Category Archives: eclipse

astrology, eclipse, human rights, lunations, planetary change, Politics

Mars, Saturn And The Horns Of A Dilema

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The full lunar eclipse in the fifth degree of Aquarius on 27th July 2018 is conjunct Mars. Most astrological analysis seems to be centering on the eclipse itself, caught between the horns of two partial solar eclipses and the longest in duration for some time. But Mars, forming its first prolonged aspect to Saturn since they began a new cycle in Capricorn, is the focus, the primary input.

Even if you are only expecting all things ‘heat’ related to be under the Mars lens, the lunar eclipse itself begins to take on a different appearance.

In semi-sextile with Saturn Mars is asserting itself as an independent energy, attempting to break free of the old time keeper’s influence, and here the imprint of their new cycle is showing its first teeth. This drive for self determination is essential to the trajectory of the moment.

Mars met with Saturn in Capricorn on April 2nd 2018, in a region of the zodiac where self determination can be both celebrated and challenged, a place in which power, ambition and control are already hot issues. Pluto has been affecting this place for the last decade and its purge of the cardinal earth has not been easy for those already in power, or coming into power, especially the self appointed demiurges who would play with our fates. But when this is the basis upon which Saturn and Mars initiate their new cycle we are promised fierce restructuring of our daily lives as all layers of power are affected. The question is, does this come about through our own volition and, if not, then what can we expect? Their previous cycle began when these two planets last met in Sagittarius, August 2016 – can that cycle offer any indications?

Given Saturn and Mars last meeting hovered around the star Antares it might well have been expected that a theme would be set around war, its antithesis, the violation of boundaries and a desire to address the effects of sanctioned violence. We certainly got that, and, given the Sagittarian platform from which Saturn and Mars began, we should not have been surprised when an unboundaried socio-idealogical conflict was delivered into our hands.

An old problem with a new face, philosophy, ideology and religion once more demonstrated the raw nature of their fundamental underpinnings and brought us unavoidably into questioning the deepest of core values we hold. Perhaps more importantly, we were also brought face to face with the polarised state such fundamentals can manifest, especially when ignited at both ends. In the mundane sense, those ends would, crudely put, be represented by ‘protectionist nationalism’ on the one hand and ‘open armed liberalism’ on the other, the perfect ingredients for engendering knee-jerk confrontation, and that too is what we got.

One thing we should recognise here is how Mars and Saturn work together – there is no agenda to their partnership, it functions as a force of nature whose dynamic is one of internal contradiction which needs resolving and that in the process demands we face external extremes first hand. It is we who supply the drama, the backdrop into which their energetic bombshells drop. Mars and Saturn together are fully capable of upping the anti, in fact, in their way of working this is, often enough, their modus operandi. In a planetary climate which sees five planets plus Chiron simultaneously retrograde the internal aspect of this effect is exacerbated.

Fact is, as an example of social engineering through geopolitical means the debacle which accompanied their old cycle was, for those supporting globalist agendas, a masterstroke, perfectly preparing the thrust of the global narrative to take advantage of the Capricorn cycle and its re-appropriation of power, when it arrived. Well, it has, and it is the consequences of this thrust to which the Capricorn in us all must now apply our best abilities and most grounded qualities. This helps contextualize Mars at this eclipse. Lets briefly remind ourselves of the scenario.

A geopolitical and societal tsunami was unleashed during the last Saturn Mars cycle in the form of mass migration, its impact and the consequences of deeply liberalised socialist immigration agendas upon personal values. Generated out of a collusion between violence, spiritual extremism and the strategically significant humanitarian crisis which followed, the shell of philosophical and religious conservatism was apparently broken open, uprooted humans spilled out and the “liberalised” west responded with open arms. The tension created by mass movements of people away from areas of conflict, the exploitation of morality and ethics to meet the challenges arising from this and other related humanitarian issues, do bear the hallmarks of responses made to Mars and Saturn’s own collusion in Sagittarius. All inflammation and strictures, it was perfectly orchestrated, in fact. The rise in nationalistic protectionism similarly. These were the apparent horns of the dilema, similarly reflected through Mars and Saturn squaring the Moon’s nodes which were in Pisces and Virgo at the inception of their Sagittarian cycle.

Two months prior to this inception we saw the UK undertake to leave the EU and birth Brexit. Through this time Donald Trump was campaigning on a ticket which, just three months after the inception saw him achieve victory – it was a ticket which strongly reflects aspects of the Brexit imperative. Both results expressed the majority voice of the popular vote, a point which many who disagreed with the outcome even now find hard to accept. But, these only serve to illustrate the energetic and emotional dynamic being exposed in accompaniment to the Saturn Mars  cycle.

We have witnessed an over-spill, in human form, from war stricken regions in the near and middle east in particular during the intervening times, bringing new levels of questioning to the meaning of consensus, tolerance and democracy, all expressed quite graphically through an amplification of tensions and threat, if not across boundaries then certainly behind them. There is a sense that it must be done, Mars, at odds with a knowing that it must be contained, Saturn. Each carry their own shadow and it is inevitably the shadow which is the problem. Integration of the shadow, en masse, to be precise.

Backlash is not inevitable, but, when stoked by surrounding issues of free-speech and ‘political correctness’, as well as the constant media hype and the sheer irresponsibility of one sided reportage and misrepresentation of facts, there are bound to be consequences. Especially when, more to the point, there is an uncured and unaddressed powder keg of centuries of old enmities smouldering dangerously beneath the surface.

We could be justified in asking, what makes people so susceptible to such overtly propagandised manipulation? The effect of technologies on human attention and the mind, for sure. But could there also have been a reflection of the square with Neptune in Pisces which left its mark on the opening of Mars and Saturn’s Sagittarian cycle? Yes, but the fact that Neptune was sitting on the lunar south node at the time should have indicated the real need to take care not to fog over old issues when borders, religion and wars are involved –

“those who ignore the lessons of history……”

If, in the intervening time an element of drama has been allowed to escalate within this arena, with little doubt it has been aided and abetted by that other war, the ongoing one surrounding manufactured and fake news. Yes, folks, while the good people of Syria are defending their own, it is now the White Helmets/Al Qaeda who need rescuing, Justine time – the show must go on.

But, Capricorn is where this reality comes home and is either purged and made useful, or annihilated. Now that Mars is forming its first aspect to Saturn in their new cycle and is itself conjunct the lunar south node, the fog is being scorched off and we have long since passed the point of peak tolerance. Even though some governments are reneging, it really is vital that the relevant past be brought into the spotlight, if only such that humanity does not forget who we are and how we got here, and acts accordingly. There is no room for clouded thinking anymore, in fact it is downright dangerous, which is one of the reasons people like Jordan Peterson have such prominence now – it is all part of a movement and a dynamic towards reclamation of our lives.

Where Neptune was obfuscation, Mars is Action here. Ideology must give way to pragmatism.

Activating the forgotten past requires a great deal of energy and the best place to get this is from the ancestors themselves – petition them, with passion and fierce determination, for clarity and reconnection; the eclipse is made for this. Operating outside the constraints of time, ancestry and spiritual allies will pick up on the Mars impulse. Use it.

Act in response, responsibly. When a total lunar eclipse accompanies alignments like these the need for consciousness around the possible and perceivable consequences of our acts are amplified – they will have a more lasting effect.

We face old truths now, the better to live in days to come.

 

If the last Mars Saturn cycle saw the philosophical and heuristic basis for how we live and live together seriously brought into question, this one is going to be where answers found and insights gained must be tested out in hard core reality.

In a very real sense this is about putting the real world application of self determinism to the test, and especially at a personal level. This is essentially an “experimental” place we find ourselves in. When Uranus squares the lunar nodes we should expect no less.

Pluto has been preparing the ground for this experiment since 2008 and is now close on its own south node in Capricorn, but this is a far more far-reaching matter. Whereas the lunar nodes cycle is about 19years, Pluto’s own nodal cycle lasts 26,000 years and collectively this temporal frame of reference is now active and of the greatest relevance. At a collective level, we have now entered the natural culmination of the long collective Soul cycle away from the Cancerian polarity, with its own decidedly lunar collective manifestation. We have thirteen thousand years to think about and must put our findings to reconciling the opposites.

The alchemy of the moment requires memory as well as vision be brought into our desire to act in the present, under the shadow of this eclipse. Technology has beguiled us with its own alchemy, but if humans are indeed intelligent, and enough of them can extract their minds from a few square inches of hand held electronic miasma for a sustained moment, it could just happen. We have been led to believe that this technology is a form of power and that, while having it is enough to become endowed, using it is in some sense liberating if not revolutionary. But, for all its gains, it remains little more than a mental hijack which has removed our minds from our bodies for most of the day. There is a solution which does not involve the obvious one of giving it up entirely.

Earth. Always remember to ‘earth’. Humans will always be in the process of trying to find a working relationship with ‘power’, in all its guises; its hardwired. But, Earth…..it helps that relationship develop in a balanced and healthy way. Earth is at the center of the lunar eclipse.

The Aquarian eclipse is also a warning by way of reminder in this respect. Turn off your router when not using it, especially when sleeping. But, rather than getting carried away on the mental-floss of life, this eclipse, if anything is telling us to get our minds out of the machine and, with Mars involved, to “get the fuck back into our bodies!”

Reclaim your life and creativity!

How we use our evolving knowledge, our shared and communicated understanding of the world, our role in it’s planetary evolution, will begin to have a profound influence on the relationships with power we set about building through the current Mars and Saturn cycle. In fact the Mars Saturn cycle that follows this will naturally culminate the first real gains of this process, and that cycle will begin at 0° Aquarius. The significance of this threshold point cannot be over emphasised, not least of all because it is the exact degree in which Jupiter and Saturn will also begin their next cycle.

This is the time to take notice and act accordingly, to drop preconditioned responses in favor of deepened attention to what we are aware of and the ground upon which we base our acts. Whatever we do, just as it must ‘work’, it must continue to ‘work’ beyond our personal mortality, another Mars/Saturn ‘mantra’.

The simplest mantra you will see associated with Mars+Saturn in fact is ‘hard work’ – but, if we ensure that each cycle is built upon, taken full advantage of and its effects acknowledged this will also have the great benefit of creating meaningful work, possibly more meaningful than we can realize. If nothing else Mars and Saturn initiating a cycle in Capricorn needs to be made meaningful through learning the lessons of history and seeing what has immediately preceded us, what surrounds us now, in the light of what we learn.

What is being decided is not where the center of power is but where and how power can be centered. We live within a matrix of power, are power and can access power – its concentration at any point which abdicates connection to the whole is anathema to life. The answer to this conundrum is where Mars and Saturn’s Capricorn cycle will test our mettle to the max.

How human power is used, in all its multifaceted guises, will be the ongoing issue, but, there is now a significant window of opportunity for meaningful hands-on work around the degree to which the ordinary citizen, or humans as a species, can and will have a say in this. That window is  between now and the 2020 December solstice. That is when Jupiter and Saturn meet on the cusp of Aquarius. It really is no use kidding ourselves that there is more time; the couch is not your friend.

The next Mars Saturn cycle will also be initiated in the first degree of Aquarius, March 31st 2020. And we should not overlook the fact that Mars and this lunar eclipse are square Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, now in Taurus, about which more next time. The indication is that the paradigmatic basis for how we work with power in our future, in both an enabling and an enforcing context, is in its most pragmatic sense very much being decided now.

 

 

 

astrology, culture, eclipse, mundane astrology, Politics, Root Medicine of the Stars

Behind The Mask

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A full lunar eclipse on January 31st falls in the 12th degree of Leo. Times and places for observing the eclipse can be found here.

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.

astrology, Earth healing, eclipse, Politics, Root Medicine of the Stars, Social Conflict

In Respect Of Eclipses

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eclipse drama

“Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.”

Eclipses are to be experienced to be understood. Despite the chorus of astrological interpretations surrounding them, there is no substitute for direct experience, and this is especially the case with a total solar eclipse.

While astrologers tend to analyse and interpret to find their meaning, the experience of being under the Moon’s shadow as it races across the land and obscures the disc of the Sun is first and foremost not intellectual, or even rational, it is visceral. Its impact is profoundly tangible, exciting and direct. It not only becomes integrated into the human frame, affecting the energetic and emotional bodies directly, embedding itself within ‘long’ memory, but is, or can be, one of the most direct cosmological experiences we can have. It is a gift of nature, both transformative and empowering in its creative potential.

Much in contemporary western culture stands in the way of realising that natural potential, but, as astrologers like to say of eclipses, they signal a reset or return to our path. It is an ‘art’ of being human that can be relearned.

For 21st century humans this alone tells us almost as much about eclipses as we need to know, not least of all as it also points up aspects of ‘contemporised’ human nature that tend to obscure such direct experience. Conditioning and preconceived ideas can, and often do, get in the way of such a direct art and removing them is, at the best of times, far from easy, especially in the current global environment. Much needs to be unlearned.

In the run up to the eclipse of August 21st 2017 preemptive speculation has been rampant, priming people’s expectations with a vast array of interpretations about its significance and meaning. Even if it is an allergic reaction to fears, stress and the unknown that is itself a part of a conditioned sentient nature, we are not necessarily doing ourselves any favors by buying into its dynamic – it is time, as nature shows, to pause and be still.

Astrologers have however been priming this particular pump with a relish that betrays their art, and personal bias, and if we are to believe what they have been saying we can expect this eclipse to signal everything from civil unrest, regime change, assassination and the onset of thermonuclear war, to liberation and release from the very conditions that contribute to those possibilities. The effects of such a dramatisation precede and contribute to their realisation, itself a dynamic reflection of the conditioning that comes with preemptive bias. What you preconceive is, to some extent, what you get.

Eclipses, when they carry this degree of preemptive charge, begin to change reality before they have even arrived. To a large degree this is humans fooling themselves, but, it can also be exploited as an opportunistic act of deliberation.

Eclipses thus charged and framed stir things up, in ways which can make the likelihood of such radical events appear preordained, amplifying the necessity for their elimination, or realisation, depending upon which interp you jive with most. In the contemporised mindset, whether by design or not, eclipses are seen to be opportunities for creating ‘self fulfilling’ prophecies and, by the same token, are golden opportunities for social engineering and manipulation, for stressing the human frame with fear and expectations of ‘the worst’, as much as idealistic escapism.

These are old programs, partly natural, partly induced. Millenialism and religious dogmas of apocalypse and transcendence thrive on such ambiguous conditions and conditioning and these too are a part of this underlying dynamic, deep seated and all too often subliminal. Such teleologies belong to doctrines which ignore the possibility of ‘continual creation’, of a living breathing if divine universe and, in so doing, deprive us of the most meaningful experience life can offer us.

An innate perceptive susceptibility and weakness is at work here, a consequence of split consciousness which, in our times, is exploited everyday by media, governments and marketeers. It is also subtly if profoundly divisive when it is spun into the ongoing narrative. It has been projected onto our antecedents to this end, effectively supporting evolutionary agendas and authoritarian historicism alike. Through this, for example, the popularised image of the ‘native’ cowering under the shadow of the eclipse has been exploited to distance ourselves from ancestry as much as it has been used to propagate superstitions of eclipses as ‘bad omens’, all of which has contributed to human supremacism and racial divide.

If the mundane world has been pre-endarkened by this eclipse it is currently nowhere reflected more clearly than in this arena. Classic projection and dissociation, or ‘otherness’, the control mechanism of an elite caste system, both become strategies of control employed in social engineering and used to implant heirarchic conditioning, as much as division. Such insidious conditioning, if tagged on to a major eclipse event, can stir and subtly reinforce deep seated prejudice, especially in times of heightened political and social tension. With current events unfolding under the path of the eclipse we have seen a none too subtle exploitation of this dynamic at work – this eclipse has already become a part of the ongoing psychological and emotional terrain that serves the purpose. However, it merely serves to up the drama and distract from the true nature of the moment.

Its cyclical nature has been capitalised upon by some astrologers to this effect, previous eclipses within the same cycle having been used as temporal markers with fateful consequences for American Presidents for example. The complexity of historical events is whitewashed out with such use and astrologers are no less guilty in this than political spin doctors and creators of the ‘official narrative’.

The eclipse cycle’s distinct periodicity, the variability of which has been observed and tested for millenia however, is not simply a political tool, itself no less a superstition than an alleged determinant. As a physical experience of a cosmological event orthodox science tends to lean upon the periodicity of total eclipses as markers in an unchanging and stable system of planetary dynamics, a view which supports the dogma of scientific orthodoxy and physical ‘laws’ which support it. These are the bedrock of scientific determinism, as much a confirmation bias in its favor as a support mechanism, or program, for historical narratives. They are also propagators of a pernicious fiction.

This ‘predictability factor’ was, these same narratives tell us, important to the regulation of power within social structures in the distant past, the province of an elite priesthood and initiates into the metaphysical sciences – the immense calendric capabilities of ancient cultures is not conceded within the orthodox view as an indication of their scientific sophistication. Instead it is seen as a form of primitivism, if not a fear based response to forces beyond human control. We are ‘supposed’ to have progressed beyond such a condition. Such sophistication however, if it were acknowledged within deep human ancestry, would suggest a lack of ‘progress’ if not dangerous precedent, and that is tantamount to a heresy within the teleology and ‘material eschatology’ of  ‘orthodox’ science.

The indigenous traditions however tell us that the primary protocol for eclipses is one of ‘respect’. The full impact of a solar eclipse can be a positive experience when given due respect, and that is open to both the scientific mind as much as the spiritually oriented. It is a time in which nature responds and shows the way, simply that, and empirically so. But, while the need for respect is achingly obvious amongst humans and their relationship with the natural world, it is also an honoring of the unknown. The world takes on an unfamiliar face under the path of a total solar eclipse. Meaning, at such times, can be suspended, creatively.

How humans respond creatively to the unknown with ‘respect’ is possibly most clearly developed, if not innate, in ritual and ceremony, a root acknowledgment of the cosmos and the powers that shape and inform our experience of it.

Within the northern American continent ceremonial sites dating back many thousands of years fall directly under the path of the total eclipse. Indigenous honoring of the Sun’s darkening will take place at many of them, following traditional practices handed down over many generations. But, the way in which that honoring takes place is not bound by tradition. To simply drop our preconceptions and be open to the universe, to quieten and be observant and receptive, is enough – the healing and integrity of nature extends into such a moment and makes a glimpse into universal nature possible. What arises is ours to honor and cherish, an empowerment which could have far reaching consequences.

Whether we experience this as mysterious or not, it is above all at heart an art, a human art of tremendous creative potential that expresses itself through natural participation, a communion with life in all its power and perspective giving glory, and eclipses of this kind offer us unique access to a deeper experience of this. If approached in this way and if the overriding nature of the so called ‘Great American Eclipse’ is to be honored so, it will change us, and will reveal an art and creative power all too overshadowed in our times which can heal the dramas we are enacting – we could simply call it the art of ‘human respect’.

The quote at the head of this article is from the great dramatist and theatrical mentor, Jerzy Grotowski.

Aries Libra axis, astrology, culture, Earth healing, eclipse, environmental issues, human rights, planetary aspects, Root Medicine of the Stars, Socail Conflict, Sovereignty, The outer planets

Return Of The Thunder Spirits

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circle-of-life frank howell

“……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.

lost-warrior frank howell

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.

lakota-blue-aura frank howell

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.

fruit-from-the-light-frank-howell

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’

Aries Libra axis, astrology, Disclosure, eclipse, EMVs, lunations, planetary change, Planetary Mind, Politics, retrograde planets, Root Medicine of the Stars

Mysterious Travellers

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Just four months ago our outlook on the world appeared very different. Few could have foreseen the full consequences of the choices that were being made around that time or the speed with which the global change we are experiencing  would be catalysed to a new level of intensity – I am of course referring (at least in part) to the significant impact of the USA’s presidential election. But, the arena within which this change is now unfolding is more than simply ‘political’ – behind the regime change driven legislative and geopolitical restructuring that we are now seeing a planetary process has been unfolding that reflects  our terran experiences quite clearly.

Jupiter and Uranus are now fully within the mid-phase of their current synodic cycle and, if the ‘effects’ they reflect on the ground are undeniable, the transformation at work within them is equally startling. Here we will map out some of the ways in which these two transformative aspects of what is actually a singular process relate to and inform each other.

Enough time has now elapsed since entering the midpoint (November 2016 to November 2017) of the current Ju/Ur cycle for us to begin assessing how Uranus and Jupiter’s opposition is working out. In this article we will see how, in our immediate time, this ties into the current lunar cycle. In the process we’ll also unpack some of the key points of the midpoint period as a whole and look into correlations between this and the Moon’s phases.

Confused? Well, it is a revealing journey that we have embarked upon that will, hopefully, help us to make some sense of this chaotic time!

Back in October I published an article here that began exploring the current synodic cycle between Uranus and Jupiter and its significance for us now. It revealed some of the key signatures of this cycle, as seen through the lens of their initiatic conjunction (2010-11), particularly in relation to pivotal events carrying global implications around that time.

We found connections with events like the Deepwater oil rig disaster and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. One of the characteristics of these are events is their profound environmental impact, and we found further echoes in the historical record of oil spills that have brought much environmental damage to our oceans and land. We also found connections to the history of landmark nuclear events – all of the events highlighted were shown to have clear astrological signatures that tend to repeat themselves as these incidents arise.

Power generation and the widespread traumatic impact of the energy industries, especially when they fail is very much at the heart of these events, as might befit the combined signatures of Jupiter and Uranus. The nuclear story is equally impactful in its ‘military’ applications, as well as its ‘domestic’.  Both radically change our outlook on the world.

Both mythologically and integral to our experience of the world, Jupiter and Uranus together have the ability to wield power that transforms us intrinsically, but, as we reach the height of their cycle the opposition between them is turning the dissemination of this power more fully inwards. At their first opposition both planets were direct, but Jupiter is now retrograde as we approach their second opposition, and at their final opposition it is Uranus that will be in-volving, in retrograde.

We have entered a period of augmented ‘inner adjustment‘. Whether we engage with the process or not depends on our outlook and personal capacity to see the bigger picture – however, and this is a big ‘how-ever’, the more we do engage with this process the easier excercising this capacity will become.

At an individual level the moral of this part of the story is to trust in our selves and our inner guidance in dealing with the world – augmenting and facilitating this, this is a time to take up the inward momentum to observe our personal bias and use this process to shed our personal blinkers.

Within this, over the coming year we will also see another aspect of the Jupiter Uranus dynamic begin to accelerate and expand, in ways that will radically alter how the world looks – the impact of revealed truths, and their ability to both generate reaction and disclose deception, both of which are intimately related to each other, will begin to transmute our ‘reality’.

To begin now, lets pull focus and come more fully into the present.

On February 6th (2017) Jupiter stationed at 24° Libra beginning a four month period of retrograde motion that will change to direct when it slows down in the skies again to station at 14° Libra on June 10th. There is a connection here between these degrees and the lunar phases. Taking a look at 24° Libra through the eyes of the Sabians and their symbology gives us some insight.

The Sabians tell us that 24° Libra is associated with “the ability to develop, for inner strengthening, new modes of response to basic life situations….” and what makes this particularly interesting is that Jupiter entered 24°s of Libra precisely at new Moon on January 28th, the beginning of the current lunation. There is a cross fertilisation suggested here that the Sabians further elucidate :

“A special development of an aspect of the spiritual life is shown…..some power has been added to the normal spiritual life of the individual person (within) the instinctual field of the consciousness….A new strength is shown, perhaps as yet unrealized.”

What we will see beyond this initial seeding is the “unrealised” gathering energy – we will feel this as a latent ‘knowing’, an increasing feeling that we need to be paying real attention to our instincts and intuition. The Sabians go on to say  :

“A fourth stage symbol usually refers to some kind of technique or technical achievement. What is implied here is that the contact with the revivifying Life-force can result in the appearance of a new faculty, the use of which may not as yet be consciously evaluated. Indeed it is the establishment of such a contact which constitutes a technique for ORIGINAL MUTATION.”

“A BUTTERFLY WITH A THIRD WING ON ITS LEFT SIDE“ is the Sabian symbol for this degree.

‘Original mutation’ is an interesting term…..the reality of this symbol is being seen here as a non-physical change of state, but, the image itself reminds us of the mutations caused by radioactive isotopes. There is an intimation of genetic engineering about it as well.

For us, the fall-out of this process of incursive energetic insemination, of the primary mental realms in particular, is initiating an inward expansion of connective awareness and energising consciousness. Imagine the primary impulse that causes the single cell to divide and multiply within itself at work. Go a step further and we are in the realms of ‘Life making’.

With the Sabians, who gave symbolic form to each of the 360 degrees, this is translated in our time into an anomalous ‘third thing’, the wing being symbolic of flight (higher dimensions/spheres of consciousness) and the butterfly being symbolic of both transformation and the intrinsic nature of the imaginal.

There is a deeper and more hidden layer to this as well that is worth noting here : the meaning of each degree, which the Sabians codified, has ancient roots in the 360 senses which describe the original  range of human senses, each referring to its own divine origin. Referred to in ancient Egypt as the Neters, the divinities involved are spiritual entities that reside, within the Earth sphere, within nature, ours as well as the planet’s. Are we being opened up to this fuller range of senses…..if so, the breakdown of the ‘status quo’ and the ‘establishment’ is deeply entangled within this process.

If we return to the bigger picture of the present Jupiter Uranus cycle and look back to the end of its first quarter we will find some clues as to where within this cycle the breakdown first began to show.

The first square became directly active between June 2013 and May 2014 and the following are some of the key events that occured through that period.

Edward Snowden exposed the covert mass surveillance programme being run by the NSA and other intel agencies.
Egypt saw a military coup which removed its president.
India launched a rocket carrying its Mars orbital observer.
The Ukraine regime change was instigated.
Iran agreed to limit its nuclear development programme.
China soft-landed its Yutu rover on the Moon.
Flight 370 disappeared.
Russia was suspended from the G8.
The UN and Russia came into dispute over Crimea.
The USA enforced sanctions on Russia.
The militant organisation known (amongst other things) as ISIS emerged in Syria.
Flight 17 crashed in the Ukraine, under accusations of it having been shot down by a ‘Russian’ missile.

Disclosure and changes in perception, as well as regimes and boundaries, are intrinsic to these events. If there are trends visible here they continue to play out. Within the geopolitical arena in particular, they became exacerbated as the US elections and the current Ju/Ur opposition were simultaneously coming into effect.

The environmental arena has also become intensified. This period also saw the rise of mass marine die-offs within the Pacific, especially on the eastern seaboard. The isotopes that are Fukushima’s fingerprint are now being acknowledged to be present in the marine life found there. The truth about Fukushima is presently becoming harder and harder to deny, six years after the event.

Hurricanes and Typhoons also ravaged the eastern Pacific and eastern Atlantic. Globally, the occurance of ‘extreme weather’ has increased. While sunspot activity is now at a minimum it has been shown very convincingly that such solar minimums accompany lowering temperature on Earth and, if the climate change meme of human driven causes insists upon the opposite, it has also been shown that global distribution of temperature increases is matched by redistribution of seasonal cold. Selective data use to push official agendas not withstanding, it is rarely mentioned that in some parts of the globe the glaciers are growing and new ones being formed.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more related to coronal holes than sunspots, and quakes above 7.0 during this period were observed to be above the long term average, the largest occuring in Russia and Chile, many of 5.0 and more focused around the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’. The atmospheric influence of vulcanism is a more powerful driver than any effects of CO², in fact it is now acknowledged that CO² follows temperature rises and currently remains far below high levels know prior to the industrial revolution. Geo-engineered weather manipulation, however, is deeply instrumental in climate change.

Our thirst for material comfort is no less impactful of our environment and little needs to be said further on this – it is self evident. But, the oil industry is the source of widespread pollution in many ways, oil derivatives such as plastics chief amongst them. Oil spills from pipelines are a hot topic now and are increasingly being reported (although you’ll often have to look beyond the MSM to find reliable coverage).

Notable for its visibility in this respect, the stand-off between indigenous/environmental ‘protectors’ and federal agency backed oil ‘enforcers’ at Standing Rock has intensified alongside the current Ju/Ur opposition. Standing Rock has now entered a critical stage as a direct result of the US election and its symbolic significance has amplified as the situation on the ground has escalated in intensity. We can expect the ennvironmental, political and sovereignty issues involved here to become more intensified, but on a wider scale. They will continue to do so as the fossil fuel industry fights to maintain its centralised role in power generation…..the technology that makes this role redundant is ‘bringing the edges to the centre’.

Coping with this prolonged intensity will take its toll and it is here that the Sabian’s mention of “inner strengthening“ finds its purpose. We cannot know what will transpire over the next four months, but, we know that we will need our strength. A brief look at Jupiter’s station degree in June helps clarify the likely effects and our best strategy for dealing with them.

 

14° Libra carries this Sabian symbol :
“IN THE HEAT OF THE NOON HOUR A (HU)MAN TAKES A SIESTA.

KEYNOTE: The need for recuperation within the social pattern of everyday activity.”

The emphasis here is on the emotional/cultural level and the fact that we cannot maintain the same level of activity indefinitely. As the Sabians go on to say, “….this fourth stage symbol can be seen as emphasizing the need for techniques of RELAXATION, and the need to allow the functions of body and psyche to “digest,” free from external pressures, the complex experiences of social living and particularly of business.”

Jupiters stationing direct occurs simultaneously with the June full Moon, shortly before solstice. Culmination and balance is emphasised. We should anticipate the risks and make efforts to avoid ‘burn out’. Intense processes in the mental realms can have a deep impact upon our feelings and emotional body and impact directly our ability to continue functioning as we have been. We need to release our own inner tension, the better to be able to think ahead.

In the face of outward shocks to the system the key here is to remember that an internal process is at work, one that is aiding us in developing our ‘seeing’ capacity and, through this, understanding more clearly what is happening around us. The millenia of ‘control’ are now culminating. The blinkers are falling away. But, that is not all that is falling away…..the millenia of censorship of our innate senses, our complete natural range of intra-action within the world, is also coming to and end. Here is our unified process.

The next direct opposition we will see between Uranus and Jupiter is exact on March 2nd, just four days after the February new Moon (Feb 26th) in Pisces. This will be a time to be especially vigilant of our thoughts and impulses, the more so as Mars is moving through conjunction with Uranus during the week before and after new Moon. To add spice to the recipe, this will also be a strong solar eclipse, a real turning point and reset.

With such heat applying to the new lunation the confrontational aspect of the Ju/Ur opposition could be what creates the turning point. With Uranus involved and Mars powering up the unexpected, it is fairly safe to say that some form of disclosure or acts that will ‘blow the lid’ will be ‘in the air’. Make sure your mind is not blown into a state of cognitive dissonance along with them!

Whatever happens, Uranus and Mars direct intervention will push the boundaries within the mundane world and force the issue….we should use our increasing accuity to maintain inner balance during this time. Hightened discernment will be ‘de riguer’. But, that is precisely where our inner process can be most pragmatically put to use, in developing an inner strength of ‘knowing’.

With the February new Moon close on both the Moon’s south node and Neptune in Pisces the spiritual aspect of this lunation is also emphasised. A great need for compassion, especially self compassion alongside compassion in action, is likely to be matched by challenging events, so inner strength rests upon our inner balance. We can each use our most favoured methods for maintaining inner health to foster this, as a way of grounding.

Mars will also figure in the third opposition between Jupiter and Uranus in the latter half of September and Venus is also in Aries tracking Mars at the February new Moon. While Mars is domicile and excercising great power, Venus is in detriment in Aries. Here it is the fragility of isolated values that are emphasised….we each need to ask an important question now – ‘what do I value and love most in life’? However, their unity finds its mark more fully in September and the answer to this question may also become more pragmatic as a result.

Uranus and Jupiter’s third opposition is in the late degrees of Aries and Libra respectively. An accompanying opposition at that time is between Mars+Venus in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces. Venus is in fall in Virgo. I am seeing financial dissolution in this, perhaps appearing to be driven by hyper-inflation, the seeds of which may well be sown around the February new Moon. We could see a hidden agenda behind this, as well as an underlying necessity – looking beneath the surface will provide the answers.

The third Ju/Ur opposition is also exact at first quarter Moon after the equinox and will see all the outer planets beyond Saturn retrograde at that time. The ‘powers that be’ may well be in retreat, but, the impulse to shape our future will be firmly in our own hands with Saturn Uranus and the north node trining each other in the fire signs. We will need to ask then, as now, a second important question – ‘what are my responsibilities‘?

Venus and Mars in Virgo at that time will pull us down to earth and both astrological impulses and world events will help us answer these questions. But, there is an equally important third question that we must ask of ourselves at this current ‘entry point’ in time. ‘What are my Gifts’?

We can sum up here by focusing on this question as it is now presenting itself.

The full Moon that is coming into phase as I write is a also penumbral eclipse. This dimming of the lunar disc is at the edge of the Earth’s shadow, but, the full Moon is accompanied by a green comet in a fly by 7.5 million miles from Earth. Comets are the ‘mysterious travellers’ of our solar system, augeries of the unknown.

We are seeing disclosure all around us and what has been marginalised and hidden is coming into full view. We have arrived at the boundaries that demark the balance between illusion and truth. As we cross this threshold the weirdness of it all is ramping up; who would deny it. Expect more over the coming year and beyond.

The unknown faculties of perception and thinking that are being activated are in fact innate within us, even if we are relatively unconscious of them. This is their novelty, the Uranian gift, which Jupiter is helping spread. Beyond what we already know of ourselves lies much more, amongst which are gifts that have long been deliberately overshadowed and suppressed. But, the agencies of that suppression are collapsing under the same impulse now. We are witnessing the impact of truth upon the delusion that they have created, and that delusion is dispelling.

The long spiritual and mental war that has been waged upon us as natural beings is coming to an end and the physical wars will be unsustainable if we embrace this process fully. As Jupiter and Uranus might be urging us to realise, the more who do so, the stronger will be the transformation. Jupiter’s energy spreads from a centre, an effect that is now potentiating our awareness while spreading consciousness. Uranus breaks through the boundaries within our selves.

The three important questions above help us to redefine ourselves, in the context of our own lives – it will help us now if we consider that the anomalous ‘third’ thing symbolised here suggests a redefinition of our selves. The process we are in, for all the mundane turmoil that attends it, aids and abets this redefinition, but, it is taking us on a journey into long forgotten terrain in which our answers will also change, based upon different values and perceptions to the ones we have become ‘accustomed to’. 

The reality of this planet is not as we have been told. But, it is being revealed. The planets and the living energetic matrix they and we inhabit are wise in this. Uranus itself holds many clues, being anomalous amongst the ‘known’ planets, its axis of rotation perpendicular to those of the other planets. Why this is so, and why the planets are in their current orbital positions will become more widely known to us, founded in disclosed reality, beyond the redundant musings of the orthodox scientific priesthood.

When Voyager II left the heliosphere and our solar system, its internal language was altered, 0 flipped to 1 in its communication systems. According to the scientists working with the probe, this could not have happened by itself. If it was hacked, it was not by any terran source, they say. While such revelations are often cloaked in untruths and can lead us astray, it is the eyes of experience that will rule here. The Indian Mars orbiter and the Chinese lunar rover are not alone exploring our solar system. Whether they are instrumental in accelerating ‘disclosure’ remains to be seen, but, this too is a pathway of  discovery that could, amongst other things, reveal the truth behind ‘Apollo’. It is my understanding that the Moon is no stranger to the human footprint, but, it was not the technology we have been shown that took us there.

As many medicine people and carriers of indigenous traditions tell us, we have our origins beyond this Earth, and we always have belonged to a wider community both seen and unseen. Many eyes are upon us, beyond our known mundane world, watching our progress; we are being gifted with a chance to return to our senses and become mysterious travellers in our own right. Think of it as initiation that opens this wider community to us, while revealing our true identity. 

Footnote

This article and ‘Jupiter & Uranus – In Deep Waters’ are part of a continuing series that will be exploring the midpoint of the current synodic cycle between these two planets. The next article will be published around the second week of March, shortly after the second exact opposition between Jupiter and Uranus. At that time we will be collating some of the evidence that has been found so far in the midpoint period alongside that for the key points of the waxing half of their cycle. A deeper analysis will begin to emerge then so that, by the time of their third and final opposition, we will be able to anticipate the denoument of this part of Jupiter and Uranus cycle and look forward with a clearer understanding of their synodic cycle and its significance as a way shower in our times. Thanks for tuning in….!

Aries Libra axis, asteroids, astrology, culture, Earth healing, eclipse, lunations, Magic, planetary change, Planetary Mind, planetary nodes, Ritual, Root Medicine of the Stars

In The Realms of The Black Moon

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Lilith And The Need-Fire

On September 18th fire maned Venus met with her dark sister, the ‘Black Moon Lilith’ and, stepping into the Lilith corridor, donned her robe of dark feathers. As she did so she opposed Uranus, the cosmic fire wielder and ancient consort of the Earth goddess, and through the mantle of the dark feminine power ignited a Need-fire that will burn for 13 Moons. Mark this time and set a lunar calendar by which its phases can be counted. There will be many as the inner and outer realms are being activated in unison with a pulse that brings many synchronous levels of planetary phases into an entraining sequence.

The die is cast for the coming months as She also carries the seed energy of the eclipsed Moon from 16th September, striking the ground of the fertile darkness with black lightning, the shadow side of Uranus fire, as she traverses the ‘fiery road’ that leads into the heart of the Scorpio.

With this subtlely convened entry into the other worlds Venus path may have gone unmarked and, leaving no visible trace, undetected; save in the hearts of the wise women, the poets and seers whose vibration of the membrane between this world and the next within this world would have felt like a sweet rage of passion upsurging to issue forth with new verse, insight and knowing…..the zone of extreme psychic sensitivity that the Lilith corridor demarks is below the sweep of the ‘common’ mind’s radar. And yet, in us all, there is this path and we know it, even if only by its dream traces and the ‘anomalous’, the unbidden scents of ancient forest of knowledge through which it leads, whenever we stumble across the boundaries between the worlds within our own world and hear their whisperings…..

As I write, Venus has now left the ‘via combusta’ but remains yet within the Lilith corridor, having met with Black Moon Lilith’s sister ‘Dark Moon’ Lilith on the way. As the corridor closes behind the ‘fire-maned’ goddess, on October 10th, the two Liliths having also swapped places, such is the weaving of their own paths, Black Moon Lilith once again ushers ‘Fire Mane’ out and into the company of Juno who awaits her at the sacred portal in late Scorpio.

With this passage into the realms of the dark fire, Venus activated the degrees upon which the thunderer Jupiter and the awakener Uranus will mark the mid point of their current synodic cycle. She opens the pathway for the Sun and Mercury to follow in her wake before the storm bringers get to work. Having sensitised the degrees of opposition with Uranus and initiating a year long archetypal influence that promises a widening of mental perception and injection of paradigm shifting potential into the planetary field, She also marks the second half of the current lunation with a potent homeopathic dose of intense otherworldly energy, the subtle workings of which will underpin the coming year with psychic sensitivity. Her journey through the via combusta has carried this psychic imprint and, as Venus accelerates through the zodiac towards the slow down and retrograde that precedes her eventual meeting with Uranus in Aries, June 2017, is pushing feminine issues and the reconfiguration of ‘wealth’ distribution to the top of the agenda.

Following Mars lead, as he opened the transit of the outer planets by starting a new synodic cycle with Saturn in August, Venus and Mercury will be activating the outer planets through this time zone to mid year, and we can expect big shifts on the ground, and in our personal lives as a consequence. The issues at stake are rampant, complex and global, but they boil down to one major effort to end the abuse, of our planet, of each other and of ourselves. This is a massively important time for us all and Venus has found the best of company with which to open the flood gates for serious healing.

Venus has been gathering a storm behind her and She, with Juno, who oversees the boundaries of the sacred marraige and who upholds its lore and sacred laws, will be seeking justice for all the wrongs done in the name of falsity and greed to the Feminine ‘archetype’. The sacredness of Life has become threatened to the point of extinction, through the violation of the sacred marraige that a rampant army of patriarchal genocidal murderers has wrecked upon the holy, our Earth, no less than holy women, and men, our brothers and sisters…..and we are all of their kin, as they, holy, within our bones….

…..the wound is deep, so deep, a maw of millenia wide abuse, torture, rape and pillage, whose scouring of the temenos and razing of the circles of sacred power undid what Venus, the Fire Mane, Comet Goddess began when she seeded this world with the holy fire of the otherworlds at the turning of the worlds, the beginning of ‘our’ historical time. The turning must, in turn, be turned.

The Liliths are not bound by the material, but are of an ilk that embodies a knowing and imbues our acts with unchecked raw passion, is uncensored in its primal power, deeply erotic with the love of the life force at full flow, capable of no less a cataclysmic transmutation of the known through their own dark fire than Uranus lightning strikes, and it is this furious compassion that they invoke, for a cleansing of this world; no less than this will turn the world from its present destructive course – we are disposed to take its spark into our own hands and hearts to this end. Without it ‘goodness’ alone will be inadequate to the immensity of the task.

There is a voluminous depth to their emotional power now, banked up behind them by generations of murder at the stake, inflamed by usury and enslavement of the creative embodiment of the life force in service to a specious post modern psychosis of scientific materialism…..and, in Scorpio, this reaches down to the primary building blocks of life itself, to the encoding hardware of our DNA, its inwoven story of ancient memory itself a path between the worlds. The mutation of all life forms at the hands of controlling yet uncontrolled hubris that has so marked the later phases of the ‘modern era’ cannot continue without severe consequences.

sheela

The Dark Goddess has been reviled, suppressed and seared to the bone for being the source of wisdom that needs no mandate from a higher ‘God’ to manifest its fecund life affirming creative energies in form. Lilith was the original serpentine Eve, the true repository of such wisdom and empowering knowledge and means – empowerment as it could be, has been and will be again, within the incarnate realms. This violation is the great wound of the modern ‘Christian’ Era, at the hands of the ‘church fathers’, their armies, mercinaries and plunderers, who have sought to wipe her power from the earthly realms – but Christianity is not alone in its subjugation of the Feminine and the propagation of this wound. All wars carry the vile seal of their murderous intent, ‘holy’ or not. And War rages on, until we end it.

Expect now fierce reprisals, fearsome even……but, that would be an understatement…..for there must now be a swing in the balance, archetypal and paradigmatic in scope, in favour of the Feminine power, for a purging of the unholy cankers that scab the wound, to clear the way for a truer balance between the sacred energies of creation to be created anew. For the wound to be healed. Libra and Scorpio propagate this process, are at work in this.

Do not expect the world to end; do not expect an end, without a fight, for fight we must, not with violence but with the sacred passion of protectors……and will need the lightning seeds of a revolutionary resurgence and passion fires of raw wisdom that Fire Mane has been gathering in her wake, to burn in our own hearts and minds as we do so.

The Need Fires must burn away the rot and its shadow, and will, with Her blessing. And this is not man’s fire, but, the ancient fire that was invoked to scour the illnesses and dis-ease from the face of this world with sacred purpose. The knowledge of the Need-fires was one of Fire Mane’s gifts to our own ancestors and were ignited from, carried the sacred spark of, the original fire at their heart, as must we. Sacred Fire keepers we must be, as Uranus gatekeepers……promethian heirs to an unbound legacy, the buck stops here.

Within the Lilith corridor Fire Mane will have gained necessary knowledge from the ‘lunar’ sisters that will restore Her vitality in this resurgent cleansing of the world, the better to find its mark; the wise ones, medicine people, healers, poets and seers will know it, invoke its inner flame, sound it wide and far, for this is now their time, our time; but, its markers will be seen in the mundane world, the world of the ‘common’ mind, and minded, as the collapse of its secular gods, upon their own alters, impaled upon the barbs of their own greed and lust for power….economies will crumble, the swaggering ozymandian empires of this world will follow Percy’s prophecy and the New World will find its coat of lies burnt to ashes, its imposed Order-out-of-‘chaos’ destroyed in the wake……

….the high priests of this Order have long lost control of their own minds, their hearts hollowed, their souls long reduced to dust beneath the feet of their own uncaring pantheon…..they long ago instituted the ‘death of all caring’ and will suffer their own fate accordingly; it is not for us to perpetrate such, lest we merely perpetuate their crimes, we who would see all souls redeemed…..and can any diviner, astrologer or seer, poet, wise woman, or man, proclaim any other intent…….I, for one, would say not, for the chain of guilt that binds the violators will be the  nematic  rope of karma that hangs them, the chasm that swallows them, for guilty they are, and even now pile further crime upon crime……such is the psychotic vortex that surrounds them, of their own making. Its mark upon the world is not hidden; look to where their is unjust pain, like Chiron’s wound, awaiting redemption…..this wound is real, its source no less so, and this is where the Need-fire must be applied.

To say that the wounding is ‘real’ is to reduce it to banality, but, at the risk of such, it is true to say that the planetary alignments brought out this theme with the penumbral lunar eclipse conjunct Chiron at full Moon on September 16th, just as Venus was coming into orb of opposition with Uranus. And Chiron is no less an architect of the subtle than Saturn is an architect of the material. As the lastest of the group of eclipses across the Virgo Pisces axis, that sweeps the ecliptic following the lunar nodes with its own fated destiny every 18.6 years, this ephemeral eclipse may have slipped its own influence beneath the radar; but, the world and the celestial sphere reflect each other with unerring acuity, and there is little in the world of human and planetary affairs now that does not reflect the need to pay heed to the wounds that have been created, and are being creating still.

night-owl

As an augery of the times the opposition between Venus in Libra and Uranus in Aries is by itself a powerful indicator of the erotic power of primal creative energy, of the profoundly transformative effect of peak experiences and ‘divine’ insight on our human mentality and how we, as humans, relate to the world. Seen together they suggest the rapid transmission of kundalini energy, ‘serpent power of the goddess’, into the higher generative realms of the mental sphere, the source field of the mind’s architecture.

By itself, this energy is potent requiring a purposeful and timely integrity, a soul possessed of a level of self reflection and ‘completion in understanding’ in which clarified intent and a high degree of self honesty are already established. Otherwise, it is a transformative power that belies the positive aspects of its potential; the shadow side of these transformative experiences are latent within their manifestation – if one is not prepared for their influx these arcs of Uranian kundalini like power can be equally devastating, wreaking immense damage to both body and mind, subverting Uranus potential for transformational liberation into deep psychosomatic wounding from which only equally deep cleansing can restore its liberating potential. But, this is the true reflection of the world, of what the Fire Maned Goddess and Her dark sisters are invoking in our minds and hearts, the ‘need’ within the need-fire, and be sure, their Need-fire must burn within, as well.

When the Black Moon Lilith is involved with Uranus, especially in opposition and union with  one of Her planetary sisters, the Uranian power manifests its shadow, and such healing becomes the absolute necessity. Uranus castration brought forth a new order in the realms of creation, an order in which his own wound and seperation from the Earth goddess realms is complicit. With this firmly in mind, it is of great significance to a world undergoing such deep wounding, as ours is, of Uranus usurped creative power, that this opposition activated the Aries Libra axis in anticipation of the major opposition that sets the 13 Moon time frame, that between Jupiter and Uranus. Their orb is activated as the current Black Moon lunation closes and completes in October 2017, as Jupiter enters Scorpio.

Not only Uranus but Jupiter too is calling forth a revolution. Juno’s husband will test us, call us to levels of understanding we cannot foresee, unweave our knowing and weave it anew, bring elemental power into our mental workings and reverberate the collective mind, awakening the Planetary Mind. To understand the visceral significance of this necessity we must revisit the beginning of their synodic cycle back in 2010. And this will be our theme next time…..

…..for now, make still your sacred center, gather the kindling of your passions and set the hearth in your own sacred temenos to receive the fire seeds of Venus and the dark sisters of the Moon. And in the meantime let us come one step closer to the present moment…..

…..this post enters the neural pathways of the ‘virtual’ etheric as the second waxing quarter of the Black Moon opens, the Moon preceding Samhain, just as the lunar disc joins with asteroid Lilith, close on Pluto in mid Capricorn, having first called forth the sacred fire of the protectors at Moon’s passing of Mars one day ago. For we are here within the embrace of an older calendric, under the rising energy of the Black Moon, and this will be our closing invocation here. Let it be understood by this that the naming of this Moon is quite other than that which popular ‘modern’ pseudo folklore has applied; this Moon is Black by another name……

star-owl-copy

The Black Moon

The Black Moon lunation which began on October 1st completes in the 8th degree of Scorpio on October 30th and fully describes the arc of the transition involving Jupiter and Uranus, making of this lunation a powerful augery for the primary archetypal signature not only for the emergent power of the Lilithian Fires, but, of the coming year over thirteen lunations. That it completes at Samhain provides us with a clue to the subtle pathways it is engendering and through which its energies are working…..if it is karmic it is also cyclical and its karmic roots, as we will soon see, in the next post here, were clearly delineated at the beginning of the current Jupiter Uranus synodic cycle.

The major archetypal marker however for the first half of Jupiter and Uranus cycle has been the Uranus Pluto square, whose transmutative series it perfectly frames. As this solar year ends and the new year begins the last reverberations of the Pluto and Uranus square will be felt as they come to within 4° of orb, signing off the current phase of their cycle. By that time Venus will be transiting the Moon’s south node in Pisces and the Sun will be transiting Pluto. The ancestral legacy of 5,000 years or more of sacred violation is loaded in this time, awaiting its great turning, and Pluto has opened a wide portal of his own, all the roots of that ancestral tree ablaze with the Sun’s light as the solar disc crosses its meridian.

The intensity of the last six years is shifting in focus, density and pace as we move out of the zone of radical transmutation brought through Uranus and Pluto’s seven waxing squares to the fundaments of power at work in this world. Complicit with this emergence, new cyclical relationships are forming between the inner and outer planets, amongst all the planets in their synodic phases. We are seeing the beginning of a new planetary phase which will, ultimately, help us to make sense of the turmoil and dissonance we have been experiencing.

Astrologically, it is Jupiter and Uranus opposition across the Libra Aries axis that is providing the underlying planetary influence behind this emergence, stimulating new levels of intuitive thinking and instinctive knowing. We must ready ourselves for an expansion of neural connectivity that reaches beyond the habitual limitations of our own mental frame. But, before we can fully integrate with this powerful influence we would do well to call forth the inner wisdom of the Goddesses, to light our own need-fire and purge our own inner lives of the mental canker that we carry and project onto others and the world. This Black Moon is the grounding time for this preparation.

In this light the new Moon which began this current lunation was labelled with a deceptive yet provocative epithet – hailed with populist new-age fervour as a ‘Black’ Moon, its apparent ‘rarity’ no less than obscurantist, freighted with imaginary significance that does little more than distract us from its relevence by drawing on an artificially created human thirst for meaning.

Flattened into desouled meaninglessness within the scientifically refracted spectra of sensual reality that blights our times there is, on the one hand, no especially ‘black’ Moon, at least none any shade significantly darker than at any other new Moon; this use of name is ‘simply‘ down to the fact that two new moons occur within the same calendar month, one of which is called ‘Black’, in the same way that one of two full moons occuring in the same Gregorian calendar month is called a ‘Blue’ Moon – such is the anodyne post materialist view of the ‘literalist’, no less ironic for its unacknowledged Papal endorsement, who will tell us, “neither are black or blue or gain any special meaning from the term”…..

…….except that, as the poets and people of medicine remind us, on the other hand, by some subtler construct and equally subtle irony, to which the unquenchable if curiously human desire to clothe the mundane in a livable story responds, the Soul is re-awakened through such fertile symbolism to a possibility beyond the senses, beyond the literal. The same fertility sown through Lilith and Venus transactions between the worlds.

The synchronous advent of this symbol, as it has perhaps unwittingly  been applied to this Moon, with the invoking of the ‘need-fire’ reminds of the presence of this inextinguishable fecundity at work behind our world. It is a symbol we need, that is calling for our attention. It tells us that this possibility for other-worldly intervention between the worlds persists, even now, that it enters via backdoors, hidden behind the hard reflective surface of homogenised reductivism, a magical propensity that somehow, perhaps miraculously in the face such rampant literalism, by dint of iteration and innate need, is constellated in this Black Moon and its lunation.

Lilith, in all compensatory and redemptive senses, has begun to dance this magic back into our lives…..only the soul-less will fail to feel it, but, Hers is a dark fire, both invisible to the physical eye, and seen by the soul, that is the need-fire. It comes, as the ‘need-fire’ has been invoked by Earth loving peoples for countless millenia, in response to the times, in anticipation of the Samhain Moon, as a purge of illness and disease between ourselves and the ancestors….

We are thirsty for such magic, as they are for us to invoke its healing power; the soul feels that ‘need’ as a magnetic pull from the heart, whose knowing responds to the innate, to the already known, which the ancestral realms give us access to, which itself carries healing resonance, and accepts the wound as the passageway to wholeness.

The ‘via combusta’ in which this Moon finds its own fiery culmination earned its uneasy reputation from the fall of the luminaries, the Sun and Moon, within its own respective signs of Libra and Scorpio, as well as those same signs loaded associations with the ‘malefic’ aspect of their ruling planets, but, the archaic roots of the ‘burning way’ have almost certainly been overlayered by these meanings. There are certain times in Earth’s history when such a term would have carried a very different meaning, and this too we now invoke, in preparation.

The cyclical cleansing of earth, of homesteads and of livestock through Fire is not an apocalyptic biblical construct, but, the same very old tradition, surviving into post-glacial times within emergent cultures, that relates to celestial events that preceeded and prompted their advent. The great comet that has been recorded globally amongst indigenous peoples to have brought these planetary changes, and marked the rise of aggression against the Feminine, was described as trailing hair of fire and scouring the earth. She became subdued through capture into the Sun’s magnetic heliosphere and became known, amongst other names, as Venus, and thus began the rise of the solar cult and its shadow, the cult of Saturn so loved of the violators. She was a planet become a comet, before she resumed her planetary status, and her-story carries the memory of our true ‘his-tory’. All the planets have undergone massive transformation before achieving their present orbits around this, our second Sun, become our central Sun. But, that is a story for another time……

As we have seen, it was Venus who, under the astrological shadow cloak of Her romanised form, called up her dark sisters prior to this Moon, igniting this lunar ‘need-fire’ and, in so doing activated the greater resurgence that will come into manifestation over the coming year.

Regardless the human folly, Lilith will not be held back and in the process our Story will be returned to us. This will be a part of Jupiter and Uranus gift to us.

This is the time for the raw power of the ‘Feminine’ to emerge, to be given voice and the fierce fire that burns behind its wisdom to become manifest, reinstated. As a creative force it is unbridled, knows the intimacy between life and death, and pulses with passionate intensity. It casts no shadow for its own light is innate, the darkness transformed – this is the healing within its fire, burning off the illusions of the shadow realms. This is the Black Moon lunation’s gift – let us use it well……at Samhain there will be celebrations if we do; the Great Fire tended by the ancestors at the center of their village will burn the more brightly and ignite new dreamings in our souls. Our medicine people, seers, poets, wise women, and men, will sing us the way….

As we end now you may have noticed one major planetary player by their absence here, Neptune. Neptunes realm will be at the heart of the next post when we take a very different look at how the oceans of this world have suffered the wound of our times and how this relates to the Jupiter Uranus cycle…..in the meantime,

Blessings of the Sacred Fire be with you!

astrology, eclipse, EMVs, Mercury, planetary change, retrograde planets

Alchemical Times

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2012.10.16 EMV at Sun

As Mercury transits the Sun in the 20th degree of Taurus on May 9th Jupiter stations direct and we feel a renewed sense of purpose as the light bulbs start to flash in our minds – the transit is a cazimi, exact. There’s a download of rarified spiritual energy coming through this transit that is opening the aperture for inspiration on the earth plane. This is an ideal opportunity to energise and entrain your own inner resonances with the download of life force coming in.

Our eyes alone will not perceive it (without the suitable technology) but the Sabian symbols provide a valuable insight to what this wave is carrying as Mercury crosses the Sun’s disc. It is worth quoting in full:

“PHASE 50 (TAURUS 20°): WISPS OF WING-LIKE CLOUDS STREAMING ACROSS THE SKY.

KEYNOTE: The awareness of spiritual forces at work.

Any emergence of life potentialities from the depth of the vast Unconscious is answered by the spiritual activity of superconscious forces in a cosmic kind of antiphony. The individual who has taken a new step in their evolution should look for the “Signature” of divine Powers confirming their progress. It may reveal the meaning of what is to come next. The “wing-like clouds” may also symbolize the presence of celestial beings (devas, angels) blessing and subtly revealing the direction to take, the direction of “the wind” of destiny.

This is the fifth stage of the tenth five-fold sequence. It concludes a process, having experienced which the individual should find themselves more securely established in their own original nature, receiving the BLESSINGS of super-natural forces.”

These days it is hard not to see chemtrails in those wisps of winglike clouds, a sight confirmed as I look out of the window – they were at it with avengence from first light this morning. The dust is falling, somewhere, everywhere.

The chemical particulation of the atmosphere is a dangerous alchemy in its own right, especially when heavy metals, dna and nano-organisms are part of the cocktail of toxicity being dumped daily over our heads. If the winds of change are blowing now those wisps are obscuring the view as they spread a blanket of dull alloyed cloud over the Sun. This is what we are up against, messing with nature and a misuse of power that will not speak its own name but is all too ready to tell us it is all for our own sake, to reduce ‘global warming’ for example, for which ‘we’ btw are held responsible. ‘We’ are not so easily taken in.

However, the download from Mercury in this transit is as rare as the occurance of its transit itself. There are only thirteen per century, on average, and they are known to signal significant events that have a lasting effect, so the effects of this one will stay with us for some time. The next is in 2019. We can capitalise on this.

Mercury is retrograde and is turning our gaze inwards – we are talking about the inner worlds here as the winged planet crosses between Earth and Sun.

The transit opens a channel of transmission, an aperture through which the energy of spirit can enter. This delivers its ‘blessing’, connecting with and received within our ‘unconscious’. In a world where split consciousness rules, this download has more of the unifying nature about it – it could reveal to (and re-mind) us that there are, in nature, no boundaries in consciousness. The cosmological ocean of conscious energy that our planet swims in is also the source of the Sun’s own life giving radiance and Earth is an expression of the design held within that consciousness when it is given the right conditions in which to incarnate and flourish. These conditions arise out of a very dignified and advanced application of natural law (see footnote) and Nature manifests natural law as a creative expression of the intelligent design that is present throughout our universe.

We can see this everywhere, it too is right outside our front door, as well as in our selves, but, we cannot see the transit – we can however sense its effects intuitively. It is synchronistic by nature so look out for those signs.

Being ‘established in their own original nature’ also suggests aligning our earthbound vehicle with spiritual essence and Mercury’s role as messenger between the worlds makes him the soul vehicle. Here is an inner alchemy in which the soul mediates. This also echoes the more esoteric meaning of the impulse carried by the March solar eclipse. The aperture that this process opens allows in the Sun’s life giving fire, its ‘pneuma‘.

In alchemical processes regulating the fire is an essential skill that requires knowledge and experience. In feeding the inner fire with the breath of spirit, regulating the fire ensures that the essense is not spoiled; the more intelligence, awareness and knowledge we bring to it the deeper this process goes and the purer the elixir it produces.

The elixir spoken of in alchemy is the result of a long process. One who has the experience to regulate this process can reap its rewards and securely establish their original nature, but, it requires commitment. It also requires an aspiration to perfect, but,  inner alchemy is also the alchemy of the soul that is following an innate path of desire. In doing so it must, like its more ‘material’ counterpart, ‘burn off the crap’, eliminate its impurities and return gross matter to its essential nature. There is no doubt that this is equally applicable to our current material ‘science’ and its misguided use, but, there are other forms of science that involve spirit.

There is perhaps inherent within the blessings delivered by this transit an infusion of inspiration that will spur us on to develop a spiritual technology, a new alchemy that will serve a higher function. Such is not unknown to us, and although the dominant paradigm attempts to steer us away from remembering this, remember it we will!

However, there are no coincidences. The Sun and Mercury trine Pluto, the great alchemist, and the Moon’s north node, the goal of our soul’s journey, as the transit perfects and form a grand trine in the earth signs. The geometry of the triangle has long been associated with fire and bringing the spiritual fire to earth is built into the matrix. The trinity of spirit, soul and body are a part of the design.

The effects of this transit will last and our individual experiences of it will be unique for each of us. But, Mercury will return to this degree just as the current lunation closes so we will find a resonant echo of its qualities at work in the background up to that time and revisit it then. Mercury also activated the current grand earth trine (involving Jupiter) at its onset and closes it at its conclusion, so Mercury embeds a spotlight on earthing by being present with our essense through inner awareness throughout this lunation. This can be a creative time that bears unexpected and valuable fruit.

Blessings be with you!

The image shows a massive EMV next to the Sun. Electro-magnetic vehicles farm and manage the Sun’s energy and are responsible for creating and regulating conditions needed for solar systems and planets to bear and maintain life. They are an important part of our extended community and soul life and embody a high degree of spiritual technology. They were first acknowledged by science in present times by the ex-NASA scientist Norman Bergrun who found them amongst the rings of Saturn – his book The Ringmakers Of Saturn is still available and is an essential read with many good illustrations throughout. For more information about EMVs visit James Horak’s blog as well as find photos and videos about them posted at Touchstone Radio. Have fun!

astrology, Earth healing, eclipse, lunations, planetary change, planetary nodes, Politics, retrograde planets, Root Medicine of the Stars

The Fertile Darkness

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wild hive

…..luminous darkness, birthplace of light…..

The fifth lunation of 2016 opens with the Moon and Sun joined at 17 degrees of tropical Taurus. From the earthbound point of view five planets are in retrograde motion as this Moon cycle gets underway, all of which fertilise the New Moon, intensifying the seed energies of the lunation.

The inner power of this seed point is emphasised by the Sabian symbol for 17 Taurus which talks of the ‘Seeker’ turning ‘Warrior’, raising the energy of internal illumination as the weapon of choice in the ‘eternal battle’. The battle that would see truth prevail. The historical limitations and conditioning of material existance are no longer accepted as given, as the bottom line, the necessity for individual evolution and self determination taking precedence over conformity to roles and agendas that do not belong to us as individuals.

Taurus pulls focus to the individual’s struggle for survival, to the question of what matters most, and, having begun to witness the groundswell of energy emergent at a grass-roots level since the spring eclipses, this lunation  furthers the internal strengthening of individual resolve to repurpose life in accord with our own natural values, the impulse  that was seeded at the March solar eclipse. The darkness of the eclipse is coming alive. It is about aligning ourselves and re-establishing life in accordance with Natural law, as opposed to Human law. This is an image brought to the point of utter necessity by what we are witnessing in the world and emphasised beyond question by the Sun and Moon’s trine to retrograde Pluto in Capricorn. Wholesale destruction of nature through authoritarian rule stops with our personal choices and the transformative power they enshrine.

The lunation’s seed point is amped up by Venus and retrograde Mercury also in Taurus, both now closing on the Sun, and the Earth signs are further linked through this stellium’s trine to retrograde Jupiter and the Moon’s north node  in Virgo. The Earth signs ask us to bear witness, in support of a future that can be lived according to realities with which we can each resonate. These are core values, realities that are meaningful in answer to what we are witnessing and can be sustained to the benefit of those who come after us. This is the bottom line impulse powering the grass-roots groundswell.

Venus sextile to Neptune in Pisces pushes the issue of discerning what is real in relation to those core values and through quincunx to retrograde Mars in Sagittarius makes it clear – this is, as the Sabians describe it, a time in which ‘swords’ are at odds with ‘torches’ in the struggle for survival. If we are to be torch bearers we must pay heed to how rx Mercury is working within us. Mercury’s retrograde raises the need for inner clarity and clear connections to become the cutting edge here. We must, we know, be on guard against fantasy and deception, especially our own, emphasising the importance of inner illumination as a metaphor for light thrown upon our own thinking. But, this is also about ‘thinking on our feet‘.

As the old Irish saying has it a warrior must first learn how to dance before wielding the sword. Neptune’s mutability can provide us with both the imagination required to refigure our path and at the same time distract us from grounding ourselves in the ‘now’. A fluidity of action, perception and balance in motion serves to keep us centred in our power. It is an old art taught for the benefit of both the individual warrior and the community and cause they serve. The old guard is now being unbalanced and caught on its heals, fighting a dirty war in the face of rising awareness of their stratagems. It is becoming clearer that the ‘old’ is being dressed up as the ‘new’, ‘vision’ being appropriated and propagandised as ‘truth’. Nowhere is this more apparent then in environmental and ecological issues, particularly where vested interests are exposed. However, in the emergent climate the efforts of those who continue to disseminate the deception can no longer escape attention, and not only is the historical veil of lies and hypocrisy wearing very thin but the ‘people’, seeing through the orthodox version of reality we have been and are being sold, are gaining in awareness of what lies beneath. If the momentum is with the ‘People’, we know we must also dance with the Earth and her rhythms.

The lunation carries this momentum forward with a release of energy as Jupiter stations direct during first quarter and begins moving towards the Moon’s north node again. They will converge at solstice on the full Moon of the next lunation, just before Uranus ignites Mars into action, but, in the meantime we have a deeper matter to consider.

In her novel ‘Children Of Men’ the author P D James cast a distopian vision of the future in which human fertility has ceased, a not too far distant time that sees ultra controlling authority at war with rebelious factions amidst a world in lock-down. As speculative fiction it carries disturbing tendencies very much present in our own world to an all too plausible point of realisation. She is not alone in envisioning such a future. Margaret Atwood’s novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ envisions authoritarian rule over fertility under militant theocratic control as a consequence of terrorist driven revolution. In both cases the issue of self determination is raised to become the front line in the battle between natural law and human law.  Human fertility is its central metaphor. Womankind is made both victim and redeemer. With Venus in the sign of her rulership there can be no fakery in this respect.

Many might not want to contemplate such visions of the future, but, they serve us with due warning – there is too much that is recognisable in the world not to take heed of it. This too is a reflection of the illuminating power that is central to this lunation, made all the more poigniant through Taurus association with fertility and survival. To remain grounded in livable realities that give us the balance of a positive vision of the future the threats to that future must be acknowledged and actions be taken that ensure we do not allow such threats to become realised. This is not a time for navel gazing and idealistic dreaming.

This factor will become more pressing and present as this and the following lunations unfold, unless our individual choices carry the clarity of perception and adaptability called for now – while the ‘new age’ may be the prerogative of the dreamers amongst us, the danger is that in following the dream alone we may also discover that the road to hell really is paved with good intentions. The future must also be defended and the offensive against it, as these two novels might strongly suggest, is already under way.

A core underlying element that reflects this through this lunation and beyond is indicated by Saturn’s presence in Sagittarius, quincunx the new Moon. Retrograde Saturn is testing the reality of our beliefs against experience. In squaring Neptune we may become disillusioned at what we find, become dispirited and equally determined to hang on to our cherished dreams. The mutable fire of Sagittarius illuminates from within, transforms through worldly experience and encourages us to grow in the process. The message here is to allow the truth in. Saturn, while burning off false beliefs can also be the ally who provides the essential reality factor that fuels wiser and more realistic choices.

The worldly view of evolutionary forces that are at work within our times can be revealed in this. Saturn’s stationing retrograde on Uranus south node activates memories stored in our bones, ancestral memories inherited from times in which natural law has been at the centre of both traumatic and revolutionary events in our extended history. These are memories that have been over-written in the orthodox version, versioned to suit controlling agendas. In accessing them we reclaim our past and with it our rightful path.

Sagittarius is also the sign of the seeker, the wise fool who follows the spirit of their passion out into the world. With Mars in close proximity this factor is being fueled up, in-volved with passionate soul searching – a passion that can lead to the most fundamental heart of truth, embedded within the fertile darkness. The torch bearer leads the way.

Each of the five retrograde planets reveal different aspects of the seed energy at work within the inner workings of this lunation. They invite us to engage on a personal level with our…….

……individual evolution and self determination taking precedence over conformity to roles and agendas that do not belong to us as individuals,

concerning ourselves with what matters most,

our own natural values 

the better to embody personal choices and the transformative power they enshrine.

They ask us to bear witness

to core values, realities that are meaningful,

inner clarity and clear connections

providing light thrown upon our own thinking.

Thinking on our feet,

 a warrior must first learn how to dance before wielding the sword,

embodying perception and balance in motion –

an old art taught for the benefit of both the individual warrior and the community and cause they serve.

Here the issue of self determination is raised to become the front line in the battle between natural law and human law.

The future must also be defended by such a warrior,

testing the reality of our beliefs against experience,

prepared to allow the truth in,

the essential reality factor that fuels wiser and more realistic choices.

In doing so  we access memories stored in our bones, ancestral memories

 and reclaim our past and with it our rightful path,

the most fundamental heart of truth, embedded within the fertile darkness.

The torch bearer leads the way……..

Aries Libra axis, Earth healing, eclipse, Pisces Virgo axis, Politics, Root Medicine of the Stars, Transition of the Ages

Common Ground

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firedance

“Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people’s money, other people’s safety, other people’s future.” (1)

The potential of the eclipses we have witnessed in the first half of this year is ours to be be realised, and, as the year progresses intentional conscious participation in our own evolutionary process becomes central to working with the eclipse signatures. This is a very political signature when it comes down to it, but, amongst the eclipses the lunar eclipse of March 23rd, while being partial and relatively subtle, just within the ‘eclipse zone’ so to speak, is notable for having activated the Aries Libra axis, a shot of adrenalin to the social arena – the other three eclipses of 2016 all highlight the Pisces Virgo axis and show more of the internal processes at work that are setting the agenda within that arena, both at an individual and collective level.

If the solar eclipse of March 9th highlighted the need for conscious self determination based upon personal experience and knowledge to take precedence over globalised top down ideological determinism the lunar eclipse of March 23rd raised the question of whether we are capable of creating a social context that is coherent enough to support such self authority without diminishing it or its potential for creating real change.

The Aries Libra axis points towards challenges in consciousness that are intrinsic to this socialising process. This is a process that aims to create a society in which the power is returned to the people. Within the predominant paradigm the Aries drive that fuels such a process itself must become conscious and Venus higher octave of ‘relative values’ within Libra, if based upon lucid perception and listening, can provide the drive for awareness necessary to such a society with its own mirror. It is this self reflective quality that helps the new social consciousness seeded at the March solar eclipse and emphasised at the March lunar eclipse to take on its potential protean qualities, adaptive, able to respond to immediate needs and to find appropriate shape accordingly. The rhetoric for change is empty without this mutable potential.

The Sabian symbol for the Sun’s degree in Aries at the March lunar eclipse speaks of the emergence of dipolar qualities within its conscious imprint, the awareness of dualism within the evolving self, but, as embryonic as this may appear does its innate naivety work against it? How we create such a context, one that is itself free of the effects of those ideologies it has been formerly programmed by, formed in service to and which itself does not perpetuate their faults, is dependent upon utilising the potential within this polarity.

The Sabian symbol for the eclipsed March Moon also reveals something here; it shows us a circle of young people gathered in communion around a central fire – intrinsic to this symbol is Listening, a quality that underlies the positive aspects of Libran consciousness. To quote, the Sabian text tells us that, “If a new society is to be built, those who yearn for it, or perhaps who have envisioned its outlines, should commune. But communion is useless where no central “fire” burns, IN-SPIRITING the group“. While listening is a fundamental human necessity within this social context it is the central fire, its creative principle, that calls us together and defines the space within which it is activated and illuminated. The ‘creative principle’ at work within ‘gathering’ reveals the nature of our common ground.

Here Mars elemental thrust is reclaimed from the prevelant ideological paradigm of ‘progress’ and consciously put to work in our midst, supporting the process of self determination and social formation. This signals a reframing and revisioning of the ‘democratic processes’ itself, a need that is all too present in our time. While the UK debates whether to remain in the EU or not, a debate that highlights the need for change in ‘representation’ either way, it is the US electional process that we can look to here for some primary indicators of how this is playing out, especially within the ‘Democratic Party’ itself. If Bernie Sanders represents the new re-alignment and activation of social consciousness Hillary Clinton is well positioned to continue the dynastic tradition peculiar to American politics within our time. Between them they encapsulate the paradigmatic political struggle that is its characteristic.

“A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.”(2)

As the Sabian symbol for the Moon at the lunar eclipse also indicated the signature of the preceding solar eclipse is here ‘evolved’ forward indicating that an answer can be found in fostering a ‘grass-roots’ movement ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’ – that may in our times have the ring of irony about it (in respect of the Gettysburg Address), but, doesn’t it also sound like a familiar battle cry from the hustings?

The transits to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s natal charts in connection with these eclipses are worth noting here. With Clinton we have a problem as her birth time is in dispute, but, while I would have gone with the 8:02 am time giving her a Scorpio Asc I am leaving out references to the houses in both charts and to the angles in her own chart, while I’ve included Sanders Asc and MC as they are significant here.

The eclipsed March Moon was conjunct Sanders natal Mercury, sextiling natal Pluto. This coincided with an acrimonious 8th debate between Sanders and Clinton in Miami, as well as Sanders victory in the Michigan primary. The March solar eclipse fell on Clinton’s natal Moon and squared her natal Uranus, the day she delivered her “counterterrorism” speech at Stanford. Do politicians utilise such transits intentionally…..it is certainly not unprecedented for them (and their masters) to do so.

Sanders is also seeing Uranus transit his natal Moon + Mars, a sustained transit that is igniting his popularity as a champion and fighter for social change. Clinton has natal Pluto and Mars conjunct in mid Leo forming an exact square to her Scorpio Venus and a loose but applying square to her nodes – an indicator of an ambitious nature which her Sagittarian Jupiter emphasises. She will stop at nothing in its pursuit, which her Scorpio Sun will risk everything for – even if it means her downfall she will remain undetered.

The fight is well and truly on as transiting Saturn is squaring Sanders natal Virgo Sun and transiting Mars squaring his MC, while Neptune is transiting his IC. He is having to draw on his most innate visionary qualities in bringing his deepest social values into realisation. Transiting Mars will conjunct Clinton’s Jupiter twice during the current Mars retrograde, stationing direct on her Scorpio south node. These transits reflect the uphill battle Sanders has faced as an ‘independent’ pitted against Clinton’s ambition and establishment platform, but, show how while these make her a formidable opponent these same qualities can also be her achilles heal, especially when her south node is activated by Mars and her personal history is under attack. Clinton’s natal Saturn, in detriment in Leo, also squares her nodes indicating a life heavily suffused with karmic lessons.

The remaining eclipses of this year will also directly affect both Sanders and Clinton’s natal charts. The solar eclipse of 1st September falls just one degree from Sanders Midheaven, and the lunar eclipse of September 16th falls on Sander’s south lunar node, this time both luminaries squaring Clinton’s natal Uranus. If Sanders appears fated to carry a revolutionary vision to the people as a break from the past, Clinton appears as his perfect foil, a woman in pursuit of the precedent of claiming the ‘top job’, but, in the midst of such ecliptic interaction the Uranian element is absolutely key – Uranus will conjunct Sander’s natal Mars on the September lunar eclipse. This could signal both ‘breakthrough’ and equally ‘martyrdom’, though no-one would wish the latter upon him, save his detractors. His Scorpio Asc makes him tenacious but equally susceptible to fault in the midst of power and deception – there are vulnerabilities at stake with both candidates. If they both have it all to fight for, what that ‘all’ means to them both as well as to us is deeply and significantly polarised.

The fight for the Democratic ticket and the challenges to its holder will continue to be ignited by astrological transits to both candidates charts in the run up to election day, but, that is a matter best served in a seperate post. Either way it is the longevity of the prevelant political ideology that is ultimately going to be the deciding factor. We are poised on a knife edge and it is the people who will decide, if their votes and voice are to count for anything…..

“The world is changed not by the self-regarding, but by men and women prepared to make fools of themselves.” (3)

If, as it often seems, it is the People who have been made fools of by the political power game, in the current political climate, which has its tentacles reaching into all our personal interests, there is an emergent level of consciousness at work here that cannot be denied. It is a consciousness itself born out of the need to be free of hegemonic ideologies and their encumbant effects. Such consciousness holds attributes we might associate with Mercury and Uranus in combination and it is worth remembering here that Uranus north node is in mid Gemini. However, as the outcomes of many social revolutions and dictatorships alike have shown, being solely self determining, a hegemony unto oneself, is a seriously dangerous business, in fact it is the inherent danger and runs counter to the ‘grass-roots’ theme; to evolve and be able to establish coherence beyond its own anarchistic undertones such consciousness requires acceptance of ‘difference’ and a willingness to acknowledge that no one individual or group of individuals can represent ‘the whole truth’. This was always the caviat inherent in the March solar eclipse, the truth that requires revitalising in the process of emergence from the millenia of power struggles that have shaped the cocoon of our body politic. It applies equally to any sustainable future in which a new social vision might take flight.

We are looking then towards engendering a shared coherence based not on homogeneity or its ideological counterpart ie. democratic conformity, but, through bringing a mutable quality to its conscious formation and sustainability, and, while as a species we are not without precedent for such a context, those who have lived it have, historically, been suppressed, their fire all but stamped out – we must accept that we are both returning to the beginning and making a break from the past in rekindling that fire.

There is an evolutionary consequence to this – while we are not being called upon to re-invent the wheel, in exploring  new ground we must be ready to make allowance for what we do not know, to suffer our own foolishness in the process. Such a task belongs to individuals who are, at core, secure enough within themselves to undertake the fools journey without its pitfalls undermining their self authority. It is perhaps a consequence of human consciousness that we do so, as we witness each other speaking and acting upon our personal truths. It requires of us a balancing act between being able to have the courage of our convictions and to be ready to learn from our errors, and laugh at ourselves in the process. Discernment without over-ruling judge-mentality is key, a signature of maturity as well as a more egalitarian society.

As we venture further into the cauldron of the year we will find this evolved and evolving capacity serves us all well as the matrix is now breaking away from rulership under the cardinal face off exemplified by the Pluto Uranus square. We will be resonating more with the meaning seeking qualities set up by Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn and the Moon’s nodes through their mutable T square active through Virgo, Pisces and Sagittarius. The sixth, ninth and twelth signs of the zodiac bring that much needed mutability into focus in the run up to the September eclipses, and how this will carry our impetus for social and personal evolution forward will be explored further in future posts. As we enter a self reflective period in which Mercury will station retro in Taurus joining Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and Pluto already retrograde it is the mutable Geminian signature and the revolutionary Uranian future which will bring its potential into conscious synthesis.

(1) (2) & (3) ‘Children Of Men’ by P D James

Image : ‘Mongolian Firedance’ ~ Karthik Anand

Earth healing, eclipse, Pisces Virgo axis, Root Medicine of the Stars

The Road Home – Solar Eclipse In Pisces

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On August 17 1999 a 2.5 meter high tsunami rippled out across the Sea of Marmara, its source a 7.6 magnitude earthquake of 37 seconds duration which struck from an epicenter 70 miles east of Istanbul at a depth of 13km. While the tsunami claimed the lives of over 150 people the destructive power of the Izmit shake itself is reflected in stark numbers: official figures issued by Turkish authorities claim around 17,000 deaths resulted, although this is almost certainly significantly below the actual figure. While over 40,000 were injured, damage to buildings left over 300,000 people homeless and the total material cost to Turkey’s infrastructure has been estimated to have run as high as $8 billion.

Turkey is sandwiched between the Eurasian and Arabian plates and is no stranger to high magnitude quakes. The Anatolian plate moves, is literally being pushed westward, at an average rate of about 2.5 meters per century. The maximum offset along the rupture created by the Izmit quake was just under 6 meters, which, on the face of it, represents the release of a very high degree of potential energy, above the average for crustal displacement within this region. One fact of great interest about this quake however is that it took place six days after a high magnitude total solar eclipse whose path ran exactly over this region.

Correlations between eclipses, both solar and lunar, and tectonic activity are not well enough developed at this time to provide any reliable indicators of eclipses as precursors of such ‘earth events’. However, the notion is not without some grounding in physical reality. Aside from gravitational effects of the Sun and Moon, the momentary fluctuation in particle density and polarity affecting the Earth’s magnetosphere and biosphere is an observable phenomenon associated with eclipses, as is the synchronous ‘entrainment’ of ‘transmission lines’ within the earth’s electromagnetic field to the solar/lunar fields; the combined effect of such factors will contribute directly to if not produce an effect. The gravitational effects on both liquid mass and subcrustal plasmic pressure may well be enhanced as a result.

There is a problem here. The field of plasma physics in relation to tectonic events may well be in the process of yielding a deeper understanding to eclipses and their effects here on Earth, but, while such correlations need careful consideration and, while the data available in our time is growing which will facilitate this, the field itself is relatively young. It also, significantly, challenges scientific orthodoxy and remains underfunded, its findings appearing anomalous within the concensus of the dominant scientific paradigm; as a result, the orthodox scientific understanding of these effects remains clothed largely in theory which hides its true face, rudimentary and founded upon potentially false assumptions as the ‘electric model’ uncreasingly shows, at least at the public or should we say ‘disclosed’ level. The same degree of understanding could be said to apply to the astrological interpretation of eclipses.

Astrologers often asign meaning to the metaphysical apsects of eclipses via the familiar symbolism, rules and protocols of chart interpretation, its integral ‘science’. There is some crossover between astronomy and astrology here, especially with regard to geocentric (as well as heliocentric) planetary alignments, the geometry of ‘hard’ aspects and transits, however, the astrological emphasis is almost always at best speculative. The usual agreed understanding amongst astrologers, at base, is that eclipses have a lasting significance of up to six months – beyond that the jury largely remains ‘out’.

But, the golden rule of observation, collation that supports correlation applies equally to both astrological and scientific understanding. These are Virgoan characteristics. The data base that will help this understanding to evolve is growing exponentially, thanks in no small measure to the Uranian technologies which augur and through which we can perceive our gradual shift into the Aquarian age.  Electric and plasma technologies are at the leading edge of the shift. With this eclipse they carry Jupiters expansive energy and signal a phase shift in consciousness.

This shift is, in keeping with the Uranian archetype, infused with unexpected and revolutionary insight, it is partly characterised by jolts and instantaneity. It is a time of surprising advances and sudden ‘shocks to the system’, reality checks which not only illuminate but eliminate as well as restructure, referencing Aquarius traditional ruler Saturn which is squaring the March 9th eclipse from Sagittarius.

Saturnian strictures upon our world views are putting a hard edge on this eclipse, a fight with limitation and for control, but, the shift also has the flavour of ‘revelation’ or ‘the lifting of the veil’ about it. This was the original meaning of the word ‘apocalypse’ which itself echoes with the word ‘eclipse’ and suggests the immanent emergent reality illuminated beyond the occultation itself. The outgoing Piscean age is itself the veil that is being lifted, its Neptunian depths and Jupitarian heirarchies are being penetrated and radicalised as we make this phase shift.

Jupiter as traditional ruler of both Sagittarius and Pisces is also opposing the eclipse on the Moon’s north node in Virgo – a growing socialisation of spiritual values can be seen in our future, but it must come through and be inclusive of individual experience framed within a much broader sensibility. What we each hold to as personal truths will be and is being tested against the rigidity of the ruling elite, spiritual or not, and, with the square to Saturn, comes up against dogmatic resistance to change. We can also expect to increasingly experience this on a one to one basis with this aspect in the chart, but, there is a way to approach this problem indicated in the nodal symbolism of the eclipse itself.

Virgo also emphasises our humanity and Pisces our compassion, the need for both inclusivity and differentiation, the one within the other. We take stock and purify through discernment in Virgo and let go, seek union with the absolute in Pisces. To combine their symbolism is to find absolution within – it is the axis of perfection through forgiveness. When the two poles embrace we move nearer to wholeness.

When the north node is in Virgo this becomes the personalised goal. As a personal spiritual goal ‘purification of our aims and a willingness to consciously engage with our own soul’s evolution through practical means’ will be greatly enhanced through Jupiter’s proximity to the node, but, the Piscean mirror which Jupiter is holding up to each of us shows us that behind all this is the need to expand into a higher level of inclusivity. We are required to grow as souls in order to embrace a larger view. This is a prerequisit for the Aquarian age, if we are to retain our humanity while shifting into it.

Solar eclipses cast a lunar shadow upon Earth and in the shadow side of the Pisces Virgo axis this is reflected in  our times through experiences of victimisation, especially of women, through heirarchical disempowerment, a narrowness of mind and endemic delusion that removes us from reality.

When the Pisces shadow is experienced in Virgoan territory it will intoxicate first and diminish second, hide its true face behind our own dependencies and confuse facts with fictions. No one person can hold the entirety of truth, but, our willingness to see beyond it as we encounter it within ourselves and acknowledge the ‘truth in others’ grounds a greater sense of the whole and helps us to discern what is real. This is a prerequisit for meaningful change; to resist such inner transformation can mean experiencing isolation amidst lethargy inducing disillusionment – a loss of faith more characteristic of a dieing culture than a vital and spiritualised one. When stripped of such greater meaning and confronted with the hard facts of life we can become prone to on the one hand extreme unconscious neurotic compulsion, and on the other deepening depression in the face of overwhelm.  In a global context the ‘Media’ and their masters are at work here on a collective level of ‘dumming down’.

The shadow Neptunian factor also manifests in Virgo through addiction and its attendant drug induced loss of perspective and personal power, and we can also witness how this hijacks the Uranian channels of connectivity and communication that might otherwise provide liberation. Such power loss and disownment is reflected as a collectivisation of soul loss. An apt symbol for the negative shadow symbolism of the eclipse. Two millenia of such disenfranchisement has left a gaping hole which religions and the MSM are all too willing and ready to fill.

There is however a significant counterbalancing factor at work here which is reflected in the proximity of Chiron to the Moon’s south node and the new Moon. Chiron redeems his suffering through embracing his humanity. While his animal body suffers the wound his choice reflects an extreme evolutionary necessity. In the myth the archetypal healer must realise that his soul is subject to a higher power for the wound to be healed and in the process become transformed into a conduit for and embodiment of ‘reality of a higher order’. This could almost be a symbol of shamanic initiation, but, with the south node it is an ancestral wound that is being healed, one that is carried collectively whose shadow affects us at the individual level.

The collective wounding we have suffered under Piscean ‘rule’ must be undertaken as a personal responsibility to heal through our own lives (north node in Virgo). This augurs a radical shift within the religious order and a grassroots emergent culture of experience and Earth  based spirituality. In a sense we could see this as a call to become guardians of the Earth, but, answering that call begins with care of our own soul. That commitment towards the larger reality, as expressed from within the healing soul, is fundamentaly a call to connect with our soul’s desire and expands into intelligently and compassionately tending to the resurgence of the life force present within all things.

In our time and especially in relation to the March 9th eclipse it is the occultation of the life force and its spiritualising power, as it has manifested (south node) within the Piscean age, which is being momentarily called to attention. By the same token, on a philosophical level, the opportunity offered is to ignite our own soul’s desire to illuminate our personal path through opening to direct transmission from the source, outside of the influence of any spiritual heirarchy. How this may be experienced by any one of us cannot be foreseen, but, the imperative is to be receptive to it.

This is a practical philosophy at root. We work for it through practical means. In the material plane this manifests through the work we undertake itself, which becomes the vehicle for transformation. It is a disciplined approach to putting humanitarian ideals into action. Hands on help given to others, especially those displaced and clearly in need, for example. There is no room for prejudice in this – divisive discrimination works against the good of the whole and the mutable signs of Pisces and Virgo indicate that such discrimination as a negative can be transmuted into discernment as a positive force for the good. Chiron’s multifaceted practicality also reflects how we can put simple practicle means to a powerful healing end that transmutes such narrow mindedness.

This is an eclipse for the each of us to use as a turning point upon which, as an individual, we can reclaim a practical sense of our personal spiritual reality and commit to creating a coherent understanding of who we are and why we have come here. The message within this is ‘practice makes perfect’. Whatever the work we undertake, while it may be directed towards others, it can both liberate and heal ourselves directly as well. In those moments when we are faced with our own quiet need for healing meditation in nature may well be the best way to experience its inner light, but, setting the intent to work for those who come after us by caring for life here and now is the essential core – some might call it the Dharma path. Whatever it may mean to you to step onto that path is to take the road home.

There is one last note to add here.

We must also pay particular attention when a ‘supermoon’ is involved in an eclipse, as it was on August 11th 1999, just as it is on March 9th 2016. Some astrologers see eclipses as Uranian by nature and, insofar as by concensus their effects remain unpredictable, this may be true. But, concensus in the Piscean age is radically different to consensus within the Aquarian. The shift from one to the other is highlighted and powered up with this eclipse. The question that naturally arises is at what stage in the shift have we collectively arrived, what phase are we in?

An answer to that question may come from interpreting the chart for the eclipse itself, but, the answer is essentially personal – collectively we each need only to look to the world we live in more closely to understand how fares the land. It is inherent in the Pisces Virgo axis upon which the 9th March eclipse is centered that we do so – paying attention is intrinsic in tending to something or someone.

There is no prediction of earthquakes being suggested here but the need to be vigilant and prepared for the unexpected is especially poigniant now with this new Moon. The need for grounded compassion and care of the soul is its signature but there are seldom more truthful times in which this becomes our imperative and driving force than when the earth moves and we witness the suffering of others.

In the next post we will return to this theme and look at how the eclipse of the Moon in Libra on March 23rd will help us tend to our personal and collective soul’s evolution further.