There’s something of the feeling that accompanies crumbling realities and faded illusions about the beginning of the May lunation, that comes in with this dark Moon of tropical Taurus. Its a dilapidated mansion with trees growing out through the windows, a once florid fountain now a tangle of ivy and moonflowers, ghosts drifting on the other side of darkening mirrors, speckled with age.
There’s light in its darkened interior, but, its spectral, a dream seeping through from the other side.
It feels like the Age is collapsing, on the surface not unlike stepping out the cinema mid afternoon, the film still vapour trailing its way through our mind and imagination, while the hard edges and bright light of the outside world grate against our senses.
Its a dream we are waking up from, for the hundredth time, and we know it – only this time we know there’s no going back. Once we emerge there’s a whole different set of values and realities at work, determining how we live, only, we are not yet clear about what they are.
This lunation is where we begin to get our bearings.
The new Moon sextiles Neptune and, while there is certainly more at work in the new Moon chart, under Neptunes influence, it is our innate association with the illusory and its influence on our sense of self, the clouding of our inner truth, which is highlighted here.
This colours the new lunation with a need to purge ourselves of illusion in its negative sense, a point which is driven home by the two eclipses that punctuate its mid-point and culmination. But, it also asks us to make choices, to re-evaluate and feel out the priceless riches that our inner worlds do give to us.
Illusion and metaphor are rife in this world, and the illusory in particular is instrumental in dividing its human population. We over compensate by deifying ‘truth’. But, that edifice too is becoming atomised. One person’s truth may not be another’s, but, then who has the monopoly on truth right now? Besides, the point may well be, not who is right and correct, but, beyond all facts, can we respect each other’s realities, as different as they may, in reality, be?
After all, where is the boundary between the inner and outer world.
I spent some time with the new Moon chart, felt I wasn’t seeing it, or getting beneath its skin. Its easy enough to apply the orthodox interp methodologies but something just didn’t ‘ring true’. After a while, however, after going away and coming back, and following the planetary developments around this lunation and through the next four weeks to the solar eclipse, I noticed a pair of hidden aspects which rhyme subtly with this new Moon.
Just as the Moon entered tropical Taurus Venus, the Taurean ruler, formed a tridecile with Saturn from tropical Gemini. The angle of 108 degrees between Saturn and the Evening Star, married in that moment with Mercury’s transit of the North node, brought the hidden planetary resonance to light.
The tridecile is an aspect that seeks to marry creative energy with identity, to solve the problem of who we are by giving us access to the visceral power of our own imagination, as well as to the deeply poetic nature of the experiences it can give birth to. With Saturn involved we know that we are sculpting in time, bringing a higher level of consequence to our creations, and at the same time being alerted to the narrowing of perception that can disable our wider vision.
With Venus involved we find the ruler of the new Moon revisiting the stars of the Bull with Mercury, as they were at Venus transit of the Sun and her transformation from Evening to Morning Star in May last year. The seeds of that time may well have germinated – what we were looking for then was “the raising of a counter-culture”.
In the orthodoxies, Saturn rules the third decan of Taurus, lends it a conservative and purposeful nature, knowing what it likes and seeking the comfort of familiarity. This comes out particularly in the image of the dilapidated mansion and its faded sumptuousness. But, its an illusion, in a state of breakdown, its deception made more visible for being so.
The Zodiac, it should be remembered, is an ancient mansion of meaning, at least five thousand years in the making, in the orthodox histories, but, it has very deep roots that tap into a source well beyond this, roots which are recognisable to the ancient soul in us. It is essentially a calendric device that has grown out of an intimacy between its originators, the Earth and the stars. It is an Earth bound vision that has been projected onto the starry firmament and which, in more recent times has loosened its ties with navigation across time, its portents and natural cycles, in favour of psychologies and mythologies. Its magic is that it mirrors something of our own inner state in this respect. We have projected our human self reflective imaginings into the realms above and imagined we were looking in a mirrored pool of meaning.
However, a deeper still origin brought this vision down to Earth, a root medicine of the stars on Earth that was seeded here, a panspermia of celestial origins which belongs to our extended family, in this and other worlds. We are on the cusp of revealing those origins to ourselves. But, in the interim some preparatory work within our own imaginings is necessary, a polishing of our own inner mirror. We must first remove the dust of illusion from its reflective surface.
As an expression of a seasoned world of interpenetrating multiple worlds, in which time is experienced in cycles and we relearn the meaning of navigating across space by navigating across time, we might catch a glimpse of a familiar light, shining within our own inner firmament. We may catch a whisper of that far distant song of the cosmos that is all too often now claimed as our own, bewitching ourselves into believing we are arriving here for the first time in the process. That is possibly the augury of the tridecile; it is a resonant aspect before all else, but resonances are understood, not through analysis of their parts, but through the way they pattern us. That would be the signpost to a future understanding and application of astrology which is waiting to be restored to our memory.
Being three tenths of a circle, the tridecile’s angle and energetic presence is far from obvious, unlike the Ptolemaic aspects. It does not jump out at us but sings its song as from a distance, unseen.
But, at another fundamental level 108 degrees recalls the harmonic resonance of creation, as it is enshrined in our very being, and, it is an expression of the prime fundamental that unites the divine with its manifestations.
It is the embodied number of the extended chakra system and propitiatory number of salutations to the spirits, divinities and beings of the unseen worlds. It is the beads of the Mala and distance between the Sun and the Earth expressed in solar diameters. It is the distance of the the Moon to the Earth expressed in lunar diameters.
108 is, of course, fundamental to the balanced seeding of the creative energy of the cosmos, is integral to the fifth harmonic.By themselves, these facts are fascinating by all accounts, but, in their interrelationship and integral unity they express the ineffable, the unseen, bring it into the earth realm, and find form that expresses the natural law of its inviolable inner nature.
We can read these forms via the imagination, through the eyes of the soul and the heart’s intelligence. They are within us as well as around us. Can we go further?
At new Moon the fifth harmonic also appears through an aspect between Jupiter and Uranus which, being in quintile aspect, are found to be exactly 72° apart, two tenths of the circle.
72, like 5, also relates to Venus, to the quintile pattern of her synodic relationship with the Earth. The pentacle is both star and incarnate knowledge of creation – is it a coincidence that Venus orbit is 0.72 AU, 72% the distance of the Earth from the Sun?
Venus is the fertilising influence here, by all appearances un-aspected at the dark Moon’s birth, she is also dissolving out of a square with Jupiter. With Uranus and Jupiter in fertile relationship a sense of divine imminence might prevail, but, can we foresee the nature of its off-spring?
That such resonances give rise to the cosmos, as we find it, are the imagination of the cosmos at work through manifestation, may be more important to the unfolding of this lunation than we can, in all truth, yet imagine.
In truth, ‘we are not yet awake’ to the full possibilities available to us.
This is not so much presenting us with a metaphor for ‘waking up’, as asking how much we value the imaginal and, more importantly still, how we can preserve it, protect it and ensure its survival, even as we re-emerge into the ‘real’ world.
It is what we have been led to believe is the ‘real’ world that has, in the final analysis, put distance between the understanding and knowledge that is indigenous to our spirits and souls and the in-dwelling worlds of our inner vision.
Its a curious thing to ask if too much ‘reality’ can be a poisonous thing to humans, but, that too is a question here, as well as a symptom of this separation. In a world where VR is becoming the new frontier and our minds are the new colonies, the empire building spirit knows exactly how valuable the blurring of that division between the real and the ‘virtual’ is to its purposes. But, that blurring is not the work of nature, and we need to be careful not to forget that, especially now.
These are complex and beguilingly difficult matters to navigate, and yet we must, because human nature itself is at stake if we do not.
If you give it time, you’ll find that the lunation which this dark Moon marks the beginning of will asked for deeper evaluations and choices to be made, but, under the skin of the world another is busy at work towards which we are being pulled more urgently still.
A convergence of worlds creates a labyrinthine dynamic, and, once in, we are tasked with remembering how to find our way out.
That requires a special way of looking, one which the innate nature of our imagination is naturally skilled in helping us develop, and which the poet in us will dance a wild jig to if we play its tune.
I’m reminded of the travelling fiddler who, on their way to the next village through the fields, heard the sound of a distant melody and, in trying to find its source was led in circles, until, unable to find its point of origin, all that remained was the song itself and the realisation that this was a gift from the magical realms, a sacred gift which it was the fiddler’s responsibility to carry. It is a part of that responsibility to not only honour and acknowledge the source of the tune, when it is played, but to know when and how to play it, and when not. To claim it as his or her own would bring disaster upon the fiddler and their kin.
There is something of that responsibility that needs to be heeded now, not only to avoid hubris and unnecessary conflict but to ensure that we do not bring disaster down upon ourselves.
The laws of the other world are natural laws and we must build our world with care not to violate them.
Be inspired to listen….
Blessed Be!
ROOT MEDICINE OF THE STARS ON EARTH 