Category Archives: Eclispes

Ancestral Medicine, astrology, Eclispes, planetary aspects, Root Medicine of the Stars, Venus

Worlds Within Worlds

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There’s something of the feeling that accompanies crumbling realities and faded illusions about the beginning of the May lunation, that comes in with this dark Moon of tropical Taurus. Its a dilapidated mansion with trees growing out through the windows, a once florid fountain now a tangle of ivy and moonflowers, ghosts drifting on the other side of darkening mirrors, speckled with age.

There’s light in its darkened interior, but, its spectral, a dream seeping through from the other side.

It feels like the Age is collapsing, on the surface not unlike stepping out the cinema mid afternoon, the film still vapour trailing its way through our mind and imagination, while the hard edges and bright light of the outside world grate against our senses.

Its a dream we are waking up from, for the hundredth time, and we know it – only this time we know there’s no going back. Once we emerge there’s a whole different set of values and realities at work, determining how we live, only, we are not yet clear about what they are.

This lunation is where we begin to get our bearings.

The new Moon sextiles Neptune and, while there is certainly more at work in the new Moon chart, under Neptunes influence, it is our innate association with the illusory and its influence on our sense of self, the clouding of our inner truth, which is highlighted here.

This colours the new lunation with a need to purge ourselves of illusion in its negative sense, a point which is driven home by the two eclipses that punctuate its mid-point and culmination. But, it also asks us to make choices, to re-evaluate and feel out the priceless riches that our inner worlds do give to us.

Illusion and metaphor are rife in this world, and the illusory in particular is instrumental in dividing its human population. We over compensate by deifying ‘truth’. But, that edifice too is becoming atomised. One person’s truth may not be another’s, but, then who has the monopoly on truth right now? Besides, the point may well be, not who is right and correct, but, beyond all facts, can we respect each other’s realities, as different as they may, in reality, be?

After all, where is the boundary between the inner and outer world.
I spent some time with the new Moon chart, felt I wasn’t seeing it, or getting beneath its skin. Its easy enough to apply the orthodox interp methodologies but something just didn’t ‘ring true’. After a while, however, after going away and coming back, and following the planetary developments around this lunation and through the next four weeks to the solar eclipse, I noticed a pair of hidden aspects which rhyme subtly with this new Moon.

Just as the Moon entered tropical Taurus Venus, the Taurean ruler, formed a tridecile with Saturn from tropical Gemini. The angle of 108 degrees between Saturn and the Evening Star, married in that moment with Mercury’s transit of the North node, brought the hidden planetary resonance to light.

The tridecile is an aspect that seeks to marry creative energy with identity, to solve the problem of who we are by giving us access to the visceral power of our own imagination, as well as to the deeply poetic nature of the experiences it can give birth to. With Saturn involved we know that we are sculpting in time, bringing a higher level of consequence to our creations, and at the same time being alerted to the narrowing of perception that can disable our wider vision.

With Venus involved we find the ruler of the new Moon revisiting the stars of the Bull with Mercury, as they were at Venus transit of the Sun and her transformation from Evening to Morning Star in May last year. The seeds of that time may well have germinated – what we were looking for then was “the raising of a counter-culture”.

In the orthodoxies, Saturn rules the third decan of Taurus, lends it a conservative and purposeful nature, knowing what it likes and seeking the comfort of familiarity. This comes out particularly in the image of the dilapidated mansion and its faded sumptuousness. But, its an illusion, in a state of breakdown, its deception made more visible for being so.

The Zodiac, it should be remembered, is an ancient mansion of meaning, at least five thousand years in the making, in the orthodox histories, but, it has very deep roots that tap into a source well beyond this, roots which are recognisable to the ancient soul in us. It is essentially a calendric device that has grown out of an intimacy between its originators, the Earth and the stars. It is an Earth bound vision that has been projected onto the starry firmament and which, in more recent times has loosened its ties with navigation across time, its portents and natural cycles, in favour of psychologies and mythologies. Its magic is that it mirrors something of our own inner state in this respect. We have projected our human self reflective imaginings into the realms above and imagined we were looking in a mirrored pool of meaning.

However, a deeper still origin brought this vision down to Earth, a root medicine of the stars on Earth that was seeded here, a panspermia of celestial origins which belongs to our extended family, in this and other worlds. We are on the cusp of revealing those origins to ourselves. But, in the interim some preparatory work within our own imaginings is necessary, a polishing of our own inner mirror. We must first remove the dust of illusion from its reflective surface.

As an expression of a seasoned world of interpenetrating multiple worlds, in which time is experienced in cycles and we relearn the meaning of navigating across space by navigating across time, we might catch a glimpse of a familiar light, shining within our own inner firmament. We may catch a whisper of that far distant song of the cosmos that is all too often now claimed as our own, bewitching ourselves into believing we are arriving here for the first time in the process. That is possibly the augury of the tridecile; it is a resonant aspect before all else, but resonances are understood, not through analysis of their parts, but through the way they pattern us. That would be the signpost to a future understanding and application of astrology which is waiting to be restored to our memory.

Being three tenths of a circle, the tridecile’s angle and energetic presence is far from obvious, unlike the Ptolemaic aspects. It does not jump out at us but sings its song as from a distance, unseen.
But, at another fundamental level 108 degrees recalls the harmonic resonance of creation, as it is enshrined in our very being, and, it is an expression of the prime fundamental that unites the divine with its manifestations.

It is the embodied number of the extended chakra system and propitiatory number of salutations to the spirits, divinities and beings of the unseen worlds. It is the beads of the Mala and distance between the Sun and the Earth expressed in solar diameters. It is the distance of the the Moon to the Earth expressed in lunar diameters.

108 is, of course, fundamental to the balanced seeding of the creative energy of the cosmos, is integral to the fifth harmonic.By themselves, these facts are fascinating by all accounts, but, in their interrelationship and integral unity they express the ineffable, the unseen, bring it into the earth realm, and find form that expresses the natural law of its inviolable inner nature.

We can read these forms via the imagination, through the eyes of the soul and the heart’s intelligence. They are within us as well as around us. Can we go further?

At new Moon the fifth harmonic also appears through an aspect between Jupiter and Uranus which, being in quintile aspect, are found to be exactly 72° apart, two tenths of the circle.

72, like 5, also relates to Venus, to the quintile pattern of her synodic relationship with the Earth. The pentacle is both star and incarnate knowledge of creation – is it a coincidence that Venus orbit is 0.72 AU, 72% the distance of the Earth from the Sun?

Venus is the fertilising influence here, by all appearances un-aspected at the dark Moon’s birth, she is also dissolving out of a square with Jupiter. With Uranus and Jupiter in fertile relationship a sense of divine imminence might prevail, but, can we foresee the nature of its off-spring?

That such resonances give rise to the cosmos, as we find it, are the imagination of the cosmos at work through manifestation, may be more important to the unfolding of this lunation than we can, in all truth, yet imagine.

In truth, ‘we are not yet awake’ to the full possibilities available to us.

This is not so much presenting us with a metaphor for ‘waking up’, as asking how much we value the imaginal and, more importantly still, how we can preserve it, protect it and ensure its survival, even as we re-emerge into the ‘real’ world.

It is what we have been led to believe is the ‘real’ world that has, in the final analysis, put distance between the understanding and knowledge that is indigenous to our spirits and souls and the in-dwelling worlds of our inner vision.

Its a curious thing to ask if too much ‘reality’ can be a poisonous thing to humans, but, that too is a question here, as well as a symptom of this separation. In a world where VR is becoming the new frontier and our minds are the new colonies, the empire building spirit knows exactly how valuable the blurring of that division between the real and the ‘virtual’ is to its purposes. But, that blurring is not the work of nature, and we need to be careful not to forget that, especially now.

These are complex and beguilingly difficult matters to navigate, and yet we must, because human nature itself is at stake if we do not.
If you give it time, you’ll find that the lunation which this dark Moon marks the beginning of will asked for deeper evaluations and choices to be made, but, under the skin of the world another is busy at work towards which we are being pulled more urgently still.

A convergence of worlds creates a labyrinthine dynamic, and, once in, we are tasked with remembering how to find our way out.
That requires a special way of looking, one which the innate nature of our imagination is naturally skilled in helping us develop, and which the poet in us will dance a wild jig to if we play its tune.

I’m reminded of the travelling fiddler who, on their way to the next village through the fields, heard the sound of a distant melody and, in trying to find its source was led in circles, until, unable to find its point of origin, all that remained was the song itself and the realisation that this was a gift from the magical realms, a sacred gift which it was the fiddler’s responsibility to carry. It is a part of that responsibility to not only honour and acknowledge the source of the tune, when it is played, but to know when and how to play it, and when not. To claim it as his or her own would bring disaster upon the fiddler and their kin.

There is something of that responsibility that needs to be heeded now, not only to avoid hubris and unnecessary conflict but to ensure that we do not bring disaster down upon ourselves.

The laws of the other world are natural laws and we must build our world with care not to violate them.

Be inspired to listen….

Blessed Be!

Ancestral Medicine, astrology, Capricorn Cancer axis, Eclispes, lunations, planetary change

Lunar Eclipse of the Wolf Moon

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Lunar Eclipse/FM 10/01/20 19:18 UTC

Lets put a little perspective on things. The Saturn and Pluto conjunction is being touted as the headline news, and it is a real doozy for sure, a true indicator of the forces of constriction and purgation at work within the collective layers of the mundane world. But, it is in the nature of a crash viewed in slow motion.

We have had months of the Saturn Pluto convergence, they first came into orb a year ago and their combined effects have been applying since Saturn began his slow march through Capricorn two years ago. Pluto has occupied a narrow band of degrees between 18 and 23 Capricorn through all this time…..

Look around and see what is happening now that is a version of the same disruption and restriction from a year, two years ago and more, to get the picture. Notice where things are intensifying.

…….and so it comes around now that the actual conjunction of these two ‘respect demanding’ planets is a mark in time, ‘a point not of impact but import’, which is signified not by collision but by ‘alignment’ – remember that.

This really is not meant to be experienced as a moment of temporal neurosis. However, if anyone wants to make punctual use of it, the exact conjunction of Saturn and Pluto is at it most intense in a five minute window between 16:55 and 17:00 UTC on January 12th, but that is rather missing the point.

Yes, there may be, and it is a ‘maybe’, events which coincide with this particular alignment ‘on the dot’, and its not as if there are not enough events that would already qualify for identification with this as an astrological ‘collision’ happening in the world right now. But, we should know by now that, while our emotional bodies are undoubtedly being impacted, we are not in reality here to be distracted by the ensuing drama to the extent that we let it cloud our assessment of what is happening – that is a great danger in a volatile world situation where rash judgements can reek havoc, even at the personal level, and much remains ‘unseen’.

What we don’t want to happen is to perpetuate disfunction, rely on that which does not work or is ineffective, make plans based solely on crisis thinking or, perhaps most importantly in the current situation, underestimate the obstacles being faced and the power and resources of those who rely on those obstacles being there, for whatever reason.

In a very real sense this is what Saturn and Pluto are advocating; that we use what they are revealing to purge the system and draw a line against the machinations of our detractors.

Number one rule of ‘engagement’ here is to remain as clear headed and perceptive as possible.

Yes, do what the moment calls for, but keep the longer term goals in view, and that is where the lunar eclipse comes in.

This is a weakened domicile full Moon in some senses; it has its esoteric aspects, yes, but these are inextricably interwoven with the exoteric manifestations it mirrors – rather than a full on blast in the face of the vicarious powers lined up against the people, this is a reminder, as Jupiter now on the Moon’s south node makes very clear, of the fact that we have been here before and are fighting a battle that has become perpetuated over a very long time by a many headed power hungry hegemony whose destructive workings in the world we now face more clearly than ever.

More to the point the ‘weakened’ aspect of this full Moon is reflecting the shadow which ‘suppression and usury’ has cast upon the spirit of humanity, and this planet, as well as humanity’s complicity in the workings of those who are responsible for that suppression.



Within the context of the big conjunction, this eclipsed full Moon and the solar eclipse which preceded it define the actual temporal gateway. It is a gateway which not only calls our finest qualities to be brought forth as we pass beneath its lintel, but tells us to ‘mind our heads’ and requires the balance of unflinching self honesty and grounded realism that keeps our feet firmly on the ground as we tread over its threshold.

While the rebellious freedom seeking spirit in humanity spits out the socio/cultural/economic bait and poisoned idealism it has been fed, that has led to the hiatus it now experiences, it now also realises and for the sake of our own healing must admit that it has been coerced and, when the sanctioned violence of war and physical oppression has been invoked, force fed that same bait in lethal doses.

If Saturn and Pluto are turning the screw on anything, it is the fact that there is nowhere to hide from this reality on this planet – which raises the obvious, if not over obvious, clarion that “we are all in this together”…….

..…if there is a thread of hope offered by this it is also mirrored in the lunar disc, in the portion of its luminous glow which refuses, by dint of fate and celestial mechanics if nothing else, to be overshadowed and dimmed. Identify with that, as the shadow too will pass and the true light of love for this Earth and unswerving willingness to be a protector of this magical blue orb, which the full Moon in Cancer can be for us, will prevail.

The full Moon and eclipses makes sense of the Saturn Pluto conjunction in a way that is unique to our times – in the mundane sense it tells us that what is now being revealed cannot be forgotten, we cannot afford to. We cannot un-see what we have seen, or unknown what we now know – in fact, we bear witness in order to make correct use of our knowledge, or at the very least endeavour to learn how to.

It is in the nature of eclipses that we do so with the longer term view in mind, at the core of and guiding our acts and endeavours. There is more to this than simply being better, correcting our ways though.

The Moon in Cancer opposes Sun, Mercury, Saturn, Pluto and, importantly, Ceres in Capricorn. Strong convergences characterise the moment. Mars hot undercurrents push from beneath. Jupiter amplifies the purging and remembering process via the Moon’s south node and with Ceres so inextricably involved, being the Earth-Mother personified, the memory of Her demise and how this came to be is writ large on this, the final eclipse across the Capricorn Cancer axis for a decade.

Herstory is diligently and ineluctably rebalancing history.

If prayers be made, make them deep and lasting, as deep as the passion with which Ceres fought her corner on behalf of her daughter, entrapped in the underworld, and stood up to Hades. Make them as lasting as the cycle of the seasons which Ceres hard line negotiations won. Our very fecundity and vitality rest on this. It is a mythological story for our times, in many ways. It is up to each of us what we put into those prayers, but, collectively we petition the divine Mother in doing so.

Moon in Cancer speaks of the waters of life that nourish the community, that are protected and run deep within the earth. Give thanks with offerings made to the springs and aquifers, to the spirits of the waters that are nearest to and provide for your home, for the life and sustenance they bring and wondrous nature of our own aqueous being they provide.



Mercury will be sending the message ahead when he wings his way into Aquarius on the 16th, but, here signifies the guile and wits we must have about us while manuevering among the gods and rulers, those who would assume upon their station.

That message is what we are compiling now, through our acts in the world and our magical workings, a message not to be writ in stone, but that will become airborne, as moisture to the skies, carried on the airwaves and through electrical connectivity. We are gathering charge.

As the full Moon escapes the Earth’s shadow the ruler of Aquarius, Uranus, takes up direct motion once more and completes the picture with all planets now moving in direct motion in the skies.

Uranus will figure greatly in the close of this lunar cycle squaring the dark Moon on Jan 24th at new Moon. Mars will square Venus and Neptune at the same time. But, first things first.

We are getting intimations of a change with this coming cycle, away from a fatalistic and heavy atmosphere and into a more cerebral if intelligent emphasis on our approach to living.

This is not to diverge from our focus on Earth but to bring a higher level of understanding and connectivity to our lives, the better to find our true symbiotic nature and relationship. But, we will come back to that in time….we will

Blessed be!

beautiful image : Joyce Kiapen….

…..in celebration of the Wolf Moon

Ancestral Medicine, astrology, Eclispes, lunations, planetary change, Root Medicine of the Stars

Seasons of the Eclipse

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The December lunation opens with Sun and Moon in alignment on the ecliptic, within four degrees of the Moon’s south node.

Opening with a solar eclipse, this powerful and busy lunation will see Venus, Mars and Mercury change signs, sees Uranus station direct midway through the lunation, and contains the twin to the opening solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse at full Moon – all this on top of the most talked of planetary conjunction of 2020, Saturn conjunct Pluto just two days after full Moon; more on the latter as we approach mid-lunation.

In fact, there’s a lot to take in here, so we’ll come back to review the key moments as the lunation progresses.

With the dark Moon eclipsing the Sun and coming into conjunction with Jupiter as it does so, when everything is taken into account the impression here might be that everything is being brought to a pitch, that massive change is imminent and that for this to happen, something’s got to give…..but while we are in the midst of this cosmic readjustment process, for that is truly what it is, we are very far from being helplessly at its mercy.

This is not all about what is happening ‘out there’. So much of the transformative energy that is at work within the world now works across any apparent divide between inner and outer worlds – the effects are deep, the releasing old memories into life to find new  meaning for example, forgotten ways resurfacing to find new forms of expression and understanding, and a release of energy from the sacred realms that has been locked up behind false notions and suppressed by regimes of spiritual ‘control  and dogma’ for millennia.

In reality, reality is adjusting out of the ‘reign of the false’ and one of the main effects of this is the restoration of a unified experience of life in which there is no divide between inner and outer, unless ‘we ourselves’ make it so. Some insist upon retaining this construct, one of the consequences being an over-reliance on ‘technology’. A restoration of the ‘integral’ nature of perception however and our ability to restructure it at will could be taken as a corrective to what has become an over-literallised notion, that ‘we create our own reality’.

An alchemical power is being released from within the matrix, that encodes the transmutative processes at work between ‘energetic and material’ states, an ancient knowledge, of a kind that is very far from being confined to the ‘Earth realms’. This is to describe one of the elements of the Saturn Pluto equation at work now, clarifying under the influence of the eclipses.

But, we came here precisely to witness this resurgence and to be present in as powerful a way as we individually can to participating in its unfoldment.

By working with the energetics of the matrix at this time, as supercharged as they may be, we have an opportunity to integrate more fully with what is potentially a massive dose of radical change within the world.

We have to ask ourselves, is the perspective of the bigger picture speaking directly to our personal self; this can be overwhelming, and many are still suffering the miasma of cultural indoctrination, social and political correctness et al which obscures and prevents this experience from becoming consciously embodied.

In the world, among the human politic, this brings the reminder that the enormity of it all ‘is’ no barrier to the powerful difference a small number of people, or just one individual can make, and there are plenty of examples of this reality being brought to bear at this time.

But ‘size’ is not the issue here, as, on the scale of things that runs from the sub-atomic to the super-galactic for example, humans stand at the centre point – small shifts at the fulcrum, balance point, can have a big impact.

In plain-speak what these times are telling us is that “while we are, each of us, a tiny and seemingly insignificant speck in the vastness of ‘all that is’, it is our ‘role’ and the qualities we bring to fulfilling it that matter”.

What this lunation can help us with in particular is to get a clearer view of what that role is and, more pertinently at the off-set, what needs to happen for us to fulfil it more completely.

First, and this applies to all, we could simply commit to stepping more deeply into the role of ‘change maker’. This is not, as the ‘new-age’ version might have it, about ‘creating our own reality’, so much as being able to participate more deeply in reality creating itself, in other words aligning ourselves with Nature’s way.

Secondly, if the events of the world around you make you doubt just how effective you can be, use this perspective to define more clearly what ‘is’ actually within your reach, and focus on that.

But, use this lunation to gain the wider perspective and to place your actions within the larger context as well…..this is all a part of the gift of these times, for everyone now living within the ‘ongoing’, should we be willing to accept it, or have eyes to see it.

So, having internal clarity is paramount.


For this clarity to come into play some things will have to be checked on and if necessary changed within ourselves, to access the necessary inner balance point; if we can fully accept that our part in change is just that, a part, but without losing sight of the potency and effectiveness we individually have, it is then this balance point that brings us, like Sun and Moon on the ecliptic, into alignment. Its being on and in Life’s ‘sweet spot’ and knowing how to flow and adjust with it.



At the outset of this lunation in particular, it is that which is ‘getting in the way’ of this inner change that is being brought to our attention and reflected in the world and, as the lunation gets under way at the solar eclipse/new Moon the opportunity arises to bring deeper than normal levels of personal awareness to these ‘facts of life’ at work within our own lives.

This is the south node effect, which shows us the residue of past actions, the, if you like, ‘karmic imprint’ which we yet labour under, and which consequentially affects our personal trajectory and behaviour on our journey through this lifetime. This may well be ancestral, we may well be here to make the deeper adjustment to the ancestral line and engage with ancestral healing.

At the same time, in keeping with the south node, it is also that which we have innate to our being, that we have brought with us as ‘powers’, knowing and skilful means into this life which is being brought to our attention here. We can in fact be very complacent about theses innate gifts, take them fore granted, and thus miss their true potential and the immense fuel they provide to us in reaching for our soul’s purpose and direction. Eliminating the blind spots to these gifts is a part of the purging process at work in this.

We have an opportunity to see ourselves in a new light here.

To take it, we must be prepared to not only accept our flaws and strive for self awareness beyond our current state, to accept unconscious aspects of ourselves as ‘ourselves’, each of us must be prepared to more fully own our power and commit to using it wisely in the world, ie acting responsibly with and upon it. The two go together.

What is blinding us here is personal not just embedded unconsciousness, it is personal bias, and what we are being blinded to is the damage our unconscious actions cause ‘when they are not in accord with the times’.

Being in accord with the times is a developed art, one that can be nurtured, and divination is one of the most powerful practices to hand for this, but which rests very much on our inner equilibrium and self knowledge.

Yes, given the state of things this current calling represents a ‘damage limitation scenario’, but it is also an expansion of awareness that is rippling through the entire matrix. The entire solar system is ripe with change and its reverberations are at work right through to the galactic core.

On a planetary scale the alignments at this solar/lunar eclipse season are shifting the centre of rotation of our solar system to an extreme and the changes we see are not merely local but are reflected across a wide bandwidth of scale and depth within our local interplanetary space. In such conditions certain ‘life rules’ and natural laws come into play.

We may well have created a great deal of the shit we are currently experiencing in the world, but, the message here is that when our ‘personal will’ ignores the collective terrain we are travelling through collisions will happen, the shit will continue to hit the fan,  and we simply cannot allow for that to happen any more. Period.

“The buck stops here.”

This could well be the theme of this lunation, and it might be enough to simply allow this to sink in and let it become integrated into our entire being, but, ‘being in sync with life’ is much more the underlying theme here, where the real ‘power’ lies. It is the power for harmonious living.

We will see the tides turning over the course of this lunar cycle, the qualities of the times shift with them and, before ending this brief synopsis of the lunation’s onset it is worth taking a look at the quarters, to make better use of their energetics in relation to our own charts and personal energetic matrix.



First quarter on January 3rd sees Mars enter Sagittarius and Mercury, having entered Capricorn, conjunct Jupiter.

Full Moon on January 10th sees Saturn closing to within 10 minutes of arc with Pluto, and Mercury transiting the Sun on the lunar eclipse. Jupiter will be transiting the Moon’s south node.

Bringing an unpredictably novel twist to the moment Uranus also comes out of retrograde motion, meaning all the planetary bodies will be in direct motion, all of which funnels through that powerful Saturn/Pluto conjunction. Uranus needs to be paid special attention now with this change to direct motion – be prepared to change direction, take opportunities as they arise, but being open to anomaly without shutting down or going into cognitive dissonance is of the highest importance.

The effects of Uranus within the Taurean field are profound enough, but this is a time when they are bring highlighted, in the run-up to the Saturn/Jupiter cycle which begins in November 2020 in particular. How we see and value the material and natural world is an obvious change that is underway, but this is not simply the product of becoming aware; it is about coming into alignment with and allowing an evolutionary change within consciousness to take hold of us.

The ‘old world’ and its ‘trappings and entrapments’ are dissolving away, their hold on us diminishing, and what is emerging in the process is both old, very old, and new, very new.

I have written about some of these effects in the two ‘Uranus in Taurus’ posts you will find in the listings here, but, I have held back from publishing part three, where these latter changes are looked into more specifically, as the changes anticipated are happening much more quickly and with stronger effect than expected – part 3 will now appear in the first quarter of the new calendar year, once Uranus has cleared its retrograde shadow.

By last quarter on 17th January Venus will have entered Pisces, the sign of her exaltation, and Mercury will have crossed into Aquarius and the message of these times will have come more clearly into perspective.

There will be an unusual twist in the tail of this lunation for sure, but, as we head past this watershed moment in time the purposefulness which we need to bring to of our personal journey will have been made much clearer, and that role may well bring more than we have been accustomed to expecting of ourselves into play…..

….the next lunation opens in the first decan of Aquarius on January 24th 2020 and puts the work and changes made during this lunation to the test – its Sabian symbol tells us that “A COUNCIL OF ANCESTORS IS SEEN IMPLEMENTING THE EFFORTS OF A YOUNG LEADER.”

The question now is, “where in the circle do you stand?”

Blessed Be!


image : Carson Ellis

activism, astrology, Eclispes, environmental issues, lunations, Pisces Virgo axis, Root Medicine of the Stars

Between Root And Branch

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LIGHTNING-TREE-A

At 14° Pisces the first full Moon after the August solar eclipse shines down on a world awash with floods and scorched earth. Perhaps, given the water and earth axis which it activates, we should not be surprised that our attention is pinned on these events, but, this is no place for glib astrologising and there is nothing intrinsically catastrophic about the Pisces Virgo polarity that would explain the environmental turmoil that we are currently experiencing – that comes of imbalance and the exacerbation of already present extremes. True, total solar eclipses are comparatively extreme events, small within the cosmological scale but not forgotten once experienced – but even then, the release of destructive qualities we are seeing now from within the ‘natural world’ is not made intelligible by such natural phenomena, their cyclicity, or by reaching the ‘maximum’ of the lunation opened by the ‘Great American’ eclipse.

If we were to have telescopic sight, able to penetrate the glare of Virgoan sunlight reflected from the lunar disc, we might perceive the underlying presence of Pisces ruler Neptune close on the full Moon. But, for all its symbolic resonance Neptune’s smokey lens within this planetary set up is not the catalyst that has set the forests ablaze or pushed the rivers to breaking point. It may be an indicator of ‘pervasive’ elements at work and its symbolism more likely to create an illusory cinematic effect in our minds than lens Virgoan attention to detail into a coherent picture we can understand, but, this is a picture that was already losing its center and distorting our focus long before the eclipse, or this lunation.

Uranus, however, is not only rotating on its own axis at an anomalous angle to the plane of the solar system, compared with the other planets, but is at an oddly disquieting angle to the Moon and Neptune as well as the Sun at full Moon. Astrologers associate the semi-square with an uncomfortable energy, an angle of relationship that sensitizes whatever it touches with tension, a precursor to the full-blown right angled antagonisms of the square. This is nevertheless a spur to development, to find creative relationship through which the tension can best be relieved and expressed, preferably with conscious effort. It is a little like the moment of first recognition within a relationship when something or someone catches our eye; there is attraction, or a call to pay extra attention, especially when there are warning signs, but there is also a heavy dose of the unknown at work in that moment – as exiting as that can be, with Uranus involved ‘the unknown’ has a major role to play, so willingness to step beyond the known is a part of the deal here. At least that is an experience we can all recognize, but, does it account for the hiatus that is upon us?

Some would say that we have arrived at that point in relationship to the natural phenomenon we are now seeing escalate across the globe – the chaos factor is rising and living memory no longer serves to reassure us of how to weather these fire and water storms, symbolic or not, let alone whether we can, if they persist.

Looking further afield we could add that all the outer planets, including Chiron, are retrograde at this full Moon. The amplification of archetypes is a potential hazard here, first and foremost an inwardly registered experience when this is the case but all to often projected outward – however, there is an important element of psychological resonance with these archetypes when the retrograde ‘trans-personal’ planets touch directly into our personal planetary matrix. We can observe a collective transference or exchange of energy that displays their hallmark characteristics in which we may see ourselves reflected. This is ripe ground for emotional distortion, if we are unable to separate our own feelings out from the collective, and makes potential Neptunian infection and distortion of reality a stronger factor in how we relate to each other, our circumstances and perceptions. Full Moons up this quotient significantly.

What comes to mind at this point is a real need to hold to our own center, to ground ourselves and feel our body rooted in the earth. Virgo’s earth not only houses the Sun here, asking for realistic assessment, but sees Mars entering into its first degree at full Moon. What drives the necessity for realism is all too often our own survival and, our current planetary circumstances aside, this inception of Mars can mean determination to see through the emotional hazing and focus on what is immediately to hand, if not to re-purpose our emotive energies into practical actions and to do so with the fire of natural instinctive drives – passion for what we know is right. We need to feel the sturdiness and solidity of our own existence just as it might be embodied in and felt by the trunk of a tree, even while our roots and branches are being pulled towards extremes, between fires and floods. The last thing we can tolerate the thought of, much less the reality, is being blasted and uprooted in the midst of these storms.

Mars is transiting out of trine with Uranus releasing us from a willful desire to assert the madness out of our system, as cathartic as that may be to people in positions of power. World leaders take note. Now it is the intelligence of clear speech that is most effective as a mental or emotional reaction, not rhetoric or threat – bravura is a poor substitute for good leadership and belies a severe lack of concern for human frailty or vulnerability. Fully ignited Neptunian compassion would throw sufficient water on that false flag fire if collectively embodied and leadership that can inspire such compassion is a rarity in these times. The people are doing the leading here.

Keeping the faith with each other as a creative counter to mental crowd control, Mercury has stationed direct, on the degree of the solar eclipse, and is teaming up with Uranus to bring creative thinking outside of the box into the collective power game. This is no more true than when the power games are designed to shut down that innovative capacity we have, but, again, humans do not have to accept ‘representations’ of reality at any time and the Uranian element of subversive non-compliance can open doors where none were thought to exist. And we are now witnessing this reality too, first hand.

If it carried any symbology, this most recent solar eclipse was a wake up call to this fact and gave us the cosmological opportunity to experience a greater reality first hand. Its natural development has brought the need for an added edge of realism into the midst of everyday life, a measure of which is provided by the speed with which we are able to respond realistically to events as they unfold. For many, seeing through the rhetoric, the falsity and the pre-programming surrounding these disruptive events is now where the real action is.

Do not be surprised, once Mercury gathers speed and enters Virgo, to see a plethora of facts emerging that cut through the manufactured reportage and engineered reality-bites associated with the backstories to the floods and fires. Mercury will oppose Neptune on September 20th, at new Moon. It is already happening, as anyone tuned into the geo-engineering debacle knows, and the fact that the debate surrounding it has not only accelerated but entered ‘the mainstream’ shows that there is a significant shift taking place in the arena of public awareness. This is our opportunity to get with the beat. The beat of microwave pulses through heavily sprayed cloud bases for example.

This full Moon can be a powerful time for cutting through the fog of disinformation if we understand how important our own personal role is in supporting that shift and adding the truth of our own story into its impetus. If the Jupiter Uranus cycle we are now seeing crank up to their final opposition is anything to go by, its foundational development in environmental disasters and wayward technology is creating its own perfect storm – but, it ain’t natural to use heavy metals in cloud seeding any more than it is to use them as conductors for super-heating the cores of hurricanes. Yes, the impetus is growing in calling this particular reality out for what it is.

There is cause for qualified optimism as the angles between Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon’s north node are tightening as this lunation winds down bringing us back into a more realistic and expansive if philosophical creative vision for our collective future. Uranus will figure into the trine pattern with Saturn and the north node as we head past the Ju/Ur opposition and Jupiter enters Scorpio – any guesses where this is heading? Best be philosophical and expand our thinking accordingly; looking ahead we see Sagittarius hosting the Sun, Venus, Saturn and Mercury when the December full Moon arrives forming a T-square with Neptune, and Jupiter is upping the reality stakes trining Neptune at that time, all of this is coming immediately after Mars opposes Uranus – time is of the essence and we should not expect a respite, just yet. But, the power of nature is a great teacher when realities are being manufactured.

The Neptunian factor is not so much showing us ‘how’ we have been duped as to the fact that we have been, not least of all in that the philosophies of a nation’s ‘dream’ are nothing if they cannot be lived. Once that bubble is burst in any person’s mind there is no going back – the doubt we may feel about the reality we have been presented with has a cutting edge of critical thinking at its disposal, a personal human faculty which can not only spot anomalies as flags and way-markers for evidence based discernment but is an essential part of the knowledge base in which survival and healthy living are rooted.

But, astrologers love symbolism and this full Moon comes with a high dose of pertinent symbology, for any willing to take its portents on-board; its a free gift of the liberated mind that it can hold the metaphysical and the physical in one thought without losing a sense of reality – it speaks a kind of poetic realism where, in other words, poetry is the voice of the life being fully lived, both hemispheres firing simultaneously, roots in the earth, branches in the heavens, so to speak. It is a spiritual language, even in its secular forms, that reveals humanity and, in astrology too, tells us the ongoing story of our times and our place within it.

I will leave you with the Sabian symbols for the Piscean full Moon of 2017 and the Virgoan Sun that is feeding it as a symbolic reminder of where we stand. Roots hold firm, branches protect, we stand between, the body that connects and holds the flow.

 

(VIRGO 14°): AN ARISTOCRATIC FAMILY TREE.

KEYNOTE: A deep reliance upon the ancestral roots of individual character.

Stressed here is the fact that the power available to any one person in time of crisis and decision has very deep roots in the past……one returns to the roots in order to produce the flowering of personality, if this flower is to bring forth a living seed. ROOT POWER is essential to seed-achievement.

(PISCES 14°): A LADY WRAPPED IN A LARGE STOLE OF FOX FUR.

KEYNOTE: The use of intelligence and mental subtlety as a protection against storms and trials.

In symbolism and mythology the fox is always a clever and subtle animal. It represents the intellect at its early stage of “cunning”; in a broader sense, it also refers to “intelligence,” considered as the ability to adapt to any and all life situations. Spiritual will and the ability to stand in facing tests are necessary in any crucial or challenging situation that an individual meets within a power-oriented group. But the sword-like will often has to be shielded, and intelligence or acumen can be the most precious help in danger………..a self-protective way of meeting the inclemencies of weather, actual or psychic, which abound as one leads a life consecrated to a vaster Whole……the need for PROTECTIVE SHIELDING is imperative.