Tag Archives: Earth healing

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

Worlds Within Worlds

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

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

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

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

This lunation is where we begin to get our bearings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be inspired to listen….

Blessed Be!

Ancestral Medicine, astrology, Planetary Mind, retrograde planets, Root Medicine of the Stars, The Lunar Nodes

20-20

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monrise

“…..we have been blessed with an unexpected gift as a result of our constrained confinement. 

It is a time for the emergence of a new spiritual quality, which is a more interior time. This inner time, which is specific to our species, invites sharing and otherness among all. Imagination and poetry find their place in the luxury of this “regained time.”

“The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet,” writes Novalis. In this crisis of the outer world questioning so many parameters, including some of the most profound ones affecting our human condition and the awareness we have of ourselves, shall we regain a soul?”

Jean-Michel Geneste – March 2020,

who wrote the above in response to Chauvet Cave, the 35 thousand year old paintings which the ancestors left there and the inspiration these bring to our times.

…

I came across this quote shortly after finishing the penultimate draft of this post. It echoes themes which found their way into the writing, even though I had not set off to write about them – this was in fact supposed to be a brief report on the current lunations; it turned into something else, out of necessity as, working with the full Scorpio Moon, I was pulled ever more deeply into the inner realms of our current situation, much of which points directly towards what Jean-Michel Geneste speaks of so eloquently. As a result, the article before you has now been separated into three parts, each of a more digestible size, of which this is the first. It attempts to translate something of this shift, this re-emergence, sourced in the celestial and imaginative realms, in terms of the present context. In spirit with its core theme, it begins with a deceptively immaterial yet imminently potent recent astrological event…..


A shift in signs of the Moon’s nodal axis on May 5th now sees the north node transiting Gemini, the south node now in Sagittarius. This subtle change in the zodiacal region in which the Moon’s orbit crosses the Sun’s apparent path in the sky may not be headline news, certainly in these times, but it is far from insignificant.

Eclipses in June, July and December 2020 which represent turning points, points of resolve and the actions that follow, will not only be qualitatively different under this nodal pull, but what works for us in the coming months will rest on our being truly cognisant of what ‘needs’ to happen and commit to acting on this intel, a direct reflection of the nodal axis’ new focus.

This represents a development in thinking rather than emotion based decision making.  We have had a year and a half of exploring the relationship between expressions of worldly power and the emotional body’s integrity. Now, analysis and perception become especially important. But, so does our relationship with the immaterial worlds.

When working with the nodes we bring immaterial senses into play, senses that inform the soul, facilitate communication between the seen and unseen aspects of life. The relationship between power and emotion seen through the lens of cardinal earth and water highlights the strengths and weaknesses of these senses within these realms.

Now, we are drawn into the mutable elements of fire and air to explore more deeply the ways in which our soul translates experience and communicates between the dense and subtle realms via the lens of Gemini and Sagittarius.

Understanding and our relationship to information and knowledge via the agency of awareness,  intelligent sentience and resonance have a greater bearing on how we experience the world with this axial shift.

This in turn informs our overview, and our philosophical outlook shifts in accordance. We can live life differently according to these communications and understandings, this awareness.

This shift is characteristic of the emergent realm of enhanced coherence, and in this realm the world is illuminated as a conscious living entity. This is the world we come back to when we find our own inner light illuminating and integrated with consciousness. It is all one light, in fact.

It can be deeply divine to experience, but, it can also be humble and practical.

When eclipses in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius occur, they bring opportunities for clarifying our minds and changing the way we think about things, for putting clear thinking into action and for bringing meaningful actions to bear where they are most needed.

We can utilise eclipses as opportunities to discard the redundant and propagate our potential; in the midst of current circumstances this offers some hope, but, ‘the buck stops here’ and self-responsibility is also being very strongly highlighted in these times, as will become apparent.

 

The first of those coming eclipses will be a penumbral lunar eclipse in Sagittarius on June 5th which opens the doorway to the next 2 years of eclipse cycles on the Gemini/Sagittarius axis.

This initial eclipse is by nature quite peripheral but it carries the sting of being a full Moon exactly square Mars in Pisces. And Mars in Pisces talks to one of the underlying themes of these times, namely the spiritual damage caused by intellectual and philosophical warfare and its tangible consequences. The emphasis here is on regulating the energies of mental and spiritual health, which falls in line with the nodal shift very clearly. Being mindful of burnout and emotional exhaustion is highlighted. Not getting caught up in the undertow of emotional tidal waves, or being infected by a pandemic of repurposed facts, information and beliefs.

This is a conflict that very much undermines peoples ability to know ‘truth’, and the erosion of cohesion with and connection to ‘source‘, factors which affect us both collectively and individually.

The second and third, a total solar eclipse on June 21st and the following penumbral eclipse on July 5th, by sign are both  still activating the Capricorn Cancer axis, and they will be the last to do so for a decade, so working with them centres on cleaning up essential business and detritus from the last ten years, and especially the last six months. That in itself is a major undertaking.

False philosophies must be identified. The mechanisms of generating consensus and manipulating thought and understanding made more deeply aware to us. This is a massively important process for our future.

Importantly for now though, working with these midyear eclipses will enable the Gemini/Sagittarius blueprint to be more clearly utilised and built upon, especially when we get to the end of the year when we’ll see another penumbral lunar eclipse, this time  in Gemini, and a following total solar eclipse in Sagittarius.

The immediate planetary matrix, however, sheds more light on this revision and ‘clean up’ operation and points the way to what’s coming later in the year.

In the second half of the current lunation three planets turn retrograde and, pulling the gravity of the full Moon further into the personal sphere, initiate this process by turning it inward and intensifying it.

If consciously worked with Saturn stationing retrograde on the 11th May, Venus stationing retrograde on the 13th, and Jupiter stationing retrograde on the May 15th, will not only encourage the internal changes necessary to take full advantage of the Gemini/Sagittarius axis via the nodes and eclipses towards the end of the year, but will lay the ground for the new Saturn Jupiter cycle which is initiated on the December solstice in the first degree of Aquarius, a truly momentous watershed.

Venus retrograde in Gemini stimulates the mental sphere and potentiates the nodal theme further, especially as Venus transits Uranus north node around the 13th degree of Gemini in the process. I would suggest contemplating your own values through the retrograde period in terms of how they inform the way you perceive the world, the higher values you apply to it. This is not simply about your opinions, beliefs and actions; these are reflexive in themselves – this is more about becoming aware of the processes which produce those reflexes, what informs them. It is also about evolving this inner faculty for perception and awareness in the process.

Venus can apply to many material values in this context, but, look to the more subtle inner forms that her energy highlights. These are the forms of intelligence that take on natural form, the mind of Nature. Get into natural places and listen, let Her speak to you.

Become aware of your relationship to beauty in the world, what it means, where you find its highest vibration, how that feels. Become aware of what threatens these manifestations of the ‘beautiful’. Is what you perceive to be beautiful carrying meaning that is inviolable? Notice what is at work within yourself as you experience these enquiries, an aesthetic appreciation of the world. How does the receptive nature of perception inform your inner world?

This latter aspect is important in balancing out the aggressive and assertive forms of perception and understanding which are so virulently at work in the world at this time. There is restorative value in this – it encourages emergence of the voice of the soul.

We’ll come to Saturn and Jupiter, especially Saturn, in part 2, but, as the year progresses all the remaining planets also enter retrograde periods, and this will aid us in bringing our inner world fully into conscious activation.

Link to part 2

Saturn stations retrograde 11th May, 1°57′ Aquarius
Mercury enters Gemini 12th May
Mars enters Pisces May 13th
Venus stations retrograde 13th May, 21°50′ Gemini
Jupiter stations retrograde 15th May,  27°14′ Capricorn

Penumbral lunar eclipse June 5th, 15°34′ Sagittarius
Total solar eclipse June 21st, 0°21′ Cancer
Penumbral lunar eclipse July 5th, 13°38′ Capricorn
Penumbral lunar eclipse November 30th, 8°38′ Gemini
Total solar eclipse December, 23°08′ Sagittarius

astrology, Earth healing, lunations, Root Medicine of the Stars, Sagittarius Gemini axis, Solstices, Transition of the Ages

Redeeming Prometheus

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“In the world unknown
sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
can its rest be broken” (1)

So long as we are held within the grip of a compulsion to externalise it, the inner illumination of the divine fire that enters through the imaginal realms may hold more importance than we realise – it was not always so, but, neither need it always be so. Questions arise around the relationship between the unseen and the tangible realms under the light of the June full Moon, and Uranus asks whether we can survive without remembering what instigated the crisis caused through their seperation. The answer, like the seen and unseen worlds, lies sleeping in a ‘world unknown’ and integrating its lessons into our world view is the step we must now take.

We began to radically transform that world view when Uranus south node first entered Sagittarius, 2700 years ago. Where formerly we had been immersed in the oceanic undercurrents of a more archae-emotional realm, it signalled a rise in inspired thinking that penetrated the manifest world with profound insight. But, it was a torch held aloft in a realm that had formerly been perceived fluorescent with spirit and soul, a world fast becoming a shadow land, of increasing contrasts, dividing as between night and day. We had arrived in a place that for millenia had already been moving steadily away from a more deeply rooted experience of the promethean fire.

As the divine spark present within all life receeded from our grasp we began to look for it within the tangible realms. In fact, our journey into the Sagittarian fields of philosophy and knowledge could well have been the natural human response to this process, a shift from the all enfolding ineffable towards the personalised individuated experience of the divine. It was the beginning of our pathological experience of the world and, with the ensuing rise of religion, as a formal extension of this experience in relation to the divine, the power of rational thinking correspondingly became its wilful executor within this world. As ironic as it may seem, the advent of religious experience seeded the rise of logic, rational discourse and phenomenal objectivity and in the process laid the foundations from which secular science would eventually emerge. This was the beginning of our hubris.

Two millenia later the Enlightenment brought this process to its logical conclusion. Saturn and Jupiter, who had once ruled the worldly affairs of heaven as a counter against the human will, had become dethroned, relegated and co-opted into the inner pantheon of humanity, Saturn ruling our world view with the pragmatic logic of cause and effect, and Jupiter, our ever thirsting quest for knowledge. These roles still apply, but, the astrology we practice is changing – it too has stepped up to that threshold. Saturn has turned upon Uranus memory.

LIFE   DEATH   LIFE  –  TRUTH (Ω)

Saturn shows us now that we have reached a place of standstill, stationing on Uranus south node in Sagittarius, a place in which paying our karmic debt is crucial to releasing the promethian impulse from its secularised straightjacket of rationality and scientific progress. This is the age of transition in which we are tasked with responsibility for redeeming our relationship with the divine fire, and use of it, as a positive power within the world. We have applied this vital energy outwardly, filling our world with a material manifestation of its power and, as the Ages shift have come to the point where the accretion of the consequences to our actions, having effectively uncoupled us from its inner source, are now drawing us back into its field of influence, towards the source of that sacred illumination.

Not only our science, but, our minds have led us here, our path poised at the threshold of that ‘world unknown’ – for some, the next step is inconceivable, for others it has already been taken. It is inconceivable to the wholly enslaved mind that its rational master could ever be found deficient, but, we must claim our freedom from knowing and reclaim the sanity of our liberty from reason’s irrational hegemony. Too much of the opiate of rationality and reason can unhinge our minds. To enter the ‘world unknown’ is not to collapse the wave of probability into the particle of the known, but, to ride it, become submersed in it, become it, in all its luminous darkness.

This moment, the heart of this lunation, with Sun and Moon, spirit and soul illuminating the solstice axis, asks for us to let the voice of the sacred fire be our navigator, the unspoken voice that would in-form us and self propagate the inner flame, raising it and us from our own sleep. To burn off the calque that obscures its native tongue, the spirit and soul must unite in transfiguring the body nature and free the material body from its exile. In exile it has become a shell, a husk of accretions that have calcified our imaginal nature – in the spiritual lucidity of the solar disc, and the lunar luminousity of the soul, the light of our inner eye is released from the limitations they impose.

“Throw away the lights, the definitions,
And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that,
But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know
Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations?
Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.” (2)

 

Nocturne in Silver ~ Richard Cartwright
Nocturne in Silver ~ Richard Cartwright

 

(1) Percy Bysshe Shelley ~ from Prometheus Unbound

(Ω) The words ‘life death life truth’ were scratched on bone sacrificial tokens found on the northern coast of the Black Sea at Olbia. They were accompanied by Orpheus name and offered in complete faith of the Orphic mysteries as a deliverance from the shores of uncertainty that surrounded the lands of the dead. They have been dated to at least 500bce, having been cast into the waters some 2,700 years ago…..

(2) Wallace Stevens ~ from The Man With The Blue Guitar

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

The Road Home – Solar Eclipse In Pisces

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is one last note to add here.

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

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

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

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