Category Archives: lunations

astrology, Earth healing, lunations, Moons, Planetary Mind, Root Medicine of the Stars

Fanaagyric

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FANAAGYRIC

Fanaa – in Sufi tradition, describing the dissembling of ego that enables full emergence within the Divine.

Gyric – from a Greek term, ‘agora’, describing ‘assembly’, its manifestation and nature.

Uranus is now in virgin territory in Taurus, and the Scorpio full Moon gives us a clear heads-up to one of the central themes we will be seeing develop throughout the Uranus transit. The in-breath before the storm, as the Taurus Sun and Scorpio Moon face-off, we see the Uranus-in-Taurus effect now beginning to bite.

This is all about transcending biological limitations.

There is no room with this Moon to indulge the anthropomorphising tendency to see things purely from the human perspective; this is about energy, at a sub-quantum level, and about the innate ability which nature embodies to build from that level outwards.

It is also about innate awareness, the sentience of Life, intelligent design translating itself into living form.

It is about the bridge between the two, an area in which we will see technology and understanding develop massively over the coming decade and a half.

We are now in the ‘body-shop’ phase.

Neither are we talking about Ai, that other grossly over anthropomorphised branch of technology which some see as the new Messiah, others as the End.

This is about source field connectivity, and embodiment, in forms that are way beyond our imaginings.

For all its intensity, much is hidden behind the clamour which accompanies this full Moon. In fact, in many respects at its most mundane level it mirrors a classic case of not being able to ‘hear the signal for the noise’.

Part of the reason for this, the obvious part, is external. Part, however, and arguably the most relevant part, is internal.

Around its most extreme point of illumination, with emotions likely to be running high and rhetoric taking on a bullish nature, in the midst of this lunation it is advisable to not let the social melting pot, its provocative, finger pointing memes and adversarial dynamics become a distraction – from here on in, this must be the case.

Stop, step back and just pay some attention to the pure unadulterated moment, as you find it.

This is a prime moment for higher level engagement with life and this planet which we find ourselves on…..

…..much here, in fact, is to be gained by ‘keeping an ear to the ground’ and through paying extra careful attention to the quality of energy at work beneath ‘it all’.

Perspective.

The outer planetary dynamics are feeding underground, ‘behind the scenes change’, which may give an impression of gradualism at work within the corridors of power, but, more realistically conceals a tightening of the screws and the steady preplanned implimentation of long term global policy.

The now endemic surface noise provides suitable distraction.

The BIG issues, which are generating a high percentage of the noise, are all carefully thought out. Effectively, they both keep the masses busy, in fear and feeling small and ineffectual in the face of ‘it all’.

The opera is, in fact, in full swing.

In its original meaning ‘opera’ refers to an orchestrated articulation of emotions, an art form with hidden political and sociological teeth. In our current times the main parts are commonly played by corporate entities, puppet ‘politicians’, unaccountable organisations, carefully selected school children and ‘rebels’, all of whom are, to a greater or lesser extent, the products of lengthy research and planning.

Meanwhile, ‘governments’ fulfil their accepted roles of ‘scapegoat‘ and embodying the ‘problem‘. The ‘swamp must be drained‘. All within the operatic portfolio.

To get to the core of the moment we must cut through all this.

Then there’s Uranus, and the global tech outreach of the brave-new-world-order.

If the Uranus in Taurus effect isn’t taking down trees in your neighbourhood don’t think you are going to escape 5G.

The world is speaking to you loud and clear, but, that innate facility that the human organism has to see beyond the obvious, and the visible, is also, by the same token, under threat of, if not being taken down at street level.

Trees, as Uranus will teach us, are ‘immense’ in our planetary network of awareness.

Perspective.

The eyes and ears of the cosmos are upon us.

Only astute observation will reciprocate.

Regardless, ‘Wake Up Calls‘ are now de rigueur, a part of the “environment”, which means paying  an especially high degree of attention to the world at large, lest we become too used to them, ‘adjust’, get lazy and become inoculated to the core values and messages they alert us to.

‘Waking’, being ‘woke’. is not simply about waking up, now, its about taking it to another level. Taking ourselves to another level. This is by way of a ‘security’ announcement, in fact, with this full Moon.

Here, the planetary matrix is clear, and there is a great deal of integrity involved in this moment, even if it is not at first obvious just where, or how, or is being drowned out.

Consider yourself on standby – stay alert.

But, more,  more than the adept faculty of operating on several different levels of awareness simultaneously, even.

The common denominator is this. Get used to being ‘the receiver’ – at surface level, to begin unpacking this, rather than expending so much energy on being the ‘transmitter’, allow the ‘observer‘ within to take a more central position – and calibrate more of your own energy field to the frequency and wavelength that this more specialised, if aloof kind of ‘awareness‘ is operating on.

The ‘observer’ is closer to ‘the source’ than might be readily apparent. An important step closer, and that matters, now.

The more persistently distracting aspects of the changes now being enacted in the outer world will lose a great deal of their ‘below-the-radar’ mental hold and emotional influence if this shift in focus is integrated regularly. Take this full Moon as the cue.

This is an endemic opportunity, but, how many will and are responding in this way – the best form of compassionate response to those who remain fixated on the drama and its noise is to enhance your own inner matrix and allow its powerful if subtle and more silent, latent influence to increase in depth and reach. It will be effective. The matrix at large is strengthened by it, and everything which feeds that strength registers within it.

Uranus has set about signalling a recalibration our physical operating systems, their connection to the source field, and our ability to perceive reality as we have never seen it before – the results might seem novel, if not downright weird and spook some people out, but nothing that is kicking in wasn’t already innate – its just that the ‘hardware’ has been shut down for some time. The operating system is fully capable of self upgrading, if the metaphor be extended further.

Yes. Remove the socio-media blinkers, perk up, and tune in. But, be pro-active and take the process on.

Keep your energy field clear, using those methods that you already know work for you, but above all, ‘EARTH’…..

…….it is essential to ground ‘the antennae’ as you explore the inner faculty that is now developing. The more your are earthed, the more you can explore, and the more connected you will be – ask a tree.

The planetary matrix supports this action, but with Mars in Cancer, it must be optimised. Bringing internalised energy to the ‘positive’ end of the ‘feedback reaction process’ which the sign of Cancer embodies is of the highest priority – this is a process which builds core strength through reciprocity.

Within the Cancer template this manifests as ‘mutual dynamics which circulate energy‘, keeping it in containment while Mars own ‘direct’ energy feeds causality into the loop. That’s food for growth and development. Forests know all about it – great reason to go sit with them. They too are our common ancestors.

Obviously, as an intended action, internally this development needs oversight and heightened awareness – it also requires inner strength and integrity and, alerting us to the necessity of this, this is where the ‘negative’ function delivers its own message, by way of warning…..take note.

The negative state of this process is capable of manifesting an innate potential for intensification in mood swings, a flipping backwards and forwards between emotional extremes which,  when in such a state, become mutually exclusive, increasingly antagonistic instead of mutually supportive.

Over-reaction to outer stimulus is common to this state and this can result in the fundamental breakdown of integrity, at many levels; where before there has been stable coherence, fracturing and division take on new forms and breed.

This is more often than not seen at an individual level, and contemporary western society is currently riddled with its effects, but becomes chronic at a sociological/collective level. Memes, which utilise both these levels, often carry this negative invective, which can, ironically, be both truth revealing and lie propagating. Memes are addictive; be alert.

False flag scenarios can, similarly, be identified from the felt impact of larger scale events within the public realm. This is not an ‘exact’ science, but, is an essential skill.

But, even though this negative dynamic has a long pedigree and can be intentionally used to induce systemic tension, a strategy we are now seeing widely at large equally in both political and activist quarters, at heart this is about more than evoking a polarising disintegration of core values to induce dramatic destabilisation of the field, and isolating disempowerment of the individual. It is also the vehicle for disseminating, propagating and maintaining false narratives which concretise these effects.

This, accumulatively, is to describe the ‘freight-train’, deliberately obstructive and disinformative, which hogs much of the highway through which intel and ‘info’ is currently exchanged, both within and beneath the public realm.

On top of this, a high degree of vulnerability and openness to manipulation accompanies this negative state when it is operative within the public realm – it goes without saying, but, the need for astute vigilance and maintenance of inner equilibrium is, naturally, equally high.

Venus conjoins with Uranus in Taurus around the full Moon indicating that jolts to those core values are almost inevitable and, while we should not allow ourselves to get used to this, acclimatising to the fact of the ‘new reality’ it signals is a must.

Shocks to the system make these high risk times if you are making investments in futures, especially while not giving enough penetrative attention to the underlying nature of the longer term trends. We are walking a fine line when we ignore the inner nature of things.

Similarly, the inventiveness of Nature is being stimulated – while humans are forever tinkering with nature, the ‘great experiment’ is happening of its own accord.

As Buckminster Fuller said, “nature is trying hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us – we are not the only experiment”.

 

The real revolution, which this landscape of distraction appears ‘but only appears‘ to be shouting about, is much more subtle. In keeping with the late Scorpio Moon, it resonates with a centre of gravity that embodies fundamental principles of Life, rather than its surface effects.

As a metaphor, think cymatics – rather than focusing on the forms that the water is being agitated to take up, think more of ‘the source’ out of which the energy that the resulting patterns embody arises.

As if adding to the complexity, but in reality aiding and abetting the process, Neptune also provides the Moon’s nodal axis with a dose of disorientation through this time – again, don’t be distracted by lack of clarity about where-this-is-all-going, or become infected with the ‘how-on-earth-are-we-going-to-turn-this-all-around‘ virus.

The very same inner orientation applies here as well, but as a field effect, and although this affects all,  it can be approached from the individual point of view – this provides us with a vital bridge. At an individual level the effect is ‘fanaagyric‘, ‘absorption into the greater assembly of the mystic’.

In spiritual tradition this involves a process whereby the ego and ego-ic identity are broken down and dissolved, merging with ‘the source’, but, outside of a more traditional setting, where our ego-centre remains vital to functioning within the everyday world, developing the ‘observer’ makes this both managable, accessible and practical. It grounds the visionary faculty.

If the astrological indicators for this process are written across the matrix at this full Moon, its ongoing presence is perhaps nowhere more pointedly symbolised than by Chiron in Aries, now coming to square with Mars, an aspect that sustains until new Moon.

Beyond that, the heat begins to turn up as we head for the solstice point, and the inner planets begin to fire off against the slower moving outer heavy-weights.

This time, for all its noise and underlying tensions, is bringing a golden opportunity.

The ‘adept’ nature within is being re-awoken, to a new level of resonance and inner allegiance. Deepening the personal path through intentionally revitalising consciousness and awareness, it is connecting ever deeper into ‘the integrating principle at the core of existence’, so be of good heart – none of this requires anything of us other than what we already are, at heart.

Every individual who takes the opportunity to move towards and get in sync with this  development of inner connectivity and awareness is assisting the entire planet, a gift which humans can give with increasing power and effectiveness now, and beyond that, demonstrates something humans are in dire need of, a way of giving back to Life.

Blessed Be.

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, Capricorn Cancer axis, culture, equal rights, lunations, Root Medicine of the Stars

Begin Now

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The full Moon early on January 2nd at 2:24am UTC carries an important message for us and for the future of this planet. It also marks the midpoint of the longest lunation of the 21st century!

With the Earth at its closest point to the Sun and the Moon at its farthest point from the Earth at this full Moon, the Capricorn Sun is very energised as it illuminates the Moon in Cancer, so expect feelings that anticipate big tidal forces sweeping through life in the coming year. Begin now to sense out the potential for significant change as a major shift in how the landscape of our lives will look through 2018 is now available. How much of a say in these shifts any one of us has is, as ever, an expression of our own personal dance with the cosmos.

Much in that dance, as this lunation indicates, depends upon whether the current connections that we have, our dependencies and relationships, are feeding us or directing us, a balance needing to be addressed now. But, the astrological imprint of this Moon in particular is very clear when it comes to ‘energy’ and how we use it.

The full Moon in the twelfth degree of Cancer is at the tail of a kite formation. The Kite is a symbolic embodiment of the aspirational creative dance with the cosmos with which we are now engaging – it can also embody a major project or path we are here to bring to fruition in the world this year.

Opposite the Moon, at the top of the kite, are Pluto, the Sun, Venus and Saturn, all in Capricorn. These planets represent the energies of the astral winds holding aloft the ideals which enable the kite to fly and reach its highest levels of expression. These winds, emanating from Capricorn, embodied through the qualities of realism, beauty, illumination and innate power, are all seeking an earthly expression filled with ‘earthy’ magic.

Of particular note here is that both of the new Moons which frame this lunation are in close proximity to the point in the lunar orbit associated symbolically with Lilith, known as Dark Moon Lilith. She is the fecund psychic powerhouse which emanates the ‘magical function’ in life. Deeply fertile with both creative power, insight and knowledge, She has become, in her powerful innate feminine wisdom, deeply shunned in the scientific age – this lunation marks the stepping up of Her return into the centre of our daily affairs and naturally questions our guiding philosophy. How we answer to this is expressed through the way in which we as ‘a people’ work with ‘power’, its public expression; this new phase of feminine re-balancing began in earnest, however, in March 2017 with Venus’ equally powerful initiatic retrograde across the Aries/Pisces cusp, an honouring of the sacred feminine literally coming back to her ‘place of exaltation’. Think back to what transpired at that time, early March to mid May, and consider what you have learned in the meantime in this respect, how this can aid you now.

This aspect of strong feminine wisdom coupled to the full Moon is magnified further by the fact that this lunation began on December 18th with the Sun and Moon conjunct at the Galactic Centre, archetypal in representing the womb of the Great Mother. Venus and Mercury also in Sagittarius were close by at that time, but, the planet Saturn was within orb of the December new Moon and GC and was just about to return home to Capricorn, having spent many weeks anchored in this part of the zodiac. A sense of time being born anew might have precluded this full Moon but, as Mercury was retrograde at that time, the introspective mood we might have been experiencing then is now lifting as Mercury is now moving forwards again in Sagittarius, bringing liveliness and a depth of meaning, extra mental energy and scope to our projects. Saturn’s rekindling of the Great Mother energy into manifest form now finds its mark with his return to Capricorn – we have entered Shakti’s dance of creative power and wisdom.

Together these elements tell us a great deal about both our personal and collective purpose in this time and the responsibilities such brings; as incarnate beings, to be engaged in this dance of life is our fate, no matter what, even if in response we seek ‘a way out’, but, with all the elements involved in this Moon and the way they piece together this now gives our personal projects and their realisation an extra potency and meaning, both in the present and in the long run. Engaging with this potency is the ‘how’ that this Moon brings to turning the tables on the negative elements we might have been fighting in our lives recently – in the process we are turning our fate into our destiny. Great things can be achieved in the coming months if we engage with this energy.

On either side of the kite, at each of its wings, are those powers which we can employ to steer and give direction to the manifestation of our creative dance with the cosmos – to one side are Neptune and Chiron, the visionary and the healer, both capable of bringing uniqueness and transcendent qualities to our plans, tapping into the Dreamtime and other-worlds; to the other side are Jupiter and Mars, both of which encourage growth and give outward direction to our undertakings in the mundane world; the latter are squaring the Moon’s nodal axis which tells us that all must happen in accordance with the balancing of past, present and future. Directed energy and perception beyond the horizon are present here, a reflection of Mercury’s current transit of the Great Attractor – lets not get caught up in the spell of mundane technologies at this time though; this is a special moment, not to be repeated. Make it count, begin now…..

…..the full Moon in Cancer anchors all, bringing that balance to bear through tempering selfish ambition and grounding our aspirations in the realism of right and meaningful relationship. The Moon emphasises that no matter what we are aiming for it must embody caring, nurturing and rightful relationship within the rest of creation to be of lasting value. This is an intensely ecological Moon for this reason. Where we fit into creation and how our presence honors and respects the rights of others, the life which gives us life, is of the deepest importance here; these could be the most important defining elements in not only the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of our plans, but the ‘how’ and ‘with/for whom’. This full Moon carries a strong reminder that we are here to ensure that this balance is central to all our undertakings.

But, don’t let that hold you back or cramp your style – Uranus’ un-aspected wild card in the full Moon chart says surprise yourself, let your dance lead you beyond the known!

Much that is set in motion now will carry its energy into new and original manifestations as the year progresses. As unforseeable as these may be, take time now to look ahead and feel out your place in the bigger scheme of things with the aid of this lunation – by the time we arrive at the next full Moon on January 31st we will need to have navigated the wind at our backs and have a clear destination in mind; that will be a total lunar eclipse, visible throughout the Pacific, especially within the Ring of Fire.


Much needs to be redressed in the balance of power through this coming year, especially when it comes to the use and abuse of sexual energy, of the life-force and of the generative power humans have at hand – such demands that we must all expect a strong element of initiation to be present in our worldly undertakings as the year progresses. Venus showed us the way as she found her path into Chiron’s cave to reclaim her initiatic right. In her exalted state she re-emerged and set about seeding the possibility for new dreams to put down roots within reality now. Her next retrograde will see her station in Scorpio and trace her own steps along the Via Combusta, what will be a lesson in Phoenix medicine and the powers of regeneration through the heart for us all. In a coming post we will look more deeply into her journey and its significance in this time of feminine resurgence; but, don’t delay to redress the balance – begin now!

Think seven generations ahead for perspective if you are feeling ambitious; keep the perspective of what you are giving to others in mind at all times; but, above all, remember we are the ancestors of the future and the gifts you are here to bring into life are those which all our descendants will inherit – what we are living through now provides us with the true perspective we need, if we can look at life clearly and are honest in our perceptions, but, at heart, this Moon’s message is a beautiful and powerful way to begin the calendric year of 2018.

Blessed Be

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.

 

astrology, lunations, planetary aspects, planetary change, Politics, Root Medicine of the Stars

Post-Truth And The Power Of Love

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Post-Truth

The new Moon at 4°47′ of tropical Gemini on May 25th is unaspected within the planetary matrix, enhancing the entire field in resonance with its qualities. There is a fired up conscious energy at work in the inception of this lunation which can be brought to bear on actions and ideas that carry the revolutionary potential to go beyond the norm. This breaking of ‘old patterns’ inherent within ‘the norm’ is itself a necessity born of long held beliefs and views now being perceived to have well and truly run their course. In fact, the uprising common sentiment driving this energy of change is that ‘enough is enough’!

The 5th degree of Gemini carries the Sabian symbol of “A Revolutionary Magazine Asking For Action”, as poigniant a symbol as you could ask for in the current socio-political climate of an impulse for populist change and a reseting of what we ‘believe’, or have been led to believe, against ‘what we know’ to be true. The Sabian’s keyword of “Plenitude” has positive qualities here, indicating a release of energy that expresses movement beyond fullness and culmination. A saturation point is reached where prevailing conditions are now collectively perceived to be unsustainable to the extent that a decisive and corrective movement towards realising their opposite is inevitably stimulated. This is clearly expressed by the Sabian’s resolution of its symbol through the desire “To Reach Beyond Established Forms”, the very impulse which carries this energy of change. We might sense within this time a threshold beyond which is poised what the Sabians further describe as “the experience of a world of being so far unperceived by the everyday consciousness”.

Such novel inventiveness is both natural to life and an expression of Life’s non-linear capacities for creating uniqueness within ‘evolution’.

But, although otherwise unaspected, this new Moon enhances the dynamics of a planetary matrix that is already similarly poised; the celestial field is fomenting the desire for realisation of this creative release. It has its counterparts in the mundane world where, amidst dynamics that are reseting the power structures underpinning western (and ostensibly ‘global’) society, the recent series of political elections figure strongly – the upcoming UK parliamentary election on June 8th is itself an opportunity for the revolutionary potential of this moment to be given form. Voting UK nationals take note – if ever there was a time to vote and to maximise this potential, this is it!

All things being equal, the global (and ‘globalist’) political agendas that have brought us to this point are consistently being tested in our times, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump being arguably perfect examples, and, while a rear-guard resistance to such change is inevitable, the otherwise seemingly ‘immovable object’ of the ‘establishment’ is now seen to be losing credibility and integrity. While the voice of the ‘establishment’ might speak of being ‘strong and stable’ (which is the predictable mantra that the UK’s prime minister Theresa May has chosen to lead her Conservative party into battle with) this meme is very far from the emergent truth that is seeking expression and, ‘if truth be known’, as the Gemini Moon suggests the ‘irrestistable force’ that would bring the necessary change is gaining sway. The planets mirror this sentiment with unerring accuracy.

Uranus, Saturn and the Moon’s north node trine each other, uniting the fire signs, with Mars in Gemini in waxing opposition to Saturn, together forming a kite configuration at new Moon. This aspect becomes exact on May 28th when the Mars Saturn opposition becomes exact and the Moon in Cancer opposes Pluto, forming a T square with Venus in Aries.

Venus too is now moving forward carrying the dream of a new reality that she seeded during her recent retrograde – in pragmatic unison with Pluto’s complete restructuring of the ‘power base’ in Capricorn, their influence is infusing the new Moon’s global resonance for conscious action with a new focus. We’ll come back to Venus, but, there are other planetary factors which support this focus as the lunation unfolds.

Mercury in Taurus and Neptune in Pisces are forming a yod at new Moon with Jupiter at its action point in Libra. This is a catalystic aspect pattern that also becomes exact on the 28th of May, here pushing levels of awareness in collective consciousness to a new high; the recent publication of three books all sharing the meme of ‘Post-Truth’ in their titles resonates here and, true to our times, the Oxford dictionary chose ‘post-truth’ as its word of the year in October (1).

What we might have formerly held to be ‘true’ is undoubtedly now being called into question and its is our inner conscience, the voice of our own heart and spirit, which is now pushing for new values to be shared as a common basis in this time of ‘post-truth’. We need to listen to this inner voice of conscience as well as communicate the truths of its own values to each other to maximise this lunation’s potential.

Mars opposition with Saturn, still conjunct the Galactic Centre, highlights the need for collaboration between the energies our personal awareness with the reality of the bigger picture – this resonates with the Moon’s nodal axis as an elevating influence on how we perceive the future, and our personal role and place within it. Big themes yes, but, to make sure that Venus’ dream goes  ‘big time’ this is the celestial mandate for our focus.

This Venus retrograde, for all its visionary subtlety, registers in the heart, and as mediator between the ‘body-mind’ and ‘brain-mind’ the heart embodies the centre and balance point, the generative power house of creative energy that gives our physical vehicle life and, ultimately, those core values which are most truly meaningful to each of us.

Old value systems which are incapable of embodying these powers are on the wane, their redundancy becoming ever more obvious, a fact of life which the state of this post-truth world reflects back to us faithfully day by day.

Within the political establishment, its religious and economic foundations, an emergent reality is at work, but, far from rising from the old order, it is sourced in the individual, expressed to great effect collectively, and requires our personal involvement to realise its full potential. We saw the process at work in the US elections, but, who could have predicted its outcome – in truth this is an outcome that is still unfolding and each political juncture brings its potential further to the fore. The ‘war on our minds’ this is fueling is now very tangible.

For UK voters the moment is loaded with meaning, a truth now being fully felt through terrorist intervention, following the Manchester bombing event which is now pulling on our attention. Timing is crucial in understanding what is at stake here – in recent years ‘terrorist attacks’ have almost unfailingly coincided with political processes, interrupting elections, creating diversions and drawing focus, often enough away from other key political, military and financial developments – such is in the nature and design of so called ‘false flag’ events. But, the contentious nature of such events is itself perhaps not the only relevant factor to us now; we are fast becoming savvy to the patterns involved, are developing our ability to read beneath the surface of appearances and join the dots. While this is highlighting the tension between beliefs, appearances and inner truths, it is also calling us to the counter their underyling causes and this increasingly asks every individual to think more carefully about what we can do to affect change upon those causes themselves.

The post-truth quality of our times has politicised life to an unprecedented degree – in a sense we are re-inventing politics in our own image. This impulse too aligns with the energy of this lunation, but, it also expresses a natural function of the Pluto Uranus squares that began coming into orb a decade ago. If the turn of the millenia saw us shocked into questioning reality, post 9/11 we have begun to rebuild from within. The financial and environmental crashes we have witnessed since have forced us into realisation that our world is under assualt, and questioning these realities, are now coming to realise that it is not all ‘our’ fault’ or for that matter down to forces beyond our control, as the political memes otherwise might have us believe. An increasingly awake and questioning public is ensuring that the ‘politics of guilt’ is now being crucified on a cross of its own making.

The complicity of the ‘power-base’, of corporatocracy and a pernicious ‘agenda driven incentive to deceive’ are now become a daily part of a war on our minds, as much as on our liberty. Where we formerly rallied to the call to ‘wake up’, many now have and the level of cognitive dissonance encountered in the process is pushing the envelope on ‘truth’. The process is now become political at a personal level – we know that our liberty is not only at stake, but its re-establishment is commensurate with ensuring the health and future of the planet. The means to achieve this are themselves at stake, a pragmatic imprint of this lunation’s qualities.

The June 8th election in the UK will see the country’s national chart challenged by the intrinsic impulse of this lunation in particular and, as a case in hand, is worth mentioning here.

Transiting Pluto precisely opposes the UK’s natal 10th house Moon throughout this time and, on election day itself, the Sun opposes UK’s natal 3rd house Mercury which is at 18 Sagittarius. The voice of the people rests upon the power to bring the necessary percieved need for change into manifestation. There is a worldly quality to this voice that is carried by the younger generations of voters, those whose savvy in world affairs is perhaps more clearly expressive of the new reality that is seeking expression – on election day transiting Mercury, domicile at 3° Gemini, squares the UK’s natal 5th house Pluto and trines UK’s 12th house Uranus. This is a moment of high octane creative potential and an opportunity to truly break with the past. The creation of a new social mandate is required; whichever party most reflects this need will capture the imaginative vote.

The ruler of the UK’s Ascendant, Venus, is trined by the transiting Sun as the poles open, activating innovative social awareness with more worldly conscious energy. Venus occupies the 5th house in Aquarius in the UK chart and the Sun’s transit through the UK’s 9th house suggests that the values of the bigger picture will be highlighted in this political process, but, the key is in the Sun’s opposition to Mercury here.

The voice of the younger generations needs to be heard – can the establishment really be said to represent that voice……

 The Power Of Love

Venus retrograde saw her track back to 27 Pisces, the degree of her exaltation in the sign of her exaltation, a point which may have slipped under the radar of collective consciousness but which nevertheless reveals the core values she is now carrying forward. In many ways she has unconsciously touched and activated that inner voice of conscience we all have.

With the inner meaning of Venus retrograde now being carried forward, emphasis on our abilities to live out our heart’s desires and knowing is now brought into the broad light of day. It should be remembered that Venus conjoined with Chiron as she stationed in 27 Pisces and old wounds are now coming up for long awaited healing. In Neptunes realms the energies locked up within them carry a strong redemptive value. With a re-invigorated and resurgent spiritual quality, the energy we bring to this impulse is both creative and visionary – we should not hold back in applying it. It is with exquisite timing that the May-June lunation furthers this seed for the future and brings it into the conscious sphere.

There is also a core principle at work here which, in esoteric teachings, tells us that conscious focus maximises energetic manifestation. ‘Energy follows intent’ would be another way of expressing it, but, when the underlying seed of a ‘completely new’ reality is being activated an extra level of awareness, rooted at deeper more innate levels of consciousness is also necessarily at work – its manifestation also requires that we be fully awake to the emergence of its unknown and ‘so far unperceived‘ qualities, ready to respond to them and work with them co-creatively. This level of adepthood will find resonance in each of us according to the degree of self-awareness and heart centeredness we have achieved, being grounded in where we put our individual focus. Behind this another reality is also at work, that which lives in us as an accumulation of the past which is embodied within us in the present.

In previous posts we have seen how the celestial impulse emerging through recent lunations has drawn our attention to this truth, the need to own our personal power and to stand firm, deeply rooted in it. From this place of inner integrity and culminating presence the energy of this lunation draws its most potent power. To now give it voice and form is central to its celestial mandate.

Having taken time to look into the resonances unfolding throughout the Venus retrograde, it is now possible to identify some of the key areas in which this is embedding within the collective sphere. In the follow up post we will journey into the esoteric side of this process, but, for now, the lunation pulls us into a worldly sense of timing. Again, ‘timing is everything’ here and how we make this lunation count depends as much on this as on our individual potentials.

Venus emphasis on the truth of the heart pulls us into personal focus, grounds us in the present and can make short work of the cynicism which pervades the political terrain of our times. With this lunation, its point of focus is nowhere more strongly visible than within the rising generations that will inherit the political reality it is now instrumental in choosing. The power behind this focus, which can carry its intent forward most effectively is Venus own, the Power of Love. Reclaimed from its own seeding in the 60’s, the era of the Uranus Pluto conjunction which began their present cycle, the potential for this to be instrumental in activating its new tap root and deeply grounding its much needed power within the world is at hand.

If the harmonious implementation of the ‘so far unperceived’ planetary impulse behind this lunation is to find its true form in the world, this is the power it must now rest upon. For us all, but for the people of the UK in particular, the ‘next day’ will say it all – June 9th is the day of the full Moon in 19 Sagittarius, conjunct UK’s natal Mercury. The Sabian symbol for this degree has this keynote : “The need for people concerned with the future to discover a new way of living and more wholesome surroundings” – its keyword is “survival”…..

…..if ever it were in doubt, this alone should tell us that ‘now is the time to speak from the heart, with the power of love‘.

(1) Evan Davis’s ‘Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It’
James Ball’s ‘Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World’
Matthew d’Ancona’s ‘Post Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back’

astrology, human rights, lunations, Moons, planetary change, Root Medicine of the Stars

Awakening The Tides Of Rememberance

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The full Moon on Wednesday May 10th in 21 Scorpio is carrying a potentially deep and stirring emotional energy, and a focus on the individual as the nexus both within significant change and its apparent opposite, stabilisation. It sees the energy of the Sun in Taurus highlighting areas of life in which we excercise conformity, and this is reflected in balance by the Moon’s emphasis on the roots of individuality and inner freedom. There is a choice being called up between these two seeming polarities; but, the ‘personal’ and the collective, the hereditary and the ‘socio-cultural’ were ever entangled thus.

Where this inner/outer dynamic is harmonious we may feel the magnetism of life pulling us towards those things, and people, in which we find much beauty, correspondence and deep resonances. Mismatches between these two foci is where the tension of this full Moon is expressed most visibly, and felt most implicitly – either way, the affecting energy will increase in us a strong desire to either bed down into our culturally endorsed beliefs or to be rid, once and for all, of all that pollutes our personal lives which hinders us from expressing our true selves.

For a person who might be willing to go along with the mores and dictates of the society they live in, their personal freedoms will be expressed in relation to, if not directly in, the very terms of those ‘rules for living’; but, this also applies whether ‘for’ or ‘against’ these dictates, and where we have a strong sense of conflict present between our own inner needs and those predominantly manifested by society, conversely we are likely to feel an upsurge in rebellious emotions, an impulse to break free and establish a more unique if not unorthodox identity.

Both impulses express the same strong self clarifying desire – to associate with what is most meaningful to us. In sextile with Pluto rx in Capricorn, there is going to be a very real sense from this Moon that the time to give shape and form to these deeper emotional values is upon us, is now, that they can no longer be denied. Its a time for establishing identity either by staying within predefined parameters and abiding by their perceived truths or through using those parameters to differentiate and establish one’s own reality as the true benchmark and foundation for the future.

This harkens back to the strong impulse to ‘stand in our own truth’ of the March full Moon, and its development in ‘balance and right relationship’ in the April full Moon. The eclipses of March have set the tone and theme for this period and its culmination in August through September.

The Scorpio Moon’s impulse carries this theme and its emergent qualities forward, is an adjustment to the future, also reflected in the sign change of the Moon’s nodes, the north node now having entered tropical Leo for the next year.

This shift into a future oriented, self defining and essentially creative energy field will lend a bouyant feeling to the unfolding time, even where strong emotions are felt within. But, this is an ancient dynamic that is now phasing out of a prolonged period of antagonism, and the inherent division has morphed. It is now becoming more clearly defined between those who adhere to an old dream of the past, and those who have discovered a new dream germinating within themselves, the latter being the theme of the Venus retrograde that is now nearing its completion – this retrograde has slipped subtley under the radar, but, it also frames these lunar/solar events.

The old order is seperating away, even while it tries to re-establish itself, while deepening its inherent dichotomy. A new language is emerging from within the creative field of collective consciousness, its old counterpart now becoming redundant, its terms, like the old struggle between ‘conservative versus radical’, becoming irrelevant.

But, the truly radical individual here is courting a new and unknown social reality, is willing to draw more deeply from within themselves and their own personal truths than those endorsed by society. This is a society that is seen to have outlived its relevance and become both unrepresentative and false, and disfunctional to the extent that it no longer represents givens and universal truths. The inevitable result of this, an irrevocable divide, is leading to a breakaway movement, if not reality. Uranus and Mercury aid and abet this shift of perception and awareness. It is both ancient and new, deeply familiar and profoundly awakening, just as it is both poetically charged and reality expanding.

If the Sun’s trine with Pluto underlines this overall dynamic, whatever we do as a result of engaging with it, it must not only feel real, but be ‘real’  – many have had enough of the chicanery and subversion employed to prop up the illusion of the old dream, and Jupiter’s closing inconjunct with Neptune is pushing the issue here, incubating the new dream within collective consciousness.

On the personal level, given the collective nature of this Moon’s energetics and its widely affective focus, the sensitive degrees associated with it are in fairly wide orb, within the 15-25 degree arc of the fixed signs, and 0 to 10 degrees of the Cardinal signs.

The days either side of exact full Moon are also especially sensitised, so keep an eye out for indicators of how emotional undercurrents and drives might emerge, as reflected through your own charts. But, its that Pluto input that gives the cardinal energies of initiation and assertion the edge, so, the question is ‘where, and into what should we put our best energies?’

A positive use of this Moon’s energy might be to clear deeper blockages between ourselves and our ancestors, as these are in some way reflections of the same intrinisc dynamics which we are seeing at work in ‘surface life’ now. Their struggles have been carried forward and, in a very real sense, have been used against us while we are still living them out. Its a karmic loop which is ready and primed to be broken.

There is a fundamental power struggle at the core of this, a matter of survival and will, between those who have engineered the ongoing struggle, its ‘maintainers’, who might coincide with the ‘status quo’, and those who are clear within themselves that this status quo is stifling life and must change .

As the established power structures which seek to impose their power and will over our own personal determinism are highlighted, many of the political and social changes that are now taking place, which have increasingly been coming into the spotlight over the last decade in particular, are going to be in this Moon’s beams.

Social uprising is always preceded by ‘disquiet’ or disemblance beneath the surface, but, there comes a point where its energy must break through – while we won’t necessarily be seeing a new ‘Arab Spring’, the same ‘unrest’ has now become much more widespread and is bubbling away beneath the surface. We now have an opportunity however to use this impulse creatively.

To commit to this dynamic is to open more fully the channels of creative energy that flow from our roots, and this can bring real power to our personal lives if we connect with it positively. This is the energy we need to make changes in the world that correspond to our inner lives more fully, the same positivity and impetus necessary to freeing ourselves from the binding nature of the past and realising its inherent gifts.

Much genetic programming has become rooted here, a habituation of survival instincts at a very deep level. Radical by nature, how do we change this survival instinct from a negative into a positive? Much of the epigenetic memory that belongs to these instincts is collective, belongs in levels of consciousness that require a contiguous quality of awareness to be active, implicitly imbued with a desire to manifest changes perceived through the eyes of necessity.

The answer to this is in Venus retrograde, which has penetrated the dreamtime and fertilised the field, the celestial matrix, with a new and ancient dream-seed. Even though she is unaspected at full Moon, the celestial field conspires to support Venus as she moves toward delivering her story and arrives at back at 13 Aries, the degree in which her inner journey began early in March.

Mars has entered mutual reception with Mercury, each in the other’s home sign, and is squaring off to Neptune, the ruler of Pisces, in whose realms Venus has been travelling. The message she carries is gathering energy and awareness. Saturn’s long slow conjunction with the Galactic Center is a part of the same story behind this message – but, Venus story will be where we pick up this thread next time, and carry the energy of this full Moon forward.

As a hint of what is to come, here is a quote that perfectly sums up the theme of this full Moon and its relationship with Venus retrograde, in its most positive light :

“…..‘Awakening the tides of remembrance’ means accessing the gifts sent forward by our ancestors, understanding you are the sum of all that’s ever been of your line. It’s seeking to understand your journey, discovering the truth of who you are. And in that uniqueness walking ‘your’ truth, not another’s. It’s about freedom…..” (1)

(1) Barry Brailsford, chosen by the elders to be custodian of the histories and knowledge of the Waitaha peoples, who were already present in Aotearoa when the Maori arrived.

Top image : stone circle, central Mongolia.
Middle image : crop circle center, Silbury Hill, near Avebury, August 2009.
Bottom image : sunset at Poldhu, Cornwall.

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….!

astrology, culture, Earth healing, lunations, Magic, Moons, planetary aspects, Ritual, Root Medicine of the Stars

Looks Within Moon

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This is precious time for us, a time of reconnection and unity in a common purpose – to hold to the sacred as protectors and guardians of the unbroken thread of life that unites us all. In the north the fires are lit that mark the opening of the bone road, between this world and that of our forebears. In the south it is the first flush of the pregnant world that swells the seed within the flower and calls us to nurture hope within the world again.

When the new Moon is born at such a time it augers deep healing and brings remembering into our lives. The Scorpio Moon invokes memories and emotions to this purpose, sourced within the most mysterious unchanging aspects of creative energy as it flows into life from its source – its ability to transform and inform, to survive the journey, to survive all; great courage and a will to live can be found in this. It infuses our lives with a sense of belonging that is braided into the most fundamental roots of our being.

In connecting with Neptune’s energies this Moon brings the vision of our spirits alive within this regenerative place and reminds us of our own true purpose. It holds the vision of our future at its heart as it connects at the opening of the lunation with the Moon’s nodes.

It reminds us that the knowledge of life and death is rooted in the heart and womb, the power and true value of feminine wisdom within our world – Venus and Saturn square the Moon’s nodes showing us how this power informs and holds steady its true value for us as living souls.

Through Uranus square with Mars the power of discovery and inspiration are born under this Moon, opening possibilities for new pathways to be forged and encouraging mindful appreciation of the directions we are taking. There is great power for healing at work in this, as Mars sextiles Chiron. This can bring us closer to each other and lend our workings in the world the powers of the subtle realms.

Mercury runs before this Moon, carrying the radiance of the Sun that is in the hearts of the children, and the illumination of their deep untarnished connection with the source. Jupiter stands at the midpoint of Mercury and the Moon’s north node, squaring Pluto,  bringing optimism to our vision for the future, and spreading the power of recognition that we all share the same source, are all related.

But, it is the ignition of the great fires of creation, the source of connection with the divine known more fully to those who have passed before us, which can bring this Moon’s greatest gift to us. In this our common ground and deepest source of inspiration can be found when we look within, our connection with the worlds within this world and the mind of nature.

Within this Moon a powerful elixir can be invoked, for healing, connection and belonging, a salve for our times that is at the heart of the elder wisdom gifted to us by the Looks Within Moon.

The old ones, the wise ones, lit the fires of dreaming under the Looks Within Moon. Gathering the people in as the fires were lit they brought out their bundles, the sweet medicine of their stories, carried from the time of the first fires, carrying the flame of the last fires. Their eyes upon another world they would feed us with the warmth of their own soulfires, and tell us of the dreaming Earth, Her love for Life and of us, her children.

In this Moon there is a longing to reunite with the luminous core of our belonging, our longing to be at one with the deepest and most meaningful aspects of life, and to give thanks for the gifts we find there. It is a Moon of deep feeling, of reaching into the settled stillness of things, to allow the warm inner radiance of belonging to infuse our own roots. At the heart of all things, offering the promise of return, it is the sweet medicine of Earth that calls us to gather around her central fire, to remember this fire burning within our selves.

Memories of Life, of lives once lived that yet carry pain, can be healed in this time, its salve, rememberance of times in which we have known the radiance of our own soulfire, its joy and warmth, and the healing balm of coming home to our heart and hearth, our Earth.

In our time, amidst uprooted lives and damaged life, the casualties of war and manipulation, pollution and illness, this deep feeling can be raised to unite us in passionate invocation, for protection of all that matters most, for unity and deep rooted solidarity as guardians of the sacred, of each others lives, and the lives of those yet to come….

…..and, in this place we can ignite another fire, our own center fire. Its gift, the shared warmth of an elder wisdom that still burns with a passion for life, made rich through lives lived, that in the deepest core of our selves yet lives on. Its presence can be summoned, can unite us all in its knowing beneath the Looks Within Moon.

In the northern realms our bonfires hold a memory, of a journey we have all taken along the bone road, the road of return and communion with our ancestors. Old and young come together here, around this ancient fire – the elders might gather and give counsel, themselves children amongst the spirits of the ancestors, holding an unbroken thread of belonging. The old songs are sung reminding us of our roots, our grounding and role as guardians of the sacred Earth.

Our children are honoured here, around this center fire, their voices the sound of fresh springs and running waters, reminding us of our sacred duty to life, a certainty that all the suffering we endure has a purpose. They remind us that they are our future, our guides as we walk this path of responsibility, strong and united in the courage and commitment to protect and nurture new life, to keep the thread unbroken. In every childs face is the elders dream come home, Earth’s dream in our midst once more…..

……if the fire is lit and the way of Earth’s dreaming is brought back into the village, new beginnings can be made, founded on wisdom and courage, connection and responsibility. We can rise to the challenges of life with assurity. Our voices can rise within these beginnings and be as the sound of wild bees, drawn home to make the golden honey of truth in our world, restoring in life the sweet medicine that lives in each of our stories……use this medicine well to bring healing to the forgotten ones, the orphans of circumstance and greed, to bring recognition and respect back into their lives, and ours.

This is the time in which the Earth enters her dreaming, as the shadows lengthen in the northern realms and falling flames of ancient sunlight lay their gold, tawny and red blanket upon the Earth, as the flower’s dance with the sound of wild bees and feel the breath of the Sun Spirit swelling in their hearts in the southern realms.

At this time……ignite the fires of belonging with this medicine, for those who have gone before us, who have come into our midst again, and those who will come after us – they will tell us who we are, will help us to remember why we came here, if we look within and hold this prayer at the lighting of our sacred fire.

Even amidst the turmoil and uncertainty that surrounds us, one simple flame can hold the path open for us at the time of the Looks Within Moon, and bring us back to the center, the radiant still point at the eye of the storm. This is a talisman of continuity and rememberance, of the creative energy we carry, the generative power that unites us all. We can invoke its power for the healing we know is needed, wherever it is needed, whether it be our own, or others less fortunate than ourselves, or of the ancient guardians themselves, the wise beings of our natural world. We are all one in this. Be of good heart loved ones, this is Earth’s gift…..under the Looks Within Moon.

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.

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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……

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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, culture, Earth healing, human rights, lunations, planetary aspects, Root Medicine of the Stars

Failing Magnificently

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nine samuri

“The creative adult is the child who has survived”
Ursula Le Guin

Growing Pains

The August lunation opens with the new Moon at 10°58′ of Leo in the tropical zodiac. The Sabians tell us that this degree augers “spontaneous activity of the innocent mind”, a creative energy that loves to explore the possibilities of life, is open to the future, but whose outlook is still ‘green around the ears’ and easily swung by emotional energy. This childlike energy belongs amongst the people as awareness of something of great significance emerging into our world; but we do not know at this point what it is, the shape it will take, more that it is immanent and happening, an upsurge of ‘spirit’. It is a playfull energy that can inspire, wants to run free and yet, at this stage, is also vulnerable, needs to be ‘protected’, and the aspects to this new Moon bring out the tension generated between these qualities.

In traditional ways the elders, in their wisdom, will let the children play freely, but, will always keep an eye out for them and be there when reassurance, compassion and the wisdom of experience is needed. Its a community approach that values uniqueness, young and old alike. The Sabians clarify this, telling us that the role of tradition and grounded knowledge which the elders signify offers valuable protective space for the as yet ‘young’ to flower in. But at new Moon the Sun and Moon are in aspect to Neptune and Saturn whose own antagonistic square is actively breaking down the old to make way for the new. ‘Tradition’ and ‘the orthodoxy’ too is being tested out in the world, the tried and tested is giving way to the ‘unknown third thing’.

We are looking at a handover of power, from the old to the new, from the established formalised ways of the older generations to the innovative ways of another, younger age group under the stars. Walt Whitman captured something of the underlying sentiment at work here when he said,

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in
columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomerwhere he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself,
In the mystical moist night air,
and from time to time,
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.”

The mutable square between retrograde Neptune and Saturn carries this flavour at its most philosophical level and this square has been at work since late 2015. It will continue through this year to revision our knowing and understanding, to challenge our beliefs as well as our capacity to mature, to step into the “mystical moist night air”. Neptune’s pervasive creative resource can be very otherworldly and Saturn’s knowing conservatism very down to earth ~ they are not in easy relationship. Goethe also captured something of the dynamic in their ambivalent relationship when he said “talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of life”. For our dreams to grow beyond the known we must be prepared to take risks and accept the ‘breakdown’ as a part of the ‘breakthrough’, before we can build new edifices for our mores and ethics, our invention and learning. And, as Sarah Ban Breathnach tells us, “playing it safe is the riskiest choice we ever make”.

Walt’s tiredness with the old mechanical view of things was enough to inspire him to follow the call to a far less jaded and self-congratulatory place and commune in more innocent rapture with life. There is a deceptively naive beauty present at this Moon, both raw, knowing by instinct, and clarified in its knowing, the more clearly to see and experience Life. It is the soul nourishing innocence of one who has survived and taken their inner child with them for the journey. We too must trust that knowing and enjoy its mature transparency.

But, as Mark Twain said, “loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul”, and while the energy of the lunation may have a fresh and forward looking quality to it, the emergent awareness is also telling us that we are no longer able to rest in innocence and are waking up to those aspects of living in which we must find a new freedom, one that feeds rather than defines or delimits the creative expression of our souls.

In trining the new Moon retrograde Saturn also gives us the benefit of a more positive protective quality. There is a co-creative element at work here too, in that the creative energy is crucial and must be allowed to develop through its own experience and wisdom, given the space within which it can feel safe enough to take risks. Here Saturn’s more maternal archetypal qualities are revealed, those belonging to the all embracing mother goddess as Crone, ‘She who knows’ and within whose compass all arises and resides.

The Moon and Sun quincunx both retrograde Neptune and the Moon’s south node, and here culture and tradition is being pushed to re-envision itself from within. Antoinne de Saint-Exupéry captured the essense of this aspect well when he said, “if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t asign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”. If the ocean of imaginal creativity is to be explored we must have more than simply the means to do it; we need the passion, a sense of calling, and the willingness to set sail from the safe harbour of the known, the Moon’s south node. This node can provide us with vitals, essential supplies, talents for finding our way by skillful means and charting new territory, but, they do not represent the end in themselves – to some large extent that ‘end’ belongs in the ‘lap of the gods’ and the fair winds they may or not assist us with!

Pattern Recognition

In astrology this threefold aspect complex is called a ‘pythagorean triangle’, and this one (involving planets; the Moon has been triggering this aspect many times through this period) is the last of nine that have been peppering the planetary matrix over the last three months. The ‘uncertainty’ it embodies comes from the quincunx, an aspect in which an incongruity arises, a lack of relationship that calls for a new level or quality of consciousness to prevail; the ‘necessity’ is expressed in the square, where dynamic interaction between two different but clearly defined ways of approaching a problem is at its most difficult, in which the process itself needs to be raised to a higher level, regardless the outcome; the willingness to go forward together is expressed in the trine, where a continuous interchange of energy underpins the process and lends its qualities to the outcome.

Together this configuration of aspects brings a sense of uncertainty, necessity and willingness to ‘taking the leap’ together and the lunation will carry this forward in a positive way, if we give expression to its creative energy, allow its process to unfold while holding the tension embedded within its dynamic. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “when the string of the violin was being tuned it felt the pain of being stretched, but once it was tuned then it knew why it was being stretched”.

At a time when the entire gamut of worldly life is feeling the tension of this unavoidable process at work this lunation can be seen as a potential watershed, a place beyond which, if its positive side is nurtured, the emergent ‘new thing’ will begin to come more fully into view. To do so we will need to keep our eyes on the trends and currents that are emergent, to look for the patterns they are expressing, and build this ‘pattern recognition’ into our knowledge base, the better to navigate and work our passage. We will not see the pythagorian triangle again for a few months so the field is changing now and both ‘the inspired’ and ‘the experienced’ must work together, to keep an eye on the ‘weather’, and how it is changing. And that includes the emotional energies we are experiencing, together and in our own lives. We must not allow ourselves to fear, either failure or its consequences, but, the creative persistance that will prevail if we trust ourselves enough to make the leap, is the best quality we can bring to working through this time with the energies of this lunation.

Ice Cave Aurora

Falling Awake

As I write this the Moon is forming a pythagorean triangle with Neptune and Saturn from tropical Cancer, close to the degree of the last new Moon, and the sense of culmination is growing. It is a sense being enhanced through its quintile with Jupiter, 72° away in Virgo.

Jupiter is now opposing Chiron in Pisces and quincunxing Uranus in Aries. This is an aspect pattern that pulls us into a healing space that needs us to center ourselves in the unencumbered present, the kairotic moment represented by Uranus, for its fruits to be delivered. To do so these aspects too calls us to bring a new level of consciousness to bear, to pay attention to our wounded nature, to mature beyond the past and its grave errors and allow the moment to reveal the inner meaning of our history. Much of this revelation centers on invoking the creative energy of the lunation through practical means, and, Venus in late Leo at new Moon aids this release very creatively through trining Uranus and quincunxing Chiron.

This is about letting go of past hurts, while being able to accept our wounds, errors and limitations, so that we can not only mature as people but enjoy the collective freedom our hearts know we desire by embodying it creatively. It is a complex of aspects that supports the lunation’s matrix for growth, while bringing it into a more personal space. Go with your hearts desire but, as the Chinese proverb has it,  ‘be aware of your mistakes in the beginning!’

Buckminster Fuller once said, “Nature is trying hard to make us succeed, but, Nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment”, and with Pluto trining the Moon’s north node at new Moon the reality of Bucky’s statement is very much present with us as we navigate the transformational qualities of the times. Pluto is in a waxing quincunx with the new Moon and Sun but is otherwise unaspected as the lunation begins, and this pervasive sense of scale within the bigger picture, while it is a part of our growing process as a species, is not only hard to accept, but is humbling once it has been.

This lunation will close with a trine, from the north node, Sun and Moon to Pluto and pressure to take this perspective in will increase as we approach that time. In fact, the solar eclipse we will see as the September lunation opens will bring the sense of culmination to a head.

If we are to work with the larger perspective that the times require of us, and bring this lunation alive within our lives, allow its creative energy expression, the luminosity we each carry within will be our most valuable asset. As Elizabeth Kübler-Ross said, “People are like stained glass windows; They sparkle and shine when the Sun is out, but, when darkness sets in their beauty is revealed only if there is a light within”.

Failing Magnificently

The final piece of this puzzling time is provided by Mars who enters Sagittarius once more just as the Moon is renewing its cycle. Falling out of aspect with the other planets as the lunation opens, Mars is bringing a strong sense of purpose to the entire matrix, a sense that this is the time and the time is now! His journey through Sagittarius will see him meet with Saturn and re-ignite the burning issue of how we use our power to create the reality we are now experiencing in the world. War will be top of the agenda for scrutiny, not least of all as they re-unite on the fixed star Antares. As Thomas Jefferson observed, “War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrongs; and multiplies instead of indemnifying losses”. As the pressure for confrontation is tangibly increasing so is the anti-war voice at large in the world.

We can transform the world, we know, simply by choosing more peaceful means for expressing this energy, but our journey will be all the more magnificent if we can do so by transforming our wounds, and the understanding we have of ourselves and the world in the process. In fact, the one rests upon the other. Mars will accelerate through Sagittarius and spend a mere six weeks in Capricorn, where a conjunction with Pluto looks like a catalyst for significant upheaval. This might give us cause for real concern, but, as Hellen Keller advised, “we could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.” 

It is hard for us to continue to witness the pain and suffering being brought upon us by so much blatant misuse of power, and this is a time for mobilising the creative energy in the face of the destructive. It is a time when we might feel anxious, wrought by fears and doubts as much as by horror and a feeling of deep uncertainty about our future, but, there is some wisdom to be had even as we do so; as the Chinese alchemist Wei Boyang said two thousand years ago, “worrying is preposterous; we don’t know enough to worry”.

As the August lunation opens Venus is pulling out of a square with Mars and will be working her way through the Virgoan fields of healing and nurturing as the lunation progresses – she brings the dedication necessary for our time and our acts within it to really count. It is a concept that is at the heart of the most traditional of healing ways, that the world is in constant need of repair and maintenance; this is the basis upon which our healing must take place. When we understand that our true power lies in being magnificent in the face of this unremitting demand for care and creative giving, the world becomes transformed, a constant source of inventiveness and response-ability, a place in which love is the means and the end in itself. In that place we have the power to fail, regardless, and to do so magnificently.

As Venus approaches Virgo and activates the feminine wisdom of healing and nurturing through this lunation, and as Mercury very much at home in Virgo crosses the Moon’s north node and comes to meet with Jupiter opposing Chiron at full Moon, it seems fitting to close as we opened with the strong and down to earth voice of feminine wisdom that can help us traverse these difficult times while capturing something of the essense of the moment :

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
Pema Chödrön

Images :

Still from the film ‘The Nine Samurai’

Nest sculpture ~ Nils Udo

Cave Aurora ~ Sebastian Saarloos

Gobekli Tepe, Turkey