Tag Archives: global healing

A Wrinkle In Time

When the Sun reaches the exact midpoint between equinox and winter solstice, at 15°00’ Scorpio, the cross quarter fire festivals take place which, in some ancestral northern traditions, mark Samhain, the onset of winter and the beginning of the new year.

This year the entire Samhain/Beltaine axis is activated as almost exactly twenty four hours later the full Moon in Taurus will reach its maximum and, being only 3° from the north lunar node, will fall under the Earth’s shadow and become totally eclipsed.

This intensification of both the lunar maximum and the cross quarter axis is further added to when we look to the astrological alignments that coincide with both these moments.

I consider such planetary and astral interactions with nodal points to be ‘pauses’ in the hegemonic nature of linear time and, by default, temporal conditioning, and with the Moon in particular, linear time programming within the human realm.

This relates specifically to the histories that have been applied to human consciousness, and that have specifically overwritten cultural and oral transmission of our indigenous history – we are dealing here with colonisation of the indigenous past, and more specifically with its decolonisation in relation to this particular moment in time.

There is much to consider in this alone, especially as the gateway of Samhain and its association with the thinning of the veil between the worlds can also be seen as a timeless moment; where closer contact between other-worlds comes to the fore, their own distinct temporal nature comes into our lives, a reminder through ancestry and spirit of our roots outside of temporal reality, this innate connection being available to us.

This is, traditionally, a time when those connections can be deepened and strengthened.

But, here we are looking at a planetary matrix which, from the Earth perspective, suggests this to be an even deeper, more significant and longer lasting moment; nothing quite of this nature has been offered to us in any time over the last decade, at least. So, bear this cessation of temporal conditioning/programming in mind in respect of the following.

Uranus proximity to the lunar eclipse is a powerful indicator that this is a programme-free moment, but, with Venus and Mercury either side of the Sun close on the south node in Scorpio, opposing Uranus here brings a flash of inspiration that will accompany the freeing of long held ancestral bindings.

This is akin to cracks appearing in a kind of karmic dam, and a potential release of primal, indigenous energy that has built up behind that dam over many millennia into the Taurean earth realms.

This ‘dam’ is, in effect, a wall of unresolved consequences, the result of oppressed and subjugated natural power, which century upon century of hierarchic usury, and the control of indigenous nature and its natural cultural flowering has put upon humanity, most particularly via ‘the West’ and its dehumanising industrialised programmes of hierarchic and literal enslavement and colonisation.

There is a pressure cooker feel to the time, which many are feeling it seems; emphasised by the fixed signs of the eclipse axis, there is strongly present an awareness of ‘stuck-ness’ which must be released, and I see this time as the onset of that cracking open and release process.

Mirroring this, the solar/lunar opposition is squared by Saturn in societally oriented Aquarius, and the indicators are that, since Saturn is now direct and on its run up to leaving Aquarius for Pisces in March 2023, that this eclipse’s energy marker for the next six months is all about exploiting the breakthrough potential of this special moment, to the max, for its most positive outcomes to be realised.

Once Saturn enters Piscean waters the echoes of spiritual persecution, and zealotry for example, become stronger, a thought which adds intensity to the meaningfulness in our use of the intervening months.

How much Ai driven humanist technologies, like vaccine programmes that enable biological and behavioural determinism ie. enslavement, might be being used to exploit the ‘inquisitors’ agenda should, for instance, be collectively clear by then, but whether it will be too late to do anything about it by then may rest more fully in our own hands now than ever before.

The world will keep on turning, the planets will continue in their astral dance, regardless what we actively take it upon ourselves to do, but that too shows how poignantly interconnected all is now becoming within this eclipse impulse as, once March 2023 is through, this door closes and another one opens.

Also changing signs in March, and deepening the conviction to push through, are Mars and Pluto, Mars going into Cancer and Pluto into Aquarius before March 2023 and the active agency of this eclipse is out.

At Samhain and the lunar eclipse Pluto of course is in late Capricorn, while Mars is retrograde in Gemini squaring both Neptune and Jupiter, in fact all the planets in the western half of the zodiac are retrograde, adding to the underlying and interiorised sense of ‘something’ impending. All those in the eastern half are direct, reflecting the emergent qualities now rising.

The trick here is in realising that, while we are all waiting for that unknown to arrive, the waiting itself is symptomatic of the very thing that needs to be broken through. We have been trained to ‘wait’, become compliant and dependent, but, we cannot allow the forgetting to continue.

Timing is everything, and that is why such moments as this matter. Its not as if we have not seen them before – the Arab Spring uprisings of 2010-11 for example clearly expressed a similar potential, although that was more specifically an expression of the Uranus Pluto square which accompanied it.

There has been a shift in the collective consciousness as a result of that time and its mirroring in the long standing astrological square – we are certainly, and specifically in the national/global political and economic arenas, now witnessing the consequence of our own actions and inaction during that time.

The last two years have been an experiment in how far this action/inaction equation can be pushed, a fitting end to the Uranus/Pluto square perhaps, but, the nature of our personal and societal relationship with those structures of power which have bearing on how our freedoms are expressed are now under constant scrutiny. This is true on both sides of the equation, I believe, and it is now Saturn’s role to emphasise, and actualise, the limitations being imposed upon us, in the process limiting our collective power for deciding and enacting change, while making more overt and palpable the need for change itself.

With Scorpio hosting south node, Sun, Mercury and Venus we are within reach of, if not on the cusp of a breakthrough in understanding our deep past, its rich genetic nature and true history – such knowledge has the power to unleash such immense forces that could change how we live on this planet completely – the Taurean field, where the Moon’s light is momentarily reduced to its own indigenous nature, symbolically if nothing else, is where this reality will be felt, if not seen most. Scorpio holds the dna coding, Taurus the essential building blocks of life. However, Saturnian control of how, or if, this happens within the realms of human society plays off in its square to the eclipse axis.

The Bill to limit and criminalise peaceful protest that is now passing through and in process within the British Parliament is an apt illustration of how deeply embedded this limiting power is within the archetype of institutionalised democracy, for all its assumed freedoms within the west.

But, it is the longer shadow of this power-over element within our lives, its more deeply embedded effect on our collective and individual nature over a very long period of time, and our need to stand up for that nature, that is being highlighted here – this is a shadow of consequence, its own locked up energy being potentially destructive, but, the energy that it is suppressing and the suppression itself are here starkly brought out into the open – the consequences of this are unpredictable.

Even the nature of events which will express this revelation are unforeseeable; but, the energy that can be utilised to further this release is now on hand, and can be called upon, invoked for the greater good, and brought to bear in all our actions. To do so is almost enough – almost; to be able to be responsive and ready to follow through, to sustain the resultant flow of change inducing energy is equally important.

I feel like a major deja-vu moment is unfolding in saying these things, and as an astrologer and diviner I’ve heard this scenario being voiced too many times in the last two decades especially, but, perhaps that is because this is simply a part of what is a very long process, one which began millennia ago, which the indigenous spirit within is well aware of. Many who turn up for a reading are simply keeping an appointment with their own indigenous remembering – the collective need for this to happen now is upon us big time – we make it happen when we make ourselves available to it, but, how does anyone break through the amnesia?

There is awakening, for sure, and it gathers its own momentum, within our collective remembering, but, its this moment that speaks to that momentum too.

The moment is grief riddled, for sure, and that is actually for the good – the grief goes so deep it is unfathomable, but, perhaps it is in honouring the unbreakable thread of ancestry that the inherent healing power of that grief is first and foremost enabled in our times. Unbreakable, that is, so long as we protect its future, as well as its past.

The buck stops here…..but, we are surrounded by our ancestors, willing us and praying for us to remember.

This, more than ever, is the appropriate, and perhaps most auspicious time to reciprocate.

Make your prayers deep, your offerings poignant and rich with meaning in respect of that honouring, and blessings of the Great Mother be with you at this Taurean full Moon.

———-

image taken at Wildworks’ “I Am Kevin”, Cornwall, 2022

Heads Up – Mars Enters Sagittarius

…..Mars has entered Sagittarius and is sailing the rocky waters of the Scorpio constellation with a sting in his tail.

The underlying tetchy mood you may encounter over the next few days, if not weeks, is a reflection of the fact that Mars is flying beneath the radar of all the planets save Uranus, Chiron and Neptune and, in the process, is creating ripples and undercurrents that have the potential to rock all our boats.

This is a hot energy that is applying to the field as a whole and is affecting the collective overview of life. It is more than adequately reflected back to us in the image of the raging fires that are burning in nature which are impinging on human habitations – a powerful symbol of the collective human infrastructure being threatened by the flames that engulf our foundations within nature.

Take some time to reflect upon this symbol and it will throw into a sharper perspective the relationship we have with the elemental world, its powers and our ability to interact with them.

Humanity is under pressure, and this is equally reflected back to us in the now almost exact conjunction between Saturn and Pluto a sign and a half from Mars. Mars is tightening the angle.

If you encounter this in the form of pressure, take notice first, then apply a little kindness, to yourself and others….its going to pass.

If you must put your head above the parapet make sure its for good reason, and get your timing right.

Be careful, in fact, in all your dealings as we approach the exact conjunction of Saturn and Pluto on the 12th; this is not a time for false moves or rash decisions.

Mars will form semi-squares with the Capricornian stellium through this time so avoid reactions and the blame game too, otherwise you will only be throwing fuel on the fire….

….a great deal of the incendiary mayhem at large is the result of subterfuge and deliberate mismanagement of resources, but, this will out in time – for now, take Mars prompts as a heads up and adjust your inner fire appropriately.

What will come later is going to be feeding those fires further so the directive here is to get familiar with how they feel and what is necessary to regulate their emotional charge. Properly directed that charge will have the capacity to work positively for us; left to its own devices it shows its destructive nature to full effect and determines the course of events.

We can be wise to this, practical in a Capricornian way, accepting that change must come, that it may require rebuilding from the ground up, but, that it can be done with a much deeper understanding than  we have become accustomed to using – this is the opportunity to shine brightly in the face of difficult circumstances. Even if it means reconfiguring who we are collectively and on a personal level.

Light a candle for your prayers, yes, but accompany it with sweet medicine and waters of the spirit to heal and soothe.

This is, however, by virtue of exactly the same ingredients, a very good time to burn off the crap adhering to old and worn out views on Life, philosophies that no longer cut the mustard in the light of everyday living, and to use the emotive drives that arise through each day as reminders that life can be lived to the full, so long as you don’t take the slaps and cuffs too personally…..

…this is also a time in which high voltage healing can be given in the personal realms; regulate that energy and it will work wonders. Take care and….

Blessed Be!

A Mirror of Polished Stone

Full Moon 12th Nov 2019, 1:34pm UTC/GMT

The full Moon in Taurus carries a blessing of a rare nature that brings much needed balance into our midst. But, this is no ordinary corrective to prevailing conditions: imagine…..

‘a mirror of polished stone hewn by supernatural forces within the deeply rooted bedrock of an ancient cliff face’

….the Taurean energy delivers a subtly shifting reflection of ancient oceanic light emanating from the depths of Scorpio, quietly grounding its energies within the earth plane.

This is a profound reminder that death furnishes all life with life. It is a meditation on mortality, yet here the emphasis is not on the ‘impermanence of all things’, but on the eternal nature that resides within their essence; this is the foundation within which this Moon invites us to rest.

Both sides of this symbolism are reinforced by the Sabians which accompany the Moon and Sun; the Moon’s degree speaks of ‘an awareness of blessings being bestowed upon us by supernatural forces’, the Sun’s degree of ‘the sacred way being revealed to us by the divine feminine’. To enter that path is to receive the blessing.

The message is furthered through the fine tuning and nuances that smaller astral bodies and galactic energies are here bringing to each of the classical planets. They ask us the fundamental questions that enable us to enter into communion with our essence.

“Who are you, when all is stripped away?”

This reminder of how well developed our sense of self and self knowledge is comes directly through Saturn conjunct the centaur Amycus in the 17th degree of Capricorn.

“How capable are you of holding to your own truth when met with complete disbelief and denial?”

This asked of Jupiter conjunct with the asteroid Kassandra in the 26th degree of Sagittarius.

Pluto is conjunct the centuar Chariklo in the 22nd degree of Capricorn and asks if you are “capable of reconfiguring reality, finding growth through defeat”, Chariklo being a specialist in questioning what is real.

Uranus asks us if we are “willing to enter the void in order to find our higher self”.

The void, as source of all possibility, resonates with Uranus predilection for anomaly and invention. Within the darkness is infinite potential.

And Neptune’s oceanic realm is endarkened further through the Black Moon in the 16th degree of Pisces – their question is perhaps the most psychically charged of all – “what are the powers, concealed from common sight, that live within you in whose grace you are gifted with sight and craft beyond the norm?”

These are powers which we can only gain knowledge of by acknowledging their presence and entering into dynamic relationship with their energetics – the powers which dwell within the deep psyche are autonomous, belonging to the natural matrix, unavailable to complete integration, yet the interactive awareness we may bring to their presence is also a profound gift of incarnation.

Mercury has asked for a deeper look, to open our mind and use our inner faculties in seeking an answer. The gateway of Samhain has aided the inner communion with ancestry and the non-physical worlds.

Mercury’s cazimi transit of the Sun has invigorated the genetic coding we have carried forward through lifetimes, supporting a conscious intent to bring our ancestral DNA into commission.

As the Moon and Sun come into opposition across the Scorpio Taurus axis this impulse is disseminated throughout the matrix of nature. There is no need of rationality in this moment – it is within the grace that humans know as trust that the answers arise.

We are in the thrall of mystery yet, as Venus reminds us through conjunction with the Great Attractor, the unseen is a powerful shaper of life, necessary for the blessing of life to continue.

Venus having moved on from the great star Antares, whose energies balance Mars drives for action with a centring balm of peace, is on her way to conjunction with Jupiter at the Galactic Centre and developing a useful sextile with Mars as the next lunation opens. These are positive aspects we can look forward to now.

Here, at this full Moon, while Mars degree speaks through the Sabians of the power of Adept abilities to act through the unified power of Yin and Yang, Venus degree speaks through the Sabians of our own spiritual ancestry. She invites us to reflect on our own path through the knowledge of our own soul’s past which has come into our possession in this lifetime through a higher level of achievements.

Let your being rest in the lap of this full Moon, bath in moonlight and open yourself to the mystery of mortality from the spirit’s point of view.

There is much to be thankful for. Meditate in peace.

Blessed Be!

In The Realms of The Black Moon

Lilith And The Need-Fire

On September 18th fire maned Venus met with her dark sister, the ‘Black Moon Lilith’ and, stepping into the Lilith corridor, donned her robe of dark feathers. As she did so she opposed Uranus, the cosmic fire wielder and ancient consort of the Earth goddess, and through the mantle of the dark feminine power ignited a Need-fire that will burn for 13 Moons. Mark this time and set a lunar calendar by which its phases can be counted. There will be many as the inner and outer realms are being activated in unison with a pulse that brings many synchronous levels of planetary phases into an entraining sequence.

The die is cast for the coming months as She also carries the seed energy of the eclipsed Moon from 16th September, striking the ground of the fertile darkness with black lightning, the shadow side of Uranus fire, as she traverses the ‘fiery road’ that leads into the heart of the Scorpio.

With this subtlely convened entry into the other worlds Venus path may have gone unmarked and, leaving no visible trace, undetected; save in the hearts of the wise women, the poets and seers whose vibration of the membrane between this world and the next within this world would have felt like a sweet rage of passion upsurging to issue forth with new verse, insight and knowing…..the zone of extreme psychic sensitivity that the Lilith corridor demarks is below the sweep of the ‘common’ mind’s radar. And yet, in us all, there is this path and we know it, even if only by its dream traces and the ‘anomalous’, the unbidden scents of ancient forest of knowledge through which it leads, whenever we stumble across the boundaries between the worlds within our own world and hear their whisperings…..

As I write, Venus has now left the ‘via combusta’ but remains yet within the Lilith corridor, having met with Black Moon Lilith’s sister ‘Dark Moon’ Lilith on the way. As the corridor closes behind the ‘fire-maned’ goddess, on October 10th, the two Liliths having also swapped places, such is the weaving of their own paths, Black Moon Lilith once again ushers ‘Fire Mane’ out and into the company of Juno who awaits her at the sacred portal in late Scorpio.

With this passage into the realms of the dark fire, Venus activated the degrees upon which the thunderer Jupiter and the awakener Uranus will mark the mid point of their current synodic cycle. She opens the pathway for the Sun and Mercury to follow in her wake before the storm bringers get to work. Having sensitised the degrees of opposition with Uranus and initiating a year long archetypal influence that promises a widening of mental perception and injection of paradigm shifting potential into the planetary field, She also marks the second half of the current lunation with a potent homeopathic dose of intense otherworldly energy, the subtle workings of which will underpin the coming year with psychic sensitivity. Her journey through the via combusta has carried this psychic imprint and, as Venus accelerates through the zodiac towards the slow down and retrograde that precedes her eventual meeting with Uranus in Aries, June 2017, is pushing feminine issues and the reconfiguration of ‘wealth’ distribution to the top of the agenda.

Following Mars lead, as he opened the transit of the outer planets by starting a new synodic cycle with Saturn in August, Venus and Mercury will be activating the outer planets through this time zone to mid year, and we can expect big shifts on the ground, and in our personal lives as a consequence. The issues at stake are rampant, complex and global, but they boil down to one major effort to end the abuse, of our planet, of each other and of ourselves. This is a massively important time for us all and Venus has found the best of company with which to open the flood gates for serious healing.

Venus has been gathering a storm behind her and She, with Juno, who oversees the boundaries of the sacred marraige and who upholds its lore and sacred laws, will be seeking justice for all the wrongs done in the name of falsity and greed to the Feminine ‘archetype’. The sacredness of Life has become threatened to the point of extinction, through the violation of the sacred marraige that a rampant army of patriarchal genocidal murderers has wrecked upon the holy, our Earth, no less than holy women, and men, our brothers and sisters…..and we are all of their kin, as they, holy, within our bones….

…..the wound is deep, so deep, a maw of millenia wide abuse, torture, rape and pillage, whose scouring of the temenos and razing of the circles of sacred power undid what Venus, the Fire Mane, Comet Goddess began when she seeded this world with the holy fire of the otherworlds at the turning of the worlds, the beginning of ‘our’ historical time. The turning must, in turn, be turned.

The Liliths are not bound by the material, but are of an ilk that embodies a knowing and imbues our acts with unchecked raw passion, is uncensored in its primal power, deeply erotic with the love of the life force at full flow, capable of no less a cataclysmic transmutation of the known through their own dark fire than Uranus lightning strikes, and it is this furious compassion that they invoke, for a cleansing of this world; no less than this will turn the world from its present destructive course – we are disposed to take its spark into our own hands and hearts to this end. Without it ‘goodness’ alone will be inadequate to the immensity of the task.

There is a voluminous depth to their emotional power now, banked up behind them by generations of murder at the stake, inflamed by usury and enslavement of the creative embodiment of the life force in service to a specious post modern psychosis of scientific materialism…..and, in Scorpio, this reaches down to the primary building blocks of life itself, to the encoding hardware of our DNA, its inwoven story of ancient memory itself a path between the worlds. The mutation of all life forms at the hands of controlling yet uncontrolled hubris that has so marked the later phases of the ‘modern era’ cannot continue without severe consequences.

sheela

The Dark Goddess has been reviled, suppressed and seared to the bone for being the source of wisdom that needs no mandate from a higher ‘God’ to manifest its fecund life affirming creative energies in form. Lilith was the original serpentine Eve, the true repository of such wisdom and empowering knowledge and means – empowerment as it could be, has been and will be again, within the incarnate realms. This violation is the great wound of the modern ‘Christian’ Era, at the hands of the ‘church fathers’, their armies, mercinaries and plunderers, who have sought to wipe her power from the earthly realms – but Christianity is not alone in its subjugation of the Feminine and the propagation of this wound. All wars carry the vile seal of their murderous intent, ‘holy’ or not. And War rages on, until we end it.

Expect now fierce reprisals, fearsome even……but, that would be an understatement…..for there must now be a swing in the balance, archetypal and paradigmatic in scope, in favour of the Feminine power, for a purging of the unholy cankers that scab the wound, to clear the way for a truer balance between the sacred energies of creation to be created anew. For the wound to be healed. Libra and Scorpio propagate this process, are at work in this.

Do not expect the world to end; do not expect an end, without a fight, for fight we must, not with violence but with the sacred passion of protectors……and will need the lightning seeds of a revolutionary resurgence and passion fires of raw wisdom that Fire Mane has been gathering in her wake, to burn in our own hearts and minds as we do so.

The Need Fires must burn away the rot and its shadow, and will, with Her blessing. And this is not man’s fire, but, the ancient fire that was invoked to scour the illnesses and dis-ease from the face of this world with sacred purpose. The knowledge of the Need-fires was one of Fire Mane’s gifts to our own ancestors and were ignited from, carried the sacred spark of, the original fire at their heart, as must we. Sacred Fire keepers we must be, as Uranus gatekeepers……promethian heirs to an unbound legacy, the buck stops here.

Within the Lilith corridor Fire Mane will have gained necessary knowledge from the ‘lunar’ sisters that will restore Her vitality in this resurgent cleansing of the world, the better to find its mark; the wise ones, medicine people, healers, poets and seers will know it, invoke its inner flame, sound it wide and far, for this is now their time, our time; but, its markers will be seen in the mundane world, the world of the ‘common’ mind, and minded, as the collapse of its secular gods, upon their own alters, impaled upon the barbs of their own greed and lust for power….economies will crumble, the swaggering ozymandian empires of this world will follow Percy’s prophecy and the New World will find its coat of lies burnt to ashes, its imposed Order-out-of-‘chaos’ destroyed in the wake……

….the high priests of this Order have long lost control of their own minds, their hearts hollowed, their souls long reduced to dust beneath the feet of their own uncaring pantheon…..they long ago instituted the ‘death of all caring’ and will suffer their own fate accordingly; it is not for us to perpetrate such, lest we merely perpetuate their crimes, we who would see all souls redeemed…..and can any diviner, astrologer or seer, poet, wise woman, or man, proclaim any other intent…….I, for one, would say not, for the chain of guilt that binds the violators will be the  nematic  rope of karma that hangs them, the chasm that swallows them, for guilty they are, and even now pile further crime upon crime……such is the psychotic vortex that surrounds them, of their own making. Its mark upon the world is not hidden; look to where their is unjust pain, like Chiron’s wound, awaiting redemption…..this wound is real, its source no less so, and this is where the Need-fire must be applied.

To say that the wounding is ‘real’ is to reduce it to banality, but, at the risk of such, it is true to say that the planetary alignments brought out this theme with the penumbral lunar eclipse conjunct Chiron at full Moon on September 16th, just as Venus was coming into orb of opposition with Uranus. And Chiron is no less an architect of the subtle than Saturn is an architect of the material. As the lastest of the group of eclipses across the Virgo Pisces axis, that sweeps the ecliptic following the lunar nodes with its own fated destiny every 18.6 years, this ephemeral eclipse may have slipped its own influence beneath the radar; but, the world and the celestial sphere reflect each other with unerring acuity, and there is little in the world of human and planetary affairs now that does not reflect the need to pay heed to the wounds that have been created, and are being creating still.

night-owl

As an augery of the times the opposition between Venus in Libra and Uranus in Aries is by itself a powerful indicator of the erotic power of primal creative energy, of the profoundly transformative effect of peak experiences and ‘divine’ insight on our human mentality and how we, as humans, relate to the world. Seen together they suggest the rapid transmission of kundalini energy, ‘serpent power of the goddess’, into the higher generative realms of the mental sphere, the source field of the mind’s architecture.

By itself, this energy is potent requiring a purposeful and timely integrity, a soul possessed of a level of self reflection and ‘completion in understanding’ in which clarified intent and a high degree of self honesty are already established. Otherwise, it is a transformative power that belies the positive aspects of its potential; the shadow side of these transformative experiences are latent within their manifestation – if one is not prepared for their influx these arcs of Uranian kundalini like power can be equally devastating, wreaking immense damage to both body and mind, subverting Uranus potential for transformational liberation into deep psychosomatic wounding from which only equally deep cleansing can restore its liberating potential. But, this is the true reflection of the world, of what the Fire Maned Goddess and Her dark sisters are invoking in our minds and hearts, the ‘need’ within the need-fire, and be sure, their Need-fire must burn within, as well.

When the Black Moon Lilith is involved with Uranus, especially in opposition and union with  one of Her planetary sisters, the Uranian power manifests its shadow, and such healing becomes the absolute necessity. Uranus castration brought forth a new order in the realms of creation, an order in which his own wound and seperation from the Earth goddess realms is complicit. With this firmly in mind, it is of great significance to a world undergoing such deep wounding, as ours is, of Uranus usurped creative power, that this opposition activated the Aries Libra axis in anticipation of the major opposition that sets the 13 Moon time frame, that between Jupiter and Uranus. Their orb is activated as the current Black Moon lunation closes and completes in October 2017, as Jupiter enters Scorpio.

Not only Uranus but Jupiter too is calling forth a revolution. Juno’s husband will test us, call us to levels of understanding we cannot foresee, unweave our knowing and weave it anew, bring elemental power into our mental workings and reverberate the collective mind, awakening the Planetary Mind. To understand the visceral significance of this necessity we must revisit the beginning of their synodic cycle back in 2010. And this will be our theme next time…..

…..for now, make still your sacred center, gather the kindling of your passions and set the hearth in your own sacred temenos to receive the fire seeds of Venus and the dark sisters of the Moon. And in the meantime let us come one step closer to the present moment…..

…..this post enters the neural pathways of the ‘virtual’ etheric as the second waxing quarter of the Black Moon opens, the Moon preceding Samhain, just as the lunar disc joins with asteroid Lilith, close on Pluto in mid Capricorn, having first called forth the sacred fire of the protectors at Moon’s passing of Mars one day ago. For we are here within the embrace of an older calendric, under the rising energy of the Black Moon, and this will be our closing invocation here. Let it be understood by this that the naming of this Moon is quite other than that which popular ‘modern’ pseudo folklore has applied; this Moon is Black by another name……

star-owl-copy

The Black Moon

The Black Moon lunation which began on October 1st completes in the 8th degree of Scorpio on October 30th and fully describes the arc of the transition involving Jupiter and Uranus, making of this lunation a powerful augery for the primary archetypal signature not only for the emergent power of the Lilithian Fires, but, of the coming year over thirteen lunations. That it completes at Samhain provides us with a clue to the subtle pathways it is engendering and through which its energies are working…..if it is karmic it is also cyclical and its karmic roots, as we will soon see, in the next post here, were clearly delineated at the beginning of the current Jupiter Uranus synodic cycle.

The major archetypal marker however for the first half of Jupiter and Uranus cycle has been the Uranus Pluto square, whose transmutative series it perfectly frames. As this solar year ends and the new year begins the last reverberations of the Pluto and Uranus square will be felt as they come to within 4° of orb, signing off the current phase of their cycle. By that time Venus will be transiting the Moon’s south node in Pisces and the Sun will be transiting Pluto. The ancestral legacy of 5,000 years or more of sacred violation is loaded in this time, awaiting its great turning, and Pluto has opened a wide portal of his own, all the roots of that ancestral tree ablaze with the Sun’s light as the solar disc crosses its meridian.

The intensity of the last six years is shifting in focus, density and pace as we move out of the zone of radical transmutation brought through Uranus and Pluto’s seven waxing squares to the fundaments of power at work in this world. Complicit with this emergence, new cyclical relationships are forming between the inner and outer planets, amongst all the planets in their synodic phases. We are seeing the beginning of a new planetary phase which will, ultimately, help us to make sense of the turmoil and dissonance we have been experiencing.

Astrologically, it is Jupiter and Uranus opposition across the Libra Aries axis that is providing the underlying planetary influence behind this emergence, stimulating new levels of intuitive thinking and instinctive knowing. We must ready ourselves for an expansion of neural connectivity that reaches beyond the habitual limitations of our own mental frame. But, before we can fully integrate with this powerful influence we would do well to call forth the inner wisdom of the Goddesses, to light our own need-fire and purge our own inner lives of the mental canker that we carry and project onto others and the world. This Black Moon is the grounding time for this preparation.

In this light the new Moon which began this current lunation was labelled with a deceptive yet provocative epithet – hailed with populist new-age fervour as a ‘Black’ Moon, its apparent ‘rarity’ no less than obscurantist, freighted with imaginary significance that does little more than distract us from its relevence by drawing on an artificially created human thirst for meaning.

Flattened into desouled meaninglessness within the scientifically refracted spectra of sensual reality that blights our times there is, on the one hand, no especially ‘black’ Moon, at least none any shade significantly darker than at any other new Moon; this use of name is ‘simply down to the fact that two new moons occur within the same calendar month, one of which is called ‘Black’, in the same way that one of two full moons occuring in the same Gregorian calendar month is called a ‘Blue’ Moon – such is the anodyne post materialist view of the ‘literalist’, no less ironic for its unacknowledged Papal endorsement, who will tell us, “neither are black or blue or gain any special meaning from the term”…..

…….except that, as the poets and people of medicine remind us, on the other hand, by some subtler construct and equally subtle irony, to which the unquenchable if curiously human desire to clothe the mundane in a livable story responds, the Soul is re-awakened through such fertile symbolism to a possibility beyond the senses, beyond the literal. The same fertility sown through Lilith and Venus transactions between the worlds.

The synchronous advent of this symbol, as it has perhaps unwittingly  been applied to this Moon, with the invoking of the ‘need-fire’ reminds of the presence of this inextinguishable fecundity at work behind our world. It is a symbol we need, that is calling for our attention. It tells us that this possibility for other-worldly intervention between the worlds persists, even now, that it enters via backdoors, hidden behind the hard reflective surface of homogenised reductivism, a magical propensity that somehow, perhaps miraculously in the face such rampant literalism, by dint of iteration and innate need, is constellated in this Black Moon and its lunation.

Lilith, in all compensatory and redemptive senses, has begun to dance this magic back into our lives…..only the soul-less will fail to feel it, but, Hers is a dark fire, both invisible to the physical eye, and seen by the soul, that is the need-fire. It comes, as the ‘need-fire’ has been invoked by Earth loving peoples for countless millenia, in response to the times, in anticipation of the Samhain Moon, as a purge of illness and disease between ourselves and the ancestors….

We are thirsty for such magic, as they are for us to invoke its healing power; the soul feels that ‘need’ as a magnetic pull from the heart, whose knowing responds to the innate, to the already known, which the ancestral realms give us access to, which itself carries healing resonance, and accepts the wound as the passageway to wholeness.

The ‘via combusta’ in which this Moon finds its own fiery culmination earned its uneasy reputation from the fall of the luminaries, the Sun and Moon, within its own respective signs of Libra and Scorpio, as well as those same signs loaded associations with the ‘malefic’ aspect of their ruling planets, but, the archaic roots of the ‘burning way’ have almost certainly been overlayered by these meanings. There are certain times in Earth’s history when such a term would have carried a very different meaning, and this too we now invoke, in preparation.

The cyclical cleansing of earth, of homesteads and of livestock through Fire is not an apocalyptic biblical construct, but, the same very old tradition, surviving into post-glacial times within emergent cultures, that relates to celestial events that preceeded and prompted their advent. The great comet that has been recorded globally amongst indigenous peoples to have brought these planetary changes, and marked the rise of aggression against the Feminine, was described as trailing hair of fire and scouring the earth. She became subdued through capture into the Sun’s magnetic heliosphere and became known, amongst other names, as Venus, and thus began the rise of the solar cult and its shadow, the cult of Saturn so loved of the violators. She was a planet become a comet, before she resumed her planetary status, and her-story carries the memory of our true ‘his-tory’. All the planets have undergone massive transformation before achieving their present orbits around this, our second Sun, become our central Sun. But, that is a story for another time……

As we have seen, it was Venus who, under the astrological shadow cloak of Her romanised form, called up her dark sisters prior to this Moon, igniting this lunar ‘need-fire’ and, in so doing activated the greater resurgence that will come into manifestation over the coming year.

Regardless the human folly, Lilith will not be held back and in the process our Story will be returned to us. This will be a part of Jupiter and Uranus gift to us.

This is the time for the raw power of the ‘Feminine’ to emerge, to be given voice and the fierce fire that burns behind its wisdom to become manifest, reinstated. As a creative force it is unbridled, knows the intimacy between life and death, and pulses with passionate intensity. It casts no shadow for its own light is innate, the darkness transformed – this is the healing within its fire, burning off the illusions of the shadow realms. This is the Black Moon lunation’s gift – let us use it well……at Samhain there will be celebrations if we do; the Great Fire tended by the ancestors at the center of their village will burn the more brightly and ignite new dreamings in our souls. Our medicine people, seers, poets, wise women, and men, will sing us the way….

As we end now you may have noticed one major planetary player by their absence here, Neptune. Neptunes realm will be at the heart of the next post when we take a very different look at how the oceans of this world have suffered the wound of our times and how this relates to the Jupiter Uranus cycle…..in the meantime,

Blessings of the Sacred Fire be with you!

Memories Of Futures Past

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We have to talk and talk tough, with extreme lucidity, and put our petty concerns aside – the times demand it of us. But, more than that, we have to walk our talk. The radical end game of the Uranus Pluto square has arrived as the two outer planets slowly break out of antagonistic orb. Five years of unrest has seen the world change profoundly, one irrevocable truth overshadowing all others – the disastrous consequence of the pursuit of nuclear power is a reality that will not go away; Fukushima made sure of that. Few could have forseen the actual event of Fukushima, but, well before this, once the atom was split the writing was very clearly on the wall. How on earth did we let that happen? Who’s choice was it……

At the end of the Piscean Age our choices for the future bring us to the very edge, the crux of transition, the fact that whatever we decide now will affect all who come after us. Fukushima’s imprint is seemingly indelible, potentially covering 50 millenia or more, two precessions of the equinox.

The Piscean Age was always ultimately about endgames; its ultimate danger, oblivion, its ultimate promise, absolution. We could have perhaps walked the talk of its spiritual core and brought ourselves to unparalleled heights, but there was always an element in our midst that sought all the glory for itself – and now, caught beneath the many tentacled manifestation of its shadow, it is no exaggeration to say that we are in a fight for survival as we struggle to lift its smothering veil. That shadow element has proven itself ruthless, to the point of self destruction – it is an old old wound that has become cancerous, quite literally, but, we must ask; how did it get there, what is its true nature and what must we do to eradicate it, for good?

We could begin by recognising that it began long ago, not simply a consequence of some mad myopic modernistic race for ‘progress’ but the inevitable consequence of profound changes within humanity that began nearly twelve thousand years ago. The seeds of those changes were sown by cosmological events, Earth changes that forced us to evolve new ways of thinking and living around the end of the younger Dryas. Then too, our choices were stark, but, choices we had. And we would do well to remember them. It is no coincidence that the planetary matrix is reflecting this reality back to us now.

Saturn is conjunct the south node of Uranus – we must remember our unique capacity to survive the worst of adversity, the human ability to meet radical times with an equally radical shift in consciousness, and more than anything else how it changed us – such remembering brings us face to face with the karmic consequences of seeking power over natural law.

Pluto is closing on conjunction with its own south node; we must retrieve the memories of that deep change that shifted the balance of power within our human world, within our human relationship with this living being we call Earth – no matter how painful the trauma, we will find the map that leads us to our own long hidden and virtually forgotten buried treasure in that place.

Without this level of collective self knowledge we are consigning ourselves to repeat our gravest errors, to continue the phobic blackout and inflict upon our selves an even deeper if not irrevocable wound as a species. Pluto’s south node in Capricorn can give us the keys unlocking the mystery of its own north node in Cancer and, the radical necessity of doing so is at its crucial point. Uranus is now exactly squaring that node. The shift in power, the radical change in mores and social structures, seeded the rise of patriarchy and heirarchic relationships based upon dominance. Capricorn represents the culmination of these changes, the apotheosis of Cancer.

When Saturn conjuncts Pluto in 2020 they will meet on Pluto’s south node in Capricorn and be in close proximity to Saturn’s own south node. The shadow of the past will be unavoidably manifest in the present at that crunch time. We have a clear time frame for this endgame.

In the intervening time we will see Uranus transit the Taurean cusp three times, eventually entering tropical Taurus in March 2019 for an eight year stay.

In 2024 Pluto will enter Aquarius for a 22 year transit of Uranus home sign. This transit will culminate in their opposition, the first of seven across early degrees of the Pisces Virgo axis over a three year period. As far off as it may seem the keys to that time, our ability to receive Uranus influx of the Virgoan field, lie in this present time and the current lunation gives us a vital glimpse. We will return to this in the next post.

Before that time, also beginning in 2024, there is another perhaps more beneficial stage in this slow shift of the Ages as Neptune finally leaves Pisces and in the process sextiles both Pluto and Uranus at the midpoint of their trine. This configuration will last for five years and eventually see Uranus transit its own north node in May 2029 in Gemini. Some might say that Neptune in Aries provokes memories of religious conflict and Pluto in Pisces a crisis of spirituality. But, again, it is the conscious choices we make now and the commitment they embody that will determine how well we are able to bring out the positive side of this interplay between the outer planets.

The message is clear – our time for reparation is short. In the last six years, since I began blogging (at Owlmirror) about planetary transits and the revolution in consciousness, the field has changed radically – not only has the world become radicalised but a parallel inner process is at work. Many who have woken up from the torpor of the Piscean miasma are now working to further this change. Our Uranian technological revolution serves to enable this as a continuing process, but, waking up alone is no longer enough. The crisis that waking up to reality presents us with now demands a sea change that must build from within the awakened consciousness of the individual. It is a commitment sourced at soul level. We have to turn the tide now. If we can use the next four years wisely to this effect the four years after may carry enough momentum for us to continue enjoying the benefits of choice.

Choice we do still have, even now, even if these appear diminished and stark against the backdrop of global irradiation and creeping wipeout. These are not morbid pessimistic statements, they are facts, realities, and there is very good reason to accept them as such. The ensoulment of Life as much as our own future depend upon it. Such acceptance and commitment may yet be the very thing that makes the crucial difference, the key to a plausible future, a radically different way of thinking and living – we have to be brave, courageous to accept it, but the bottom line is that Uranus and Pluto were always about a revolution of the soul, not just our own but this planet’s. That is why we are here, now.


Lets not forget that forgotten treasure – it lies behind the door to the future manifest in Pluto’s north node. It takes the shape of a profound memory of the past that is deeply embedded within the souls of all living now, a memory going all the way back to the Age of Cancer, the cultural high point of the age of the Mother Goddess. The egalitarian society which belonged to that time cannot be retreived, but, its soul is asking to be remembered and born anew – it is the gift of the Aquarian Age that can yet give meaning to our times.

Medussa’s Answer

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In answering the question What Price Planet Earth we must turn the tables on an many things, not least of all the degrading supression of women and it is in the myth associated with the degree of the May new Moon that we find one of the most virulent examples of the mysogynist’s dirty work, the myth of Medussa. The balance of power must be reconfigured.

Astrologicaly, the May through June lunation carries a broad and unboundaried field quality, so its influence is globalising. The lunation opening at the midpoint between Jupiter and Neptune brings an archetypal balance of masculine and feminine values into the global arena that expands upon the dynamic balance of male and female energy which was a feature of the last Moon. There we saw the feminine aspect taking the most dynamic role, redressing the balance through a self confident and athletic Venus. Now we see this energy collectivised, unfolding throughout this lunation, emergent particularly at each quarter of the Moon’s phases.

In the skies the Sun and Moon began this lunation where Venus began the last, at the flanks of the Bull, and will complete it just as they pass beyond the tip of Taurus horns on 16 June. Venus, by then will be passing through the stars that form the ancient gateway at the heart of the constellation of Cancer. She is giving us the heads up, as she slows down towards her own turning point, to look ahead and take a status check ~ be prepared, have a plan, be ready to change direction.

As this lunation opened Venus was passing through the midst of the Geminian stars, giving us a strong hint, not only of the left/right brain balance that her dynamic can help restore, but, of the necessity of listening, communication and keeping your antennae up, especially those that feed your gut feelings. She suggests that it pays now to bring the intuitive side of physical consciousness to bear on mental processes, those ‘knowings’ we experience at a gut level. This highlights the point and value of peace within adaptation. As the primary practical grounding for all our actions this is an essential part of our survival kit ~ it is also the very grounded foundation upon which the spiritual aspect of this lunation is built.

At the personal level opening to intuitive intelligence is essential as it has the capacity to guide us independantly of the powerful emotive influences of dramas unfolding around us ~ often it is heard and felt more as the quiet but clear voice that appears to contradict the concensus, the voice of the herd mentality. It allows us to avoid becoming distracted from sensing what is real. As an art, encouraging the wisdom of our gut feeling also increases integration with that aspect of our selves which is outside of conditioning, aids our deconditioning. It deepens the connection with our ‘higher self’, which is integral to the ‘pleroma’ rather than the individual energy cluster which we recognise as ‘our-selves’. In this sense it unites ‘above’ with ‘below’ and allows us to make better choices and adjust our lives accordingly.

Here, the ‘peaceful adaptation’ of the Sabian symbol for 27 Taurus may find meaning, but, how does this interface with the ‘collective’? The intuitive nature of Uranus is now building through a trine to Jupiter and works with Mercury, turned retrograde just hours after the new Moon, to receive more intuitively. Mercury’s retrograde pulls the immediate past into the present. Changes and experiences that have been brought into our personal and world field over the last few weeks are now being integrated, so,  the first days of this lunation provide a good time to take stock and reflect on what has transpired most recently.

But, the new Moon also saw Mars opposite Saturn and Venus opposite Pluto; this may not only be a period of hard choices that we are now entering, radical by nature and effect, but, of decisions that are tough to impliment. While patience might be necessary it is much easier to find when peace is present. ‘Easier said than done’, we might hear ourselves saying…..but, we do have the means to do it; the astrology of this Moon is first and foremost a tool for accessing and identifying those means appropriately. In fact there is a prophetic quality about this Moon, one connected with Medussa, a great seer who has become totally distorted into a terrifying gorgon…..the fear factor she has been foisted with is our biggest challenge. It too must be cut through unflinchingly, seen for the deception that it is.

Many traditions of seership emphasise the importance of being able to hold a high degree of clarity and focus in the midst of distraction and have built excercises into the training that help develop this faculty. It is almost as if we are now entering that training.

Not only do those two oppositions stamp their signature on the lunation at the beginning, at first quarter the Sun opposes Saturn, and the aftermath of the Uranus Pluto square is once again stressed as Venus squares Uranus. At full Moon Mars applies the heat to Pluto at the apex of the yod from Mercury and Jupiter. The complexity of this matrix is matched by its volatility. That yod definitely gives the game away ~ at the outset an ebulliant, demonstrative Jupiter in Leo sextiles self regarding Mercury retrograde and their combined energy emerges through the Pluto point, backfiring where self obsession, mindgames and narcissism are at work fueling a thirst for power, and discharging through Venus in Cancer. You will know it when you feel it, as if we are not already! The Uranus square exaccerbates and Mars amplifies this effect vociferously while the Sun gives penetrative intent to the collective voice. Many world leaders need look out and wise up! The seer’s eye is opening…..and, I hate to say it, but, heads will roll.

Pluto is now also retrograde so we can truly expect the radical games of the power-elite to be seen for what they are – a massive scam to keep our attention and energies fixated, managed and farmed.

But, the reality of the threats we may percieve are not limited to the human sphere. Geocentric oppositions involving the inner planets, such as those between Mars, the Sun and Saturn, are extremely sensitive times for tectonic movement and upticks and, as geomantic stress events, these also affect how we are feeling as well as how we react. Hard aspects, especially oppositions, between Earth, Sun and the outer planets bring this sensitivity deeper into the collective realms, Venus opposite Pluto not withstanding. Venus begins this lunation squaring the lunar nodes and it is the feminine power that holds the keys to our future as well as to unlocking the past.

Then there is the matter of the superstition surrounding the degree on which this lunation opened. With the new Moon falling on the same longitude as the fixed star Caput Algol we might well find ourselves facing long held fears and come to the sudden realisation that these must now finally be overcome, a kind of ‘now or never’ moment. In so many senses the primary quality of this lunation is a startling immediacy and compelling intensity about the nature of experience itself ~ we must not allow their intensity and our fears to petrify us into inaction, in fact, we simply cannot afford it, quite literally.

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With the Sabian symbol for the 27th degree of Taurus indicating ‘individual adaptation to collective needs’ and Venus transitting Cancer those fears and our sensitivity to them are almost certainly going to be ancestral and inherited in nature and relate to values closest to home. There is deep and long term programming at work here. You may get a sense of karmic payback at work in the world. On a personal level, if you do experience this ‘feeling tone’ arising in ‘events’, take it as a sign that something has come up in order to be changed, this time around. Collectively, Algol has given us the ‘heads up’ (pun intended).

Algol, as said, is associated with the much misunderstood figure of Medussa, the priestess raped by Poseidon/Neptune in Minerva’s temple, and yet held responsible by Athena – for her ‘crime’ she was given her serpent hair and deadly reputation, all in return for a violation of the sacred precincts in which she was not the perpetrator, but, its victim. Sound familiar?! In fact Medussa was an initiatrix in the spiritual path of the cthonic earth Goddess, a divine mortal possessed of extreme Beauty, Power and Grace……Venus has been preparing us for this encounter.

We must take up her cause now and use seers eyes, as well as listen to our gut wisdom. Looking further ahead, globally we are now entering ‘salvage’ mode, this being the point at which the need to find the route to survival becomes manifestly real and the decisive action we might once have taken to avert danger is redirected into adapting to circumstances. It all begins to come together. The need for prioritising values, deciding what is essential, and focusing on preservation and damage limitation come to the fore. The demands of the past and future are becoming more immediate in the present.

Conversely, the Sabian symbol also talks of our indigenous nature and cultural heritage giving us the peaceful means to integrate a healthy flow of energy into our social setting, our community ~ the artifacts we offer out of our heritage carry the patterns of enduring wisdom and embody a certain deep joy that can be experienced directly in them. We are meant to pay the ancestral gift they represent forward. There is a strong nod here towards the reparative effects of the ‘gift culture’, to creating a genuine flow of energy that both feeds and honours, in which reciprocation and recognition are the currency and carry the true value, rather than exchange and possession of the thing itself. Wealth is meant to be shared, in fact it can only flourish if it is. In such flourishing we all receive nourishment. A highly pertinent fact waiting to be re-embodied within our world.

Without a doubt the strongest fears we have collectively suffered around this issue are connected with the idea of ‘scarcity’. This has been the psychological crowbar that has been deployed to force open the collective psyche and allow our most vulnerable instinctive fears to surface into the world. While our rightful heritage is destroyed and life blood syphoned off We are mercilessly manipulated through its use. The inner dynamic of this is so clearly demonstrated in the imbalance between the wealth of the ‘top one percent’ and the struggle to survive being visited upon the vast majority of the rest of us, a ‘reality’ which we clearly see being aggresively ‘deployed’ globally. It is symbolised through the money laundering schemes of government that feed the military-industrial complex and the bank owning elite who profit from it, rather than the people. This too is one of the inner dynamics of the Jupiter and Neptune mid-point, its emergent shadow side, now in full view.

The highly developed material aesthetic of the final degrees of Taurus carry a heavy burden if not shared. But, if anything, this Moon highlights this imbalance at its most potent level and, through the planetary positions, shows that we must apply strong energy to the task of rectifying it.

The last decan of Taurus is ruled by Saturn emphasising the life and death nature of this level of engagement, a radicalising game in which choices are made to appear very extreme, polarised, dualistically antagonistic. But, Saturn’s door, while it is seemingly one way, signed ‘exit’, is not ‘the end’……

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……the Sabian symbol gives us an image of an indigenous woman bringing the traditional crafts and artifacts of her culture into the marketplace of the contemporary world. There are several layers to this symbol, beyond her finding a means to survive in the modern world. The idea of ‘paying it forward’ is central to the work we all face now and the feminine apsect of our times is emergent within this role. Through her journey over the current lunations Venus is highlighting the immense beauty of an empowered woman, not in competition with the men, or the Bull, but, in full flow, expressing her accomplished abilities.

The snake maned priestess decapitated by Perseus has been demonised to the point of dissociation from her roots. In our time this is the political purpose served by the myth, a suitable repository for the ‘unacceptable’ face of initiated and empowered woman, a mirror. The curse of petrification she carries is rather a testament to the immense power her eyes radiate. She has incredibly potent vision, yes, but, it is the snakes that signify her source of power. It is the very power of creation that flows within the earth realms, the lightingbolt that condenses light into plasma, that illuminates the neural pathways of the unconditioned pleroma. Snakes are its living symbol and medicine animal. Petrification is the opposite of its effect rather than its corrollary. In the human frame this power can be sourced at the deeper centres, but, its voice is most clearly heard through our intuitive insight and its wisdom equally accessed through gut feeling. Some call this primal, but, while it is certainly intense, it could just as easily be called sublime, transcendant even.

In slaying the Medussa Perseus was obeying the rational dictates of his goddess Athena, the myth overlaying symbolism onto the historical transference of primary feminine power and wisdom to the more secular and masculinised figure of the goddess born fully armed from Zeus forehead. Athena kept Medussa’s head as the protective boss of her shield, ironically signifying that her sacred law was to be regarded as beyond question; however, the antidote to this weapon of fear can be found exactly facing the constellation of Perseus in the constellation of Ophiuchus, rising in the eastern night sky as Venus sets in the west.

Ophiuchus the serpent bearer holds the snake in both hands and applies its primary healing powers to the mortal world. Indeed, it is said Ophiuchus, or Asclepius as he is also identified, was the greatest of healers, so much so that he angered the gods with his ability to restore life to the dead and, ultimately, paid for his abilities with exile to the star realms. Ironically, in the end it was Athena who made the crucial difference here as she bestowed two phials of the Medussa’s blood into Asclepius possession, one from Medussa’s left side which gave the power to mete out death, the other from her right side which gave the power of to overcome death. The healer chose to use the latter and in so doing tipped the balance.

But, it is in this balance across the opposing sides of the ecliptic that we find the goddess and the primal creative wisdom represented in our times. Indicative of healing the Geminian division between the right and left brain it is Venus message to us that our encounter with the Medussa can allow this balance to be restored. Medussa’s head is the embodied consiousness of that primal wisdom which has been initiated into a deep understanding of all that creates, heals and destroys within the natural flow of life, the Earth Goddess wisdom – we must restore it to the body of our world and, trusting her guidance, follow the pathways it opens to us. Both these constellations point to the balance of extremes, not in duality, but as a living power to be grasped in both hands.

the Chauvet goddess and bulls headThe Medussa’s head and its primary state of fully awakened unconditioned consciousness is not to be feared, but, re-united with our own creative energy – in doing so the restorative healing it can unleash in our world is unlimited.

While our question might well be ‘What Price, Planet Earth’, undoubtedly, Medussa now challenges Us to find the answer. Only fear and conditioning stand in the way of doing so.


Top Image : Underwater Sculpture, Jason DeCaire ~ modified image

Second Image : Mola textile, Kuna

Third Image : Gundestrap Cauldron

Bottom Image : Goddess and BullMan, Chauvet Cave

Reality Checks – First Quarter 2015

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The quarter between December Solstice and March Equinox began  with a new Moon and, just a few hours later, we saw Saturn entering tropical Sagittarius. Following the turning point of the solar cycle these lunar and planetary influences are now emerging with increasing effect. Against the backdrop of the final two squares between Pluto and Uranus, which frame this quarter, we are now poised at the beginning of a sea-change that will unfold throughout 2015 and beyond.

Planetary activation of the fire signs by Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus in particular will give pace and a radical edge to much of the year. But, it is the Saturn transit of Sagittarius, which takes us through 2017, that augers the predominant change of mood. Over the first half of this transit, we will see Saturn’s square to Neptune begin replacing Uranus square with Pluto as the most defining planetary aspect in the field. The first quarter of the 2015 solar cycle is a time in which this aspect will build, but, the lunar pulse through this time is most intriguing, showing us how we can optimise our personal path effectively.


The lunations up to equinox open and close on the cusps of Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces and Aries. These are powerful lunations with the full Moons heavily aspected and, subsequently, the second and third of these will be given their own readings. In the context of this quarter the first lunation sets the template.

The 0º Capricorn lunation point, with Sun, Moon and Earth in synchronous transition into new land, marks this as a clearly defined point of renewal. Far from simply being a time for setting new intents for the year, this is also an opportunity to balance goals against our personal means of achieving them. Neither will this be about staying on familiar ground ~ prepare to expand your horizons over the next 2-3 years! As with any time of growth or journey into uncharted territory, preparation, foresight and provision of essentials is of the highest significance. Each lunation provides a strong focus in which to make the necessary adjustments and, with the Capricorn lunation, the primary area to focus upon is ‘personal power‘.

There will be much clearing of both psychic and physical energy fields in the first lunation of 2015 and looking after your health and well-being will be paramount, not least as this is the foundation upon which personal power rests and becomes manifest. Trust that whatever comes up in this clearing process is right and, while allowing nature to do the work, do take note of what is happening – issues arising within this lunation are indicating areas in which personal power needs attention, especially in relation to how it is applied in the world. Finances and knowledge, as well as health, are very much a part of this assessment and you can here include the strength of your connections, the wealth of support you have across the worlds, in this appraisal as well – this will become especially clear around and after full Moon when Venus and Mercury enter Aquarius.

If you do find deficiencies examine why that is so; this is a year in which you can make the necessary corrections in relation to these and it begins through encountering the tangible evidence. Make good use of the diagnostic tools you have at your disposal and, if stuck for answers or clues, compare notes, seek a second opinion, get a reading and, most importantly, commune with nature – the answers will come; often it is ourselves that is preventing them from being seen. Ironically, when personal power is under the spotlight, it is all too often stoic refusal to ask for help or share our dilema that is the stumbling block!

The Jan 5th full Moon in Cancer is opposite the Sun+Pluto square Uranus and the lunar nodes. If you are feeling a strong desire to break out of current circumstances the key to making this happen is not through force of will, but, through higher guidance and learning. Aim to expand your knowledge base. The three days around the January full Moon can be a profound time for making sacred space and allowing the psychic energy of the lunation to clear and cleanse your subtle and energy bodies. This is especially powerful as, at the highest point of intensity, the Moon conjuncts Sirius, the soul star to our own Sun, and the greater perspective of our own higher self and our chief guides in the other-worlds can be called upon to lead the way.  If you make this connection stronger what you perceive in the process holds the key to understanding just what you have been missing out on being and doing, as well as what you might well be have been avoiding accomplishing, as an earth bound soul.

The time between this and the next full Moon can be used to align worldly means with soul’s natural desire in this lifetime. This desire is an expression of a choice already made in coming here, a choice and potential that may have become overlooked or that you have lost touch with on the journey.

Often enough we resist the soul’s desire because it signifies growing beyond our comfort zone, expanding our being, and involves having our personal power fully tested. Habitual responses alone do not cut it here ~ instinct and courage, as well as sharp intellect and discernment are necessary. These will be elements of personal power that will be needed to navigate the whole of the Saturn transit, for which, we can be assured, Saturn will provide plenty of reality checks to test them out. As distinct from the heart’s desires, the Soul’s desire is a magnetic attraction that pulls us, at the most instinctive and natural level, towards that which is outside of the known, that which we most need to grow into ~ personal power finds its raison d’etre in this.

Soul is the wild animal of our being, and, like all things wild, it is deeply connected with and belongs to the realms of Nature. Over the last few years in particular Nature has become the battle ground in which the misuse of power has become fully exposed. Equally, the roots of Nature’s own power is coming more tangibly into consciousness – in other words, as Barbara Hand Clow puts it, “We are becoming more conscious of the unconscious”. The soul’s health is deeply tied in with the healthy balance of power in Nature, a balance based on mutual co-operation and respect rather than exploitation and usury and, collectively, the growing awareness that we are out of balance is making us increasingly sick at heart of this disfunction. What we do for ourselves, in this respect, helps restore this balance and the impetus to be pro-active in this is aided and abetted by these lunations and planetary matrix. Aligning our own life with Nature has become a revolutionary act of healing!

How we can personally satisfy the needs of this aspect of ourselves and the world is further brought into focus during the second lunation of this quarter.


Shortly after the opening of the second lunation Mercury stations retrograde and, six weeks later, the inner-most planet will clear the retrograde shadow zone, just before the full Moon of the third lunation. This retrograde period will be a test to our collective cohesion, the reality check that could see freedoms of speech and connection across the internet challenged. At the heart of the lunation the full Moon is conjunct Jupiter in Leo, at the head of a yod from Mars+Chiron in Pisces sextile Pluto in Capricorn ~ the evolving complexity of the matrix has the Sun at the reaction point of the yod, quintile Saturn, with Saturn squaring Neptune. We will look to this chart in its own reading, but, the whole issue of aims, goals and self-authority is under the spotlight here. The field for this lunation favours adjusting our thinking, allowing strategies to emerge that support the strengthening of intents. These are intents which allow our personal power to become more focused and put in service to the higher ideals necessary to our times and personal paths. This may also bring up tests upon personal patience and collective confidence. Wise leadership again comes under the spotlight, both as a collective and personal question.

The true test of those ideals and the collective direction they represent begins to come out through the third lunation of the quarter as, at its high point, Sun+Chiron oppose the Virgo full Moon. We can heal the rift between our human and animal selves if Nature is listened to.

The yod to Jupiter is again active, this time formed through Sun+Chiron sextile Pluto, with Mercury, now direct and free of the retro-zone, at the reaction point in Aquarius. The emphasis on leadership has by this time swung to a global perspective and where we find persistent autocratic rule at work there will be vociferous backlash. We will almost certainly encounter this ‘reality check’ as a need to stand deeply rooted in our natural personal power and collectively make our voices heard. The mandate will be to ensure that no stone be left unturned in bringing healing and renewal to the world.

In the third lunation we also find Mars conjunct the south lunar node, close on Uranus conjunct Venus at full Moon. Again, this adds up to a complex planetary matrix, but, spiritual growth is promised if the higher guidance of perennial wisdom is acted upon and followed through. As we approach equinox the voices of the ancestors become strong – utilise their guidance in breaking free of the shackles of the past. Globally we could be seeing some old scores and karmic debts settled here, but, it is the grounded and well informed elder’s voice of reason that will carry the initiative.

The third quarter closes with a new Moon in the final degree of Pisces. This will be a total solar eclipse, visible in totality through an arc that begins south of Greenland and sweeps through the northern Atlantic towards the north pole; Europe, north Africa and much of northern and central Asia will see this as a partial eclipse, but, globally, this signals a moment of spiritual crisis that augers significant spiritual emergence. As the Saturn Neptune square closes, and as Uranus and Pluto square off exactly for the seventh and last time, the pressure will be on to tip the balance on initiating meaningful and lasting change where it is most needed in the world.


We’ll close here by returning briefly to Saturn in Sagittarius as the underlying theme emerging here is in many ways encapsulated in this transit.

Saturn has finally left Scorpio and is bringing the reality principle to bear on Jovian qualities. This brings the beliefs, ideals and philosophies we hold most dear under test of Saturn’s grounding influence. Saturn will transit briefly back into Scorpio between mid June and mid September, but, this will serve to tie up lose ends from what has gone before and to clear our emotional bodies for the greater undertaking that lies ahead.

The positive aspect of this transit will kick-in more fully as the year closes and is exemplified in grounding our greater potential and long held dreams in reality. We can make use of the next three years to manifest those dreams, to undertake the things we have always wanted to do, but, somehow have kept on the back-burner, perhaps in spite of ourselves. This will be the time to break out of this pattern. It will entail hard but constructive work, a sustained focus and will require the commitment to keep ourselves and our goals on track. The benefits promised are immense and, apart from changing how we live on our home planet for the better, the collective need in our times, these are fully in line with the impulse and direction of the lunations through this  quarter.

The bottom line is that we are here to break with the destructive patterns of the past and Rick Tarnas puts this into a much larger perspective when he describes the patriarchal epoch as “the 5,000 year birth canal for the Great Mother Goddess”! We can integrate every aspect of our lives into this process and make it as soulfull and deeply meaningful as it suggests and promises. The ructions will continue, such is the need of the process, but, we can now look to these as the contractions that precede the birth. This is about midwifing ‘the way of the Soul’, in tune with and integral within Nature, to become the template for positive and intentional living. In order to evolve beyond the new age idealism this conjures up, Saturn will bring reality checks to bear at every turn of the road, with the frequency needed to become skilled and imbued with enough self-knowledge to live up to the potential of that ideal.

With Uranus becoming free as the year progresses to innovate and inspire, if this becomes manifest as a collective process, which is now the distinct possibility, it can change the face of human life and our footprint upon our home planet. We probably have a five year window at max before we hit crunch time, Saturn conjunct Pluto in Capricorn. The challenge is to take advantage of the positive up-beat and Saturn’s reality checks will provide incentives to become knowing self-leaders, sovereign and empowered in the process. At the same time, the reality principle will apply equally to global leaders and self appointed autocrats who continually abuse their wealth and power. As the opening lunation intimates, re-balancing of worldly power is the core issue.

Uranus and Pluto’s series of squares have fractured the illusions of reality that have maintained the status quo regardless the collective will, and have exposed the rot at the root of the dominant power structures in this world. While they have not brought outright and decisive revolution, they have certainly brought reality enough into the light of day to incite rebellion and this mood is now carried forward through the lens of Saturn and Neptune’s square across Sagittarius and Pisces. The halmark of this aspect is the testing of the relationship between the limitations placed upon realising the full potential of self-authority and the sharing our visionary and spiritual freedoms.

In the mundane, Saturn rules responsibility and hard facts, and Neptune rules imagination and deception; what those in power stand for they will be held accountable to ~ we could see significant financial and political re-centering and power re-distribution begin coming into being across the globe through this year. If this is to be a renewal of democratised power, a sharing of resource as well as vision, it also rests upon the very real ability of each of us to grow, both in wisdom, empowerment and beyond our comfort zones.

The first quarter of 2015 is where the wheels of renewal are set in motion ~ as has been said before, it all begins in the present, under our own two feet, but, now we stand to see the creative power of the individual mobilised collectively, to decisive effect. The question is who will you be following……almost certainly, the answer lies within.


In the coming posts we will take a deeper look into the esoteric side of the Saturn transit through Sagittarius and, subsequently, how the effects of the square between Neptune and Saturn will change how we see the world.

Venus In Furs

venus in furs

Venus in Capricorn brings us face to face with the empowered woman. What is the image that is conjured in those two powerful words? We might imagine a ‘successful’ individual, one who has reached personal pinnacles and challenges our notions of power itself, against the prevailing odds. In Capricorn Venus is emphasising the role of the empowered woman and, if we must ask ‘what are her symbols’, we must go beyond the image of the CEO or stateswoman, as, is this not simply a projection of male values. However, Venus in cardinal earth does not ask, or wait, for an answer; She Knows. And that is Her fundamental Truth. No wonder the corporatocracy is rife with glass ceilings.

In a world and time such as ours the planetary Goddess resonates with much deeper truths, manifests first, asks questions after, if at all ~ She is the living memory of earth, untamed within its crystalised forms, as much present in the wild wind and waters, as the volcanic plumes and rivers of molten rock. If we do encounter her in the mundane, on the hustings and frontlines facing the violators of Nature, whether with megaphone in hand, giving it her all, or feather and drum, holding the memory intact, chances are she is fired up with that ‘knowing’, pushing for change in the face of violation and usury. There is great passion coursing through her veins, pushing the boundaries of the world to grow out of its complacence and apathy. If invoked, She calls up the roots of change itself in her being. And Her faces are many, have endured time and tide.

She can be present in spirit and in body as the Wild Woman, the Huntress, whose powers are timeless, even when distorted, as she has become in the dominatrix and louche seductress. Pluto, who is centred in Capricorn in this time, has much to answer for here, but, he is himself transformed in her presence and, as Ceres, whose asteroid is presently close on the Sun, She drives the hard bargain that draws upon her own pragmatic nature, demanding equality where, otherwise, no deal may be struck. She looks after her own, her children as well as those who look after her, give to her their fealty.

She is, for all her political nous,  a fierce lover in Capricorn. Her power is deep, sensual, charged with earthiness, and demands parity in her lover. She is also the creatrix, ruling over the most fundamental natural laws of manifestation within the Life/ Death/Life cycle. In her most fecund state She can be seen in the most ancient art, caught in an ambiguous embrace with the Bull headed man in Chauvet caves, brought out of the living rock and clay of her own body in countless ‘Venus’ carvings and figures. The shaman knows the deal.

She reminds us here of that which endures like no other, in memory and presence, and holds fast the root of humanity in her being. But, She also holds the protectorship of the animal world as Mother of the Animals, active as the central figure in indigenous knowledge, as She who must be petitioned by the hunter for a good hunt, and, as the bestower of blessings, health and nourishment upon the tribe and community, must be herself respected, fed and shown due care, before She will reciprocate.

Sedna’s story pulls into hard focus the egotism and disrespect shown by the paternal line; her fingers, severed as she fights for her life, become the creatures of the oceanic realms into which she has sunk, over which she subsequently rules. When, on the 5th of December, planetary Venus aspected Neptune by quintile, shortly before entering Capricorn, Sedna’s asteroid was quincunx Venus from Taurus, her sign by rulership. A report emerged on that date that echoes with the tragedy of this story, revealing that Pacific Killer Whales have suffered a 100% mortality rate amongst their off-spring this year on the West Coast of the Americas. This brings a devastating reflection, through the fertility giving apsect of the quintile to Neptune’s oceanic lens and the hard reality checking quincunx to asteroid Sedna, that reveals the underlying story at work in our times. She is speaking directly to us here, of ecocide and its inherent dangers. She will protect her own, her children, but, it is ‘we’ who will pay the price if we do not listen.

This is far from being the first indication of the story behind the disease and disturbance at the heart of the global ‘eco-system’, as it is reflected within the Pacific Ocean. Alongside Starfish ‘dissolving’ in their thousands, mass beachings of Whales, Dolphins and Seals, many dead on arrival at the shore, showing chronic skin wounds and sores, are pointing back towards pollution and irradiation of the oceans. The reality of this is being heavily censored in the mass media channels, but, is not escaping the awareness of independant reportage and monitoring. It is time to stop the carnage, even if it looks too late…..not least as the power of the planetary Goddess will prevail, regardless the disregard She has been shown, and, whether we are here to witness her resurgence, or not.

In contemporary life under the dominant culture Her role has become forgotten, overlooked and distorted. For the most part, amidst the decadence of western hegemonies, where the Capricornian Venus is present, she is demeaned, hoisted upon a pedestal and made an object of masculine fantasy. Amidst the ruinous distortions and photoshopping of western patriarchal ideology Her root power is suppressed, its source exploited as matter, glamourised and manipulated out of meaning and devoid of respectful understanding.

The millenia of the Piscean age have seen war waged upon Her and her lovers, but, she is an archetypal Spirit, and her essense, pushed into subterranean realms of both consciousness and emotional energy, if disconnected from the pursuit and embodiment of power as the misogynists have framed it, is all the more dangerous, unbound beneath the surface. Her power cannot be repressed without consequence. The glass ceilings of the power-broker’s world are a false prison, in constant need of re-assertion in the face of her own irrepressible nature ~ and, in the heart of the city, the citadels of plutocratic rule, even in the most arid of places, She inhabits the understrata of the land, the culture, its human root, holding its memory in seed form, waiting to push open the cracks in concretions of power with her wild and indestructible beauty.

She taps Capricorn’s catalysing motivation for manifestation with a subtle power that can and will absorb all in Her path ~ she is the transmuting power of the earth, rich, fecund and ancient. But, she can wear many faces here too ~ even in the most tender of flowers she is present, ineluctable, fresh and filled with deceptively subversive potential, to grow and spread. She grounds us, stimulates our own roots, smudges our subtle body with odours of Vetiver and Sage-brush, imbued with the stings of Thorn and Rose beneath her white and red robes.

When Venus entered Capricorn, on December 10th, the cracks began to show and she mirrored back to us the erronious nature of her detractors – witness…..


Ice

……on December 10th, just hours after the release of the CIA’s ‘torture report’, Japan introduced a new Secrecy Law making investigative journalism, leakage and whistleblowing of facts surrounding the Fukushima disaster a criminal act carrying heavy penalties of up to10 years incarceration. Simultaneously, reports of lobbying of the US government by the UK company Oxitec for the release of GM mosquitos into the environment began to surface in the alternative media, and, on the same day Spain announced gagging laws which threaten to make public protest illegal and severely limit freedom of speech.

In the USA, Congressional staff staged a walkout on this day in protest of the Garner and Brown cases, highlighting the unaccountability of fatal police actions against unarmed civilians, racial discrimination and the widening gulf between the People and the agencies of State and Law.

Since then we have seen the US Senate move to legislate stripping the Apache nation, the largest landholder amongst Native American tribes, of their ancestral landrights in favour of giving Resolution Copper, an anglo-australian subsidiary of Rio Tinto, access for mining to 2,400 acres of the Tonto National Forest, as well as ceremonial and burial grounds within the Apache reservation. Rio Tinto is responsible for Uranium mining operations in Africa, amongst other global actions which threaten land, people and environment alike, and which also involve foreign investment from countries such as Iran and China.

Also coming to light during this time, the World Health Organisation’s dissemination of an ongoing and historical programme of fertility reducing vaccination throughout Africa, the development of nano-robotic vaccines, proceedures for renouncing citizenship appearing in social networks, figures showing child poverty to be at its highest recorded level in the USA, have been revealed.

All this, and much more, within the space of a week has signalled an intensification in diametrically opposed interests between, on the one hand, the People and, on the other, the ruling powers of government, the legal system and their corporate cohorts…..if it isn’t apparent yet, if the dots have not yet been joined between all these events, we are in the midst of an assualt that, while appearing so diverse as to create an incoherent kaleidoscope of effects, reflects a far from disparate attempt upon the personal and collective freedoms, as well as the very well-being, of us all. Venus in Capricorn tests our values, and the judgements we base upon them.

Venus brings our attention to values that we experience in the arena of the everyday world. Capricorn throws us into the midst of the arena and asks us to fight for what we ‘know’ is right, that reflects those values. We can see the pressure rising within the zone of earthly power and its already manifest forms of initiation within the material world. The connections between such value systems and Nature, the environmental concerns this brings up, as well as imbalances of power inherent within this arena is obvious, the more so with Venus now approaching Pluto in mid-Capricorn. Venus will conjunct Pluto just as Uranus, squaring Pluto, turns direct, right on the solstice. With Mercury, the Sun and Moon joining Venus and Pluto in Capricorn at the turning point in the solar cycle we can expect an uptick in these issues, but, keep your eyes peeled as the season’s festivities get underway – there is a fine line between reality and illusion, and we need to have the eyes of the seer.


shamanVenus has just passed exact sextile with Neptune in Pisces as this goes to press and, if we care to see it, we can see the more sinister effect of this focus coming to light.

The illusion is failing that Fukushima, the ultimate symbol of the payback that reckless disrespect for Life brings, is in any way benign in relation to these events and, with senior scientists from the Japanese nuclear industry now admitting that the situation at and arising from Fukushima is exponentialy worse than Chernobyl, the attempts of the Japanese government to quash the truth is brought into full perspective. But, this effect is not confined to Japan. A greater part of the illusion, outside of criminalising ‘truth’, which the PTB are attempting  to deliver in full swing, is to marginalise such information, reduce it to the level of ‘conspiracy theories’, for example. 100% fatalities amongst creatures directly affected by thousands of tons of irradiated water being released everyday into the Pacific says otherwise. The water cycle alone tells us Fukushima is a global event that cannot be avoided, but, how much of a counter to this reality can we raise? Venus in Capricorn challenges us to ask ourselves, and to re-evaluate and work from our most heart held notions before we answer.

Neptune as a planetary influence is directly associated with widespread dissemination, as well as the propagation of illusion. The negative influence shows through unboundaried viral and epidemic effects. The Ebola illusion is that it is a virus, and, all this while the truth has been plastered, in plain sight, all over the media where the chosen image of Ebola is of a worm-like creature ~ the truth is that Ebola is a parasitic organism, against which vaccines are useless. In the light of the current vaccine programmes you can draw your own conclusions from this.

But Neptunes influence here has a positive counterpart as well, through connection with the worlds of imagination and non-physical realities, bringing energy to the unexpergated Venusian realms of creativity that we can tap into in our art and dreaming. Neptune’s positive corrollary in the mundane world is also visible in fashions and trending, but, with Uranus direct, in a world of global connectivity through Uranian technology,  this can become the field through which the counter-punch is delivered. Censorship of the internet or not, the energy is unleashed.

Under such conditions, perhaps the Orcas have a deeper message to deliver in this respect……if are we party to their infanticide, we are also a party to our own, as a species. Sedna has spoken and the message pulls us into the dreaming powers we are so much in danger of forgetting.

The Whales carry and connect us with something unique in the animal realms, a far reaching and ranging role that reflects a deeper truth native to our planet and beyond, a gift inherited by all Her children. We are all here for a very special reason, which imagination, connection in spirit and creativity make conscious and visible. In the animal medicines the Whales are here to connect us with that positive Neptunian attribute ~ they connect us to the cosmic source, the Dreaming. In this they are the essential part of Earth-Life that is ever-present in the Wild Woman’s kenning, as keepers of inherent knowledge of this connection, as it manifests within both natural and Natural law. It is said that piebald and spotted animals embody a link with the stellar realms ~ and, in the medicines, the Orcas are the fierce protectors of this cosmological connection. They work through the balance of life and death within Life as our planetary connection with the Dreaming.

With the loss of a generation comes serious reflection – augeries can be found in all things, but, if we were to look to the Orcas we would find a clear indication that the link is now seriously endangered. This not only applies as an animal mirror of the medicines within the wheel of Life, but, as a true reflection of what the gagging orders, limits on our movements and freedom of speech seek to prevent coming to light. The mass protests are also an expression of the unrest that rises when the stories held in the Dreaming are themselves censored. We are in the midst of chaos out of which arises their resurgence and re-telling. This has been an ongoing theme over the months on this site, but, the truth is in plain sight as organisations and official bodies responsible for clandestine programmes of eugenics, genocide, ecocide etc etc, clearly no longer consider it a responsibility to be accountable to the People, let alone the truth that our emerging mythos is seeking to enshrine for future generations. But, let us not forget, Orcas are also the Hunters of the Whale nation.

If Sagittarian influences, the realm of the Archer, are expanding consciousness through the Sun and Mercury in this time, Venus journey through Capricorn energises those issues that have already been disclosed that are most crucial for earthly life to continue, and, with the planetary Goddess meeting Pluto, the underworld deity, these issues will undoubtedly manifest their radical nature, equally demanding a deeper appreciation and commitment.

The combined energies of Pluto and Venus bring us face to face with the wild Animal Mother, She who unleashes the fearless energy of the Huntress and governs the creative principles of Life and Death through Nature. These are times for us to bring her energy into our hearts and feel Her own deep truths speaking to and through us.

The need to bring this fierce and unbounded love for Life into our own lives, where death to one world means birth into another, needs no mirror and is inherent within all of us who have been born through her body, but, nevertheless, mirrors we have in abundance when Venus and Pluto meet, and the flip-side of this combination is equally provocative and revealing.

Old woman

When Venus conjoins with Pluto she also sextiles Chiron. Here She can disclose subconscious inner feelings, neurotic wounding and experiences of inadequacy, of the unnatural desire for sado-masocistic interactions as an expression of relationship. In many ways Chiron amplifies the dark side of both Pluto and Venus played out through exploitation and the creation of victim/violator roles in which subjugation reaches damaging and critical levels. These are levels in which psychoses manifest their dynamic, and we might well be seeing this at work in the disfunctional and destructive examples cited above. But, it is precisely in their positive counterpart that they find their nemesis. The Chironic embodiment of animal and human frame in one being is also the realm of the Wild Woman and her pack.

She can be Venus in Furs in both senses, but, regardless the scenario, the choice is ours ~ do we roll over and suffer the degradation, allowing the dominators free rein, or do we let the blood rise and burn with a deep and fierce energy in our hearts. As dramatic as it may sound, in reality the choice, like Orca’s markings, is becoming very black and white for us now, clearly polarised. But, the onus now, in anticipation of the coming season of powerful Moons and the final Pluto Uranus square, is to realise the values represented by both sides of the equation, to hunt down meaning and understanding within their midst, in order to find a path of realism, one that promises a better future. The question is are you moved to take up the Orca’s call, the call of the Wild Woman and Hunter, and, in entering their circle, invoke and bring their medicines into your own life and circle……

It is a choice between being the hunter and the hunted ~ one thing is certain, either way; She is the ancient heart of the world who sees all…..

Top image : Susan Seddon Boulet

Crossing the Bone Road

pythia copy

It is one of the oldest tricks in the book to re-name something of ‘power’ and conceal its affective capabilities and influences behind its  own negative or opposite effect and meaning. The entire history of so called ‘western civilizations’ is shot through with this subversive strategy; religions have been built upon it, wars have been fought in pursuit of it and people have been disenfranchised of their rights and rites as a result of it. These tangled webs of deceit are now unravelling in the world, it is a failing strategy, and yet, at the same time those pathways of empowerment that once fed the roots, trunk and branches of the Tree of Life are opening again for the people, you and I, to walk in freedom. There is one small caveat however ~ for that freedom to be fully restored, the planetary soul must be cleansed of the divisive disease that has sought to disempower the people in this way.


Between the lunar eclipse at the midpoint of the 10th lunation and through to the full Moon of the 11th lunation the celestial story has followed a labyrinthine pathway that leads deep into the belly of the goddess, the heart of the ‘mysteries’. We have followed the red thread woven within the planetary matrix and seen how, if the myths themselves are stripped back to their older forms, the patterns made by the planets, stars and interplanetary bodies reveal the pathway as well as the history of subversion through which it has become hidden.

At full Moon on the 6th of November we arrive at the ultimate threshold of this ancient pathway. This is a place that signifies timely ‘endings and beginnings’ and the augeries tell us of arrival at a point in which ‘crossing over‘ becomes the central theme of this Full Moon. This is the the same road that later became known as the ‘via combusta’, the ‘burning road’, and in so doing, an attempt was made to obscure its original meaning and significance. But, such roads are built with soul stuff ~ though their outward forms may change, beneath all they do not die.

At this time there is a perfect synchrony at work and, throughout Samhain 2014, an almost uncanny series of conjunctions have been revealing the cosmological power and beauty of the journey. It began with the full Moon and lunar eclipse in mid Libra with Weaves the Web and we entered the heart of the labyrinth on the new Moon and solar eclipse at 0° Scorpio with The Red Thread. Now, older resonances connect into the earth realms through the current chart, a rich vein of symbols and ritual remembered in earth and stone. The Moon is exhalted in Taurus and Sun, Moon, Earth and stars bring the planetary matrix alive as we walk the this sacred pathway at the thinning of the veils and reach the place of re-emergence under the light of the exhalted full Moon once more.

In the previous posting here, An Ecology of Power, the chart for Samhain was cast for zero hours UTC on 1st November, this being the calendric date most commonly associated with the cross-quarter fire festival in its more familiar guises of Halloween and All Souls. The astrological midpoint between the September equinox and December solstice, however, falls at 15° tropical Scorpio and with the Sun reaching this point in the zodiac the full Moon, exact at 22:24 UTC on November 6th, aligns perfectly with this place in the celestial wheel. This is also the terminal point on the Via Combusta.

The Via Combusta, now considered to occupy the degrees between 15 Libra and 15 Scorpio, was already know to Al Biruni, one of the founders of geodetics and a great scholar of comparative calendrics, the earth sciences and astronomy. Al Biruni was well travelled and in his time, the 11th century, saw a flourishing of these sciences as medieval Islamic culture brought knowledge from the east alive within the western lands again – so, while we can celebrate the return of the knowledge he brought, we can also surmise that the roots of the deception around the ‘via combusta’ is old. Its latin root is a ‘dead’ giveaway. While talismanic magic that used astrology and connected with pagan practices and ways was still present in the west, the work of evangelical christian scholars and scribes had already spent at least five centuries scourging the art and the people’s ways of much of its past meanings. The ‘burning road’ sums it up.

The negative astrological meanings attached to this zone derived from the Sun and Moon, which were interpreted as being in their fall in Libra and Scorpio respectively. That they became associated with downfall is a convenient astrological truism in this context. Being opposite the signs in which the Sun and Moon are exhalted, Aries and Taurus, the fall indicates a loss of power and influence. Affairs undertaken in connection with this zone were considered doomed to crashing failure……but, as we have found here before, once the lie is stripped away, we discover that this could not be farther from the truth and this is further illustrated in the story unfolding now.

Here, the Sabian symbols for both the Sun and Moon speak of the necessity for maturation, uniting the young and the old in the common search for freedom and empowerment. The youthful stages of becoming human, based on learning through experience, are highlighted through the Sun ~ in the human journey this is about building a body of knowledge. The Moon highlights the challenge to put teachings ‘hard won through experience’ into action ~ this is about pro-actively being that body of knowledge. The key words for 15 Scorpio are ‘Future Oriented Growth’, and, for 15 Taurus ‘Character’.

In fact there is a mirroring of the one in the other, each side reflecting the astrological significance of its opposite sign. Modern psychology, shored up by our contemporary mythological interpretations, have pitted light and shadow against each other in planetary oppositions  ~ however, in Living Astrology we look to an innate understanding less coloured by an antagonistic psychological dynamic of polarities in which the meanings of the one are the soil in which the seeds of the other are sown and grow. Here we are looking at integration within the whole.

The seeds of future maturity are sown in the Taurean field of physical experience that will become the living library of the elder in later life. The fields of Scorpio hold the keys to knowledge of life and death where we encounter the will to transcend the limitations of the physical while returning to and remaining in it. Both talk of embodying a deeper understanding of Life’s cycles of becoming as an expression of movement within the spiral path of creation. The challenge is to transcend the limits and limitations belonging to both these realms of experience and to, in the process, forge, develop and use well the tempered edge of an empowered soul in the world. In essense, completing the circle of life so that it can be renewed is at the heart of the rites attached to Samhain which embody the deeper knowledge, and this year in particular is resonant with the empowering energy of this undertaking.

In our time, within the secular life of our technological age, we live a more surface oriented lifestyle. The significance of the transitions that mark the major thresholds of experience are now woven into the everyday, but, almost to the point of invisibility. We still enter the same phases of growth and maturity, transiting from child to youth, youth to adulthood, and adulthood to elderhood, but, unless ours is a culture with strong traditions in which a living link with its indigenous roots is present, it is unlikely that we will find these thresholds celebrated, held within community and honoured as such. However, astrology can help us reconnect and find our way ~ significantly, the qualities spoken of here are also archetypal characteristics of the eighth house and Scorpio, embodied in living tradition on a cultural level and linked through ancestral inheritance in the personal sphere.

Some astrologers have speculated that the pathway of transformation buried beneath the ‘via combusta’ once ran the entire length of Scorpio, a notion that was already changing amongst Al Biruni’s contemporaries, but, which reached back to times when precession of the equinoxes saw the zodiac align the equinox with the first degrees of Scorpio in the zodiac wheel. We see through the patina of time and the accumulated propaganda of a history written by the self appointed ‘victors’.

Through the Sun and Moon illuminating these thresholds again, an opportunity to find new forms for the rites emerges. On the global as well as personal level this means healing the split between this world and the ancestral, between this and the subtle realms of spirit. It is a deep rift, but, the entire Samhain period, is primed time for us to dedicate ourselves to healing the wound.

On November 6th the Sun and Moon also link in with Chiron at 13 Pisces. Here, experience enables the healer to act through the role of mentor and it is mentors, those made wise through experience, who hold the ritual space. Not everyone is made wise through the benefits of experience however.

Ours is a time in which cultural vaccination against developing experience and mature wisdom is inbuilt into the dominant culture ~ not only have we been lulled into a passive relationship with the learning available, inured against strengthening our own ‘knowing’ immune system, but, we insure against accident and take out ‘life’ insurance policies. With the current full Moon trine Pluto and the Sun quincunx Uranus and sextile Pluto we are brought face to face with the absurdity of this notion. The field is primed for change.

There is also, deeply seated within popular culture, an inherent obsession with eternal youth, and a pernicious accompanying prejudice against aging. At the same time the cultural State regulated agenda sees maturity used as the instrument of oppression – the puer (eternal youth) culture is ruled over by the senex (the old man), more in an expression of jealousy and resistance to passing on wisdom, than of fulfilling the mentoring role the senex is equally capable of.

In some manner Mercury recalls the eternal youth and Saturn the senex, or ‘wise’ old man. The Greco-Roman myths, however, are rife with the jealous rivalry between the generations. In a culture based on competition, this is perhaps understandable. But, the ideal and precursor of this relationship, collaborative partnership, is better represented in the interaction between mentor and mentee. In fact, to further illustrate the subterfuge, the word ‘competition’ in its own root form means ‘to petition the gods together‘. The mentor is the guide in how this is fulfilled.

The shift represented here is also from lateral co-operative to vertical heirarchical relations and parallels the transition from the matriarchal to the patriarchal epochs, both in their respective relations with Nature and through the way in which relations with the divine and with spirit was enshrined and culturally endorsed. This has had serious effect on how we experience  ‘power’ and our own manifestations of it out of balance. That shift was long in developing, but, when its polarity did arrive it was swift, and radical in its effects ~ those effects have shaped the modern world.

But, this world is crying out for a rebalancing to emerge, between male and female, young and old,  and a re-honouring of the indigenous knowledge of ‘collaborative relationship‘ that enshrines maturity within a culture and society, and, at a more profound level, within Nature.

Saturn’s largely unaspected influence in the full Moon chart emphasises how the pragmatic nature of maturation through experience affects all fields of life. Gaining maturity, in our sense, also means becoming empowered, a consequence the post industrial senex State will do everything to suppress, if not kill off  ~ control, Saturn style, rules when fear invokes his shadow. Saturn’s own myth illustrates the close ties between fear and arrogant misplaced pride, but, this too is changing ~ our world demands it of us!

It is time we learnt from if not re-wrote the myths and, in so doing, released our psyches from their hegemonic influences and renewed our own mythos ~ one way to do this is through ‘re-riting’ life. Re-instating the rites of life, through their celebration, renewing their forms, and honouring of the cycles of life and our own places in them, is essential work whose fulfillment is in our own hands and no others.

The poigiancy of this is emphasised through Mars at 8 Capricorn, within 3 degrees of Pluto, and both are building energy towards conjunction within days of the full Moon. In fact, Mars is conjunct Okyrhoe, named after the seer known as Swift Runner, one of the interplanetary bodies known as ‘Centaurs’. Her orbit spans those of Jupiter and Saturn, so she can be seen as a bridge between the two. Looking a little deeper into Okyrhoe’s story will throw some light on this. This present conjunction with Mars could also be seen as the signal to  martial energy in service to the power of foresight, and, in Capricorn this brings the penetrative power of the ‘seers’ eye to bear on the underlying power structures of the State.

Okyrhoe is closely linked with the powers of prophecy and seership. In the myth she was a nymph, the daughter of Chiron, and it was he who mentored Apollo, the divine youth, in the skills that Apollo himself later became the patron deity of, healing, music, divination and prophecy.

Okyrhoe’s own prophetic powers were cthonic, rooted in the oracular traditions of the Earth Mother, linking her with the Delphic Pythia and practices of divination originating in this root. In contrast Apollo, ultimately, and for all his patronage, was, however, a solar god.

Ironically, in the myths it was Apollo who later suppressed the original matriarchal powers behind these sacred practices, killing off the dragon ‘Python’ and opening the road for the ascendancy of the patriarchal solar sects, But, the myths usher in the ‘ironic’ and Okyrhoe, through her prophecies was herself, perhaps unwittingly, instrumental in this.

She foresaw her father Chiron’s mortal wounding, as well as the ascendancy of another great healer, Asclepius.  Asclepius will figure shortly, however, the prophecy surrounding Chiron fell fowl of the gods, they did not like having their plans exposed, and as punishment Okyrhoe was turned into a mare and cast into the sky realms by Apollo. Ironically again, Chiron’s legacy lived on in Apollo, who some say surpassed the old Centaur in skill, if not knowledge – but, what Apollo, another eternal youth, lacked was Chiron’s wisdom. Here Chiron embodies the older form of the senex, the pragmatism of the shaman who works in respectful union with the forces of nature and understands the interdependency of life and death, the necessary dialogue between the incarnate and spirit. None of Chiron’s powers of divination and wisdom, it seems, could prevent Apollo from casting the saturnian shadow of the solar cults through his own brilliance, a reflection of both youthful folly and unchecked arrogance. Does Apollo mark the break in tradition…….is Apollo following a more egotistical dictate that flourished under patriarchal rule and ultimately sought to wipe out the indigenous wisdom of the shamanic ways?

The far reaching effects of such a transmission between mentor and mentee are pertinently reflected in our times as, while we have aquired great skill in developing technologies, their contemporary application, particularly within the sciences, is far more involved in the often blind pursuit of knowledge through them, rather than through wisdom in their creation and uses. It is all too obvious that the headlong rush of this pursuit is bringing about great and perhaps irrevocable change, but, the rhetorical question asked by Mars conjunction with Okyrhoe is ‘can we be wise to the portents‘ and ‘turn the energy of this time around to affect a global maturity‘. As Chiron advises, this is a matter of radical healing.

Mercury is at work in this too, conjunct with another asteroid, Asclepius, who, via Mercury’s intelligence and awareness, gives a clear reminder that the healer is yet present within us all. Asclepius attained the ability to overcome death and revive the mortally ill and wounded. These are technologies that speak of a profound understanding of the life-death-life cycle, but, they too are linked with the serpent power. Asclepius abilities were also foretold by Okyrhoe and these, appearing tantamount to hubris, not only seriously pissed off Zeus, but, upset Pluto into the bargain as well. Through Ascelapius intervention and healing powers Pluto, the god of the underworld, saw his realms becoming depleted of souls and witnessed his rulership over their fates in the underworld diminishing. Pluto petitioned Zeus to intervene.

What is interesting is that, while raising the level of the healer to new heights brought Asclepius into dis-favour with Zeus and saw the master healer exciled to the celestial realms, his roots were nevertheless recognised as he was confined within the stars of the constellation Ophiucus, the wielder of serpent energy. Zeus intervention, however, is a clear illustration of an elitist strategy of disempowerment through seperation, here of powers innate to the earthly realms by exiling them to the heavenly realms. ‘Divide and conquer‘ by any other name, this has been such a central strategy to the heirarchies of the patriarchy.

Mercury and Asclepius tell us it is time for the more ancient healing traditions of the Earth and the healing powers of Her serpentine energies to be remembered, brought back into awareness and restored to the earth realms. But, Samhain is also the time in which this connection is activated through ancient sites that were carefully built to encode this memory, and, in them and the immense investment our ancestors made through them in us, the Sun is setting on the old solar culture…..

As if now to emphasise this, as well as the gateway of transition beyond death, the Sun is also conjunct the asteroid Atropos, symbolising the meeting place of the alpha and omega points in the cycle.  Atropos was one of the three fates, her role being to cut the thread of life that her sisters, the ‘daughters of the night’, had spun and measured. This conjunction brings an even stronger emphasis on beginnings and endings, and in Atropos we can see the danger in an atrophy of the life force belonging to the ancient pathway of initiation; however…..the knowledge of the ancients has been left for us hidden in plain sight.


Winter Avebury

Out in the land, every day at dusk, the setting Sun sees the literal and symbolic solar influence occluded by Earth’s own physical and nocturnal powers. There is at this time of day a palpable energy shift that can be felt as this happens, particularly at the megalithic sites, and especially where the alignments of the stones with which they were built incorporate the quarterly and cross quarterly Earth/Sun alignments. One such sacred place is the great ceremonial centre of Avebury in southern England.

With powerful understanding and ingenuity the great stones of Avebury were placed inside an earth circle to hold enhanced resonance between the serpent powers of Earth and the stellar realms, potentiating them within the sacred circle. The southern entrance of the circle is marked by two giant megaliths and at sunset on 6th November the shadows of these gateway stones unite, their energy fields forming a charged threshold at the circle’s entrance.

It was within the charged energy of this shadow land that the skin of the old year would be shed by the celebrant, a cleansing that strips down to the bone, the core essence, and allows the soul to re-enter the cycle of life renewed – it is a rite of death and re-birth and in its undertaking we cross over the ‘bone road’. The thinning of the veils is embodied in Avebury Henge.

The ritual fires that accompanied this rite have been passed down to us in what we call bonfires, a memory of the ancestral rite of ‘Bonefires’ burned at this time of year.

In our time Avebury remains open and active, a meeting place of ancient and modern peoples. This is a powerful ceremonial, learning and ritual centre and the energies present within this site and its megaliths point to another level to this phenomenon.

Avebury’s makers, without a doubt, had a wider active range of perception than modern humans and were able to see the vibrational layers within the bandwidths of energy beyond the visible spectrum. The megaliths hold testimony to this. This is not as far-fetched as the orthodox science would have us believe ~ even though we rely on devised technologies, external to the human vehicle, to detect and measure these bandwidths, humans are naturally endowed with the organic technology that makes their perception possible. In fact, if we engage with it we discover that our innate indigenous and organic technology is the more sophisticated, by far.

The necessary knowledge, foresight and wisdom to build a site like Avebury would have been more intrinsic to the life experience of a people who had not suffered the dumbing down, suppression of, and apparent seperation from these ancient human faculties, as we predominantly have. But, we can do something to change this. Our abilities have not died, they are, for the most part, dormant within us. It is through direct experience that we become re-empowered.

One way to undertake this healing is to observe these rites once more. Sharing this path and being in circle with the ancestors and each other at such times strengthens the effect, and, holding circle at sites like Avebury can bring profound shifts in a person’s life ~ we are reconnecting with and awakening the powers of the stars, the Sun and Moon, the Earth within our own paths. All the powers at work here belong to Nature, our own indigenous nature and the natural world around that we are held in and given life by. This renewal of the ancient’s innate faculties and knowledge, the seer’s eye, the diviner’s senstivity and the shaman’s rites of passage, with all the accompanying shifts in relation to the cyclical and sacred nature of Life, are deeply empowering and can bring great healing to our planet. In fact, it will…..with that one small, but, significant caveat. In seeking to renew life and set our sight free, we must collectively and individually cleanse ourselves on the ‘bone road’. In this way we are taking a resonant and powerful step towards healing the soul of the world. I’m sure many a witch and shaman would agree……


Top Image : H R Geiger

Second Image : Winter Avebury

Weaves The Web

elder one

The 10th lunation of 2014 is marked with extreme significance by two eclipses, a lunar eclipse in the 16th degree of Aries on 8th October which marks its midpoint, and a solar eclipse in the first degree of Scorpio on October 23rd/24th which closes this lunation and opens the next.

Living Astrology‘ works with the lunar cycles as an indigenous natural process, belonging to us all, within which we can find windows of opportunity for healing, meaningful action and an understanding of the cosmological mirror through which our personal path can move in sync with the natural processes of change at work within Life. When eclipses come along the process becomes charged with hidden potentials. Eclipses are moments of Truth, the currency of real change. Truth is not always comforting or comfortable to live with….but, it can lead in that direction. This, in itself, is a notion central to healing and shamanic wisdoms.

Eclipses, especially total eclipses, are profound events, whether experienced through contemporary eyes or indigenous. Astrologers often associate them with opportunites for a reset, a peeling away of solar and lunar luminescence that allows a doorway of opportunity to open that is otherwise obscured. When such occur in the midst of great change we are naturally drawn to look at the otherwise hidden elements of our lives that are touched by that change, where the personal and the collective meet, and, for us now, this carries a momentous quality.

The auguries of the stars tell us that there will be great changes coming very soon and, although we are confronted with many interwoven problems, humans have always had amongst them people who carry the wisdom and capacity to bring perspectives to bear that can adivise on and deal with these eventualities. The question is, are they being heard and their wisdom embraced. In so many ways this question exposes a significant part of the problem that we all face now on Earth. Amongst the plethora of council at large in the world, through our technologically enhanced networks, the voices that can make the difference are often lost in the noise, if not censored. There is a complexity at large in the world at this time that would benefit the wider perspective of the Elders.

Much however is available to us, and, although the dominant version of reality tries to overshadow its importance, we can always begin by taking notice of inherited wisdoms, even that which appears most benign ~ consider first some of the indigenous traditional associations with this Moon. Many first nations name the 10th lunation in connection with the attributes of the season ~ gathering in caches for the winter, taking in the harvest, first ice, falling leaves, hibernating begins, birds fly to winter and summer grounds, feeding the roots and protecting new life, looking ahead, and many more, all expressing a clear reflection of the people’s focus within nature….and Nature is ‘radical, by nature’ ~ it is a time of the big shift that signals preparation for whats coming…..

….amongst the original peoples one understanding is that eclipses foretell of endings and beginnings, of death, the ultimate gateway, and signal moments at which the people gather together, in which the elders have sway, the greater experience and wisdom of the stronger amongst the old ones being called upon to help the people navigate this challenging portent of a transitional time.

On both counts there is resonance here with these eclipses.

In the more global context, the world reflects this relevance back to us. Even though the well vetted presentations of these events filter into the public eye through the veil of the ‘official line’, when the simultaneity of UN Climate change talks, the prosecution of war and launch of air strikes, and the massive marches globally protesting the issues behind these events, for example, are seen in this light, the connections with the indigenous understandings become poigniantly highlighted and their  worldly significance intensified. In many ways it is fitting that such things should be in the front of our minds as we traverse the gateways of the eclipses.

We tend to overlook the spiritual aspects of conflict and political opposition, but, the indigenous view of the world does not seperate spirit and matter. Whether the emphasis is put on the spiritual or the material aspects of life’s issues the sense in which these aspects are deeply interwoven is profoundly illuminated at this time ~ they are not seperate. And, as perverse as it may seem, through struggle and the need for survival the world is becoming ensouled.

At one level, the solar eclipse in Scorpio develops what the lunar eclipse in Aries reveals, and, while the Scorpio new Moon will have its own post here, the two form a part of a much larger whole. The Scorpio eclispe is developmental, being in the first degree of the sign, and will see concretisation of the energy generated in response to the lunar eclipse. As the Sabian symbol states for 1 Scorpio, “….this symbol……refers to the first realization of what a larger whole of existence — a more encompassing frame of reference — implies, in very concrete and perhaps startling terms. What is at stake is A WIDENING OF EXPERIENCE”. While in this post the focus is primarily on the lunar eclipse, we are dealing with multiple levels of meaning now and anchoring this within the wider scope of time’s spiral provides an essential perspective.

Within the temporal/astronomical perspective we are a quarter of the way through an 18 month process of interaction between the Sun, the Earth and the Moon formed by a tetrad of consecutive total lunar eclipses. The sequence opened with the total lunar eclipse of April 15th 2014 and will culminate with the total lunar eclipse of September 28th 2015. The full list of this tetrad of eclipses and their respective astrological placements appears at the end of this article.

We need to go wider still to benefit the extra-ordinary nature of the eclipse cycle at this time. What further heightens the significance of this tetrad is that it is the first of its kind, all total ‘central’ lunar eclipses, since the 1580’s. Not only that, but, the 21st century contains eight such tetrads. We live at a crossroads of opportunity and change that can bring total transformation, radical change that affects and involves generations.

Within the present, the opportunity to affect real choices has a definite time stamp. From the astrological perspective eclipses extend their period of influence up to six months beyond the exact time. So, within this tetrad, the end of the culminating eclipse’s period of influence reaches all the way to the March equinox 2016. The four eclipses are spaced six months apart so within this 24 month period we are already deep into working within the ongoing flow of the first tetrad as one of eight gateways within a century long process. What we initiate now we pass on to our children and their children ~ the onus is upon the present human population of our planet as guardians of this Earth.

At the eclipses the opportunity to reset the pattern we are weaving in the world opens much more deeply than at any other time. In eclipse time blockages to our ‘dreaming’ are removed, but, we might well make use of this special moment to remove those blockages for good. We can pull our individual threads into new perspectives, reset our own paths. The individual eclipses within the tetrads open pathways that are like four strands twisting in the spiralling rope of lunar time. Wheels within wheels, describing a great web. Within the Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge, wisdom keeper Jamie Sams tells us, this lunation is connected with Grandmother Spider. The story she recounts for this Moon is called ‘Weaves the Web’, the name of the Grandmother who is guardian of the creative principle in all things, whose personal cycle is centered on working with truth. (1)

One area of truth we have been systematically lied to about is strongly connected with these eclipses ~ the reality of Fukushima. The charts for the earthquake and nuclear disaster tie in deeply with the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets on the 8th and 23rd of October 2014. Here the key transit of the lunar eclipse is to Saturn at 15 degrees of Libra in the Fukushima charts, the degree occupied by the Sun opposite the eclipsed Moon on the 8th of October. And in the chart for the 23rd October Mars occupies 28 Sagittarius, the same degree as the north node in both Fukushima charts.

Weaves the Web is also the Keeper of Survival Instinct and Mother of Creative and Destructive principles. If Saturn concretised the destructive principle at Fukushima, Mars on the disaster’s north node clearly tells us that our survival must be focused on energetically addressing the future that is facing us all as a result. We cannot allow the lies to continue. Truth is the number one priority, holding it as an unflinching solar beacon upon all that we aspire to, exposing those who seek to deceive us and exploit our ignorance, bringing it to bear in all things, especially where the whole issue of ‘energy’ and our relationship with Nature is at stake. The collective soul path of the planet is energised with these eclipses, through the lens of Fukushima it comes into sharp focus…..if the leaders will not address it, the People must, and in eclipse zones more than ever, that means you and I.

Uranus was square the north node in the Fukushima charts and now conjuncts the Moon at lunar eclipse. So, not only does Mars activate the disaster chart through the nodes but, as we will see shortly, the warrior planet energises the trajectory we are now compelled to follow in relation to Uranian values. Mars trines Uranus at the lunar eclipse.

A literal interpretation of Uranus, connecting it with Uranium, nuclear fallout and sudden shock, might be too simplistic and obvious a choice here ~ Uranus being within one degree of the eclipsed Moon on the 8th suggests a more spiritual and soul centered use of the symbolism. When the reflected light of the Sun falls away from the Moon we are opening into the Uranian influence of divine inspiration, through individual freedom and the spark of ignition that creates new awareness and radical departure from the old path. This carries high potential, a chance to break the mold of destructive blindness, particularly now within the innovative use of energy technology, the potential to initiate a higher order of truth into the midst of the People.

On a soul level the October full Moon infuses our collective journey with an initiatic alchemical magic, that of Change itself, should we open to it. In true Saturnian style, it also suggests we might experience  a real need to rethink. Through unforeseen events,  in the face of systemic change, when it occurs within the eclipse zone, we may experience deep questioning of our most enshrined personal realities.

Transiting Saturn is close to the Fukushima IC, having just entered the fourth house of the Fukushima disaster chart. This is the most deeply seated area of the chart, the roots of the World Tree, and the truth about the events of 3/11, and many others related, is coming home to roost ~ Saturn tells us that all our actions in relation to it demand clarity, realism and unremitting dedication at the most personal level. In the most basic sense this means looking after your well-being and those closest to you. At the very least, look after your immune system!

One of the toughest realities of Fukushima we have to embrace is the life and death nature of its fall-out, and, in this the People have been deceived greatly. Mercury goes retrograde just 3 days before the lunar eclipse and this lends an added edge to the need for vigilance in relation to how we are perceiving the facts. The truth behind what is happening at Fukushima is as radical as it gets ~ with four cores in meltdown, China syndrome has been actualised and the Earth’s response is a major shakedown. Look to the increasing occurance of super deep earthquakes that are occuring amongst a severe uptick of global shakes for the answer.

The incoming square between Pluto and Uranus will see the People pitching against deeply entrenched established power over the coming months. Individual freedoms and State power. This is manifesting what the Taoist traditions refer to as Weiji ~ wei means ‘danger’ and ji means ‘opportunity’. It applies to the moment at which yin transforms into yang, and vice versa. No living system can go beyond a 98% balance at one polarity and survive ~ the ‘99%’ is the sign that needs, in fact demands, response. It also reflects the energetic dynamic manifest between exclusive heirocracy and inclusive networks. Within this perspective, the globalised nature of the tension within the Uranus Pluto square tells us that while being active within Change is an imperative, meeting with this challenge will also rest squarely upon demanding systemic truth and change where it has been hidden and suppressed. The entire planet is affected. This is the crucible of realism.

Neptune, the planet of systemic encultured creativity and trending, and Chiron, the healer and mentor indicating where the greater picture overlaps the personal, are both retrograde and are transiting the 7th house of the Fukushima disaster chart. Chiron and Neptune are transiting from Pisces, the mutable water sign ruled by Neptune. With the solar eclipse in the first degree of the fixed water sign Scorpio, the picture now becomes clearer.

The pervasive nature of the wound that affects our reality is becoming amplified. In relation to Fukushima it is carried by the waters, in the weather and the oceans. The millions of tons of irradiated cooling water from Fukushima has nowhere to go and cannot be treated by any means yet known to the ruling technology. Perhaps Uranian innovation will intervene, but, if it does, it will not come from via ‘known sources’. Water is essential to Life, but, there is much more to Life than the orthodoxy lays any claim to knowing. What does the elder wisdom hold in this respect…..

Tangentially, in an objective sense, this is also connected simultaneously with both invasive deception and the transformative power of creativity. Chiron in particular has a strong voice here, the wise shaman and mentor quincunxes the Sun and squares Mars in the eclipse chart. But there is a blessing in this. We cannot be at odds with the inevitable, but, must rather find a way of navigating it through wisdom and creativity. In this way what may appear fated becomes destined, and we can be the arbiters of that destiny. It is our sovereign right. It is no secret that the ruling power claimed by the 1% must be redistributed, as the sovereign right of the 99%. This indicates the nature of healing that serves as a means to freedom, and Healing, the wise centaur tells us, is the only option. But, the connection with Mars pushes the issue and Mars is joined with Jupiter and Uranus in a grand fire trine that infuses the eclipse with creative potential and optimism. If the crucible is heating up it is also through the fact that, in this function, the fire brings out its most inventive and transformative nature.

The lunation has fire at its heart, but, if we make the wise choice, this can be the fire of inspiration and renewal. If this report seems to focus on finding the positive through combating the negative, it is also, like the eclipses, exposing realities that have beauty at their heart. Venus is squaring Pluto at the lunar eclipse, within 5 degrees of the Sun.

The Moon represents the People and from the surface of the Moon it is the Sun that will be totally eclipsed, the entire rim of the Earth set aglow with the fiery light of all our planet’s sunrises and sunsets simultaneously. From the lunar perspective we see the Earth as if surrounded by the light of the womb ~ this brilliant red light is reflected back to us on Earth from the lunar surface and transforms the Moon with an embryonic luminosity.

In the time around the lunar eclipse we all have the opportunity to collect our focus and bring it to bear on finding our truth, the spark of undying light that is held within the mortal frame, letting it ignite and take on new forms. There is another world waiting to become manifest within this one and, if we embrace it with the Elder wisdom, we can yet weave our relations back into balance within the web of Life once more.


Total Lunar Eclipses – First Tetrad of C21

April 15th 2014 – 25 Libra
October 8th 2014 – 15 Aries
April 4th 2015 – 14 Libra
September 28th 2015 – 4 Aries

(1) Jamie Sams, ‘The 13 Original Clan Mothers’ ~ Harper 1994

Original artwork, ‘Elder’ by Rob Purday 2001