Tag Archives: archetypal astrology

Whose Story Is This?

On 24th November 2006 Jupiter entered Sagittarius, conjunct the Sun. With Mars, as it is now, in Scorpio, Pluto was close on transiting the Galactic centre. Over the next year and 25 days Jupiter journeyed through its home sign, finally crossing the solstice cusp on 18th December 2007. What was set in motion through this time is still with us and now, twelve years on, Jupiter once more completes its term of home rulership within the mutable fire sign and prepares to enter Capricorn on December 2nd 2019.

So, what’s the story? What’s your story?

If during the 2006-8 period the everyday world was marked by one defining feature it was possibly ‘the culpability and deception that financial collapse exposed within the global banking and trading system’. How did that look? What was the punchline to its story?

If the finger was pointing in one direction it exposed the ugly truth, that “Greed rules”, that its lying dictators, priests and minions act with impunity, even when its hegemony implodes.

But, if we claimed to already know this, as we surely did, with these events its reality must surely have begun to hit home.

Have we learnt? Have we moved on? Does anything in this time tell us, reassure us that we have? With Jupiter again about to enter Capricorn we should be wary of the consequences of not answering, and not answering truthfully, more than the answers themselves.

Pluto finally entered Capricorn late in 2008 with Jupiter at that time in the degree now occupied by Saturn. If the enormity of the reality we faced then did not in fact fully come home to us, the exposure of it’s underlying superstructures has, if not transformed the financial system, certainly transformed our perceptions and awareness of it and its consequences. The reality of ‘our’ mythos is exposed.

Some might attribute such a role to the outer planetary triad, but, Jupiter rules our mythos, the narrative we collectively run through our systems, the meaning we both give and seek within the justifications we bring to buying into it, as well as in attempting to look beyond it.

When it comes to the 2007/8 “Crash” and its consequences, which began with the US sub-prime mortgage debacle late in 2006, this mythos is magnified and put into hard perspective; we know the nature of the world we live in, the slavery and servitude its plutocratic tyranny ensnares us in. There is no escaping our awareness of the truth within this narrative.

With Jupiter now cusping Capricorn this awareness and the question it still begs of us, “the response we have yet to bring to it”, is the reality that looms large in our current world. With the awareness we have gained, so long as the same hegemonic ‘system’ remains unchanged we know, and are reminded on a day to day basis, that we are living at odds with it and our awareness. We can no longer justify the mythos – our knowing, if not our acts, tells us so.

In a nutshell, this is to describe the dilemma that must be resolved during Jupiter’s coming transit of Capricorn. It is a transit that will culminate with the meeting of Saturn and Jupiter in the first degree of Aquarius on the December solstice in 2020.

It includes the most talked of transit and conjunction since Uranus and Pluto squared off between 2011 and 2017, the meeting of Pluto and Saturn in January 2020. This conjunction by itself marks this as a ‘crunch’ year, and there will be a mix of faster transiting planets, including Jupiter, along with the Sun adding to this intense primary power source as this conjunction resonates through the year. But, the writing has been on the wall for at least 12 years, in fact, for a very long time we have known that it must come to this.

When the Galactic cross was precision formed and completed by our central Sun on December solstice 2012 the impulse for evolutionary transformation brought ‘events and consciousness’ into sync in a way that initiated a spiral dynamics of exponential acceleration. The consequences of this are initially chaotic, but, will transition to another phase of order, the shape of which is, in significant part, in our hands – we have a window of time in which to determine this.

The knowledge of this synchronisation of inner and outer realities is millennia old, but, its stimulation in our times, by orb of 1˚, began in the 1940’s and was fully marked by the so called ‘end of hostilities’ at the close of WW2 – from here the healing of an ancient self destructive trauma that world wars, and atomic psychosis, had brought to insane pitch must now begin and that same orb marks the years up to 2074 as the closing phase of this 144 year period of transformation. This fractal of the great year has its resonances at different scales. At the personal level, we should be thinking ‘seven generations…..’

…..when Jupiter left Sagittarius in 2007 it was amidst an evolutionary seed conjunction with Pluto, Mercury and the Sun around the galactic centre that set the stage – we have just seen Jupiter and Venus meeting in the same degrees. Now is a time to expand our creative energies from the heart. This is a part of the healing we must not miss – why?

Where Uranus held the mid degrees of Pisces opposing Saturn in Virgo at that time in 2007, Neptune now sits and becomes outwardly active, having turned direct.

That Uranus Saturn opposition was magnified, exacerbated even, by Jupiter’s transit of Uranus on the Aries cusp, an astrological event coinciding with the Gulf of Mexico disaster, ultimately finding expression in March 2011 at Fukushima.

This too is a part of our current terrain. But, how are we to navigate it?

The shock of ‘collapse’ and its potential catastrophism has now become homogenised and dangerously familiar, if dulled into a vague semblance of reality, “actual” reality, one might say. And this in spite of the current state of the world and our perceived collective contribution to, participation in and provocation of its symptoms. So, whose narrative are we following here?

The evolution that the marriage of events and consciousness might have seeded then has become our prerogative now. The ‘new age’ maxim that we ‘create our own reality’ has, in this sense, its head on the block and, if we can, in or after the fact, make our own reality come to be, the rules of the game are now exposed – simply put, reality happens, whether by direct engagement or not. Our input remains, regardless, conscious or not. And, conscious or not, we face the consequences.

We are here to know, yes, but such knowing is useless without the ability to act upon it. What is stopping us? That is perhaps the big Jupiterian question at the time of its ingress into Capricorn.

If the Saturn Jupiter cycle bookends Jupiter’s ingress into Capricorn, it points up the fact that, if we have not learned how to do just this, meet knowing with action, it will almost certainly be being decided for us by then. By other humans, our circumstances, or some other ‘presence’ – who knows?

Jupiter’s reminder is that we too are myth makers – we weave and bind with what we have and know, and find meaning in the patterns we make, as we do.

Is the story we are living truly our own?

The choice is ours…..

Mysterious Traveller – Mercury in Pisces

starmaidenMercury in Pisces……bringing messages from the far distant shores of the dreamworlds, of spirit, seeing the scintillating light of eternity in the ordinary, its inner world both here and not here, more than here, communicating through the archetypes, words carried on the winds of imagination, speaking the language of the clouds and ocean currents, a traveller with no destination, in the world but mysteriously not of it…..

The great poet and itinerant zen monk Basho had something of this….

“The rough sea – stretching out towards Sado – the Milky Way”

…but, when Mercury is retrograde in Pisces, as he is for the moment, the journey is turned inwards, an invertion that pulls us into moods and feelings of longing, a search for our own meaning and the solid ground of knowing…..

At best of times Mercury can put us in touch with the Gods, deliver the kiss from the Goddess….and not telling us of the consequences, leave us laughing  on the edge of the pool, until we twig and, leaping in, follow him…..

“an ancient pond – a frog jumps in – the splash of water”

…but, which comes first?

The predominant astrological interpretation of Mercury retrograde is a story of disruptive interventions and flat tyres on our urgent and important journeys…..miscommunications rather than insights. But, in Pisces we are more likely to end up questioning our motives for setting out in the first place and finding they were never written in stone, were the work of other powers greater than ourselves, and, with this, vapourising our perspectives……talking to ourselves and hearing an echo in the fog…..

“falling sick on a journey – my dream goes wandering – over a field of dried grass”

Depth psychology and spiritual healing, ennui and melancholy, the old memory carried by the youthful soul, the Orphic search for the beloved, Psyche’s dream of the embrace in the dark…….all carry the signature of a compassion that floods the heart with longing for restoration, and here, Mercury can take us there, but, blindfolded and, not yet….

….trust must be found to undertake the great endeavour, a release from illusions that do not serve our soul, an apprehension of spirit, and a self depricating sense of humour – before we can fly we must retrace our steps and remember, long and deep into our past, until we find the doorway to the future…..and we will, if we trust ourselves to the mysterious traveller……

Haiku poems by Matsuo Basho

Mars – Awakening the Sacred Warrior

Pushing buttons and forging a path can be two sides of the same coin when it comes to Mars influence in the chart, but, positive and negatives aside, the red planet has his foot on the accelerator right now and is asking us to step up a gear on many fronts in the world as we speak. As a warrior archetype the challenge with Mars is invariably to bring the raw power of action into service. Harmonious aspects aid and abet this process and there is a plethora of these forming around Mars progress within the tropical chart at this time – infact it was at the new Moon on the 13th, just as Mars conjunct the Galactic Center, that the positive energy of the warrior began to connect with other planets on the galactic/stellar side of the Earth’s orbit, stimulating the collective archetypes of Neptune, Uranus, Chiron and Saturn within the matrix. The sextile aspects predominate and have given an edge to the bigger issues working themselves out in this world, bringing the immanence of  their numinous power up from the unsconscious and asking us to realise the warriors role, the emphasis now coming very much into one of service. We can feel the energy rising in amongst the events now underway all around us.

Mars is nothing if not eventfull and ‘Events’ with a capital E are where this archetypal influence is becoming most tangible within this lunation – these events are so multifarious and pre-eminantly collective at this stage that it is a challenge to identify where our individual place within them all is, but, they do impinge upon the lives of each and every one of us, which is perhaps central to Mars message at this time. Mars can also be the awakener. However, when Mars conjuncts Pluto on the full Moon/lunar eclipse, we will be able to gain a much deeper sense of purpose and insight into the unified drive that is now at work in the world. Before then, it serves us well to recap what Mars is bringing out through this process of change just now.

Sextiling first with Neptune, you may have noticed especially powerful dreams emerging recently, the influx of an undercurrent of pro-active energy at work as a quality present within everyday life, agendas being pushed, issues gathering the feeling of a growing need to be addressed. In sextile with Saturn the discipline and strategy necessary for putting this need into action is highlighted – we know that recklessness will not bring us resolution and a deeper appreciation of the dynamics between the passionate drive for justice and the necessity of holding form in the midst of action are key, as every warrior knows. Being prepared for any eventuality is a challenge that is fast becoming a reality, as reflected in the square to Uranus, but, the trust in our ability to weather the storm and take the knocks comes with Mars sextile to Chiron. This sextile also begins to clarify the nature of the sacrifices we must make if the changes that we want to see in the world are going to become a reality. The sacred warrior archetype is rising, but, if this defines anything it defines the form, rather than the theme that is now emerging. This too is stimulated in the coming days to become a matter of power management as Mars comes to conjunction with Pluto.

The Pluto conjunction is exact at full Moon, a lunar eclipse of some significance for the coming months, and, where the solar eclipse of the 13th opened the field to the emergence of unconscious dynamics that are shaping our reality from deep within, the lunar eclipse will help us to personalise and embody these dynamics with awareness and meaning. This will need looking at carefully, especially if you have planets at 7 to 9 degrees of Sagittarius or Gemini in your chart…..but, Pluto is also working a midpoint to those aspects already mentioned, so, with Mars joining Pluto in early Capricorn, we can expect the energy to rise in any area of our lives where power struggles and the transformation of agressive energy to higher causes are at work, so look also to the cardinal signs for indications of direct action that we can individually manifest in a positive way now. The  truism that ‘everything is connected’ transcends its philosophical significance and becomes a very tangible reality now. The Sacred Warrior is here the representative of this reality in action.

Pluto orchestrates the alchemical process of change at the root of all worldy power in our times, and Mars turns up the heat on this process – with the mutual reception between Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn, Mars arrival and collaboration with Pluto brings out the importance timing within this firing process. Saturn aids us in regulating the fire…..a matter of increasing pressure while intensely focusing the energy, the pro-active pushes we make through this time will bear fruit when Mars sextiles the Moon’s nodes at solstice…..

…..there is little that is not touched by this process in our world; if astrology can make a difference here it is to stimulate a sense of purpose and meaning amidst an otherwise chaotic and seemingly unco-ordinated process of change and transformation, and who would deny that we are in the midst of such a process. It is a struggle that is being fought on many fronts, but, there is a powerful underlying sense of direction that can also be felt within this.

In symbolic terms the Pluto Mars conjunction is the very image of the Great Mother flexing her muscles – we may not be familiar with Pluto in this role, but, this fact itself is so deeply symptomatic of the process that is now underway. Millenia of suppression and dishonouring of the creative power of the feminine is seeking release and Mars role is to actualise the process and martial the sacred warrior archetype into service to see it through. Big themes, but, themes that touch every aspect of living as we strive to birth a world that is in balance, in which we are in balance. Within this role there is deep appreciation for the immensity of the power that the Great Mother manifests through the living Earth and, with Mars sextiling Venus immediately after full Moon, the possibility of realising the truth of Her love within our own hearts raises the passion of our journey to new and inspiring heights…..

Richard Tarnas – a keynote address at the Turning of an Age

The field of Archetypal Astrology has become one of the most fruitful, well developed and dynamic areas in our contemporary practice and Richard Tarnas is perhaps its most well respected and erudite of researchers and practitioners. His books ‘The Passion of the Western Mind’ and ‘Cosmos and Psyche’  are the seminal foundational works in the field that have really helped shift astrology onto a solid contemporary foundation of serious paradigmatic research and philosophical development, its rightful place – in Richard’s seminars we can feel the deep ranging passion and significance that he senses within and brings into the field through his work.

Here is the keynote speech he delivered to the NCGR conference in Baltimore in 2008 – in it he addresses some of the most challenging and pertinent questions raised by our current epoch and it remains a perfect introduction to the man and the subject. Filled with at times hilarious anecdotes and a broad sweeping vision of our times, Richard brings alive the roots and evolutionary advances we have and are making within astrology and our quest for understanding the question of what it is to be human…..relax, sit back and enjoy!