There’s something of the feeling that accompanies crumbling realities and faded illusions about the beginning of the May lunation, that comes in with this dark Moon of tropical Taurus. Its a dilapidated mansion with trees growing out through the windows, a once florid fountain now a tangle of ivy and moonflowers, ghosts drifting on the other side of darkening mirrors, speckled with age.
There’s light in its darkened interior, but, its spectral, a dream seeping through from the other side.
It feels like the Age is collapsing, on the surface not unlike stepping out the cinema mid afternoon, the film still vapour trailing its way through our mind and imagination, while the hard edges and bright light of the outside world grate against our senses.
Its a dream we are waking up from, for the hundredth time, and we know it – only this time we know there’s no going back. Once we emerge there’s a whole different set of values and realities at work, determining how we live, only, we are not yet clear about what they are.
This lunation is where we begin to get our bearings.
The new Moon sextiles Neptune and, while there is certainly more at work in the new Moon chart, under Neptunes influence, it is our innate association with the illusory and its influence on our sense of self, the clouding of our inner truth, which is highlighted here.
This colours the new lunation with a need to purge ourselves of illusion in its negative sense, a point which is driven home by the two eclipses that punctuate its mid-point and culmination. But, it also asks us to make choices, to re-evaluate and feel out the priceless riches that our inner worlds do give to us.
Illusion and metaphor are rife in this world, and the illusory in particular is instrumental in dividing its human population. We over compensate by deifying ‘truth’. But, that edifice too is becoming atomised. One person’s truth may not be another’s, but, then who has the monopoly on truth right now? Besides, the point may well be, not who is right and correct, but, beyond all facts, can we respect each other’s realities, as different as they may, in reality, be?
After all, where is the boundary between the inner and outer world. I spent some time with the new Moon chart, felt I wasn’t seeing it, or getting beneath its skin. Its easy enough to apply the orthodox interp methodologies but something just didn’t ‘ring true’. After a while, however, after going away and coming back, and following the planetary developments around this lunation and through the next four weeks to the solar eclipse, I noticed a pair of hidden aspects which rhyme subtly with this new Moon.
Just as the Moon entered tropical Taurus Venus, the Taurean ruler, formed a tridecile with Saturn from tropical Gemini. The angle of 108 degrees between Saturn and the Evening Star, married in that moment with Mercury’s transit of the North node, brought the hidden planetary resonance to light.
The tridecile is an aspect that seeks to marry creative energy with identity, to solve the problem of who we are by giving us access to the visceral power of our own imagination, as well as to the deeply poetic nature of the experiences it can give birth to. With Saturn involved we know that we are sculpting in time, bringing a higher level of consequence to our creations, and at the same time being alerted to the narrowing of perception that can disable our wider vision.
With Venus involved we find the ruler of the new Moon revisiting the stars of the Bull with Mercury, as they were at Venus transit of the Sun and her transformation from Evening to Morning Star in May last year. The seeds of that time may well have germinated – what we were looking for then was “the raising of a counter-culture”.
In the orthodoxies, Saturn rules the third decan of Taurus, lends it a conservative and purposeful nature, knowing what it likes and seeking the comfort of familiarity. This comes out particularly in the image of the dilapidated mansion and its faded sumptuousness. But, its an illusion, in a state of breakdown, its deception made more visible for being so.
The Zodiac, it should be remembered, is an ancient mansion of meaning, at least five thousand years in the making, in the orthodox histories, but, it has very deep roots that tap into a source well beyond this, roots which are recognisable to the ancient soul in us. It is essentially a calendric device that has grown out of an intimacy between its originators, the Earth and the stars. It is an Earth bound vision that has been projected onto the starry firmament and which, in more recent times has loosened its ties with navigation across time, its portents and natural cycles, in favour of psychologies and mythologies. Its magic is that it mirrors something of our own inner state in this respect. We have projected our human self reflective imaginings into the realms above and imagined we were looking in a mirrored pool of meaning.
However, a deeper still origin brought this vision down to Earth, a root medicine of the stars on Earth that was seeded here, a panspermia of celestial origins which belongs to our extended family, in this and other worlds. We are on the cusp of revealing those origins to ourselves. But, in the interim some preparatory work within our own imaginings is necessary, a polishing of our own inner mirror. We must first remove the dust of illusion from its reflective surface.
As an expression of a seasoned world of interpenetrating multiple worlds, in which time is experienced in cycles and we relearn the meaning of navigating across space by navigating across time, we might catch a glimpse of a familiar light, shining within our own inner firmament. We may catch a whisper of that far distant song of the cosmos that is all too often now claimed as our own, bewitching ourselves into believing we are arriving here for the first time in the process. That is possibly the augury of the tridecile; it is a resonant aspect before all else, but resonances are understood, not through analysis of their parts, but through the way they pattern us. That would be the signpost to a future understanding and application of astrology which is waiting to be restored to our memory.
Being three tenths of a circle, the tridecile’s angle and energetic presence is far from obvious, unlike the Ptolemaic aspects. It does not jump out at us but sings its song as from a distance, unseen. But, at another fundamental level 108 degrees recalls the harmonic resonance of creation, as it is enshrined in our very being, and, it is an expression of the prime fundamental that unites the divine with its manifestations.
It is the embodied number of the extended chakra system and propitiatory number of salutations to the spirits, divinities and beings of the unseen worlds. It is the beads of the Mala and distance between the Sun and the Earth expressed in solar diameters. It is the distance of the the Moon to the Earth expressed in lunar diameters.
108 is, of course, fundamental to the balanced seeding of the creative energy of the cosmos, is integral to the fifth harmonic.By themselves, these facts are fascinating by all accounts, but, in their interrelationship and integral unity they express the ineffable, the unseen, bring it into the earth realm, and find form that expresses the natural law of its inviolable inner nature.
We can read these forms via the imagination, through the eyes of the soul and the heart’s intelligence. They are within us as well as around us. Can we go further?
At new Moon the fifth harmonic also appears through an aspect between Jupiter and Uranus which, being in quintile aspect, are found to be exactly 72° apart, two tenths of the circle.
72, like 5, also relates to Venus, to the quintile pattern of her synodic relationship with the Earth. The pentacle is both star and incarnate knowledge of creation – is it a coincidence that Venus orbit is 0.72 AU, 72% the distance of the Earth from the Sun?
Venus is the fertilising influence here, by all appearances un-aspected at the dark Moon’s birth, she is also dissolving out of a square with Jupiter. With Uranus and Jupiter in fertile relationship a sense of divine imminence might prevail, but, can we foresee the nature of its off-spring?
That such resonances give rise to the cosmos, as we find it, are the imagination of the cosmos at work through manifestation, may be more important to the unfolding of this lunation than we can, in all truth, yet imagine.
In truth, ‘we are not yet awake’ to the full possibilities available to us.
This is not so much presenting us with a metaphor for ‘waking up’, as asking how much we value the imaginal and, more importantly still, how we can preserve it, protect it and ensure its survival, even as we re-emerge into the ‘real’ world.
It is what we have been led to believe is the ‘real’ world that has, in the final analysis, put distance between the understanding and knowledge that is indigenous to our spirits and souls and the in-dwelling worlds of our inner vision.
Its a curious thing to ask if too much ‘reality’ can be a poisonous thing to humans, but, that too is a question here, as well as a symptom of this separation. In a world where VR is becoming the new frontier and our minds are the new colonies, the empire building spirit knows exactly how valuable the blurring of that division between the real and the ‘virtual’ is to its purposes. But, that blurring is not the work of nature, and we need to be careful not to forget that, especially now.
These are complex and beguilingly difficult matters to navigate, and yet we must, because human nature itself is at stake if we do not. If you give it time, you’ll find that the lunation which this dark Moon marks the beginning of will asked for deeper evaluations and choices to be made, but, under the skin of the world another is busy at work towards which we are being pulled more urgently still.
A convergence of worlds creates a labyrinthine dynamic, and, once in, we are tasked with remembering how to find our way out. That requires a special way of looking, one which the innate nature of our imagination is naturally skilled in helping us develop, and which the poet in us will dance a wild jig to if we play its tune.
I’m reminded of the travelling fiddler who, on their way to the next village through the fields, heard the sound of a distant melody and, in trying to find its source was led in circles, until, unable to find its point of origin, all that remained was the song itself and the realisation that this was a gift from the magical realms, a sacred gift which it was the fiddler’s responsibility to carry. It is a part of that responsibility to not only honour and acknowledge the source of the tune, when it is played, but to know when and how to play it, and when not. To claim it as his or her own would bring disaster upon the fiddler and their kin.
There is something of that responsibility that needs to be heeded now, not only to avoid hubris and unnecessary conflict but to ensure that we do not bring disaster down upon ourselves.
The laws of the other world are natural laws and we must build our world with care not to violate them.
Back in March last year, exactly on the equinox, Saturn began a brief three month journey into tropical Aquarius. Ten days after crossing the cusp, Saturn was met by Mars in the first degree of the fixed air sign. Later in the year, after traveling retrograde back into Capricorn for three and a half months, Saturn returned again to Aquarius and famously met with Jupiter, again in the first degree of the fixed air sign. Their meeting took place exactly on the December solstice, thus beginning their current 20 year cycle, and in so doing signalled a departure from two centuries of their joint influence over the earth signs.
For the next two centuries the new era of Saturn Jupiter cycles will be initiated in Air signs, and the focus on the mental sphere that this signals requires us to be very much aware of how Saturnian energies and qualities are being brought to bear on our minds and awareness, as well as how, in a Jupiterian sense, they are being disseminated. We will be tasked to become uber-conscious of the multiple nature and realms of consciousness and its underlying structures, not to mention thoughts themselves, what is actually in and on our minds and, most importantly, the nature of their source.
The contents, dynamics and infrastructure of personal consciousness will be given particular emphasis over the next two centuries; even though over one hundred years of western psychology has seen an attempt to bring comprehension to this very arena and its realities explored, what we are moving into now is a progression building on foundations that have been laid throughout the last two eras of Saturn Jupiter cycles, in earth and fire. These stretch back to the very beginnings of the modern scientific age.
We are now entering a new era of colonisation, one in which the indigenous nature of our own minds is under threat.
The exploration of human psychology has itself been a thought experiment, and the persistent philosophical ramifications of this experiment can be seen reflected in both the ‘hard problem’ of science, ie the search for consciousness through scientific methodologies, and the subsequent shaping of scientific ontologies. The progressive effect of these experiments is itself reflected in the question of soul, not least its survival within the industrial landscape and realms of the machine.
The search for soul, identified by C G Jung as a characteristic of the modern era, has had a reductive effect on what it means to be human, an effect that is currently being capitalised on by the transhumanist ideologues – under the influence of applied utilitarian modernist ideologies in particular, which are also very ‘Saturn in Aquarius’, we have now arrived at what contemporary philosophers are referring to as a ‘crisis of meaning’. Although there is a positive side to this, in so far as the debate that surrounds this crisis is forcing a higher level of creative thinking, it is also engendering a fractured and politically diverse, if not increasingly polarised mental environment. This too is being capitalised upon, incorporated into the ‘new order’ that we are seeing emerge.
In a far less than positive sense the transmutation of the body politic, which this new thinking is influencing directly, affects our everyday lives. A ‘new dominion’ is emerging, conveniently disguising itself within the shapeshifting Hegelian dialectic of our times. The corresponding political currents of ideology and political thought which are steering this establishment of new dominion can, for example, be seen quite clearly in such movements as Communitarianism, a brand of political ideology that underpins one of our times most notorious and pervasive, if not invasive, geo-political social experiments, namely Agenda 21/30.
In fact, Saturn was in mid Aquarius, just as it is now, when A21 was first officially adopted, back in 1992 – Agenda 21 is having its first Saturn return! Look to February 2022 for the first exact return, but, in the meantime, enjoy the build up.
Seeing what we are currently going through in terms of Saturn return may well help to make sense of what is happening in the world.
Seriously, the timetable for rollout can be mapped out against the planetary movements – but, the fact is that Communitarian Law carefully balanced and integrated with National and State Law, has been installed in virtually every government’s lexicon of control, over the last three decades. It is this that has so easily enabled Covid policy to be implemented worldwide simultaneously. (1)
However, while the self appointed architects of our future have it all planned and worked out, the growing cognisance being directed at this attempt at dominion is inevitably producing a backlash at grass roots level. This is not new; you could almost say that is the Jupiterian part of the deal, although for a counter-revolutionary kick we might expect the impulse to be coming more from Saturn’s co-ruler in Aquarius, Uranus.
Uranus is currently squaring Saturn from Taurus, but what matters here is that Uranian consciousness is of another order, and represents the kind of tangential, atypical thinking that will prove most effective against the spread of the new dominion.
We might well be acutely aware of a need to bring about a conscious revolution, if not a revolution in consciousness itself, in order to counter this drive for extended rulership over our individual and collective lives. This too is an actualisation of the Aquarian impulse, but it is also very much in keeping with the current domain being engineered by Saturn in Aquarius, and the current square from Uranus in Taurus; this describes a tussle between fixed earth and fixed air, and between two very polarised planetary archetypes, and it makes of this a pivotal point in our collective story, if not our planetary journey in time.
For sure, this is not the first time I have found myself saying that phrase in the last ten years, and turning points seem to pile up complexity at every turn, but, one thing really has changed – these are intense times, almost like no other.
At the time of Venus last retrograde in Gemini and transition to ‘Morning Star’ mode, May through July last year, I suggested that we should bring as much energy, focus and passion as possible to raising a counter culture – we can still do this, but, the momentum and means to do so are being undermined by a war of attrition, one that is currently operating under the guise of responses to the global ‘pandemic’ which has become branded on our times and freedoms. The response must be equally infectious, potentially at least as pervasive and represent the means to an end that once and for all rids our home planet of the power hungry parasites that plague it.
Even though we are now living on the cusp of a great mental revolution, within the compass of a truly radical rethinking of how we live our lives under A21/30 and the so called “Great Reset” we are witnessing yet another extension of the same power of dominion that has been at work in the world for millennia. Its no surprise that the Saturn Jupiter conjunction is often referred to as the ‘King Maker’. Manifestation of the power of dominion is part and parcel of the influence that Saturn and Jupiter bring to the elements as they are embodied within each 200 year cycle. The UN agendas and Klaus Schwab’s brainchild, the Great Reset’, so called, are being built on socio-economic foundations that are centuries old. In fact, the last 200 years emphasis on the earth signs has seen incredible developments that support the current manifestation in mastering the physical realm; colonising the Earth with industrial power and machine culture has delivered us into a reality that is dominated by technologies that are now themselves challenging their own physical boundaries and nature. (2)
That meeting at 0° Aquarius which began their current cycle, exactly in the midst of Saturn’s twin sign domain, Capricorn and Aquarius, lends itself very much to the transference of power from the physical into the mental sphere, and it does so through the lens of the ‘king makers’ own creations within the realms of industry and commerce.
It has reached its own turning point too; having created for itself a military industrial complex that is currently patenting technologies that manipulate space-time itself, the bounds of the known have been breached. The old corporate model, with its heavily competative machinisms of currency, has also come to the end of its material use by date, has outstripped its own market and is now transmuting into the brave new world of crypto-data driven VR realities. The virtual market however, once fully established and locked down, is unlimited. This could be, in fact almost certainly is, the precise arena in which control of the mind truly becomes the provenance of government, which is precisely what the word government means, only political power has spent much of the last two hundred years shifting its centre of gravity to within the newly crowned techno-corporate world, and that too is now giving the reality of political power a new structure and medium, while taking the meaning of dominion to new levels. The shift into the Aquarian era is being initiated through a collective transit of the digital, virtual world.
When Saturn crossed the cusp of Aquarius it was inevitable that the very structures of our social contracts, freedoms and connectivity would be brought into sharp focus – with Neptune squaring the Moon’s nodal axis through this time it should have come as no surprise that one kind of global infection or another would become an agent of Saturn’s manifest qualities. The pandemic, so called, is a Trojan horse, no question, as, by themselves the means for nudging us further into submission are far more difficult to sustain. The “pandemic” is the perfect deployment strategy, itself a perverse model of sustainable development. Only, we know what it is hiding.
Back in March last year it was notable how well the social restrictions that came into force, as well as their easing, fit with Saturn’s movements and breaching of the Aquarian cusp. The control of movement, imposition of restrictions on public services and social distancing spoke directly to the qualities of the ingress and transit. But Saturn’s journey through Aquarius lasts for twenty seven months – even though the ‘lock-ups’, for that is what they truly are, began with Saturn’s first pass a year ago, we are still only in month four of the transit proper.
So, the burning question – “what can we expect over the next two years?” – begins now to take on a whole new dimension. This is the temporal framework of the A21 Saturn return proper. Of course, there are many other planetary factors at work through the present time, but, the underlying theme of freedoms vs restrictions, so very reflective of Saturn in Aquarius, is now pretty much a constant, like it or not. So, we too need to capitalise on that, see it as a purposeful cause, and exploit it to our advantage. Two extremes are being created, and both are at work, fighting it out for the control of our minds.
At the moment this theme underpins everything, but especially within the mental sphere. Its potentially a deadly game, being played on a global scale, felt at the personal level, that can often seem as if the very fabric of everyday life is being dictated to on an archetypal scale. Saturn commands an archetype of control and hard work, but is probably better known as a symbol of death and karma. These are powers whose dynamics have been historically exploited through war and the assertion of political extremism by ruling powers to ruthless effect, often enough in the name of both unilateral and multi-lateral security and ‘national interests’, so called. Even while slavery has been its primary modus operandi, it is all, we have been and continue to be told, “For your own safety”.
The lesson must be learnt, before history turns full circle and it becomes, once again, too late.
Even the case of a perceived global health threat cannot, we are seeing increasingly, disguise the collective psychological infection that such archetypal forces induce. It is now becoming increasingly apparent, and spoken as such, that this time the war is being fought on a front that is, more than anywhere else, quite literally in our minds.
Some might say, “this is nothing new”, such is the reality of planetary upheavals, and even without an apparent pandemic, we are witnessing our planet sliding ever deeper into massive change, in fact, its happening throughout our solar system.
All the outer planets, whose collective archetypes are very much evident in the events of this time, are going through transformation. Neptune has been seeing massive storm systems developing, Uranus is flaring, and Pluto has recently seen a profound drop in atmospheric pressure. Planetary change is endemic, but, here on the planet Earth humans are busy, it seems, making matters worse for themselves.
It may be worth noting here that later in the year, August/September, all the outer planets, along with Saturn and Jupiter, will be retrograde for a period. We will need learn how to metabolise and integrate the experiences we are having now in a way that allows us to make use of their archetypal power, rather than be used by it.
And, it helps to realise that it doesn’t have to be like this – that, in fact, is the point and our ability to shape our own destiny is very much in the spotlight. Our own personal destiny is being called into question and countering the forces involved may seem an overwhelming ask, but, the real change we might seek remains ours for the making, and, as has been said many times before, it all starts under our own two feet. Divesting of the dependencies and attachments we have to the digital world is a strong strategy, reducing and simplifying is a good strategy for beginning this process. This is a new skill which needs to be learned and developed, especially in the face of current limitations being imposed on individual and society alike. Its will require both reskilling in basic living, and a well grounded emotional sense of self.
These basic and vital abilities have also been under attack, are exposed as a weakness, open to exploitation by mislpaced authoritarianism.
The high level of restriction and disconnection that have been experienced through draconian and misplaced ‘lock-down’ measures alone can be overwhelming, and if prolonged, can induce high levels of emotional torque into the simplest of circumstances, a reality that, if sustained, will always have profound consequences – for many this is a disaster, symptoms of traumatic stress syndromes are on the increase, especially among the young adults, where as much as a 67% increase in suicides has been seen in some parts of the western world over the last year.
Right now the Saturn factor is very much present, and although its severity is under scrutiny and being adjusted, as lockdowns ease and yet at the same time remain, as a threat if not a latent underlying reality, things might look quite different were it not for the square from Uranus in Taurus.
Uranus wants to transform all it comes into contact with, and almost from the beginning has been affecting the stability of the regime which Saturn might otherwise reflect unrelentingly. Even more so, Uranus, although co-ruler of Aquarius with Saturn, is not playing on an even pitch with Saturn for, while Saturn is very firmly domicile, and has been on home ground since entering Capricorn very shortly before the December solstice of 2017, Uranus is in Taurus for the long haul and will remain in the fixed earth sign for five more years, by which time Saturn will have passed out of Aquarius, through Pisces and into Aries, along with Neptune – my, thats going to be interesting!
What Uranus is transforming within the natural earth realms, Saturn is overseeing through deployment in the human realm. Much of the context in which the deployment and purposeful use of Uranus transformation of infrastructures and resources is taking place, is being conditioned by Saturnian controls and limitations.
Uranus, it has been said, always wins out in their tussles, but, when these two planets work together, frankly, they are capable of changing the face of reality. And that is very much the applied planetary theme of the moment, especially where technological experimentation is being applied to the earth realm. The vaccination programme is such an experiment, although the technologies embedded within its midst are testing our future as humans to a far more insidious and irreversible extant than is openly admitted to by its architects, scientists and designers.
In case you haven’t noticed, and there are many, it seems, who haven’t, We are fighting for our lives. Under duress of an agenda driven with psychotic fixation on its outcome, time in its most rigid sense is not on our side. Saturn is, in the most traditional sense, the ruler of time and mortality and, if present trends are an indication, the Aquarian ideal is currently showing a very steely edge of inhumanity that reflects this.
The continuation of the ‘war on terror’, the 21st century’s defining oxymoron, which began this millennium has now been extended into and by the heady synthesis of medical, corporate and political determinism. Militarised against a common foe, its alleged enemy is invisible and pandemic; but, the big con in that war has always been about who exactly is in the cross-hairs. The threat, however it is packaged now, is mass die-off, and even though the hardware facilitating the infection of the biome with atom scaled nano-technologies feeds the subtle if saturating encroachment of a growing empire of digital enslavement, its primary weapon of mass destruction is, it seems, fear.
From the extremity and insidious nature of the Saturnian treatment alone which people worldwide are being subjected to, the more gullible and blinkered among us might be forgiven for thinking, and many do, that the real threat is each other – we are the enemy in the midst, not of a biological war against infection, but against self programming psychological and physical control of our freedom and liberty. This extends into climate and environmental threats, in which we are given to believe that ‘our’ part is totally culpable, until of course we get on board with ‘the green new deal’ and ‘build back better’. Its almost as if you could shuffle Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus, Taurus and Aquarius, and no matter how you deal them, as long as you comply, “the future never looked so good”.
As someone said, we are being encouraged to build our own prison, and to believe that we are being good citizens in the process.
The future is what we make it, and, if the new Aquarian era has gotten off to a disturbingly dystopian beginning, the uncanny thing is, it is all very recognisable. In fact, we have been carefully if not relentlessly primed to view our past as if this was inevitable, given the evidence. Given the prescribed role in remedying the situation, for all the posturing around carbon taxes and renewables, we should feel compelled, if not to accept it, then to know that role as an inevitability grown out of our own behaviour and ways of life. That, at least, is what the psychological terrain that we have been navigating over the last century or more has prepared us to think.
But, its a lie.
Cherished, common sense ideals have been co-opted into agendas and repackaged to provide perfect cover for the ultimate coup, no less than an attempt to overthrow once and for all the threat which free thinking human beings present to the self appointed architects of our future.
Its an impressive edifice of control, planned down to the last detail, its infrastructure of advancing technology and its magical ‘benefits’ the perfect Trojan horse enabling its roll-out. An immaculately conceived vision of deadly control, so readily mirroring Saturn in Aquarius and, through A21, the Saturn return from hell. Seeing through the lie is a part and parcel of dealing with that Saturn return.
Importantly, as is always the case with such transits, there does come a point of release; there is hope. Moreover, the emphasis this new era brings will naturally seed a counter movement, at grass roots level. Even though that too will have been planned for, the limitations and control leveraged against it are itself a rebuilding of temporal realities within the mental sphere, it is in our power to up our game and see them for what they are.
Where this operation against our minds differs this time is in its attempt at co-opting us into the transformation of the planet through a maddeningly complex and pervasive synthesis of the natural and entirely artificial.
We need to be aware and acknowledge that a great many of us have already been pulled into the honey trap with such ease and are now unwittingly entering the world of bio-computing, virtual, non-physical incarnation in and out of time as a basis for reality, and of our freedoms within its design led social transactions. Its blockchain shackles are right now dismantling the old currency of our consumer world and dangling the chrome plated crypto lure of decentralised enrichment inside a technological prison we are building keystroke by keystroke.
Be under no doubt. The global transformation now creating a virtualised financial market place that trades on human capital, currently priming itself on weaponised health regimes and performance oriented pre-determined paths of credit generating skill acquisition, will make virtual slaves of us all, unless we do raise our consciousness and our game around its reality and nature.
The way to combat it is not in simply avoiding it and attempting to build a new world based on restoration of care and natural health to this planet; left to its own devices, and those of its makers, there will be nowhere to run, unless we comprehend the nature of this beast, well enough to counter it. We must recognise its attributes within ourselves and, having identified their shadow nature, integrate them, fully, not as a reality become manifest, but as an accepted aspect and reflection of our own consciousness, being shown back to us right now.
A lifetime’s work, we must realise that intrinsic to raising levels of consciousness, we must also learn how to maintain it, work at it, daily be aware of it, moment to moment even, and in so doing be willing, in the spirit of an integrated Saturn Uranus archetype, if such a thing exists, to work at raising it further, to the highest level we can in fact.
Here Saturn teaches us our limitations by default. The hard problem of the moment teaches us the value of our efforts. In essense it reveals the hidden gift, of surrendering to the effect of searching for the light, of reaching for the ideal it represents, namely and inevitably that we will encounter the reality of our own shadow on the way.
The covert journey into transhumanist, digital slavery, has been hidden for long enough beneath the road that leads to the desirable outcomes which we most are seeking to realise ‘for the sake of the world’. Those desirable outcomes are repackaged and sold back to us through agendas and new deals which we see evolving rapidly in the world right now, and all of this is a mirror of that shadow.
It does well to remember Jung’s admonition, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is”.
For many, because our very aspirations and good intents are being used against us to fulfil those agendas and new deals, the shadow we encounter in the process of exposing their reality will almost perfectly fit the shape of own own. We are called upon to know and understand this relative reflection of the inner and outer worlds, to grasp the vitally important interplay of its dynamic within our own lives and experience, and the part we are playing in its dissemination right now. To be cognisant of the nature of our resistance to it, which may in fact at an unconscious level be feeding its dissemination, is essential – focusing on the light, and our light alone, is not only not enough, it will inevitably feed that shadow, and its manifest presence in the world.
These are hard Saturn in Aquarius lessons in which our consciousness is the field and locus, and we are the compass of our own journey. Any journey into consciousness that seeks enlightenment will inevitably lead to an encounter, our personal encounter, with the unconsciousness, and not only our own but, importantly in our times, the manifestation of the collective unconscious, so called, very much the locus of the shadow of our times and human presence.
The Aquarian age demands our realism, right from the get go, and Saturn, working with Jupiter and Uranus to disseminate and inspire the work this involves, is making damned sure we get this vital realisation.
Not all will……but, its the ones that do who will prevail.
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Last image : “Shelter to Opening”, by Autumn Skye Morrison
Notes
(1) It was Niki Raapana Friedrich who alerted me to this fact. I highly recommend her books and seeking out the work she has done with her daughter Nordica Friedrich around the history and current manifestations of Communitarianism. These include :
“2020: Our Common Destiny and the Anti-Communitarian Manifesto” ISBN : 9780981451923
The first decan of Capricorn, being ruled by Jupiter, somewhat smooths the path for the largest known planet of our solar system. Traditionally Jupiter is considered uncomfortable in the cardinal Earth sign – however…..
……although Jupiter will initially unbalance, magnify and grab our attention, especially in those areas of our lives signified by Capricorn in our chart, use this creatively, perhaps as a blessing in disguise if the experience is troubling.
Such matters are being raised now so that we can take advantage, a Jupiterian trait, of the positive potential of this next two months or so.
The negatives are there too but this is a time in which we can see a dynamic balance at work between the positives and negatives, the highs and lows. Keep to your whirling centre and, if nothing else dance, spin and gather momentum.
Then, it’s down to work, will and focused intent – there is magic to be had with Capricornian Jupiter but it requires clear knowledge of its objective and a well developed understanding of its protocols to work that magic well.
The coming period up until the middle of January 2020 is where our best preparation for the coming year can take place. Don’t rush in; take your time, remember to look where you are going, and don’t bang your head-on the way in…..
…..now is not the time for thunder.
As always, with Jupiter aim for the highest good, but be vigilant of your works – remember the story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice…..
Jupiter is now accelerating out of hard aspect with Neptune and we would do well to take notice – Neptune’s square with the giant planet has acted as an internal damper to Jupiter’s influence, but now, with Jupiter entering into an unaspected phase, its growing reach will become a latent backdrop to the field, magnifying the feeling of urgency and immediacy which the remaining phases of the current lunation throw into our midst.
We may feel that we are embroiled in events that extend well beyond our personal reach, a fact of these times which of late has been pushing emotional boundaries and compromising inner balance. The feeling is now becoming sharper and harder edged, demanding a more decisive approach to obstacles and problems when they come up, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture in the process.
Perspective is everything now and this is where Jupiter’s influence can make the coming weeks, through to the end of the month, really count.
The bigger picture can be more easily grasped when we recognise the patterns that have been created by significant events in recent times. It may seem that a veil is being lifted as things come into sharper focus. When we do see the same telltale signatures recurring our perceptions change and a shift becomes tangible. This may feel like things are coming to a head, indeed, by month’s end we might well need to withdraw our energies and reassess. But, its a wave, a preparation for coming events in the coming year.
Between now and the end of the month we will notice weak spots and vulnerable areas of our lives become highlighted; appropriate strategies and care need to be activated, but these are also pre-emptive, calling for the wisdom of our personal experience to be brought to bear – at the full moon on the 13th October, which squares Pluto, the field carries a depth charge which is likely to be reflected outwardly, accompany world events and may well rattle cages.
A reality check will be in order as we head towards last quarter and we’ll revisit this in the run up to new Moon.
Until then, remember it is not only the outer world that is changing, and a much greater vision for our future is undergoing its own transformation – we are all a part of this, no matter our platform or beliefs….be of good spirits and take Jupiter’s benevolent nature to heart…..
This article was originally drafted in October 2017, as a commentary on Jupiter’s entry into Scorpio at that time – at that time I didn’t feel there was enough solid tangibility to its ‘correspondences’ to publish. But, it is published now, edited and updated, largely in response to the evolution of the situation which I then saw coinciding with Jupiter’s ingress, and more specifically to how it is now developing; with Saturn’s ingress of Capricorn it now appears to be reaching a critical juncture. Mars is now within orb of conjunction with Jupiter in midst of Scorpio, sextiling Pluto in Capricorn in the process, and the energy surrounding the issues raised is coming to a head. There are no coincidences here, in fact.
Things that happen when Jupiter changes signs can often seem larger than life, swing wildly into view, bend our sense of reality under heavy gusts of divine largess. How were we to know that, this time round, after a year and a month of playing blustering sugar-daddy in convivial if politically motivated Libra, that Zeus on the threshold of Scorpio is more likely to kick the bloody doors down while hurling obscenities after a long night on the razzle than crash on the sofa and drool his way into the oblivion of deep morphic dreams. No, Morpheus realms have instead been turned inside out, and its definitely ‘not a pretty sight’ to behold.
When you get down to giving it some thought we seem, for years, if not centuries, to have been on an accelerating curve of intense and, at times, insanity inducing glimpses over the edge of the known and familiar. We have been dragged here, make no mistake, by psychopathy. Put it down to hubris, too. In the undertow of ‘Post Enlightenment’ paradigms in particular, the human dis-ease has latterly become a specious hunger in the soul, induced through both anti-theistic rationality and agnostically irrational drives. Its primary contemporary symptom, a blind adrenalin fueled rush towards an indefinable goal built on an intoxicating mix of dreams and technological advance, little more, however, than the emergence of a primary survival instinct, serves to, if nothing else, fill the human created ‘god-hole’. The Technocratic task is as endless as it is fruitless, barren of the very thing it both denies and seeks most, return of its own essence to its self. Spirit to embodied soul, in other words, except in a false body. Herein lies the redundancy of Ai, transhumanism, the genomic machine culture of the future.
In some ways however we are, at this late (and early) stage, under the benefit of a technologically induced illusion, being better connected, more aware of humanity’s madness as it happens here, there and everywhere than ever before; but, the madness itself, that hasn’t in essence changed at all. Its pedigree is as old as the gods themselves, at least in their classical psychosis, the dysfunctional nature of their archetypal relationships. The cost of hubristic ambition, where it is embodied in those who would seek godlike stature, humans have taken on this dynamic, and fuck the consequences.
Those at the top are as corrupt and power hungry as they ever were, sick with perverse addiction to usery and debauched self indulgence. Under self appointed rulers and material aristocracy the lives of ordinary folk have been toyed with mercilessly, bled of soul to feed those who would be demigods. Many now are awakened to this horror, have been for generations, but, even now, after centuries of revolution, rebellion and organised murder, a lobotomised mass of shitlarks remain subservient if not oblivious to their “master’s” machinations while quietly being sucked numb by a vampiric cult of violence, cultural enslavement and the opiating glamour of its oppressively kitsch emptiness. The fingerprints of that emptiness were smeared across the celestial mirror when Jupiter stumbled across that threshold into Morpheus’ realms. The planets conspired to reveal them.
For a brief time on October 10th a grand cross was formed by the waning third quarter Moon in Gemini opposing Saturn in Sagittarius, and by Chiron in Pisces opposing Mars next to Venus in Virgo. Activating the third decans of the mutable signs this brief geocentric alignment signaled a change of atmosphere with a moment of silent absorption and mood shift. In itself, if it was a quietus it was imbued with a cessation of qualities, both shock induced numbness, searching through wreckage for salvagable pieces of normality in the aftermath of franken-storms, engineered into existence in plain sight, and suspension of disbelief in the face of increasingly tangible cognitive dissonance, shock in the face of reality being stripped bare by psychopathy. It was also a pause with growing substance, less than subtly subject to effect and gathering momentum, as when a swollen water droplet breaks free of a branch hanging over a dark pool and briefly becomes a morphing cell of plasma, undefined except in its own accelerating essence. You know how it feels, when you undeniably sense something ahead; what was it ‘the Potus’ had said a few days before, something about “the calm before the storm”?
Within 24 hours, as the Moon moved into its last quarter, Jupiter entered Scorpio, the pool became one sizeable drop greater and the ripples of ‘atmospheric change’ began to radiate out.
Harvey Weinstein, conveniently exemplifying one cultic facet of the endemic problem, was outed at the precise moment Zeus/Jupiter crashed Scorpio. The full extent of the crime and abuse here is perhaps not yet fully grasped, and perhaps wont even begin to be until this transit has fully run its course. Commentators, such as Clif High, have observed that the dark underbelly of ‘Pizzagate’ and its ilk will run on even farther, continue to get darker and stretch all the way into 2022. That would see Jupiter straddling the Aries Pisces cusp and the Moon’s nodes on the Taurus Scorpio axis squared by Saturn in Aquarius, with Saturn coming into a potent closing square with Uranus in Venus realms. However. Violence against women and children is, as Lee Maracle says, intimately connected with violence against the Earth, and our future. Such violation must stop.
Violence ‘drugs’, throws fuel on the fire, and as a drug has become culturally endorsed. Digitalised, virtualised, rendered remote, it becomes dangerously and equally anti-realistically addictive – meanwhile, simultaneously, the shit is literally being kicked out of people’s lives. That has been the underlying dynamic of a long long time; and yet, it persists, and its field of operation is now shifting.
Weaponisation is the indicator, signalling that the post-human condition is ’embedding’. Climate, tectonics, genomics, organic life-forms, water, energy forms, economics, culture, religion, philosophies and beliefs, mentalities are all now subject to its programs and implementation. All are converging.
The realm of Morpheus, once turned inside out, fast becomes the perfect stage on which this psycho-drama can be dreamed into, given body and acted out.
Morphing the Earth’s magnetic field has become the plaything of a sick religion whose priests are as cold to the consequences as the ninth ring of Hell – directed energy weapons that straddle borders are no less responsible for the changes we are seeing now in our atmosphere than their airborne equivalents are for igniting forest fires that burn houses, but not trees. The good folk of Cali know what I mean. Atmospheric ionisation and heating, and heavy metal saturation of air and land are pounding the shit out of the planet’s, and our own, immune systems. A grid is being constructed, both physical and psychological, a control grid, and everything below the ionosphere is subject to it. Funny thing is, it is happening right in front of our eyes and yet ‘the narrative’ is wrong, consistently; we know it is.
Atmospheric change was also seen to be pounding the shit out of the lives of ordinary folk in the Caribbean and Gulf States over the second and third quarter of 2017, in fact last year’s hurricane season saw 11 tropical storms generated since early April, one of which performed a tight 360 degree loop, another of which ‘went north’ and licked European coasts to a froth. Amongst them Irma, Jose and Harvey created a spookily anticipated level of both chaos and real suffering while, all the while, an uneasy edginess, a feeling that things were getting out of hand grew beneath the surface. Why? Because the ‘knowing’ of what was really going down was there, growing in the background, all along; just, not loud enough to be heard. No-one, however, in the western-centric media mentioned South Africa where, in one devastating event simultaneous with the hurricanes, deforestation and torrential rain collided to create the perfect conditions for a deadly landslide which took over 600 lives……such is the state of the world.
Jupiter ‘does-it-big’ where ever he goes, but in Scorpio, the home of Pluto and Mars, things can get very dark beneath those burgeoning thunder clouds.
Subtle, or not, as this transition might otherwise have been to human senses and sensibilities the capacity of Scorpio to absorb impacts belies Jupiter’s role in amplifying and disseminating their effects, a capacity quite capable of affecting not only terrestrial lives but the fundamental integrity of the planetary matrix as well. The priests of scientism concede that our largest planet is the solar system’s ‘keeper’, but, despite being the bouncer on our doorstep, Jupiter the ‘comet catcher’ sounds more like a Marvel character, and doesn’t appear overtly in this role in mythology. Why?
For a cosmological image here, flashback and think comet Shoemaker Levy and its separation into ten parts, lined up and evenly spaced as it plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere in July 1994. Jupiter was in Scorpio at that time as well. Regardless Jupiter’s scientifically endorsed reputation as comet catcher, a protective role as much as a mysterious one, what might have been overlooked in this spectacle is the fact that Shoemaker Levy’s division and impacts left us a message, one that while it certainly left an impression has yet to be fully appreciated, let alone deciphered. This is about to change. And, given that it is the citadel of science whose walls will be crumbling, a controlled demolition if they can help it, such disclosure will not happen in the way we are being led to expect.
So much is happening ‘out there’ which doesn’t get reported ‘in here’. And, when it does, if it appears in the Mainstream Media (whatever that is these days), its all ‘controlled’……
……the recent faux ‘disclosure’ attempt, like so much else we have ‘known’ about all along, will pale in comparison to the shifts in chronology and rewriting of histories which true disclosure will bring, and continue to bring this year. But, this is the issue where all paths will converge; we must keep our minds open at this time, especially if we are to overcome that biggest of stumbling blocks, incredulity. That could be one suitable word for describing the shadow effect of Jupiter in Scorpio.
As the new calendar year opens we not only find Mars edging ever closer to the big guy with the thunderbolts, but the charge generated by Jupiter’s foray up the Via Combusta these last few months has been slowly amping up the pressure. Our arachnid sensibilities tell us new storms are brewing in this atmospheric cauldron. These are going to be unlike anything we have seen yet, when they break – while the heavens may open to reveal our brethren, fake or not, on the ground, among humans, Pluto’s sextile from the political hot bed of Capricorn will make sure that big names are on the hit list – the purge has thousands of sealed indictments to deliver, and Saturn is in town.
We are witnessing a time which, for all its unmediated obscurity, is unprecedented, and the power struggles it has been stirring up are now coming to a head. If and when we see the waters break, when Jupiter turns retrograde in March and Mars catches up to Saturn, we might just wake up to find that we’ve been lucid dreaming in the realms of Morpheus all this time.
images :
top – Horns of Jericho, HR Giger;
mid – CERN, ‘satanic’ ritual, 2016.
lower – Jupiter with impact points of comet Shoemaker Levy 9 showing in near infrared
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 togo 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 oppositeis 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’
At a time when both Chinese and Russian ministers of foreign affairs have issued diplomatic warnings to the USA administration to ‘cool it’ with North Korea, and Kim Jong-Un, the NK leader, has provocatively stated that the US has done nothing but fail through its aggressive actions in Libya, Iraq and Syria, it comes as no surpise to find that the current planetary transits are falling squarely on hot spots within the charts of those concerned. Such is the current of our times.
From the perspective of planetary aspects alone, the situation is almost perfectly if not precariously poised. As I write, Venus is stationing direct, conjunct Chiron in Pisces, both squaring Saturn in Sagittarius. Mercury is newly retrograde in early Taurus and the Sun is conjunct with Uranus in Aries. Jupiter in Libra is slowly slipping out of exact square with Pluto in Capricorn while simultaneously re-developing its waning inconjunct aspect with Neptune, also in Pisces. A complex of tensions and stress points by themselves, both dissolutionary and fluxing, veiling and exposing, this is a matrix of uncertainty and shifting polarities, not least of all between inner and outer dynamics. The key players are hotlining the moment and anything can happen. But, if the ‘drums of war’ are beating, what of Mars?
The red planet is having his Algol moment, aligned with Medussa’s star while tightening a waxing inconjunct with Saturn, an aspect that will become exact as the Moon joins with Pluto on April 18th; not a time to try and stare out the wrathful war inflamed goddess! It is an understatement to say that a conscious adjustment to the deeper imports of the situation now developing seems necessary, if not inevitable, and the US president needs to pay heed to his Russian and Chinese advisories. However, Mars is also transiting the USA’s Neptune Pluto midpoint in the Sibly chart….we should not expect too much diplomacy, or truthfulness from the US administration at this time, especially when it comes to displays of aggression, but nevertheless, that is the necessary work in hand.
Next stop for Mars over the coming months are its transit to the US 6th house Uranus followed by the US Descendant, and, as the year heats up towards the third and last Jupiter Uranus opposition in September, Mars transits in succession the US Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Sun, all in the USA’s 7th house. A rush of adrenalin around foreign policy is not what we all need from the USA right now or in the near future. Transiting Mars will also square the US midheaven and 10th house Libran Saturn in the process. Any notions of diplomacy will be severely tested. And then, of course, there’s the maverick in Trump’s sights.
According to the January 8th 1983 birth date for Kim Jong-Un (1) transiting Saturn now sits on the North Korean leader’s natal Neptune, Mars is currently applying in opposition to KJU’s natal Uranus+Jupiter, and transiting retrograde Mercury is exactly square KJU’s natal Mercury+Venus conjunction in Aquarius. There is not a lot of encouragement in this, or hope for peaceful communications. The problem here is not only that crosscurrents of communication are being exacerbated by rash hedonism, rigid idealogy and hardly veiled threat, but, Kim Jong-Un’s birth time is in question – in fact there is even dispute over the year itself. I have gone with the most frequently refered to natal planetary positions for him.
In all cases however, Pluto in Capricorn has been and will continue to be transiting KJU’s natal Sun, trining North Korea’s Sun in Virgo, which will itself come into play in the last quarter of this year when Mars and Venus conjunct the North Korean Sun. Economic factors that will undoubtedly affect the dollar could play a crucial role not only in America’s global identity (2), but, could feed directly into the North Korean scenario, if it has not been toned down or resolved by then – several commentators have recently expressed the opinion that an economic collapse around the dollar markets will fuel global tensions and instability, if not trigger and deepen further conflict. With heavy investment in the military budget by the Trump administration one has to wonder what is behind the sudden about face from Trump, who previously expressed the desire for seeking peaceful solutions to conflict, now resorting to the apparent opposite.
We could go further but it would only be putting detail on what is already becoming clear – this is a geopolitical minefield that is ready to trip, and room for wrong moves is fast diminishing.
The obvious question is, what is on Donald Trump’s mind right now?
Lobbing bombs on foreign soil, without recourse to Congress, is one answer, and not just any bomb, target or foreign soil….aside from the Syrian question, and the veracity of allegations being thrown about, or the fact that the largest of non-nuclear bombs has just been dropped by the USA on Afghanistan, there is a quality of what appears to be recklessness and petulance being displayed here, a demonstrative if unpredictable show of strength with a strong reactive quality built into its effect, if not its causes. So, what of those causes?
In Donald Trump’s natal chart the Mars connection is through the Trump MC, which it is currently transiting, and by square to natal 12th house Mars – a sense of damn-it-all ‘might or bust’ has been undoubtedly coming to the fore, but what else is feeding it? Transiting Uranus+Sun are squaring natal 11th house Saturn+Venus and, besides the ‘protectionist’ values behind Trump’s policies this might imply, the chauvinist reactionary is simultaneously on display. Transiting Venus+Chiron are squaring Trump’s natal 10th house Sun+Uranus+North Node, suggesting that a crisis surrounding deeper values and potential for reckless disregard of consequences is feeding in, and at a soul level – is he losing direction, or getting the wrong directives fed to him? We might be more reassured if the Donald would only just step back, take the necessary deep breaths, collect himself and take in the bigger picture! ASAN put it nicely in the following image….
If we go to Donald Trump’s Solar Arc chart we find tr.Jupiter applying to SA Pluto and tr.Mars squaring SA Uranus. Trumps SA Mars is also, interestingly, conjunct KJU’s natal Pluto+Saturn (3) – the degrees involved here are those that will be triggered by the Jupiter Uranus opposition in September. And, Trump’s SA Uranus is now conjunct his own natal Mars. That Uranus Mars flip flop is highly significant in respect of the current ploys Trump is exhibiting, but, Uranus, Pluto, Saturn and Mars are a highly volatile and stubborn mix by themselves, perhaps revealing something of the internal pressures he is under, a wilful need to exhibit ultimate power perhaps being its natural projection, through shock if nothing else; but, it is Trump’s progressed chart that shows the immediacy of our rightful concerns.
Uranus and the Sun are now transiting Donald Trump’s progressed Descendant and this degree will see transiting Mercury station direct conjunct tr.Uranus on May 4th. The erratic and unpredicatable behaviour we are seeing is amplified by Jupiter sitting opposite on Trump’s Ascendant in the progressed chart. When Mercury stations on May 4th the transiting Sun will square Trump’s natal 12th house Pluto-Mars midpoint – a clear message to the world that he means business, or that the power has gone to his head and he has lost his marbles!? Maybe both, as it will also trigger his progressed Mercury+Pluto 10th house conjunction.
There is more in Donald Trump’s current and approaching astrology that could be brought in but, already, this has all the halmarks of a personal hiatus being played out on the world stage. As if to drive home the point, Trump’s progressed Uranus is currently conjunct the USA’s 7th house Mars – it is true that Trump began with a key stroke, throwing out the TPP and signalling a snub at the globalist corporatocracy, but, even this is now being called into question with ‘Goldman Sachs’ in the Whitehouse – if ever there was a case for the suitability of a presidential candidate being astrologically vetted before attaining office, this would give adequate evidence of its necessity. But, suitability for office is one thing, and ability to weather the unforeseen storm is another.
Trump’s natal DC although ruled by Uranus and Saturn, being in the final degree of Aquarius, is courting both Neptunian idealism and Jupitarian expansionism in his 7th house dealings. With a Gemini Sun+Uranus+NN natal 10th house conjunction and Venus ruling his MC he is oriented towards transforming through material values and means from his position as leader – he probably feels that his leadership is both beneficial and yet holds a devil may care attitude, if only others would trust him. Trouble is Donald has a deficit of Earth in his natal chart – its either an outward show covering or compensating for an inner lack, or it is unconsciously feeding an inner need. But, the infamous if not downright quirky Trump linguistics and need to communicate with the populace via unofficial channels, which all to often simply provides fuel for ‘the opposition’ and calls forth widespread derision, needs to be backed up with solid, consistent and dependable reasons to trust him and, still only four months into his administration, the deep political uncertainties that now surround the President are testing his ability to both hold to his original agenda as well as hold fire.
If this short excursion into this mundane arena of personal and international interactivity is to be of any value it must, however, firstly bring a sense of perspective to what is, on the face of it, a perplexing and uncertain time on the world stage through a glimpse into the astrology applying to two of its key players. The value this brings to us as individuals may be limited by our own personal bias or concerns, but, the inherent dynamics, revealed or not, do affect us all.
In the next post we’ll provide something by way of an antidote and delve into ‘the other side’ of things, quite lterally, and take a look at the cosmological dance now shaping up that is fueled by changes sourced far beyond our home planet. One of the chief protagonists here is Saturn who, besides squaring Venus and Chiron, is currently conjunct the Galactic Centre, highlighting what in our present circumstances might well be an all to easily disregarded underlying aspect of our collective planetary transformation. Although we will be focusing on a much more universal aspect of these times, Saturn’s role in this is also one that may develop to become a key moment for President Trump, especially when Saturn (now retrograde) stations direct on his natal 4th house Moon.
But, we’ll leave the Trump saga behind now and, with the next post firmly in mind, set our controls for the heart of our galaxy……oh, and by the way, that tweet trolling the Donald from Earth orbit is actually a direct quote from Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell :
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch‘.”
(1) Kim Jong-Un’s birth time is unknown and the year is in dispute – however, personel from within the Kim household have testified to the year being 1983 and this is generally prefered over the alternative 1984 date; the day is verified as January 8th.
(2) The Venus Mars conjunction in mid-Virgo opposes Neptune in September 2017, squaring the US Asc and opposing the progressed US 7th house Sun. The Jupiter Uranus opposition of the same time activates progressed US Venus on the cusp of the 9th house – I have flagged up this date in previous posts as an indicator for hyperinflation, and it is almost certain to bring financial shock, effecting both internal security and foreign trade, if not investments, both military and financial. Pluto also squares the US progressed 2nd house Mars and 8th house Chiron through this time. A deeper analysis of this and the founding Wall Street chart, and its progressed chart, will be upcoming here nearer the time.
(3) Saturn’s position in the 1983 chart for Kim Jong-Un is occupied by Pluto in Scorpio in the alternative 1984 chart, while Mars occupies Pluto’s 1983 position in the 1984 chart.
“……the companion Inyan created for himself was the Thunder spirits. Their form was so terrible that they must conceal themselves within a cloud, or people would go insane merely from glancing at them. But their purpose is noble. They are here to rid the world of filth. They are here to wash away the demons, like the ones who destroyed (and are destroying) your mother. Like the ones who want to destroy you…..” (1)
As this article goes to press the deadline to clear the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock approaches – 2.00pm local time. By the time you read this it will almost certainly have passed and the battle for Standing Rock will have reached what may prove to be its crucial turning point. Time will tell, but, we are witnessing a moment in history that could be repeating itself, seeking resolution. The background for this possibility is clearly reflected in the astrology that links Standing Rock with one of the most crucial and well known events in the history of the struggle between the indigenous peoples of North America and the armed forces of the European settlers, the battle which has come to be known as ‘Little Bighorn’.
The onset of Lt. Colonel Custer’s assault on the Sioux nations on the 25th of June 1876 and its eventual bloody conclusion on the 26th give us a timeframe in which to reference the planetary positions then, and the period from 22nd February 2017 to the new Moon/solar eclipse of Feb. 26th give us the relevant timeframe for their position in the present.
The aim of this article is not necessarily to forecast any outcome for the present stand-off at the camp of the Sacred Stone, but, it provides adequate insight and food for thought to alert us to a powerful correspondence between these two events, a heads-up to its signifiance and repercussive nature.
The current planetary backdrop for the 22nd to 26th February 2017 sees a major T-square playing out between Jupiter rx in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries, both squaring Pluto in Capricorn; Mars is within 3 degrees of Uranus as I write, just 4 days from their conjunction in Aries which becomes exact at the eclipse. Alongside this, Saturn in Sagittarius is connecting into the T square through sextile with Jupiter and trine with Uranus.
The release point of this T square is opposite Pluto, around the 16-20° mark of Cancer. Going straight to the correspondences we quickly find that they speak for themselves as Mars is currently squaring its LBH (Little Bighorn) degree – that degree is 19 Cancer. Mars will arrive at this degree on July 4th 2017, American ‘Independence Day’.
We find LBH Saturn in the 9th degree of Pisces, the degree of the solar eclipse on 26th February.
Chiron, presently squaring Saturn, is precisely on the degree of the LBH north node.
Although not necessarily acting as triggers the present transiting positions of the major outer planets reveal some of the qualitative tensions now being played out.
In the LBH chart Jupiter opposes Pluto from Scorpio; Jupiter is now quincunxing LBH Pluto, while Uranus quincunxes LBH Jupiter.
Pluto is also presently quincunxing LBH Uranus.
Mercury, now entering Pisces, is quincunxing LBH Venus. In addition Mercury is also in softer aspect to other luminaries in the LBH matrix, trining LBH Sun and sextiling LBH Neptune, and as the solar eclipse approaches Mercury is transiting the current lunar south node’s degree, activating awareness of our spiritual past and the legacy of events related to this.
In the LBH timeframe the Moon transits the present position of the lunar north node, not a temporal marker necessarily, but a transit that brought it into opposition over June 25-6th 1876 with Saturn. The solar eclipse is effectively activating these degrees across the lunar nodal axis.
This may be a time for closure to be sought, but, our ability to realise this will certainly be founded on more than transient phenomena.
Although the quincunxes suggest the tension underpinning the playing out of the unresolved legacies of Little Bighorn, and the disconnect between the forces now involved, the hard aspects and direct correspondences between the events by transit of key degrees confirms the connection. Mid points are also brought into play and Pluto is also currently applying to the LBH Saturn Jupiter midpoint, directly tieing in the current T square.
But, it is within the present Uranus Mars conjunction that we find the most striking connection and transiting Mars is undoubtedly the catalyst, a warning that the unresolved ghosts, if not energies, of conflict are being raised once more. Could it be that Chiron’s position on the LBH north node indicates the that healing needed for resolution is finally manifesting, that its time has come, or will the wound of the past be deepened by these triggers? Will the ghosts be laid to rest or infuse the present with a spirit of retribution?
It is notable that a 26th Feb. solar eclipse chart cast for Standing Rock (14.58 UTC) has the current T square directly on the Asc/Dc axis with Mars and Uranus rising – Pluto squares from the mid 10th house. This carries a heavily loaded potential for resurgent and insurgent action. Strong leadership with powerful revolutionary potential is indicated in this, but, it can swing both ways and with Jupiter in Libra setting in the west, the eclipsing of justice is not beyond the scope of this chart either.
The Mars square suggests that conflict will continue to unfold, with Uranus potentially bringing unprecedented and traumatic consequences. There could also be significant breakthrough as a result of the enforced eviction. This may not be obvious at first but there are larger patterns at work in this and it’s dynamic is going to continue, and these dynamics are now applying out on a much wider scale.
It helps to reflect upon how crucial ‘leadership’ is in the current time and, in terms of leadership involved then and now, it is worth remembering Custer’s own downfall and its essential core reasons. He was an ambitious and daring individual, willing to lead from the front, whose reckless vanity was almost certainly his undoing. Without going into the well documented timeline of events that illustrate this at Little Bighorn, consider Sun Tzu’s commentary on military leadership in this light :
“There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: (a) Recklessness, which leads to destruction; (b) cowardice, which leads to capture; (c) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults; (d) a delicacy of honour which is sensitive to shame; (e) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble.
These are the five besetting sins of a general, ruinous to the conduct of war.
When an army is overthrown and its leader slain, the cause will surely be found among these five dangerous faults. Let them be a subject of meditation.” (2)
Custer was undoubtedly guilty of points (a) and (d), and as (c) would suggest, was certainly over hasty and rash; he utterly failed to carry out vital reconnaissance and sought a greater glory (a delicacy of honour) in dealing what he hoped would be the decisive blow within the Sioux Wars. He faced strong leaders and warriors who easily matched his courage, but who also demonstrated the advantage of a superior knowledge of the terrain and an ability to out-think the Colonel – with overwhelming numbers on their side there was little impediment to their victory. If there is a lesson to be learned here, present leaders might do well to consider its relevance and application in our times. The blinkering ‘vanity’ of leadership is one of its greatest stumbling blocks, but, when the scale of resitance is growing, such myopic leadership will see its misplaced values severely tested. But, the point of Sun Tzu’s strategies was always to avoid conflict and still gain the benefit.
No matter the nature of this conflict or how it plays out in our time, while the land rights of the indigenous people, whose ‘medicine’ Chiron could also be symbolically respresenting here, are crucial to the outcome. But, the scope of the battle has widened and we now see opposing forces of a different nature at work unfolding its dynamic on a much broader front.
An ancient opposition seeded in the far distant past, a struggle symbolised by the conflict between encumbent authority and individual sovereignty through the deeper polarity between the secular and the spiritual, is itself coming to a head, but, is doing so now on a global scale. Our human relationship with land and environment are at its center. Water protectors, choosing peaceful resistance over bloodshed, now oppose militarised federal forces. The people’s sovereign rights are overtly aligned with Earth rights and oppose the power of State aligned with vested corporate interest.
Entangled within this are issues around immigration and boundaries, associations that the current T-square and Saturnian influence are reflecting in an exacerbated state of national and international affairs, politically volatile and shot through with violence. Thanks to innovative Uranian technologies and the power of social networking they facilitate, the current situation is deeply affected by both manipulative co-oercion and instant connectivity of a nature never before seen in the ‘historical’ period.
The stand-off at Standing Rock, encapsulating so many of these factors has, like the battle now known as Little Bighorn, become iconic and is deeply charged with these dynamics. Natural resources are central to both conflicts, gold being at the heart of the government’s landgrab in the 1870’s. Now the ‘protection of the waters’ from the dangers of the exploitation of such resources is at the heart of Standing Rock, and the same spirit is at work in protection of the natural world in general.
Protectors of the waters, of the Earth and of the people are uniting to defend sovereign rights and the honouring of lawful treaties. They share many of the attributes and aims with the Native American warriors who fought at Greasy Grass, the indigenous name for Little Big Horn. But, the nature of resistance has changed.
As Custer approached the Sioux settlement he drove captured Sioux women and children before his column of soldiers. Seeing this Sioux scouts alerted the camp and the warriors were mobilised. In our time it is the women of Sacred Stone camp who are leading the way in protecting the sacred waters, a restorative reflection of the peaceful resistance that the protectors embody. May peace prevail.
Such is no less the case at any site where the appetite of greed and disrespectful ambition is tearing up the Earth and being met with protective resistance. But, division has become deeply instrumental and the contrast between one side and the other much more stark. The stand-off at large will continue, so long as respect for life and reconciliation is absent and the conflict remains unresolved.
What prompted me to look into the astrological correspondences here were the clear historical and tribal connections and their dynamics being played out now at Standing Rock. Just as the State attempted to order the Sioux nations off their lands under difficult conditions on the ground during the winter of January 1876 , the protectors at Standing Rock have been given a deadline amidst adverse conditions brought by snow melt and heavy rains, but, it was a video that Chase Iron Eyes posted this morning that caught my attention and prompted this article.
Chase Iron Eyes is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, an attorney and activist who is also a member of the Lakota People’s Law Project – I leave you with the video in which he talks of the importance of the Thunder spirits to the situation as it is now unfolding at Standing Rock……
(1) ‘Coyote Medicine’ – Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Simon & Schuster, 1997 (Italics, mine)
(2)’The Art Of War’ – Sun Tzu, various translations
Images by Frank Howell – from the top :
‘Circle Of Life’
‘Lost Warrior’
‘Lakota Blue Aura’
‘Fruit From The Light’
This is precious time for us, a time of reconnection and unity in a common purpose – to hold to the sacred as protectors and guardians of the unbroken thread of life that unites us all. In the north the fires are lit that mark the opening of the bone road, between this world and that of our forebears. In the south it is the first flush of the pregnant world that swells the seed within the flower and calls us to nurture hope within the world again.
When the new Moon is born at such a time it augers deep healing and brings remembering into our lives. The Scorpio Moon invokes memories and emotions to this purpose, sourced within the most mysterious unchanging aspects of creative energy as it flows into life from its source – its ability to transform and inform, to survive the journey, to survive all; great courage and a will to live can be found in this. It infuses our lives with a sense of belonging that is braided into the most fundamental roots of our being.
In connecting with Neptune’s energies this Moon brings the vision of our spirits alive within this regenerative place and reminds us of our own true purpose. It holds the vision of our future at its heart as it connects at the opening of the lunation with the Moon’s nodes.
It reminds us that the knowledge of life and death is rooted in the heart and womb, the power and true value of feminine wisdom within our world – Venus and Saturn square the Moon’s nodes showing us how this power informs and holds steady its true value for us as living souls.
Through Uranus square with Mars the power of discovery and inspiration are born under this Moon, opening possibilities for new pathways to be forged and encouraging mindful appreciation of the directions we are taking. There is great power for healing at work in this, as Mars sextiles Chiron. This can bring us closer to each other and lend our workings in the world the powers of the subtle realms.
Mercury runs before this Moon, carrying the radiance of the Sun that is in the hearts of the children, and the illumination of their deep untarnished connection with the source. Jupiter stands at the midpoint of Mercury and the Moon’s north node, squaring Pluto, bringing optimism to our vision for the future, and spreading the power of recognition that we all share the same source, are all related.
But, it is the ignition of the great fires of creation, the source of connection with the divine known more fully to those who have passed before us, which can bring this Moon’s greatest gift to us. In this our common ground and deepest source of inspiration can be found when we look within, our connection with the worlds within this world and the mind of nature.
Within this Moon a powerful elixir can be invoked, for healing, connection and belonging, a salve for our times that is at the heart of the elder wisdom gifted to us by the Looks Within Moon.
The old ones, the wise ones, lit the fires of dreaming under the Looks Within Moon. Gathering the people in as the fires were lit they brought out their bundles, the sweet medicine of their stories, carried from the time of the first fires, carrying the flame of the last fires. Their eyes upon another world they would feed us with the warmth of their own soulfires, and tell us of the dreaming Earth, Her love for Life and of us, her children.
In this Moon there is a longing to reunite with the luminous core of our belonging, our longing to be at one with the deepest and most meaningful aspects of life, and to give thanks for the gifts we find there. It is a Moon of deep feeling, of reaching into the settled stillness of things, to allow the warm inner radiance of belonging to infuse our own roots. At the heart of all things, offering the promise of return, it is the sweet medicine of Earth that calls us to gather around her central fire, to remember this fire burning within our selves.
Memories of Life, of lives once lived that yet carry pain, can be healed in this time, its salve, rememberance of times in which we have known the radiance of our own soulfire, its joy and warmth, and the healing balm of coming home to our heart and hearth, our Earth.
In our time, amidst uprooted lives and damaged life, the casualties of war and manipulation, pollution and illness, this deep feeling can be raised to unite us in passionate invocation, for protection of all that matters most, for unity and deep rooted solidarity as guardians of the sacred, of each others lives, and the lives of those yet to come….
…..and, in this place we can ignite another fire, our own center fire. Its gift, the shared warmth of an elder wisdom that still burns with a passion for life, made rich through lives lived, that in the deepest core of our selves yet lives on. Its presence can be summoned, can unite us all in its knowing beneath the Looks Within Moon.
In the northern realms our bonfires hold a memory, of a journey we have all taken along the bone road, the road of return and communion with our ancestors. Old and young come together here, around this ancient fire – the elders might gather and give counsel, themselves children amongst the spirits of the ancestors, holding an unbroken thread of belonging. The old songs are sung reminding us of our roots, our grounding and role as guardians of the sacred Earth.
Our children are honoured here, around this center fire, their voices the sound of fresh springs and running waters, reminding us of our sacred duty to life, a certainty that all the suffering we endure has a purpose. They remind us that they are our future, our guides as we walk this path of responsibility, strong and united in the courage and commitment to protect and nurture new life, to keep the thread unbroken. In every childs face is the elders dream come home, Earth’s dream in our midst once more…..
……if the fire is lit and the way of Earth’s dreaming is brought back into the village, new beginnings can be made, founded on wisdom and courage, connection and responsibility. We can rise to the challenges of life with assurity. Our voices can rise within these beginnings and be as the sound of wild bees, drawn home to make the golden honey of truth in our world, restoring in life the sweet medicine that lives in each of our stories……use this medicine well to bring healing to the forgotten ones, the orphans of circumstance and greed, to bring recognition and respect back into their lives, and ours.
This is the time in which the Earth enters her dreaming, as the shadows lengthen in the northern realms and falling flames of ancient sunlight lay their gold, tawny and red blanket upon the Earth, as the flower’s dance with the sound of wild bees and feel the breath of the Sun Spirit swelling in their hearts in the southern realms.
At this time……ignite the fires of belonging with this medicine, for those who have gone before us, who have come into our midst again, and those who will come after us – they will tell us who we are, will help us to remember why we came here, if we look within and hold this prayer at the lighting of our sacred fire.
Even amidst the turmoil and uncertainty that surrounds us, one simple flame can hold the path open for us at the time of the Looks Within Moon, and bring us back to the center, the radiant still point at the eye of the storm. This is a talisman of continuity and rememberance, of the creative energy we carry, the generative power that unites us all. We can invoke its power for the healing we know is needed, wherever it is needed, whether it be our own, or others less fortunate than ourselves, or of the ancient guardians themselves, the wise beings of our natural world. We are all one in this. Be of good heart loved ones, this is Earth’s gift…..under the Looks Within Moon.
“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 andwillingness 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.
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
ROOT MEDICINE OF THE STARS ON EARTH 