the catalyst, a warning that the unresolved ghosts, if not energies, of conflict are being raised once more. Could it be that Chiron’s position on the LBH north node indicates the that healing needed for resolution is finally manifesting, that its time has come, or will the wound of the past be deepened by these triggers? Will the ghosts be laid to rest or infuse the present with a spirit of retribution?
It is notable that a 26th Feb. solar eclipse chart cast for Standing Rock (14.58 UTC) has the current T square directly on the Asc/Dc axis with Mars and Uranus rising – Pluto squares from the mid 10th house. This carries a heavily loaded potential for resurgent and insurgent action. Strong leadership with powerful revolutionary potential is indicated in this, but, it can swing both ways and with Jupiter in Libra setting in the west, the eclipsing of justice is not beyond the scope of this chart either.
The Mars square suggests that conflict will continue to unfold, with Uranus potentially bringing unprecedented and traumatic consequences. There could also be significant breakthrough as a result of the enforced eviction. This may not be obvious at first but there are larger patterns at work in this and it’s dynamic is going to continue, and these dynamics are now applying out on a much wider scale.
It helps to reflect upon how crucial ‘leadership’ is in the current time and, in terms of leadership involved then and now, it is worth remembering Custer’s own downfall and its essential core reasons. He was an ambitious and daring individual, willing to lead from the front, whose reckless vanity was almost certainly his undoing. Without going into the well documented timeline of events that illustrate this at Little Bighorn, consider Sun Tzu’s commentary on military leadership in this light :
“There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: (a) Recklessness, which leads to destruction; (b) cowardice, which leads to capture; (c) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults; (d) a delicacy of honour which is sensitive to shame; (e) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.
These are the five besetting sins of a general, ruinous to the conduct of war.
When an army is overthrown and its leader slain, the cause will surely be found among these five dangerous faults. Let them be a subject of meditation.” (2)
Custer was undoubtedly guilty of points (a) and (d), and as (c) would suggest, was certainly over hasty and rash; he utterly failed to carry out vital reconnaissance and sought a greater glory (a delicacy of honour) in dealing what he hoped would be the decisive blow within the Sioux Wars. He faced strong leaders and warriors who easily matched his courage, but who also demonstrated the advantage of a superior knowledge of the terrain and an ability to out-think the Colonel – with overwhelming numbers on their side there was little impediment to their victory. If there is a lesson to be learned here, present leaders might do well to consider its relevance and application in our times. The blinkering ‘vanity’ of leadership is one of its greatest stumbling blocks, but, when the scale of resitance is growing, such myopic leadership will see its misplaced values severely tested. But, the point of Sun Tzu’s strategies was always to avoid conflict and still gain the benefit.
No matter the nature of this conflict or how it plays out in our time, while the land rights of the indigenous people, whose ‘medicine’ Chiron could also be symbolically respresenting here, are crucial to the outcome. But, the scope of the battle has widened and we now see opposing forces of a different nature at work unfolding its dynamic on a much broader front.
An ancient opposition seeded in the far distant past, a struggle symbolised by the conflict between encumbent authority and individual sovereignty through the deeper polarity between the secular and the spiritual, is itself coming to a head, but, is doing so now on a global scale. Our human relationship with land and environment are at its center. Water protectors, choosing peaceful resistance over bloodshed, now oppose militarised federal forces. The people’s sovereign rights are overtly aligned with Earth rights and oppose the power of State aligned with vested corporate interest.
Entangled within this are issues around immigration and boundaries, associations that the current T-square and Saturnian influence are reflecting in an exacerbated state of national and international affairs, politically volatile and shot through with violence. Thanks to innovative Uranian technologies and the power of social networking they facilitate, the current situation is deeply affected by both manipulative co-oercion and instant connectivity of a nature never before seen in the ‘historical’ period.
The stand-off at Standing Rock, encapsulating so many of these factors has, like the battle now known as Little Bighorn, become iconic and is deeply charged with these dynamics. Natural resources are central to both conflicts, gold being at the heart of the government’s landgrab in the 1870’s. Now the ‘protection of the waters’ from the dangers of the exploitation of such resources is at the heart of Standing Rock, and the same spirit is at work in protection of the natural world in general.
Protectors of the waters, of the Earth and of the people are uniting to defend sovereign rights and the honouring of lawful treaties. They share many of the attributes and aims with the Native American warriors who fought at Greasy Grass, the indigenous name for Little Big Horn. But, the nature of resistance has changed.
As Custer approached the Sioux settlement he drove captured Sioux women and children before his column of soldiers. Seeing this Sioux scouts alerted the camp and the warriors were mobilised. In our time it is the women of Sacred Stone camp who are leading the way in protecting the sacred waters, a restorative reflection of the peaceful resistance that the protectors embody. May peace prevail.
Such is no less the case at any site where the appetite of greed and disrespectful ambition is tearing up the Earth and being met with protective resistance. But, division has become deeply instrumental and the contrast between one side and the other much more stark. The stand-off at large will continue, so long as respect for life and reconciliation is absent and the conflict remains unresolved.
What prompted me to look into the astrological correspondences here were the clear historical and tribal connections and their dynamics being played out now at Standing Rock. Just as the State attempted to order the Sioux nations off their lands under difficult conditions on the ground during the winter of January 1876 , the protectors at Standing Rock have been given a deadline amidst adverse conditions brought by snow melt and heavy rains, but, it was a video that Chase Iron Eyes posted this morning that caught my attention and prompted this article.
Chase Iron Eyes is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, an attorney and activist who is also a member of the Lakota People’s Law Project – I leave you with the video in which he talks of the importance of the Thunder spirits to the situation as it is now unfolding at Standing Rock……
(1) ‘Coyote Medicine’ – Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Simon & Schuster, 1997 (Italics, mine)
(2)’The Art Of War’ – Sun Tzu, various translations
Images by Frank Howell – from the top :
‘Circle Of Life’
‘Lost Warrior’
‘Lakota Blue Aura’
‘Fruit From The Light’
This is precious time for us, a time of reconnection and unity in a common purpose – to hold to the sacred as protectors and guardians of the unbroken thread of life that unites us all. In the north the fires are lit that mark the opening of the bone road, between this world and that of our forebears. In the south it is the first flush of the pregnant world that swells the seed within the flower and calls us to nurture hope within the world again.
When the new Moon is born at such a time it augers deep healing and brings remembering into our lives. The Scorpio Moon invokes memories and emotions to this purpose, sourced within the most mysterious unchanging aspects of creative energy as it flows into life from its source – its ability to transform and inform, to survive the journey, to survive all; great courage and a will to live can be found in this. It infuses our lives with a sense of belonging that is braided into the most fundamental roots of our being.
In connecting with Neptune’s energies this Moon brings the vision of our spirits alive within this regenerative place and reminds us of our own true purpose. It holds the vision of our future at its heart as it connects at the opening of the lunation with the Moon’s nodes.
It reminds us that the knowledge of life and death is rooted in the heart and womb, the power and true value of feminine wisdom within our world – Venus and Saturn square the Moon’s nodes showing us how this power informs and holds steady its true value for us as living souls.
Through Uranus square with Mars the power of discovery and inspiration are born under this Moon, opening possibilities for new pathways to be forged and encouraging mindful appreciation of the directions we are taking. There is great power for healing at work in this, as Mars sextiles Chiron. This can bring us closer to each other and lend our workings in the world the powers of the subtle realms.
Mercury runs before this Moon, carrying the radiance of the Sun that is in the hearts of the children, and the illumination of their deep untarnished connection with the source. Jupiter stands at the midpoint of Mercury and the Moon’s north node, squaring Pluto, bringing optimism to our vision for the future, and spreading the power of recognition that we all share the same source, are all related.
But, it is the ignition of the great fires of creation, the source of connection with the divine known more fully to those who have passed before us, which can bring this Moon’s greatest gift to us. In this our common ground and deepest source of inspiration can be found when we look within, our connection with the worlds within this world and the mind of nature.
Within this Moon a powerful elixir can be invoked, for healing, connection and belonging, a salve for our times that is at the heart of the elder wisdom gifted to us by the Looks Within Moon.
The old ones, the wise ones, lit the fires of dreaming under the Looks Within Moon. Gathering the people in as the fires were lit they brought out their bundles, the sweet medicine of their stories, carried from the time of the first fires, carrying the flame of the last fires. Their eyes upon another world they would feed us with the warmth of their own soulfires, and tell us of the dreaming Earth, Her love for Life and of us, her children.
In this Moon there is a longing to reunite with the luminous core of our belonging, our longing to be at one with the deepest and most meaningful aspects of life, and to give thanks for the gifts we find there. It is a Moon of deep feeling, of reaching into the settled stillness of things, to allow the warm inner radiance of belonging to infuse our own roots. At the heart of all things, offering the promise of return, it is the sweet medicine of Earth that calls us to gather around her central fire, to remember this fire burning within our selves.
Memories of Life, of lives once lived that yet carry pain, can be healed in this time, its salve, rememberance of times in which we have known the radiance of our own soulfire, its joy and warmth, and the healing balm of coming home to our heart and hearth, our Earth.
In our time, amidst uprooted lives and damaged life, the casualties of war and manipulation, pollution and illness, this deep feeling can be raised to unite us in passionate invocation, for protection of all that matters most, for unity and deep rooted solidarity as guardians of the sacred, of each others lives, and the lives of those yet to come….
…..and, in this place we can ignite another fire, our own center fire. Its gift, the shared warmth of an elder wisdom that still burns with a passion for life, made rich through lives lived, that in the deepest core of our selves yet lives on. Its presence can be summoned, can unite us all in its knowing beneath the Looks Within Moon.
In the northern realms our bonfires hold a memory, of a journey we have all taken along the bone road, the road of return and communion with our ancestors. Old and young come together here, around this ancient fire – the elders might gather and give counsel, themselves children amongst the spirits of the ancestors, holding an unbroken thread of belonging. The old songs are sung reminding us of our roots, our grounding and role as guardians of the sacred Earth.
Our children are honoured here, around this center fire, their voices the sound of fresh springs and running waters, reminding us of our sacred duty to life, a certainty that all the suffering we endure has a purpose. They remind us that they are our future, our guides as we walk this path of responsibility, strong and united in the courage and commitment to protect and nurture new life, to keep the thread unbroken. In every childs face is the elders dream come home, Earth’s dream in our midst once more…..
……if the fire is lit and the way of Earth’s dreaming is brought back into the village, new beginnings can be made, founded on wisdom and courage, connection and responsibility. We can rise to the challenges of life with assurity. Our voices can rise within these beginnings and be as the sound of wild bees, drawn home to make the golden honey of truth in our world, restoring in life the sweet medicine that lives in each of our stories……use this medicine well to bring healing to the forgotten ones, the orphans of circumstance and greed, to bring recognition and respect back into their lives, and ours.
This is the time in which the Earth enters her dreaming, as the shadows lengthen in the northern realms and falling flames of ancient sunlight lay their gold, tawny and red blanket upon the Earth, as the flower’s dance with the sound of wild bees and feel the breath of the Sun Spirit swelling in their hearts in the southern realms.
At this time……ignite the fires of belonging with this medicine, for those who have gone before us, who have come into our midst again, and those who will come after us – they will tell us who we are, will help us to remember why we came here, if we look within and hold this prayer at the lighting of our sacred fire.
Even amidst the turmoil and uncertainty that surrounds us, one simple flame can hold the path open for us at the time of the Looks Within Moon, and bring us back to the center, the radiant still point at the eye of the storm. This is a talisman of continuity and rememberance, of the creative energy we carry, the generative power that unites us all. We can invoke its power for the healing we know is needed, wherever it is needed, whether it be our own, or others less fortunate than ourselves, or of the ancient guardians themselves, the wise beings of our natural world. We are all one in this. Be of good heart loved ones, this is Earth’s gift…..under the Looks Within Moon.
On the 20th of April 2010 the world suffered a forbidingly deep wounding of its ‘wine dark sea’, as two hundred million gallons of ‘crude’ that is to say ‘unrefined’ oil lay its suffocating shadow upon the living waters. This stifling of the Gulf of Mexico pressed down upon its soul rich heart a heavy hand of crude inhumanity and brought death forth in the dreaming sea, an unrefined nightmare that haunts us still. We saw its image, a spume of black blood issuing from the wound, a toxic rainbow mirroring the flame raged cloud that rose from the crippled rig. Such images burn themselves into the heart of our concerns for life, but, how many more warnings do we need…..
…..it was a warning that the natural balance had been recklessly disturbed once more and, as many others warnings have been since Trinity unleashed Shiva’s dance upon the Earth, that the boundaries of sanity were being pushed to breaking point – we could have turned back then; the first testing of the atom bomb showed us how far the insanity had reached within the corridors of power, but, Hiroshima and Nagasaki pushed it further still and Trinity’s unheeded forebodings were finally fulfilled within a year of the Deepwater Horizon disaster when Fukushima let loose on March 11th 2011. The boundary had been breached.
The stricken reactor nailed humanity to a disastrous cross of its own making, at least three of its cores going into meltdown, signalling the advent of the ‘China Syndrome’. But, just as the news hoisted Fukushima’s dread tree aloft our own Golgotha, then too officials spoke through sealed lips, drew their own blanket of lies tight around the fact and washed their ‘pontius’ hands of culpability. The images that accompanied this deception told otherwise as the fury of Neptune’s own hand swept down upon the Japanese people, scouring the land and sea through tsunami and irradiated chaos. As Oppenheimer had ironically foreseen, too late, the dance of Shiva once invoked, cannot be contained.
Such were two of the momentous events that framed Jupiter and Uranus meeting on the Aries point which, on June 8th 2010, marked the opening of their current synodic cycle; the midpoint of their cycle approaching, it is time to take stock of our ability to turn the tide.
What have we learnt from this, the last six years since Deepwater and Fukushima, and the ever raging war being wrecked upon our Earth? Mars complicity notwithstanding, did the Thunderer and the Awakener ignitethe cardinal fire of our deepest concerns through these acts? We have entered far deeper waters than Homer’s odyssean mariners ever sailed, and our wine dark sea has become oil black, a dumping ground for the dominant culture’s inherent complex and its objects of denial. Its eerily illuminated undertow is reflected in the harsh light of the defiled flesh and bleached irradiated bones that whales and dolphins cast upon our shores in the wake of such terrible folly.
Event Horizon
Can we hold ourselves responsible? When an ‘accident’ of such serious magnitude happens more than once, and happens again, and again, does it wear the mantle of fate, as might be presaged in the stars, or is its persistent knocking on the doors of our consciousness and conscience not trying to tell us something about our destiny and what must happen for us to claim it; if we do not bear responsibilty and ultimate culpability, do we have the power to counter the vested interests of those who, ultimately, are culpable? By its very repetition do they not reveal themselves and their cronies to be what they truly are by such account, violating perpetrators? These too are questions that must be asked, and have been asked increasingly since these epochal events stimulated beyond any doubt the need for their asking. We can all hear them being asked in Dakota right now…..
Fukushima struck while Jupiter was still connected with Uranus, their conjunction still just in orb, at its critical point of departure, but the connection and the event, though appearing late in the day, was no less prescient for this. The Japanese disaster, in fact and nature a global disaster for sure, might have brought us to our senses and alerted us to the fact that, for us too, it is late in the day, very late. We might yet sense, were we to fully take in its import and rise to its calling, that we are not entering but are leaving the epoch of planetary destruction, but, such rests upon our ability to respond and, if we do so, first realise that the path of planetary healing leads not away from the wound, but through it.
Both in scale and consequence the role of the power industries has been disastrously epochal, none the less so, regardless the nuclear desert in whose shape we are rapidly terraforming our future, as for more than a century the oil industry has held such a dominant and deeply influencial role in our current culture of power and commerce. It is a geopolitical battle ground whose theatre of war we can see playing out now. In nuclear power many were, initially, duped into believing that we were being shown the way out of this paradigm, such was the naivety of the time with which many accepted its promise, in spite of Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The planetary matrix at the opening of the first fully commercial nuclear plant, Windscale, on 17th October 1956, reveals astrological themes that we will see recurring again and again here – Pluto sextiled Neptune, both on sign cusps, formed a yod to the Moon at 0° Aries, the ‘Aries point’, and Pluto squared the Moon’s nodes; Saturn was conjunct the north node, precisely on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius; Venus opposed Mars from mid Virgo, and Mercury sextiled Uranus, trining Chiron; Jupiter was exactly semisquare Uranus, the first critical angle of their cycle, and Uranus opposed Chiron. The role of the outer planets in particular is key in our examination here and this must include Chiron who sat firmly in Capricorn, the power base, as Jupiter and Uranus opened their cycle in December 1954; Neptune’s role too is central to this article and Neptune exactly squared Uranus and Jupiter at that moment.
Without getting too deeply embroiled in the planetary matrix at this point, suffice it to say that one of the main aims of this article is to illustrate the key role that certain astrological factors have repeatedly played in the charts connecting major environmental disasters, both accidental and not, but, all here relating to the ‘industries of power’. I could have chosen many more examples, especially those relating to the nuclear industry, but that is a project that requires its own space. The Jupiter Uranus cycle, however, has much to tell us within all this and this is a long article, of necessity…..
……the ‘power industries’ have led us into very deep water and to continue following this way of power leads nowhere, except to the dead-end of a lifeless culdisac, an event horizon that is a point of no return. The voice of the industry tells us otherwise, but, the ‘authorities’ of power are clearly seen to be in the business of selling us down the river. We do not need the oil or nuclear industries to power our planet.
With the cracking of the atom we reached the ‘event horizon’ of our times and were pushed, as an exploration of the Trinity chart will indicate, beyond the brink of containment. The illness of our times became psychotic as the button was pushed, such that now the progressive pursuit of dominance through the material use of power has induced an unchecked tsunami of consequences that blight our human presence on Earth. This is no time for political correctness – we need a stronger more passionate language to voice our burning concerns.
Astrologers often try to hold a neutral ground when dealing with interpretation, avoiding such rhetoric in the pursuit of an unbiased view – but, if their is a rule in this, this astrologer favours its breaking, and with good reason. As a diviner I have found that the energy of emotion is a powerful healing tool in itself and, in taking a diviner’s approach to astrology this informs this practice equally. This is not a surgery or lab, and we cannot afford to pussyfoot around our most pressing issues…..
…….I could have gone the conventional route of including charts, but, it is a custom here to focus more on the narrative, as divination does, to give voice to the story behind the chart rather than focus on its technical elements alone; the power of the imagination is what we are after restoring, not a supplimentary science, or meta-science, to justify it, and in responding to the current of our times the poetic medicine of this innate power is essential.
We have seen enough of how science works – as much as its findings excite, it speaks a dead language. As one of our greatest scientists once ironically proclaimed, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”.(1)
Our response is gathering apace, but, our common tongue is itself afflicted with numbing irony. Buzzwords abound, ‘sustainability’ jostling for space with ‘ecocide’, ‘the environment’ and the ‘biosphere’ become flatline synonyms for our living Earth. We must not be afeared of finding and using our poetic tongue, or be heckled into submission, believing that to do so is to depart from the facts. The drama being enacted in this theatre is deeply tragic and requires equally dramatic language to disclose its true import – a journey into the wound cannot help but bring us face to face with its inherent pain; but, it is a journey we have the means to navigate and we must be unflinching in our determination to see it through. In navigating Neptune’s world this is a de rigueur necessity……
Trinity
If the celestial mirror is anything, it reveals itself to be unflinchingly precise, not least of all in asking for our attention – after the detonation of the first atom bomb, given the unholy name of ‘Trinity‘, was Oppenheimer’s invocation of Shiva any more accidental than the test itself? Is it pure coincidence that within the chart for this event the asteroid ‘Shiva’ was conjunct the Sun to within 2 minutes of arc at the moment of detonation?
The chart for the Trinity detonation is a regular dragon’s egg of powerful potential energy, its key signifiers revealing a deep coherence that carries a profoundly assertive quality; the chart carries a depth charge of meaning and portent that mirrors the moment in which the cosmic egg was rent asunder. This is a chart that warrants much deeper exploration than be given here, but, in the context of this article a relatively brief summation will indicate its unquestionable importance.
Saturn, in detriment, was conjunct the Trinity Ascendant in mid Cancer, precisely squaring the Moon, the ruler of the Asc, in mid Libra. Sirius, the brightest of stars in our night skies, had just risen, barely a degree above the horizon – a symbol of the event’s magnitude and historical significance. In Gemini, Libra’s own ruler Venus precisely sextiled Pluto in Cancer with the Moon’s north node exactly at their midpoint, just six degrees from Saturn – it was a moment of extreme collective soul crisis, a violation of the generative principle and lockdown on our future and collective identity.
The repercussions of this fateful moment have afflicted our collective soul’s journey to this day, its catatonia inducing impact contagiously propagated at the deepest levels as Pluto fell precisely on Neptune’s north node in Leo in the Trinity chart. In this vision of the future the ‘egg of creation’ has been fatally cracked open, creating a breach in time that has released the unbounded powers of the Underworld within the earthly realms. Entering the realm of this unthinkable nightmare we suffered a loss of soul that reverberated well beyond the earthly sphere. But, as Neptune and Pluto are also reminding us here, it is in plumbing the depths of the dream and retrieving the transformative scope of its vision that the keys to its own redemption can be found.
If there are shades of Orpheus at work here the soulful task in hand is brought fully home as the asteroid Orpheus occupies the mid-point of the 10th house, at 15° Aries, precisely square Saturn and the Asc, directly opposing the Moon. The wandering stars are unerring in their precision……..but, what of Jupiter and Uranus?
In the Trinity chart Jupiter is in detriment in Virgo, squaring Uranus in Gemini, a sign in which Jupiter is also in detriment. This critical juncture in their cycle is no less crucial, or fatalistic; it was a cycle that began amidst tumultuous warring, but, the degree upon which its opening fell was perhaps more fatal still as Jupiter and Uranus met conjunct the fixed star Algol, the star of the Medussa. That alone is an ominous imprint to carry, but, the chart for that moment is something to behold (12.20am UTC, May 8th 1941).
Jupiter is loosing power in the Trinity chart as the square seperates, but, while Uranus is the stronger, in its own natural element, Jupiter carries the power of two fixed stars that lend the Thunderer’s presence a symbolic poigniance in ‘earth’ and the sign of the Virgin.
In orb of Denebola, the blue star in the tail of the Leo constellation, Jupiter compounds the import of Robson’s commentary (2) on its conjunction with this star, words brought to a new level of Uranian intensity – “Pride, hypocrisy, disappointed life, troubles abroad or through relatives, secret enemies, danger of imprisonment or death by sentence.” Ebertin tells us Denebola “is of the nature of Uranus”, and that “in mundane horoscopes major catastrophes are triggered off by it” (3)
However, in closer orb of Nu, the fixed star at the head of the Virgo constellation, Jupiter’s culmination of its waxing square with Uranus opened a reckoning time, a time of awakening in which we must pay heed to the catastrophic seeds of destruction that were being sown.
Nu’s esoteric significance is not lost here and echoes something of the Jupiter Uranus theme in relation to Trinity – as the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet, one of Nu’s sigils resembles the lightningbolt. It also symbolises ‘specific volume’ in thermodynamics and, in nuclear physics, the number of neutrons released per fission of an atom.
Within this star’s rich symbology Nu also associates with the truly anomolous, a truly Uranian quality. Its energy is further indicated by its algebraic signification of wave frequency, the modulation of which is at the very heart of energy work and field propagation. Science aside, this is a star that, while being much overlooked, indicates the workings of subtle energies – numinous by name, numinous by nature (pun intended). However, with this resonance between the star and these two planets in mind, Jupiter in square aspect to Uranus becomes an amplified critical point around this energy. An extreme has been reached – in calculus Nu’s symbol is used to signify ‘the greatest fixed point of a function’; as a calculated act Trinity nailed us to the fixed point at the center of the cross of fate and destiny. It was a chronically Chironic.
If the need for the deepest of healing sought confirmation, Chiron was closely conjunct the IC of the Trinity event chart, in the final degree of Virgo, a degree that seems fated to play a recurrent role in this energetic drama – the deepest and most fatal of wounds was opened and we have been repeatedly called to its healing ever since. And, as if to drive the point home, the chart’s MC is precisely on the Aries point, within 4 minutes of arc of the point of entry into Uranus and Jupiter’s current cycle.
The Widening Breach
At Hiroshima, three years later, at 8.16am local time on the 6th of August 1945, the sensitive degrees were activated again. Mars joined Uranus in mid Gemini, with Uranus precisely conjunct the chart’s MC, squaring the Ascendant and the Trinity Moon’s degree. In the Hiroshima chart the Ascendant falls exactly on the degree occupied by the asteroid Shiva in Japan’s national chart. Hiroshima’s Jupiter opposed Japan’s Mars and squared Japan’s Moon…..and this too is a chart carrying a yod with the Moon’s nodes as its central axis.
This time it is Pluto and Mars that are feeding their energies into the Moon’s north node, with the south node at their midpoint! In the deafening roar of the bomb you could almost hear the ancestors howling in disbelief at this ultimate act of aggression. Mars is conjunct the fixed star Aldebaran, a union signifying violent death and sickness. Mars also trines Neptune and Pallas, with Pluto at their midpoint framed by the Sun on one side and Shiva on the other. The correspondences begin to show themselves as the celestial evidence mounts.
Chart comparisons of such events reveal much; they can also lead one down a very wearying path when the destructive element is being highlighted – but, when we look further afield Shiva’s presence and the roles of Uranus, Pluto, Neptune, Saturn, Chiron and Jupiter in particular spring out with an unerring call from the outer planets for our attention.
The Evidence Mounts
In the chart for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 1.24 am 26th April 1986, Uranus this time falls exactly on the Ascendant, along with asteroid Orpheus, and is once again in a waxing square with Jupiter! The Sun opposes Pluto close on the Moon’s south node and the chart’s MC/IC axis.
Pallas is exactly conjunct Pluto’s south node in Cancer, weighing our lack of wisdom in the ancestral balance of creation. Pluto was also trined with Ceres in early Virgo as Chernobyl went critical, alerting us to the depth of the event and the need to see its widespread effects within the earth realms more clearly. Did we take heed?
Mars and Neptune once more sextile Pluto, with the asteroid Shiva this time close on Neptune. The pattern at work here is revealing itself. Some say that there was no accident in Chernobyl’s meltdown, that Fukushima was no accident, that politically motivated revenge and deliberate sabotage was at work. However we look at it, there is an old old war at work in our world.
During the Gulf War massive oil spillage was unleashed by the Iraqi army in an attempt to prevent American forces from landing – the planetary positions on that day, 21st of January 1991, are very revealing.
Saturn, domicile in Capricorn, was conjunct the Moon’s north node within two degrees of the Sun at 0° Aquarius. Chiron opposed Saturn from Cancer, trining Pluto, domicile in Scorpio. Mars at 0° Gemini trined the Sun with the Moon transiting the Aries point midway between them. Meanwhile, Jupiter in Leo, squaring Saturn and Chiron, quincunxed Uranus, Mercury and Neptune, whose stellium in Capricorn is very telling. The dice are heavily loaded in this chart, activating critical degrees and pushing the power base into overload.
Neptune’s influence in Capricorn by itself might have alerted us to the message that such violent geopolitically driven disregard for the Earth’s and Life’s sanctity expresses, but this entire complex of interwoven apsects belies the pursuit of a wreckless strategy of dominance. It is a strategy that finds its purpose in creating emotional turmoil and unbridled drama, as a distraction from the underlying wound that it meanwhile deepens. It has deception at its heart and is achieved, as the American campaign in Iraq of 2003 brazenly broadcast, through the widespread delivery of ‘shock and awe’. It is also at the heart of the attempt at a perpetual war, not on but ofterror, that now sustains this intent and purpose. Neither is it confined to the military battlefield…..
…..if the military delivery of such globalised trauma is ongoing so is its environmental twin. And, if Deepwater Horizon has anything to tell us about this veiling of our sanity and its relationship with the current opposition between Jupiter and Uranus, perhaps a closer look at Neptune will reveal it.
There is a certain irony in Neptune’s role in the Deepwater chart; conjunct Chiron on the cusp of Pisces the oceanic wound carries its heart in its mouth – as environmental disasters go its magnitude, if not its cause, was both openly pronounced and concealed in the process as we heard its dry echo on the news. This was ‘the worst‘, we were told, ‘environmental disaster‘, we were informed, ‘in US history‘, we were duly advised, as if official notification of its scale and national appointment were a measure of its weight…..there was no ‘solace’ or ‘measure’ offered in the fact, or its presentation in the media.
The familiar machinations of obscuration surrounding this event are highlighted when we look closer, as Neptune and Chiron on the Pisces cusp sextile the Sun at 0° Taurus, with Uranus at their midpoint. Uranus on the Aries cusp opposes Saturn rx in the final degree of Virgo. Echoes of the charts mentioned above also resound here. The key planets here had barely moved a single degree by the time Jupiter and Uranus opened their current cycle.
In the Deepwater chart the Moon is conjunct its own south node, in the process of transiting Saturn and Pluto’s north nodes in Cancer. The soul of the past must inform the transformational building of our future. Mid Cancer, if you remember, was sensitised in the Trinity chart and the key angles are trigger points activated by the outer planets at all these events.
Jupiter and Uranus both square the Ascendant. In the Deepwater chart’s 10th house Jupiter and Uranus signal the importance of this event in the relationship between the industries of power and our ability to transcend their dominance, but it is Neptune who is the ruler of the MC, calling for redemption. Is the society of the future we dream of now a dream we can share with our descendants…..
…..in their yod with Saturn, Neptune + Chiron’s sextile with the Sun shows us how the message is being both perceived and not perceived. At 29° of Aquarius the critical point of Neptune’s transit into Pisces is overshadowed by the karmic sensitivity of Saturn’s place at the head of the yod. It is a karma both shut out of view, concretised and delivered into our hands – we have to feel it to believe in it and only the power locked up in our human passion and will to live harmoniously can redeem it for us. Some might say that, with such a diagnosis, humanity is in dire need of a soul retrieval – so, who might we find who could facilitate such an undertaking; its a rhetorical question.
Opposing Saturn, Uranus becomes the revealer who alerts us to the event’s true nature – this is not simply an act of extreme negligence, as the courts ruled against BP, the company responsible for Deepwater, it was a call to rein in the destruction to our living Earth. It was also a call to a much more profound and powerful vision, one that engenders and protects life and can be lived by. Answering such a calling would be the purpose of Jupiter and Uranus meeting at 0° Aries and such a vision forms the positive core of their new synodic cycle.
If The Path Leads Through The Wound…..
Such disasters bring catastrophic and deeply affecting damage whose images nevertheless point towards the painful heart of the healing being called for. The impact of Deepwater upon marine life has been far deeper than has been acknowledged – we are told that hundreds of whales and dolphins, many of them babies, died as a result – the toxicity of the chemicals used in the ‘clean up’ is no less pervasive to this day; but, the reality behind these events is far more deep reaching and forms part of a much bigger picture.
At the time, Deepwater Horizon was but the latest in a long history of environmental disasters falling at the hands of its industrial power base. Yes, BP were found guilty of negligence, but, to call it ‘negligent’ is an insult of the highest order, one that ignores the long list of ‘negligence’ behind its perpetrators. Over one billion gallons of crude have poured from that ongoing industrial wound into the oceanic biosphere within the last half century alone. And this figure does not include one of the biggest spills ever recorded which was not accidental by any means – millions of gallons were deliberately unleashed within the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War and it is openly admitted but never spoken knowledge that a nine foot deep crust of ‘tarcrete’ covers afflicted areas of the desert to this day. The damage within Neptune’s realms goes almost entirely unmentioned – further hard evidence must be called to the dock……
Forgetting is at the deep core of the construction of Onkalo, a mile deep repository for nuclear waste being built under a granite mountain in Finland. But how, millenia down the road, do we tell our descendants of the lethal dangers our legacy has created for them in such an irradiated tomb? The radioactive waste buried at Onkalo has a half life of tens of thousands of years, and we struggle to decipher the signs left by our ancestors 5,000 years ago, let alone 50,000. (4)
The thousands of starfish that have been dissolving on the eastern Pacific Coast, the dead seals and fish, the mass die off of marine flora and their mirror, the hundreds of deformed human babies born in Japan after Fukushima and Russia after Chernobyl are not considered hard enough evidence to halt the madness, yet. Neither are these facts redeemed by the use of depleted uranium in wars fought over geopolitical gains; gains, no matter how opposed to them we are, from which we continue to benefit; our hand is being forced, while running our cars, heating and lighting our homes, powering our computers……
……Trinity was the first of many tests, themselves running to the thousands, that have produced generations of dead and cancer afflicted ‘downwinders’, and the military personel involved in these tests, ordinary footsoldiers used in that ‘good old military tradition’ of ‘cannon fodder’, were treated with equal disdain being nothing more than a ‘part of the experiment’.
Official figures attached to these events differ wildly when they do actually appear within the public realm, by astronomical factors in some cases, an open indicator of the confusion and deception at work within. This in itself is not newsworthy enough to warrant reportage either, it seems. The hegemony of the scientific priesthood will always try to sell us the official line. Hundreds of ‘alternative’ researchers will tell us different, alternative in many senses simply because they are never consulted by the media. And yet, when these events are thrust in our face they invariably filtered down, delivered through the official channels with just enough force for the figures to wash over us, and we are expected to swallow them. This is a reality fully manifest in Fukushima where, over five years after the event, the authorities continue to massively downplay the truth and its consequences. Regardless, we know the truth – these events are all of one ilk; they are all acts of war, ultimately destructive crimes against Life. So….
…..What Is The Antidote?
At Fukushima the asteroid Shiva was exactly conjunct Pluto at 8° Capricorn and, as I began to write this article Jupiter was exactly square this degree – the burgeoning sphere of radioactive threat is upon us again as the drums of global war ratchet up their rhythm. And, it has long been known that the nuclear fuel industry is but a front for the manufacture of weapons grade uranium.
The reactors are getting old, as are the warheads. Instability rules the day. One strike from a significant coronal mass ejection will take down the grid and the failsafe on these ‘facilities’ will be tested to its extreme. It is madness to continue in this way. If Jupiter and Uranus are to have a hand in this it is our prerogative to find their higher calling and it is to this that we will be looking in the next post.
Neptune’s realms are suffering through widening pollution and irradiation, and yet the fact of the whales and dolphins carcasses in relation to these events remains obscured. If we are to bring a passion to bear here, it must surely be upon what in our times has become that most mercurial of things, Truth. The truth is there for all to see, deliberately veiled if not ignored by the official channels in order to prevent widespread panic, we are told – and insurrection, we might surmise. The cover up is no less great above our heads where the daily deposition of many thousands of tons of heavy metals, nano-technologies and viral particulates infuses the skies that carry the oceans irradiated waters and bring its heavy load to our lands, lakes and front doors. Its a ‘hard rain’ thats falling, to be sure….but the truth behind this reality does not escape our notice; witness this latest appraisal. The perpetrators know that truth is the most powerful of weapons and have no inhibition in concealing it and affecting our capacity for recognising it. Our very ability to think and dream for ourselves is under assault.
The scientific foundation upon which the industries of power have built their edifice has done everything in its power to seperate our thinking from our dreaming – we cannot imagine without either, and Neptune is the archetypal ruler of the imaginal realms.
As the planetary matrix of Deepwater and many of these charts might have indicated it is in Neptune’s, and Chiron’s, realms that the soul of Jupiter and Uranus antidote might be found. In indigenous lore the Whales are Earth’s keepers of the great repository of knowledge that give us access to the ancestral dreaming of our planet. This is knowledge that encompasses a far older memory than is widely acknowledged, a memory that reaches far back into the migration of the planets, and of our ancestors, into this solar system.
Water has memory, conveys information, responds to emotions – when we are born our body’s primary element is water (around 75%) and remains so in healthy humans ( dropping to an average of <60%>) until death; we are born from water……and the primary source of oxygen on our planet is in the oceans; phytoplankton photosynthesises over 50% of the world’s oxygen into the atmosphere……..and oxygen is the bane of cancer. It is also essential to our capacity to imagine, but, we will return to this next time.
The Whale’s return to the oceans signalled a change in our planetary atmosphere and gravity, a transformation of Earth also intrinsic to the human evolutionary path; they hold the memories of a unified consciousness that are braided into our own dna – the release and recovery of these memories is essential to our world, a central part of the antidote.
When Uranus and Jupiter met at 0° Aries they signalled a new beginning for us all in retrieving the power within these memories, of memory itself, and their current opposition across the Aries Libra axis will tell us just where and how this journey could continue, its great promise and startling reality……in future posts over the coming year we will pick up on the incoming attributes of the Jupiter Uranus cycle, looking more deeply into the story as it unfolds, and begin to unpack what the return of the whale dreamers might mean for us. The next post in the series, Mysterious Travellers, can be found here…..
(1) quote attributed to Albert Einstein
(2) Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, V E Robson, 1923
(3) Fixed Stars and their Interpretation, Elsbeth Ebertin, 1928
ROOT MEDICINE OF THE STARS ON EARTH 