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Uranus Opposition Podcast Interview
June 15, 2018 / grayastrology	/ Leave a comment
I'm excited to share the release of the second part of my interview with Christina Caudill on the Radiant Astrology Podcast. We did this interview back on the day Uranus first entered Taurus, and in this installment we primarily focus on the meaning of the Uranus opposition transit as well as some of the meaning of Uranus entering Taurus. If you were born with Uranus in Scorpio (1974 – 1981) the entrance of Uranus into Taurus brings you into the Uranus opposition period that can bring about a release and break from past patterns. If you have Uranus in the first ten degrees of Scorpio this next year will be especially big for you as both Mars and Venus will be going retrograde in range of aspect in addition to Uranus in Taurus.
Here is a link to the podcast interview:
https://radiantastrology.com/podcast-the-uranus-opposition-w-gray-crawford/
In the interview I talk about the two lectures I presented at the United Astrology Conference, or UAC 2018. Michael Lutin has called it the Woodstock of our astrological generation, and thats not off base in the sense that it did feel like an immense cultural moment for astrology. It was an honor to present there, and both of my talks were very well received which was also rewarding. There were many incredible lectures given by some of the best astrologers currently working in the world. You can order lectures now from the UAC website. Here are links to order copies of my talks:
The Light and Shadow of Mercury in the Secondary Progressed Chart:
https://uacastrology.com/recordings/Gray-Crawford-The-Light-and-Shadow-of-Mercury-in-the-Secondary-Progressed-Chart-p108202754
Radical Awakening: Uranus Opposition:
https://uacastrology.com/recordings/Gray-Crawford-Radical-Awakening-Uranus-Opposition-p108202663
Also, in case you missed the first part of my interview on the Radiant Astrology Podcast, here is a link to it:
https://radiantastrology.com/podcast-uranus-in-taurus-with-gray-crawford/
Uranus in Taurus
May 14, 2018 May 14, 2018 / grayastrology	/ 17 Comments
Bull by Pablo Picasso
The light and shade – the curious sense of body and identity the
greed that with perfect complaisance devours all things – the
endless pride and outstretching of man – unspeakable joys and sorrows,
The wonder every one sees in every one else he sees . . . and the
wonders that fill each minute of time forever and each acre of
surface and space forever,
Have you reckoned them as mainly for a trade or framework? or for
the profits of a store? or to achieve yourself a position? or to fill
a gentleman's leisure or a lady's leisure?
Have you reckoned the landscape took substance and form that it
might be painted in a picture?
Or men and women that they might be written of, and songs sung?
Or the attraction of gravity and the great laws and harmonious
combinations and the fluids of the air as subject for the savans?
Or the brown land and the blue sea for maps and charts?
Or the stars to be put in constellations and named fancy names?
Or that the growth of seeds is for agricultural tables or agriculture
itself?
— Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass (Song for Occupations [3]) published with Uranus in Taurus
The ingress of Uranus into tropical Taurus transfigures the astrological atmosphere and strikes a chord inciting a new movement in our collective chorus. Uranus enters Taurus on May 15 and will sustain it's rupturing, liberating presence until November 6 when it re-enters Aries while retrograde. After revisiting Aries during the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019, Uranus will return to Taurus on 6 March 2019 where it will remain until 25 April 2026. Uranus will only make it to 2º33′ of Taurus before stationing on 7 August 2018, and so will be most impactful this year for those with natal placements in the first five degrees of fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius). Regardless of whether or not you have natal placements in close aspect to the trajectory of Uranus across the next six months, however, you will soon notice its impact. Though life is always in flux, Uranus entering Taurus denotes a coming period of volatilizing change felt from the roots, altering dynamics at core levels. While we can explore archetypal patterns resonant with Uranus in Taurus to get a sense of what this transit could bring, it's vital to realize that Uranus brings the unexpected to such a degree that its manifestations in Taurus will go far beyond expectations.
Many astrologers have been writing and speaking about the impact Uranus will make in Taurus in terms of earth being the most dense and stable element in astrology, and Taurus being the earth sign most resistant to change. Uranus brings the necessary alchemic fire required to shake and reshape matter, signifying that Uranus impacting the fixed sign of the Bull will bring deep-seated, tectonic shifts in personal and collective events. Uranus brings a whirling vortex of change when it enters a new sign, yet in the current transition it is moving from the fast moving, change inducing sign of Aries into the plodding, patient pace of Taurus that can sustain thorough resolve for long periods of time. Ever since Uranus entered Aries in 2010 it has been under the influence of Mars in a fiery sign ideal for separating us from past attachments and boldly embarking in new directions. With Uranus in Taurus, we can deepen the dynamic changes we initiated with Uranus in Aries as Uranus will be under the influence of Venus in a grounded sign known for its cultivating prowess.
Taurus is the sign of the Bull, and this apt symbol highlights how the calm presence of a bull luxuriating in a field can turn into a raging force thundering the ground once provoked. Uranus will electrify, vivify, and fully awaken the sensualness as well as the stubbornness of Taurus, and just as it can be extremely difficult to slow down a bull once it is racing forward, we also will need to be aware of how events triggered in correspondence with Uranus in Taurus will obstinately persist with inexorable steadiness. We can imagine this to be a good thing when contemplating the emergence of an inspirational, idealistic movement focused on the greater good, but we also know from history and current events that many inspirational movements promote the benefit of proponents at the expense of oppressing others. For example, it is a well known fact that the last time Uranus entered Taurus the world experienced the trauma of destruction caused by Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany. Other past transits of Uranus in Taurus have involved the crusades, the conquering of America by Spanish conquistadors, and the initiation of direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the conquered Americas where the indigenous population was being displaced.
There has been a long historical pattern of the deep foundational changes brought by Uranus in Taurus erupting into frenzied volatility once Uranus leaves Taurus for Gemini. In part this could be due to the fact that the North Node of Uranus is in Gemini, as well as the fact Gemini is a volatile sign to begin with. In the United States of America, the revolutionary war broke out with Uranus in Gemini yet all of the necessary events that brought it about occurred with Uranus in Taurus (1767 – 1775). The next time Uranus entered Taurus (1850 – 1859) was the decade of the 1850s that led into the eruption of the civil war with Uranus in Gemini; though there was a "great compromise" that delayed the outbreak of civil war, this compromise also involved aspects such as the fugitive slave act that inflamed conflict. Finally, while war raged across Europe when Uranus was in Taurus last time (1934 – 1942), it was not until the very end of Uranus moving through Taurus that the Pearl Harbor bombing occurred that led to the USA entering the second world war (the USA combat in the war then occurred with Uranus in Gemini). In current events in the USA as well as all across the world, we can witness how fundamental change is once again rippling throughout the fabric of civilization as Uranus enters Taurus.
This time around, the core changes brought by Uranus in Taurus will be exacerbated by Saturn and Pluto coming together in Capricorn in January 2020. The conjunction of Saturn and Pluto has a long historical correspondence with the fall of powerful civilizations and the rise of new powers, and the coming conjunction in 2020 is even more notable than normal due to Saturn and Pluto uniting close to the degrees of each of their own South Nodes. Yet civilizations are part of the natural environment, and in fact are completely dependent upon nature no matter how much technology is invented. There is an obvious reckoning coming in the time period of Uranus transiting Taurus in which global civilizations will need to face the realities of population growth and the resulting drain on natural resources for energy. It's also easy to see how the increasing devastation wrought by natural disasters, coupled by the increasing evidence of climate change impact, will become intensified as Uranus in Taurus will force societies to figure out how to survive and adapt. Uranus in a fixed earth sign suggests the voice of the earth will be heard loud and clear, and that human civilizations will need to listen.
Fresco from palace at Knossos on Crete (1450 B.C.)
Unlike the past eight years of Uranus moving through Aries in which it formed a harsh, catalytic square aspect with Pluto in Capricorn, Uranus in Taurus will be spending the next few years forming a whole sign trine to Pluto in Capricorn. In addition, Uranus in Taurus will be forming a whole sign sextile with Neptune in Pisces, and a whole sign trine with Saturn in Capricorn as it approaches its union with Pluto. These harmonious whole sign aspects on one hand suggest that power structures have supportive aspects to continue amassing increased levels of power and control, but it also means that individuals taking responsibility to collaborate in collective movements will also be able to create structures to bolster the expression of emancipatory ideas and actions. Uranus and Neptune coming into aspect again is especially notable and brings potential to open up a deeper dimension of Neptune in Pisces spirituality for some, amplifying addictive escapism through technology for others.
As Uranus enters Taurus our world population is engaged in unprecedented levels of immersion in virtual technologies and electronic platforms connecting people all across the planet through the touch of fingers on keyboards. This airy age of rapid, interconnected communication is signified by the coming conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the first degree of tropical Aquarius on 21 December 2020. The union of Jupiter and Saturn in mundane astrology for ages has helped define trends in historical time periods, and so its significant we are now at the beginning of a 200 year cycle of Jupiter and Saturn conjunctions in air signs (after previously being in a cycle of conjunctions in earth signs that began in 1802- for an excellent article on this complex topic, read Benjamin Dykes). Uranus in tropical Taurus will only be six degrees away from an exact square with Jupiter and Saturn when they begin their upcoming cycle at the end of 2020, signifying the transit of Uranus through Taurus will be a monumental influence shaping unfolding events.
Taurus is a nocturnal, inwardly directed sign in contrast to the diurnal nature of Aries that has an outwardly directed essence. The other fixed signs, especially Scorpio and Leo, are commonly seen as the places of immense power within the zodiac, yet Taurus is every bit their equal in sovereign strength. The inward, Venusian power of Taurus that can nourish monumental creation may not seem as obvious as the inner martial force of Scorpio which broods and penetrates with intensity. What seems on the surface as calm stability in Taurus is similar to the unfathomable depths of subterranean life concealed by the green grass we lay our heads upon. As the goddess Inanna calls for someone to plow her fields, so will we be called to delve into the nature of our being as well as the natural world around us to discover the inspirational solution to whatever challenges arise. Uranus in Taurus illuminates our capacity to find ways to meld the wondrous magic of nature and all of its constant creation into our creative process and invention.
A native of Uranus in Taurus exemplary of its technological potential is Nikola Tesla, who as a youth transfixed with the wonderment of a crashing waterfall received a brainstorm that he could one day discern how to harness its power. As we know, Tesla not only helped develop the cultivation of hydroelectricity but numerous other inventions harnessing natural energy, including groundbreaking work in wireless power. There have been many historical examples demonstrating the capacity of Uranus in Taurus to birth technological inventions that dramatically transform culture, and the obvious need for technological advancement that can help us mediate environmental crises aligns perfectly with the potential of Uranus in Taurus. At the Northwest Astrological Conference in 2018, Caroline Casey spoke about animism informing technology with Uranus in Taurus, giving the example of Japanese bullet train design guided by the dynamics of kingfishers diving through water without a splash. This idea of biomimicry is not new, but seems fertile ground for new advancements with Uranus transiting Taurus.
Insight gained from the magic of natural creation will be felt from all fields of exploration during the transit of Uranus through Taurus. In science, there have been many examples of new theories in understanding natural laws manifesting with Uranus in Taurus, from the work of Isaac Newton with universal gravity and mechanics to Charles Darwin finally deciding to present and publish his long-standing, thorough research into natural selection that defied aspects of dominant church dogma. Newton and Darwin's work both displayed the fixed quality of Taurus as their influence within the field endured for centuries. In astrology, the current movement toward a more embodied practice of astrology that connects us more intimately with our living sky will be strengthened. Marsilio Ficino was an astrologer born with Uranus in Taurus opposite his Scorpio Sun, and was a monumental influence on the artistic movement of the Italian Renaissance as well as its underlying philosophy. Ficino translated and brought back to prominence ancient Platonic and Hermetic text which helped him devise remediation practices aligning astrology with medicinal choices, including aesthetic ones such as sound and color.
As Uranus also signifies collective movements, despite the likelihood the mass population will continue to become even further entrenched within virtual realities, there is also a likelihood for movements centered within returning to nature gaining prominence. A past historical example includes Henry David Thoreau publishing Walden, or Life in the Woods with Uranus in Taurus, a work whose influence upon people seeking life lived within natural environments extends to this very moment. Interestingly, Thoreau published his essay Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) when Uranus was in the final year of its transit through Aries. Uranus in Taurus will bring both of these ideas together, with acts of civil disobedience being utilized to protect natural environments from consumption.
Lascaux cave painting
Exaltation of the Moon
The Moon is exalted in Taurus and accustomed to being celebrated in the sign of the Bull Horns, yet will now find the strange instigator Uranus camping out there. Uranus entering the exaltation of the Moon suggests a radical awakening of soul through mindful descent into subterranean realms of inner sensation. I was recently struck by the link between enlivening inner senses with Uranus entering Taurus while listening to a workshop given by Peter Kingsley, a scholar of ancient philosophers such as Parmenides and Empedocles. Kingsley described inner sensations as "sacred ground" akin to the sacredness of the underworld to the ancient Greeks, yet in this case sacred ground you bear everywhere. Kingsley illuminated the value of the ancient healing practice of incubation, or lying down with full immersion within inner sensation, calling it a "practice of abandonment, the practice of giving up . . . when nothing else worked." Kingsley described how ancient people would seek a shrine to lie down within and be as close to death as possible when doctors were not able to diagnose a cure, and how through this process a healing remedy would emerge through submergence within inner senses.
To Kingsley the ancient Greeks had a fundamental need for the wisdom and understanding that comes through the incubation of inner sensation, stating "there was fundamentally no difference between a body that is sick, a mind that needs understanding, and a city that needs new laws." Kingsley described that just as personal imbalances could be remedied through incubation, so could new systems of laws be brought to civilization by those who had entered and come back from "another state of consciousness by practicing incubation." Through incubation we become "drawn into the underworld, into the depth . . . into that mysterious access point which is available in the underworld that gives you access to every level of existence." I like these ideas in connection with Uranus entering Taurus since the disruptions that can enter our life with Uranus transits take us into dark nights of the soul and can force us to let go of attachments. It will be helpful to make time for meditative practices, remembering it can really be as simple as lying down in full immersion of senses. The alchemy of incubation to Kingsley reveals the midnight Sun and that "the real light is found at the heart of darkness" and realization that "the source of light is inside."
While Taurus correlates with inner wealth and riches, it can also correlate with possessiveness, excessive hedonism, and materialistic greed. Kingsley spoke about how exploration of inner sensation can also address the "dynamic of nothing being enough that this [Western] culture thrives on" through nourishing us from within. Kingsley described it as a "whole process of inner agriculture" in which we can become "a farmer in the unseen worlds." Notably, farming and agricultural have been significations for Taurus since Hellenistic times. Just as we could experience innovations in cultivating our inner fecundity with Uranus in Taurus, so are we also likely to experience collective innovations in agriculture and food production, as well as increased influence from fields such as permaculture. As Vettius Valens wrote in the second century CE:
Within the great cosmic order and turning circle of time, the Bull brings acquisition of resources. It is entirely earthy in nature, acting on rustic and rural places. There is an affiliation between Taurus and farming. Because the Bull is so earthy, its action is carried downward . . . It is oriented towards work of the unending variety, the temperament being entirely unchangeable. The Bull is responsible for the building of foundations, inclining us to collect assets.
— Vettius Valens, Anthology Book One translated by Andrea Gehrz
Birth of Aphrodite (4th Century BC) attended by Hermes, Himeros, and Poseidon. Athenian red figure pelike from the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. Uranus glyph by Bradley Naragon
Home of Venus
Taurus is the earthy, inwardly directed home of Venus with a fixed focus on cultivating enduring qualities. Uranus in Taurus will be influenced by Venus and her flavorful aesthetics, sense of harmony, and sensuality. As a result we can expect Uranus in Taurus to bring innovative changes to fashion, dietary considerations, bodily caregiving and anything else Venusian. There will be a reawakening in relationships, with a need for our partners, friends, and collaborators to accept and support our essentiality. Venus and Uranus do not share much common ground in archetypal meaning, and so we will need to open the Venusian areas of our life to allow for the revelatory flow of Uranus that can be unsettling in its rapid change. As Taurus and Venus both have a lot to do with our inner values, we can make allies with Uranus by engaging in relationships that resonate with our authenticity rather than those that conform to external standards.
Uranus in the home of Venus suggests exciting developments in the arts and inspirational artistic movements are on the way. When researching past historical correlations with the transit of Uranus in Taurus, a pattern that leapt out to me was the numerous examples of masterpieces in storytelling. While Uranus was in the sign of the Bull, the ingenious Don Quixote climbed upon his steed to engage in his fantastical chivalry. The original Globe Playhouse was constructed giving William Shakespeare a stage to write and perform such classics as Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Othello. The great white whale Moby Dick, a story paradigmatic as "the great American novel," emerged from the ocean waves, inspiring obsessive quests. The "body electric" of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was also published with Uranus in Taurus, as was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath which captured the trials of survival from the Dust Bowl crisis. Steinbeck wrote about survival with directness evocative of Uranus in Taurus: "How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other."
We can also witness masterful storytelling within natives with Uranus in Taurus such as Dante Alighieri, the creator of the enduring, immortal Divine Comedy whose influence has been incredibly far reaching. Masters of modern myths Jim Henson and Hayao Miyazaki were also born with Uranus in Taurus, both capable of creating entire worlds of fantasy that reflected timely messages back to audiences. Among artists, Vincent Van Gogh was also born with Uranus in Taurus (as well as Saturn and Pluto in Taurus) and his works of passion resonate with Uranus in Taurus in the way they capture the soulful aliveness of the ground beneath as well as the stars above. Whatever challenges and difficulties arise with Uranus in Taurus, we can expect they will inspire art, music, and story whose influence will stand the test of time.
El Greco (1596-1600) View of Toledo; Uranus entered Taurus in 1599.
The planet Uranus was named for the primal sky god Ouranos, father of the Titans and lover of the primal earth goddess Gaia. Ouranos was fond of stuffing his Titanic offspring deep underground, and so it is interesting that the other mythic figure usually connected with the planet Uranus, Prometheus, was a Titan who took the side of the Olympians in the Titanomachy that led to his Titanic peers also being driven deep into Tartarus. In astrology we connect aspects of Uranus to the unconscious forces that can direct our life suddenly from unseen realms within. In mundane events, Uranus also corresponds to unforeseen forces fracturing and bursting through the facade of consensus reality. Whenever Uranus enters a new sign, unexpected events often erupt with resonance to the zodiacal symbolism.
With Uranus entering Taurus, we can intuit that commerce and economic systems across the planet will be shaken. While there will likely be dramatic periods of instability, it's also likely that economic innovations will emerge through the volatility. As numerous past transits of Uranus in Taurus have coincided with militarized fights over land rights and natural resources, we can also expect more of the same. As previously mentioned, we can also expect mass movements focused upon environmental concerns such as addressing the need for clean water sources and the protection of what remains of the wilderness. Demetra George has posted a lucid piece connecting environmental concerns and crises with the mythic Uranus giving birth to the Furies within the tumult of his downfall.
Uranus also relates to revolutions, rebellions, and social justice activism in mundane astrology. The past transits of Uranus through Taurus involve many of the threads currently knotted together in the gaping collective wounds polarizing conflict all across our planet. Social unrest, protest and activism is guaranteed in the next six months of Uranus initiating its transit in Taurus, as it will form a harsh aspect with Mars retrograde in Aquarius in June through August followed by a polarizing aspect with Venus retrograde in Scorpio in October. During this same period, Uranus in Taurus will re-enter the orb of a fifteen degree opposition with Jupiter in Scorpio, the orb used by Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche to define time periods containing the revolutionary fervor activated by Jupiter and Uranus in opposition (June through September 2018).
A previous time Uranus in Taurus was opposite Jupiter in Scorpio, Frederick Douglass gave the rousing speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" on July 5, 1852. Frederick Douglass was exemplary of the emancipatory force of Uranus due to rising from slavery to become a leading intellectual, inspirational orator, and human right activist. The words of Douglass still resonate today:
". . . At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."
— Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
The Hierophant arcanum in tarot is traditionally associated with Taurus, an arcanum signifying belief systems, guiding faith rooted in belief, and the search for higher purpose and meaning. It can also signify conformity to established social orders of morality which aligns with its association to the fixed sign of Taurus. The word hierophant has roots in ancient Greek, meaning one who reveals what is sacred. Past transits of Uranus through Taurus have brought the shattering of static religious doctrine, including the 95 theses of Martin Luther that helped instigate the Protestant reformation, as well as Charles Darwin presenting his research into evolutionary biology that contradicted christian dogma. Saint Francis of Assisi was born with Uranus in Taurus and rebelled against the material trappings of religious institutions, devoting himself to a life of poverty. Saint Francis embodied Uranus in Taurus through viewing the natural world as a reflection of spirit, not only finding connection between living creatures and divinity, but also living and serving from this belief. The mystical participation of Saint Francis that rebelled against the christian duality which separated spirit from nature is likely to gain prominence as Uranus transits through Taurus.
In ancient Egypt the great goddess Hathor who was honored and celebrated by hierophants remains an archetypal force resonant with Uranus in Taurus. Hathor was a bovine divinity and sky goddess who emphasized the fertile nourishment of the starry heavens above, the celestial cow who lifted the creator Sun god up within her horns. A bestial goddess whose womb encompasses the stars above, Hathor's link to Uranus in Taurus suggests spiritual meaning can come through connection with nature, alignment with natural cycles on earth and in the stars above, and ritually honoring the sacred. There is an old debate pitting the mind versus the body, with some arguing that the illusion of the material world means we can't trust our senses and instead must find spiritual truth through the rationalizing mind. In contrast, others have sought the wisdom of the body, delving within subjective senses to discover higher truth from within. Uranus in Taurus can activate the potential of integrating mind, body, and spirit, bridging the wisdom of inner sensation with the clarification of mind through the tests that will arise in our worldly endeavors.
Tim Addey in his book The Seven Myths of the Soul used a passage from the Platonic philosopher Damascius to illuminate the journey of soul we experience through incarnation. Prometheus, a mythic figure who has become embedded within the archetypal meaning of Uranus in astrology, appears in the passage of Damascius in the line "Like Prometheus and the Titans, she is bound to body." Addey linked the story of Prometheus to our soul's incarnation in our bodily form where she must "undergo a series of trials in order to make sense of the world in which she finds herself." To Addey, Prometheus is both "the inspective guardian of the rational soul" as well as "the descending arc of the cycle of the soul" whose path necessitates "the need to embrace the foundations of the mundane realm rather than reject them." Addey suggests that "the initiation of Prometheus requires the soul to ask what am I not?" As we enter what promises to be a dramatic time period of Uranus entering Taurus, open awareness to what aspects of your life are ready to be liberated and changed. Analyzing how Taurus is involved in your astrology chart may be helpful, but most of all allow yourself to sense what parts of yourself you've been presenting to the world no longer align with your higher truth. It's easier to ride with the force of Uranus rather than resist it.
Addey, Tim. (2000). The Seven Myths of the Soul. The Prometheus Trust.
Kingsley, Peter. (2006). Return to Eternity: a transformational workshop with Peter Kingsley.
Vettius Valens of Antioch. Book One. Rendered from ancient Greek into modern English by Andrea L. Gehrz. (2016). Moira Press.
Whitman, Walt. (1986). Leaves of Grass. Penguin Classics.
Liberated Vision: The Cycle of Jupiter and Uranus in Evolutionary Astrology
April 10, 2016 April 11, 2016 / grayastrology	/ 8 Comments
This article originally appeared in the commemorative issue of the Journal of Evolutionary Astrology published in April 2016. This first issue features articles by Jeffrey Wolf Green, Patricia Walsh, Erin Sullivan, Kristin Fontana, Kaypacha, Bradley Naragon, and many others. To order an electronic version for Kindle or a PDF copy, as well as a variety of printed choices ranging from magazine to paperback, please go here to The School of Evolutionary Astrology website.
"There is only a single, urgent task: to attach oneself someplace to nature, to that which is strong, striving and bright with unreserved readiness, and then to move forward in one's efforts without any calculation or guile, even when engaged in the most trivial and mundane activities. Each time we thus reach out with joy, each time we cast our view toward distances that have not yet been touched, we transform not only the present moment and the one following but alter the past within us, weave it into the pattern of our existence, and dissolve the foreign body of pain whose exact composition we ultimately do not know."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (from Letters on Life, p. 7)
Natal astrology centers around the moment of birth, and the arrangement of planets within their cycles ascribed to the curious thing we call a birth chart. From the moment we emerge from the womb, we begin a journey of finding meaning within a strange new world filled with innumerable conditioning influences. We are born into circumstances saturated with the belief systems of the adults who feed us, teach us, and take care of us. We are born into cultures and societies sprung from centuries of religious and philosophical traditions and conflicts. We may grow up in a family aligned with the dominant cultural beliefs of our society, or we may grow up surrounded by belief systems that are not part of the dominant cultural narrative and instead experience oppression. Many of us as we mature and experience life come to the realization that we do not align with the belief system that our surrounding elders have preached to us and judged us by. In Evolutionary Astrology as developed by Jeffrey Wolf Green, the cycle of Jupiter and Uranus involves the nature of beliefs we are conditioned to project upon reality, as well as the process of liberating from past influences in order to find a meaningful vision of life to live from.
Fundamental to the Evolutionary Astrology paradigm developed by Jeffrey Wolf Green is the need of the Soul to feel secure. Through Jupiter and its archetype, the Soul gains a feeling of security through projecting beliefs upon Creation in order to compensate for lacking actual understanding. These projected beliefs are typically influenced by various strands of consensus belief systems surrounding the individual in their present circumstances, consensus belief systems that often are out of alignment with ultimate understanding. Since the consensus belief systems conditioning the individual often involve moral principles of judgment, there can be a danger that one can be made to feel guilty and ashamed for expressing authentic feelings such as love for someone that consensus religious doctrine labels as taboo. This can then lead to a crisis for the Soul, as the beliefs it has been following to gain a sense of security come into conflict with the deeply felt desires coming from within.
Jupiter in Evolutionary Astrology further correlates with gaining actual knowledge and understanding through experience that makes certain beliefs unnecessary for security, as the Soul comes to gain secure knowledge from its own experience. Since the Soul also has a need to understand its own nature, and this can then extend to also desiring to understand the nature of Creation itself, at crucial times the Soul will rebel against consensus beliefs that do not resonate with the personal truth being received from experience. Similar to the concept of individuation developed by Carl Jung, it becomes vital for the Soul to decondition from repressive consensus beliefs and affirm the ability to live life authentically. The cycle between Jupiter and Uranus can help foster individuation, as their interplay connects with transformative breakthroughs that can feel unsettling at first, but ultimately liberating. Here the word "transformative" is not used lightly, as Uranus is a force that can inflame Jupiter beyond the boundaries of Saturn to grasp insight unavailable in our former framework.
The work of Dane Rudhyar in astrology, who was also influenced by the work of Carl Jung, created a foundational understanding that Jeffrey Wolf Green built upon with his system of Evolutionary Astrology. Rudhyar viewed Jupiter as the soulful function of our purpose within the form of our Saturn structure. Rudhyar emphasized that Jupiter cannot be interpreted separately from its relationship with Saturn, as Jupiter receives, manages, and initiates within the boundaries of Saturn. Rudhyar described Jupiter as helping us to integrate what the external world has to offer that will contribute to our inner structure, just as Jupiter needs the protective structure of Saturn in order to operate from within. Along these lines, Jupiter organizes the chaos of life within the structure of our consciousness through love and yearning, through our intuition and imagination, through abstract conceptualization and image-based feelings, and through nonlinear awareness.
As a result, while Jupiter expands us, the contraction of Saturn in response tends to keep our growth confined to the current framework that for most has been heavily conditioned by surrounding culture. In Uranus – Master of Transformations Dane Rudhyar brilliantly described how Uranus can shatter the structures of Saturn to new awareness:
"Jupiter cannot change radically the structure set by Saturn. It can only "modify" its outer appearance and the quality and balance of the organic forces which operate within that structure.
Uranus, on the contrary, deliberately and directly challenges Saturn's power: its exclusivism, its particularity, its rigidity. It "pierces through" Saturn and throws upon the inside walls of the conscious ego images of the more universal and freer world which extends outside of these walls. Thus a two-fold operation: the piercing through — then the projection of images. The first phase may manifest in many ways; perhaps through slow stages of progressive thinning out of the Saturnian shells — so that these become finally like translucent window-panes through which the consciousness centered within the shells may behold vistas of the beyond. In other cases, the Uranian action is sharp and explosive. It bores, through the walls of the ego, holes, telescopes, microscopes, channels through which the "flashes of intuition", the "inspiration of genius", may suddenly reveal themselves to the Saturn-bound consciousness."
— Dane Rudhyar from Uranus – Master of Transformations
Rudhyar's conception of Uranus imploding our Saturn structure is foundational to the meaning of the Jupiter and Uranus cycle in Evolutionary Astrology, as these Uranian impulses allow Jupiter to expand our sense of meaning and vision beyond the former constraints of Saturn. Yet the influence of Saturn is still needed to structure and manifest these far-flung insights into forms that can be understood and utilized by those surrounding us in our collective.
In Jeffrey Wolf Green's Evolutionary Astrology, Uranus is the long term memory mind of our Soul- meaning not just all of the memories from our own lifetime beyond the ones we consciously remember this moment, but all of the memories from all of the past incarnations of our Soul. Green explained this is similar to how we do not even consciously remember every single thing that happened to us yesterday, and our long term memory becomes even more imprecise every following day, week, year, and decade. Yet these long term memories remain held by Uranus, and a memory formerly blocked can suddenly come like a bolt of Uranian lightning into our consciousness through the boundary Saturn governs with our subconscious.
In these ways Green equated the Uranus archetype with the concept of the individuated unconscious of the Soul developed by Carl Jung that correlates with the unique content of each Soul. These long term memories of the entire history of the Soul are absolutely vital to consider in Evolutionary Astrology, as they ultimately condition the majority of our conscious thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and desires. It is primarily our Saturn, our structure of consciousness, that to Green filters out these soul memories covering immense periods of time, so as not to overwhelm us. As we have all collectively through ages experienced great trauma in past incarnations, this function of Saturn serves a purpose of protecting us from being overwhelmed by past memories of trauma we cannot control. Yet though we may utilize the filter of Saturn in defense, this unconscious material can nonetheless condition us into staying stuck in restrictive thought patterns of belief such as "I have to have control," "I cannot trust anyone," or "the universe is targeting me because I am a bad person." Clearly, the archetypal meaning of Uranus has a direct influence on the archetypal meaning of Jupiter and the manner in which we project beliefs in our life.
Planetary Nodes of Jupiter and Uranus
We can look to not only the natal placement of Uranus to unveil how Soul memories held in the subconscious condition us in the moment, but also look to the South Node of Uranus. Since the South Node of Uranus for everyone alive today is in Sagittarius, and therefore ruled by Jupiter, this means that the natal placement of Jupiter provides important information concerning how our current vision of life is conditioned by long term memories of the Soul. This is a key point to ponder and realize that the Jupiter vision of life we develop is not only conditioned by familial and cultural influences, but also by significant Soul memories and the full meaning of the Uranus archetype, including the South Node of Uranus by aspect and house position. Since the full evolutionary arc of Uranus as revealed by its natal position as well as nodal positions in the chart also illuminates where we have experienced trauma, it follows that past trauma plays a significant role in shaping our Jupiter vision of life until we are able to process it and activate the "freedom from the known" aspect of Uranus developed in Evolutionary Astrology.
Jeffrey Wolf Green in his system of Evolutionary Astrology connected the meaning of the South Nodes of both Uranus and Jupiter with the collective trauma that occurred in the transition of humans from being a nomadic, tribal people into the formation of agricultural civilizations. Green has written that the South Node of Uranus in Sagittarius correlates with the time period in which humans were nomadic, whereas the North Node of Uranus being in Gemini correlates with the philosophies humans created while transitioning into agricultural communities. The North Node of Uranus in Gemini therefore relates to how the projected religions, philosophies, and ethics were focused on facilitating the organization of people into collective societies that eventually turned into the nation states we have today. Along these same lines, Green has written that the South Node of Jupiter being in Capricorn correlates with the cosmologies that were developed in the transition to these agricultural societies (note: there are some born in the past century who have their geocentric South Node of Jupiter at the final degree of Sagittarius- this still signifies the development of belief systems coinciding with the transition from nomadic groupings into agricultural communities).
So what does all of this have to do with us today? For one, it means that for ages human beings have been developing belief systems around trying to control and regulate, in a Capricorn manner, the interactions of humans within societies. This point is further emphasized by the South Nodes of both Saturn and Pluto also being in Capricorn. As a result, we all hold subconscious (Uranus) memories that extend through the South Node of Uranus into the nomadic time period of humanity that predated the development of agricultural civilizations. This necessitates at times for our experience of the Uranus archetype to come into conflict with the myriad consensus belief systems in place focused upon the way human beings should interact with one another in society. When our vision of life fueled by the knowledge we are gaining from our personal experience (Jupiter) comes into conflict with the norms dictated by consensus belief systems (Capricorn – where Pluto is currently transiting and the location of the South Nodes of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto) we arrive at a crux in which we can feel judged, ashamed, and guilty or could instead rebel and individuate with self assertion in the direction of the vision being felt within.
The Jupiter and Uranus cycle not only leads us to rebel from consensus beliefs, however, but also brings us into contact with philosophies and visions that resonate with our Soul. For many it is vital to establish relationships outside one's family and cultural circumstance with kindred spirits who feel as if they are part of one's "Soul family." The manner in which Jupiter and Uranus can make these connections can be sudden and unexpected, nonlinear and image based. For example, all it may take is an indescribable look in the eye of a photograph to notice something in a figure from another time period or culture whose essence magnetizes our interest. Through the glimpse of a painting, the sound of a song, the prose of a poem, or innumerable other gateways, we feel something within our Soul light up in recognition of a kindred Soul quality. Through streams of associations that lead us to further associations, we begin to gather around us a library of resources from which we can structure a belief system and philosophy through which to live that aligns with our Soul desires.
When considering how all of this fits into your natal chart, look at the house position and aspects formed by both Jupiter and Uranus and then synthesize this understanding with the phasal relationship between Jupiter and Uranus in your chart. Eventually you can also then take into account the house positions and aspects made by the South Nodes and North Nodes of Uranus and Jupiter. Regarding the aspect between Jupiter and Uranus in the chart, start with the basic meaning of their phasal relationship outlined in the first two books on Pluto written by Jeffrey Wolf Green: are they New Phase, First Quarter Phase, Disseminating Phase, or Balsamic Phase? For example, if Jupiter is in a Crescent Phase to Uranus it would mean that you are bringing in a new vision this lifetime that will require you to foster support for persisting in the new vision so as to not be pulled back into the restrictions of the past. In contrast, if you are born with Jupiter in a Balsamic Phase to Uranus, it would be more about a great clearing occurring this lifetime regarding the myriad belief systems that have played significant roles in conditioning the manner in which your Soul projects beliefs. Going into analysis of all of the aspects that can be created by natal Uranus and Jupiter is beyond the scope of this article, however.
Current Cycle between Jupiter and Uranus
In this article I am focusing on the meaning of the Jupiter and Uranus cycle in transit, meaning the aspect formed by transiting Jupiter with transiting Uranus. This is different than the meaning of the aspects made by transiting Uranus or Jupiter to your natal placements. For example, you may have been born with Jupiter in Aries in the same degrees where Uranus is currently transiting. This would amplify the intensity of the transiting Jupiter and Uranus cycle for you, making your Jupiter under the influence of Uranus more dramatically than if Uranus was not in aspect to your natal Jupiter. However, going into the meaning of all the aspects that transiting Jupiter and Uranus could make to your natal placements of Jupiter and Uranus is also beyond the scope of this article.
Currently we are in the Gibbous phase of the transiting cycle of Jupiter and Uranus, within a cycle that began in 2010 at the end of Pisces and the beginning of Aries. This means that we are building toward our experience of the full meaning of their current cycle that will occur with Jupiter in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries at the end of 2016 and throughout 2017. Their current cycle began at the first degree of Aries on June 8, 2010, coming into additional conjunctions on September 19, 2010 at 29 degrees of Pisces and on January 4, 2011 at 28 degrees of Pisces. As a result, from 2010 through 2011 we entered into a New phase between Uranus and Jupiter that would have correlated with a burgeoning sense of a new vision felt from within. This new vision would have been felt on an instinctual level, and while it would have lacked a sense of complete clarity, we would have felt compelled to spontaneously act from it in as many directions as possible. However, although we would have been called to pursue various strands of the new beliefs being stirred up from within, unless we were fortunate it is likely that there was a lack of structures in place at that time in which to ground and manifest the full range of what we could feel internally.
The developing vision we began to sense in 2010 was especially powerful as it also involved the ingress of Uranus in Aries. Uranus in Aries is strident in the face of restrictions, and so as obstacles arose as restraining influences on the vision emerging out of the new cycle between Jupiter and Uranus in the years that followed, we could have felt mental anguish, agony, or anger.
First Quarter Phase
A few years later when we arrived at the "crisis in action" signified by the First Quarter square between Uranus in Aries with Jupiter in Cancer, we found ourselves in an extremely catalytic astrological atmosphere that also involved a First Quarter square between Pluto in Capricorn with Uranus in Aries. The First Quarter square between Jupiter in Cancer and Uranus in Aries first occurred on August 21, 2013 at 13 degrees, then again on February 26, 2014 at 11 degrees, and finally on April 20, 2014 at 14 degrees. At this First Quarter square between Jupiter and Uranus, we would have still been in the process of exploring numerous potential paths involving our developing vision, but the creation of forms and structures through which to express the vision would have become a necessity.
The final First Quarter square formed by Jupiter and Uranus in April 2014 was extraordinary in magnitude, as it occurred as part of a Cardinal Grand Square involving Uranus in Aries, Jupiter in Cancer, Mars retrograde in Libra, and Pluto stationing retrograde in Capricorn. As a result, the creative tension that is always part of the First Quarter phase would have been amplified, with old patterns of thought enticing us to remain in the status quo while simultaneously our developing vision would have sparked desire to establish new forms through which to enter into a liberated unknown. Thus the First Quarter square aspect between Jupiter in Cancer and Uranus in Aries, that also involved a Full opposition between Jupiter with Pluto in Capricorn, led to an examination of the beliefs we were living from and whether or not we were living from a sense of conformity to the inherited values of the society, family, friends, and associations surrounding us. In addition, the simultaneous transit of Saturn in Scorpio facilitated realization regarding any cultural taboos that were overly restrictive and in reality were not something that needed to be honored with conformity. Through the First Quarter square between Jupiter and Uranus, the 2013 to 2014 time period initiated a critical analysis of the core meaning of our experience, a re-formulation of personal beliefs in accordance, and incited desire to build the structures and forms needed to manifest the developing vision.
Gibbous Phase
Currently in 2016 we are in a Gibbous phase between Jupiter in Virgo and Uranus in Aries that also involves a Last Quarter square between Jupiter and Saturn in Sagittarius, a Full opposition between Jupiter in Virgo and Neptune in Pisces, and a Last quarter square between Neptune in Pisces and Saturn in Sagittarius. The t-square between Jupiter in Virgo with Saturn in Sagittarius and Neptune in Pisces will create disillusionment that fosters a vital reorientation of vision being developed within the cycle of Uranus and Jupiter. In Jeffrey Wolf Green's Evolutionary Astrology, the purpose of experiencing disillusionment is to ultimately make it possible to align ourselves to a greater extent with the actual truth and meaning of anything. One of the central tenets of Jeffrey Wolf Green's work is that through the Jupiter and Neptune archetypes humans can create any illusion or delusion that they want to believe in. It is through Jupiter in Evolutionary Astrology that we gain knowledge through direct experience of the actual truth, rather than through the projection of beliefs. As Neptune in Pisces dissolves old structures of thought, and we enter into the "crisis of consciousness" signified by the Last Quarter square between Jupiter in Virgo and Saturn in Sagittarius, we will experience a humbling process of needing to admit what we do not know and open ourselves to new understanding.
Indeed, the Gibbous phase that Jupiter in Virgo will be in with Uranus in Aries for most of 2016 is about gaining humility and preparing the Soul to interact in society as an equal, in order to effectively express and integrate the developing vision into the surrounding social context. Jeffrey Wolf Green has emphasized that this humbling is needed in order to make adjustments to overly willful and inflated desires, a potential that is very possible when dealing with the dynamic combination of Jupiter with Uranus. The purpose behind the Gibbous re-adjustment is to analyze the structure of the surrounding social environment in order to discern how to integrate our developing vision into work or service that is needed by the greater whole. At this phase of the transiting Jupiter and Uranus cycle, we can feel passionate about a vision that has felt destined, yet also feels challenged by overwhelming obstacles. It is important during this Gibbous phase to persist in pursuit of our developing vision, continuing to build the skills needed to manifest the meaning of the cycle during the forthcoming Full phase.
Full Phase Opposition
Jupiter in Libra will finally enter its Full phase opposition with Uranus in Aries on December 26, 2016. Jupiter in Libra and Uranus in Aries will come in and out of the Full phase during 2017, finally entering the Full phase for good in September 2017. While the Full phase is always about managing opposing desires for external relationships versus internal independence, this conflict will be further exacerbated by Jupiter being in the relationally oriented sign of Libra and Uranus being in the independently oriented sign of Aries. During this phase we will explore the full meaning of the Jupiter and Uranus cycle that began in 2010, and as relationships will be essential for us to discover this meaning, it will also be necessary at times to withdraw from the social sphere in order to reconnect with our inner vision. Fortunately, at the same time that Jupiter in Libra reaches its Full opposition with Uranus in Aries, Saturn in Sagittarius will form a Disseminating trine with Uranus on December 24, 2016. The combination of Saturn in trine to Uranus, as Jupiter opposes Uranus, brings the potential to liberate our personal vision from the restraints of our past framework, healing our past issues in the process. At this crucial evolutionary gate, Jupiter will be at 21 degrees of Libra, Uranus will be at 21 degrees of Aries, and Saturn will be at 21 degrees of Sagittarius. The challenges that will be experienced during 2016 in the buildup to Jupiter reaching this first opposition to Uranus in their current cycle, will ultimately enrich the flowering of meaning and vision we can give birth to at the end of 2016.
Full Moon in Aquarius
July 31, 2015 January 26, 2016 / grayastrology	/ 4 Comments
Dream (2001) by Yaroslav Gerzhedovich
Aquarius Full Moon
The Full Moon in Aquarius on July 31, 2015 triggers an intensification of mental activity and questioning of thought patterns conditioned by consensus culture, as Venus is retrograde and in its final hours in the sign of Virgo. Venus retrograde can pulls us inward to experience a reorientation of values and generation of new visions, while simultaneously creating discord in our relationships when our inner realm of feelings suddenly flows unrestrained through our communication with startling bluntness. During Venus retrograde we experience greater impetus to expand our vision for what is possible beyond previous conditioned limitations, and we also feel intrinsically motivated to act with rebellion from a place that throws off the binding of cultural expectations. While the transit of Venus retrograde is stirring things up dramatically, this week's Full Moon shines light on new angles of perception and insight into our recent experiences from a more detached, Aquarian objectification that contrasts sharply with the more subjective, passionate qualities of Leo and Scorpio that have been so strongly highlighted recently.
The Aquarius Full Moon is ruled by Saturn traditionally, and Saturn is further dominating this Full Moon as it is stationing direct in Scorpio on August 1 or August 2, depending upon your time zone. Furthermore, Saturn is stationing direct as Jupiter in Leo creates a last quarter square with it on August 3, Venus combines with Jupiter in a square on August 4, and then Mercury also combines with Jupiter in a square to Saturn on August 6. This means that the illumination we receive with this Full Moon at the end of July will face a stern test the following week as the Moon wanes toward a last quarter square of it's own with the Sun on August 6. While it is always important to listen to those around you in relationship, there is a strong sense that this Full Moon is more about realizing your own unique sense of your Self outside of the influences and opinions of those around you. Augmenting the capacity to sense this Self-awareness in the emotional body is a grand water trine formed by Saturn in Scoprio, Mars in Cancer, and Chiron in Pisces at the time of the Full Moon.
Astrologer Robert Hand has taught that a "high Saturn," meaning a Saturn that is aligned with one's soul and spiritual path, helps one become who one is meant to become through Self-acceptance of being set apart and different from consensus, status quo culture. Saturn was seen by the ancients as having it's joy in the 12th House because Saturn can embrace alienation and lead one like a hermit to see things completely differently than the dominant culture attempting to shape public opinion to match it's own. We can receive insight at this Full Moon of what past thought patterns we need to now release in order to help us foster our developing new vision for our future. We will then need to hold fast to our sense of Self-realization, as we will likely be confronted with tests and challenges that will require us to solidly embody our new perspective instead of repressing it due to a need to fit in and find agreement with others. It is important to feel Self-acceptance at this time that it is perfectly fine that you may appear "weird" or "different" from others, like an alien from another planetary system.
Ganymede (1874) by Gabriel Ferrier
Myth of Ganymede
Ganymede to some sources is the Water Bearer of the sign of Aquarius, a beautiful young man with whom Zeus was so enamored that he swooped down in the form of an eagle in order to seize for his own. In contrast to the myth of Persephone in which Hades pulls the goddess into the underworld, in the myth of Ganymede the coveted youth is pulled upward with ascension into the heavens. Zeus gives Ganymede the role of cup bearer, the one who serves the nectar that keeps the gods and goddesses immortal, until Hera's complaints lead to Ganymede being placed in the stars as the constellation of Aquarius. Among other meanings, since ancient times this myth has been seen as representing the phenomenon of Spirit ascending from the body. In modern times, we can further link this meaning into feelings of disassociation that Aquarius can struggle with and which could also come for us at the time of this Full Moon.
Jason Holley is a good friend of mine and brilliant astrologer who presented material on the Ganymede myth in relation to the polarity between Aquarius and Leo at the 2015 Northwest Astrological Conference (NORWAC), integrating the modern rulership of Aquarius by Uranus used in systems such as evolutionary astrology. His talk was entitled "Aquarius/Leo – The Journey from Fragmentation to Wholeness," and in it he explored themes associated with the myth of Ganymedes such as the split between innocence and experience, the split between the ordinary and the extraordinary, and disruptions of psycho-spiritual development that can occur as a result. Relevant to this Full Moon in Aquarius with the Sun in Leo, Jason described the sign of the Lion in association with concepts such as heart, magnetism, coherence, center, creation, appearance, unity, and now; in contrast, he described the sign of the Water Bearer in association with concepts such as brain, electricity, interruption, decentering, deconstruction, disappearance, multiplicity, and the past and future. He then showed how a growth cycle of rupture and repair can come out of the meaning of the polarity between Aquarius and Leo.
To Holley, the stable system of self brought into coherence by Leo becomes decentered by triggering material associated with Uranus that activates the more nonlinear, invisible field of multiplicity and leads to two potential paths: (1) achieving the challenge of expressing and integrating the new insights into Self, expanding our Self-concept while we continue to embody our Self-identity, or (2) a shattering or splitting off from our psyche parts of our Self that we feel like our environment and culture are not receptive to us embodying and integrating fully into our Self-concept. If we experience the second path of feeling so ruptured that we can not embody our new sense of consciousness, we can experience disembodiment, disassociation, depersonalization, abstraction, over intellectualization, and difficulty experiencing full connection with others. Along these lines we can feel great anger at the world for not accepting us, and engage in patterns of avoidance, regression, and escape. However, if we are instead able to repair this rupture, Holley explained that we are able to achieve an experience of greater wholeness, an activation of transcendent functions, and an eagerness to re-enter into the world around us with an openness to possibilities that leads us to have new experiences.
In connection with these ideas, it is further important to realize the significance of Uranus in Aries recently stationing retrograde at the same time that Venus stationed retrograde, and that Uranus is in range of a conjunction with Eris in Aries, a trine with Mercury and Jupiter in Leo, and a squares with Mars in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn. Jason Holley further explained in his talk that being consumed by Ganymedes, not unlike the concept of the puer aeturnus, can lead one to prefer idealized worlds in favor of the actual world one is inhabiting, becoming lost in endless potentials and rejecting anything that takes form, also only sustaining contact with others dependent upon them having the same shared reality system. The current transit of Venus retrograde can hopefully be seized to help with integration if we notice we are becoming too split off from reality like Ganymedes. Instead of splitting off fragmented parts of yourself from the world around you, you can use the transformational energy of the Venus retrograde to work on integrating and embodying the parts of you that seem vastly different from the consensus around you, with full Self-acceptance of parts of your consciousness that seem to be expanding beyond the norms of the consensus. The Venus retrograde transit can then become an appropriate healing space to work on re-entering society and the world with your full Self in order have new experiences of greater wholeness.
5 of Swords by Pamela Colman Smith
Aquarius I Decan
The Aquarius I decan holding this week's Full Moon is ruled by Venus, further linking it strongly into the Venus retrograde transit and the corresponding shifting of tastes and values on individual and collective levels away from previous societal norms. Austin Coppock in his book on the decans 36 Faces noted that Aquarius I "is a face of exclusion and intentional exile," and that a lot of images in older texts "depict the difficulties of living on the margins, on the outside" (p. 226). In the image of the 5 of Swords card illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, we see a swordsman haughty with pride after becoming the master of his domain through clearing the field of rivals. Coppock linked the meaning of this card to the independence, liberation, and "wider and deeper understanding of reality" to be found through breaking free from the orthodox of one's time and accepting "the mark of the heretic" if necessary (p. 227). In this way, the image of the 5 of Swords card above shows how many relationships become destroyed and sacrificed when one goes into exile away from the norms of society, though also bringing the potential that new relationships will arise in alignment with the developing liberated sense of Self. Coppock concluded:
In this face we gather what we can from outside the norm. The frontier of any reality system is hard- there is a reason it extends no further. Though exile from the core always comes with hardship, there are material, intellectual and spiritual riches on the frontier, but to seek them requires a break with the known. As a spiritual tool, this decan points towards what one gains from stepping outside of the self. Herein is the sweetness and peace which exists above the muddy tumult of life- the satellite's view of the world is always beautiful, no matter how hellish the situation below. (p.228)
As we take in the insights we receive from this Aquarius Full Moon into a tumultuous week ahead that features Saturn stationing direct in Scorpio and then being in a last quarter square to Jupiter, Venus retrograde, and Mercury in Leo, keep in mind that the Venus retrograde transit holds the potential to take you into a space of greater authenticity that is more in tune with your inner truth than the version of truth propagated in surrounding culture. Saturn stationed direct in a last quarter square with Jupiter, Venus retrograde, and Mercury is going to facilitate a process of clearing out all of the old thought forms that are no longer serving you with great finality through the swing of Saturn's scythe.
Coppock, Austin. (2014). 36 Faces: The History, Astrology and Magic of the Decans. Three Hands Press.
January 15, 2015 January 26, 2016 / grayastrology	/ 29 Comments
Saturn's rings in infrared courtesy of NASA
On December 23, 2014 following a Solstice New Moon, the demanding task-master Saturn entered the shifting, fiery, and focused sign of Sagittarius. This new transit of Saturn in Sagittarius has resonance with the Solstice, as Saturn will not leave Sagittarius for good until the Capricorn Solstice of 2017. Saturn holds together the structure of our consciousness within our skeletal system on a personal level, and on a collective level coordinates the innumerable ingredients that form our consensus reality, or the predominant agreements that define what we mean by "reality." Saturn has a palpable impact on our lives by transit, and we can immediately feel the impact following its ingress into a new sign through personal experiences and collective events. For example, both the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo satirical Parisian newspaper that sparked the "Je suis Charlie" movement around freedom of expression, and the publicity surrounding the plan of Pope Francis to present an encyclical on climate change that will urge action are signs reflecting the shift of Saturn into Sagittarius.
Yet to claim I know that these recent events are connected with Saturn shifting into Sagittarius from a tropical zodiac perspective brings up the potential shadow of Saturn in Sagittarius reflected by a rigid belief that "I know." In the recent massacre in Paris, dogmatic religious beliefs led the perpetrators to believe that they "knew" that their violent terrorism was justified, just as in 1956 when Saturn was previously in Sagittarius the racist beliefs of White Southerners in the United States led them to believe that their violent terrorism against Black Southerners protesting for equal rights was justified. Cultivating a perspective that we "do not know" with Saturn in Sagittarius will help us open our mind to direct experience of the moment that is less conditioned by our previous beliefs and cultural understanding.
"Not knowing" also connects with how Carl Jung's idea of archetypes has been integrated into astrology, in that although Jung saw archetypes as being archaic patterns connected to the farthest reaches of time, he also defined the concept of archetypes as a manifestation of archaic patterns that are forever changing. It is worth remembering that when Jung described the meaning of archetypes, he said that we can never actually consciously "know" them, we can only deduce their meaning as reflected in such things as stories, symbols, and images. Astrology or any other methodology of belief we utilize to help us navigate our reality can lead us astray when what we believe we know becomes so crystallized that our fixation on our own perspective causes us to be in denial of our actual reality. While this is one potential pitfall of Saturn in Sagittarius, at the same time Saturn in Sagittarius brings the potential to deepen our understanding of reality through focused exploration of a belief system, practice, or subject matter.
Fresco by Baldassare Tommaso Peruzzi (1520)
Bearing in mind that our current transit of Saturn through Sagittarius is within a different astrological climate and collective milieu than previous Saturn in Sagittarius transits, we can draw upon archetypal understanding of Sagittarius to give us a perspective upon potential matters Saturn will concretize in our life. The two most common images associated with Sagittarius are the Archer and the Centaur, and both cast their shadow over astrological analysis of Saturn's time in this mutable fire sign. The archer embodies the active, focused, and disciplined side of Sagittarius, as we will be called upon to take action on our visions that arose to our awareness during Saturn's time in Scorpio. To be successful we will need to apply the determined concentration of an archer keyed into a target, and in Sagittarius we will want this goal to be deeply resonant with the purpose and meaning we are currently finding in our life experience.
In the centaur we find unity beyond the duality of animalistic instincts and human rationalism, and connection with Creation and Nature. As a result Saturn's transit through Sagittarius is timely in addressing collective crises involving the quality of life in our water, in our air, and in the plants, animals, and life inhabiting our Earth. In the figure of the evolved centaur Chiron, we find union with the medicine of creation and everything in our surroundings. Chiron cultivated wholistic practices to create greater energetic balance, such as herbalism, astrology, meditation, and the martial arts. During Saturn's time in Sagittarius, we will have an opportunity to sharpen our skills and knowledge in daily practice, study, or exploration of a structured belief system that brings us greater understanding into not only the nature of our reality, but into our daily action and movement. We also may come into conflict with others studying the same general subjects of focus from a different perspective of belief, especially in fields such as Astrology, Economics, Politics, and Religion that have a high level of theoretical underpinnings. Ideally, by keeping an open mind in our dialogues with others, instead of defensively debating without listening to the other perspective, we can gain a sharper focus into the depths under sourcing our beliefs through cultivating thoughtful conversations with people holding vastly different perspectives.
The Guru is another strong association we have with Sagittarius, and Chiron was the guru of not only the centaurs, but countless humans who came to him at a pivotal stage of their hero's journey. When learning from guru sources, whether in an actual person or in a body of knowledge, we will want to remain rooted in our direct experience instead of over-consumed by the experience of the guru source. The more we ground our learning into our daily life, we will glean the message most essential for us on a personal level, and this message then will become something we can offer to others in our community. Yet, remembering the shadow side of Sagittarius, there is also the potential to become self-absorbed when digesting profound belief systems, with the danger of becoming so narcissistic in our integration of knowledge that we begin to unleash dogmatic diatribes or self-righteous preaching to others in our environment. Ambition can overcome us in Sagittarius through overconsumption with desires for personal recognition, burning desire for whatever we desire, with self-centered awareness of the impact of personal action on others in the surrounding environment. Unfortunately, where dogmatism and violent extremist behavior intersect, Saturn in Sagittarius will bring us face to face with with explosive traumatic events in the collective propagated by terrorists as well as heads of state.
Excess of all sorts can be found in the shadow of Sagittarius, a sign ruled by Jupiter. Jupiter is also known as a guru and teacher, a storyteller whose narratives reveal our underlying nature. Just as we can become excessively self-righteous, we can also become excessively self-critical, and Saturn in Sagittarius also carries a message for those who have been fearfully holding themselves back from their full actualization in the world around them. Astrologer Liz Greene in her classic Saturn: a New Look at an Old Devil analyzed that a fear of failure is vital to overcome when Jupiter and Saturn are working together in our birth chart, because it can take courage to follow the intuitive guidance of Jupiter when its visionary quality calls us to leave the comfort zone of our consensus cultural conditioning. If we allow our Saturn side to inhibit our Jupiter side, we can play it safe working a job that meets our basic survival needs yet does not serve the needs of our deeper Self that our Jupiter side can sense. Sagittarius is a sign of vision, and Saturn here brings opportunity to take concrete action to structure our life around transformative impulses that transition us away from where we have been previously repressing ourselves through a limitation of belief:
Jupiter's function in a psychological sense seems to be connected with the intuition and the faculty of creative imagination or visualisation. It is this intuitive faculty which responds to the meaning of a symbol and which makes us capable of apprehending the basic meaning or "soul" of an experience or a person without prior analysis. The direct experience of the inner world of meaning establishes the quality which we term faith; it is not built on any deductive reasoning nor on any practical experience, and it is not- contrary to the usual definition of the word- belief in the sense that it is a wish for something to be true. The man who has genuine faith has it because he knows, in an intuitive and non-rational way, that there is meaning and purpose to his experience and that it will unfold according to a pattern which contains intrinsic wisdom and purpose . . . The contact of Jupiter with Saturn appears to suggest the psychological necessity of transforming this faith into practical living so that the individual can live out what he intuitively senses to be the purpose of his life. –Liz Greene, p. 122-123, Saturn: a New Look at an Old Devil
Saturn in Sagittarius will test our personal truth, bringing experiences that will challenge whether or not the vision we believe embodies our authenticity is taking us on a journey for a holy grail or a false grail. The self-absorbed side of Sagittarius can also lead us to become encaved in isolation while taking in new forms of knowledge that bring us a satisfying sense that we are undergoing a significant process of individuation, and yet at the same time a realization that we have become detached from our surrounding community. The polarity of Gemini to Sagittarius brings a movement to communicate the visionary Sagittarian ideas back into our collective, with a Mercurial sense of how to express our new insights in a medium of expression that can be understood by others, bridging our new vision with the prevailing one. As easy as it is to write this or read this in a sentence, it is much more challenging to put into practice, and each lunar month this dynamic of Saturn in Sagittarius will be triggered by the Moon passing through the opposite degree of Gemini, as well as in April – June 2015 when Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the Sun pass through Gemini in opposition to Saturn in Sagittarius.
Saturn's rings in ultraviolet courtesy of NASA
The mutable and expansive nature of Sagittarius is vital to comprehend when discerning how the current transit of Saturn in Sagittarius fits inside a different astrological context than past transits. Saturn in Sagittarius has already entered a square aspect with Neptune in Pisces, and will eventually also move into a square aspect with Chiron in Pisces: both of these are last quarter squares signifying as Dane Rudhyar taught, a crisis in consciousness. Jupiter will also become mutable in 2015 when it enters Virgo, eventually leading to a last quarter square between Jupiter in Virgo and Saturn in Sagittarius. As the lunar nodes will also shift in 2015 into the South Node of the Moon occupying Pisces, and the North Node of the Moon occupying Virgo, the ingress of Saturn into Sagittarius marks the beginning of a new transitionary time of mutability that could feel chaotic at times within the falling apart of the familiar.
A Sagittarius Saturn in square to a Pisces Neptune initiates our entrance into this mutable time portal of decomposition that could lead to disillusionment, and many astrologers feel this intense Saturn-Neptune aspect could encase a sobering, leadening restraint around our personal dreams. There remains potential within this aspect to build and structure significant steps along a path leading to our cherished vision, but in general this will be a time of gaining deeper awareness into the meaning behind our vision. The last quarter square, the phase that Saturn in Sagittarius will experience with Neptune in Pisces, Chiron in Pisces, and Jupiter in Virgo, is a crisis of thought in which our old beliefs are called into question as we realize our old values and life structures no longer align with our evolving consciousness. While this can be a time of deconstruction, destructuring, and deconditioning, we can also realize what aspects of our old belief and value system holds authentic truth to sustain as a point of focus. Saturn will move back into Scorpio during the Summer of the Northern Hemisphere and Winter of the Southern Hemisphere, and ideally this will re-connect us with one of the most important themes of Saturn in Scorpio: honesty. Sagittarius can have issues with dishonesty, and so we can keep in mind that one of the best remedies to help keep us honest is a staunch commitment to utilizing self-reflection to avoid being in denial.
Since Saturn in Sagittarius is a mutable fire sign, it will prod us into being actively engaged with the obstacles and challenges associated with the first quarter square between Pluto in Capricorn and Uranus in Aries, and all the deep shattering of personal and societal systems that have come with it. In March 2015, Saturn in Sagittarius will station retrograde within a week of the final of the seven squares between Pluto and Uranus, after which we will finally move beyond the demarcation of their first quarter square. Saturn asks us to be accountable for our choices that align with our goals, and while Sagittarius is an ambitious sign of determination, it's mutable nature will allow our vision to shift in accordance with the manner in which our sense of personal truth evolves in the face of coming experiences. The inherent quality of our vision, and whether it is essentially about our own self-interest or serves the true needs of our surroundings, is key. The fiery nature of Sagittarius brings a more inspirational, courageous, and creative initiative to Saturn, yet this same quality has the negative potential of selfishness, opportunism, and a lack of awareness of how our actions impact others. Remembering the sextile between Sagittarius with Aquarius and Libra, it will be helpful to utilize objectifying self-reflection to be present with how well we are listening to the needs of our many relationships and how well we are responding.
The meaning of Saturn's transit in Sagittarius changes generationally, yet there is a common thread through differing cosmic climates as can be seen in a list of famous individuals born at different times with Saturn in Sagittarius: pop stars Madonna and Lady Gaga, civil rights leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, the shadowy Osama Bin Laden and Heinrich Himmler (leading figure of Nazi Germany), and bringers of light Anne Frank and Teresa of Avila. Charles Darwin, a man whose theoretical scientific research helped to fundamentally change the way the general human populace views reality, was also born with a Saturn in Sagittarius conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius and his Ascendant in Sagittarius. One theme of Saturn's time in Sagittarius that will be strong in the coming years will be the connection of Sagittarius with personal truth and law, in particular the interplay between natural law and human-made law. There was a compelling synchronicity that as Saturn entered Sagittarius this past month it was conjunct the Themis asteroid #24, as Themis is a daughter of Gaia and the Titaness of natural law, divine order, justice, and custom. One battleground we will obviously see debates raging over law, legislation, and our natural environment will be climate change, and so it is fascinating that at the same time that Saturn entered Sagittarius it became widely publicized that Pope Francis would be forthcoming with an encyclical urging action that would be distributed throughout the global Catholic network of priests.
Pope Francis is an insightful figure to think about in connection with our current transit of Saturn in Sagittarius, and indeed he was born with his Sun conjunct the North Node of the Moon in Sagittarius. While he inherently takes the role as a leader of a dogmatic religion into every environment he enters, he also has evolved the vision underlying the way in which his papal role interacts on the global stage. First and foremost, he is our first Pope Francis, evoking the figure of Saint Francis who was an instrument of Spirit on behalf of the poor, the outcast, and the natural world. Saint Francis never took vows of chastity or demanded conformity to all of the regulated rules of the Christian Church, and also was open to women taking on equal roles of spiritual authority. Saint Francis lived a life of poverty and only asked to love Nature and for each to love and know God according to their own capacity. The choice of Pope Francis to actively encourage action on climate change evokes the love of Saint Francis for creation, and is a use of his spiritual authority on behalf of nature and humanity.
Pope Francis has also re-focused the attention of the papacy on people living in poverty around the world, and he has made a constant effort to put humans first from a perspective that humans are part of creation and are not meant to be instruments of some industrial machine. In a Christmas speech he criticized the existential schizophrenia of a Vatican he sees as being filled with gossip and rivalry, with priests hiding behind papers as part of a mechanism instead of opening up with human sensitivity to others. Pope Francis was also instrumental in the process of President Obama opening up diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, and he also seems to be intent on breaking through places of crystallized, dogmatic separation between world leaders.
One of Saturn's three trips through Sagittarius in the 20th Century was between the years of 1956 to 1958, and at this time another leader who became the voice of those oppressed and in poverty arose in prominence, Dr. Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was born with a Saturn in Sagittarius and experienced an extraordinary Saturn return that began during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, leading to his home being burned down by Southern racists at the end of January 1956 with Saturn at the early degrees of Sagittarius. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, sparking the extraordinary Montgomery Bus Boycotts, Saturn was at the end of its transit of Scorpio. There is some resonance here with our own recent time of Saturn closing out a transit of Scorpio, with a number of protest movements arising around issues of oppression. What made the Montgomery Bus Boycotts so incredible was the amount of collective commitment and creative strategizing that was employed to shut down the system.
Martin Luther King during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956
The year of 1956 when Saturn entered Sagittarius around January 13 has some similarities with Saturn's transit in 2015, as just like this year Saturn stationed retrograde in March 1956 and then moved back into Scorpio again for a few months. During Saturn's initial time in Sagittarius the Montgomery activists faced a strong pushback from the legal system, including Martin Luther King being ordered to pay a fine or serve time in jail around the time Saturn stationed in March. King's decision to serve time in jail helped propel the movement further through media coverage, and by November 1956 when Saturn had returned again to Sagittarius the Supreme Court outlawed segregation on bus lines.
There remains the possibility that some of the investigations conducted by the U.S. federal government into the police killing of black men that dominated the headlines during 2014 will also lead to federal intervention through the legal system. What is clear is that there is clear resonance between the rise of Martin Luther King into prominence when Saturn entered Sagittarius in 1956 with today's transit, as well as the fact that events in Selma, Alabama that Martin Luther King was actively engaged in during the time of the Pluto and Uranus conjunction in 1965 have now been released as a major Hollywood film at this current time of the Pluto and Uranus square and Saturn again in Sagittarius. King's courageous, impassioned leadership combined with his role as a religious authority has clear connection to Saturn in Sagittarius, and his ability to stir up a collective torrent of debate over beliefs while remaining constant with a message of love in the face of hatred holds a powerful lesson that remains significant today to learn from:
If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don't ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn.
— Dr. Martin Luther King in a speech during the Montgomery bus boycotts
A further interesting connection with the figure and life of Martin Luther King and the upcoming mutable astrology time period is that Dr. King had a mutable t-square in his chart, with Mars in Gemini (2nd House) opposite Saturn in Sagittarius (8th House) with both in square to the Moon in Pisces (11th House). Martin Luther King was able to use this intense mutable aspect in his chart to be a powerful storyteller and speaker who could communicate a message embodying deep meaning while being understood by a wide populace. In our current upcoming transit, we can all learn from King's ability to take decisive action when the time calls for action, and to communicate a heart-centered message of love while creating opportunities for discussion on societal issues that need to be addressed and not covered up or ignored.
The next period with Saturn in Sagittarius was between the years of 1986 and 1988, and during the entire transit Saturn was approaching a conjunction with Uranus that happened at the very end of Sagittarius. There were once again strong African American voices in American culture in this period, for example with Jesse Jackson running for President, but most dominant in popular culture was the pre-eminence of Hip Hop in American popular music. Two groups arose to celebrity status during the transit of Saturn in Sagittarius that exemplified it's themes: Public Enemy, whose 1987 album had the Sagittarian title Yo! Bum Rush the Show, and N.W.A. who released Straight Outta Compton at the end of Saturn's transit in Sagittarius and made famous the Sagittarian line, "You are about to witness the strength of street knowledge."
However, collectively the most major shift that occurred during this time was in Eastern Europe as the movements that led to widespread revolution in the region and later epochal events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic took place. While these later events occurred during Saturn's transit of Capricorn, there were pivotal developments that made them possible during the transit of Saturn in Sagittarius such as Perestroika in the Soviet Union. For example in Poland, a country that used the political innovation of "Round Table agreements" to facilitate a democracy that would give them greater independence, there were a series of crucial strikes that happened in 1988 with Saturn in Sagittarius that were essential. Similarly, our current transit of Sagittarius will bring opportunities for collective movements that could lead to huge structural and systematic changes in four or five years.
Zodiac frieze from Venice, Italy (1530-40) courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art
Saturn in Sagittarius is currently in a balsamic phase with Pluto in Capricorn, and so we are in a time of clearing, re-seeding, and re-visioning in their cycle until the beginning of 2020 when Saturn becomes conjunct Pluto at 23 degrees of Capricorn. Jupiter will also be in Capricorn in 2020, and around the Capricorn Solstice on December 21, 2020, the next conjunction in the Saturn and Jupiter cycle will occur at 00º29′ Aquarius. As a result Saturn's transit through Sagittarius is a key transition to this incredibly important 2020 time period.
However, let's not forget Uranus, the next planet beyond Saturn and important player in Saturn's transit through Sagittarius. Saturn in Sagittarius will form a trine with Uranus in Aries in 2016, and in 2015 Jupiter in Leo will be trine to Uranus in Aries on March 3 and on June 22. As a result in the next six months the Jupiter and Uranus cycle can help us unlock the Saturn gates of our consciousness to more expansive perspectives, and then later in August 2015 when we hit the last quarter square between Jupiter in Leo and a stationing direct Saturn in Scorpio, we will face challenges and even crises forcing us to critically examine what in our life needs to be discarded and let go and what is essential to keep as we begin to focus on what we will utilize in seeding our future.
We end with a few quotes from Anne Frank, who was born with Saturn in Sagittarius:
"I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains."
"There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again."
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world."
©2015 Gray Crawford Astrology, All Rights Reserved
Rebirthing the Matrix
December 21, 2014 June 19, 2016 / grayastrology	/ 1 Comment
Our Galactic Center
Jupiter station retrograde in Leo (23°) on December 8, 2014
Mercury conjunct Sun in Sagittarius (17°) on December 8, 2014
Venus ingress into Capricorn on December 10, 2014
Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn on December 14, 2014
Mercury ingress into Capricorn on December 16, 2014
Venus conjunct Pluto in Capricorn and square Uranus in Aries (13°) on December 20, 2014
Mars in Aquarius sextile Uranus in Aries on December 20, 2014
Uranus station direct (13°) on December 21, 2014
New Moon on the Capricorn Solstice (December 21, 2014)
Saturn ingress into Sagittarius on December 23, 2014
Mercury conjunct Pluto in Capricorn and square Uranus in Aries (13°) on December 24, 2014
Merry Solstice to one and all. Our Sun was recently conjunct our Galactic Center, as it does every year as we approach the regenerative nature of the Capricorn Solstice that heralds Winter in the northern hemisphere, Summer in the southern hemisphere. Accordingly we are in a dark and potent re-centering time, a dark moon solstice (with the Sagittarius Moon conjunct our Galactic Center) that is dominated by Uranus stationing direct simultaneously. This year's Capricorn Solstice is as fertile for intention setting as it gets, as a couple of hours after the solstice we experience a New Moon at the dawning of Capricorn. In the moist darkness of this solstice, within awareness of the shadow cast by our unconscious, we can consciously plant a seed that will ultimately burst free with our full color from the deep roots we set as our foundation now. Uranus in Aries is calling us to completely liberate from the past conditions restricting our growth up until this moment, and with Venus, Vesta, and Mercury joining Pluto in Capricorn in square to Uranus and the lunar nodes, we are entering a space to change the set of conditions we live our life from, rebirthing the matrix that shapes our lives on both personal and collective levels.
A matrix has been defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as "something (such as a situation or a set of conditions) in which something else develops or forms," and also as "a container that can be filled with a material to give the material a new shape." Fittingly the etymology of matrix connects to feminine procreation, and like the patterns found in an astrology chart, a matrix has also been defined as "something shaped like a pattern of lines and spaces." For those who spend time working with their astrology chart, there can be a tendency to fixate on certain interpretations that reinforce the repetitive patterns we develop our choices and responses to life from. Yet the brilliance of astrology can be found in the awareness it brings to us of our repetitive patterns so that we can liberate ourselves from the patterns that have left us unfulfilled, restricted, or stagnated, even when from an outside perspective it may appear that we are reaching the goals that we chose to focus upon. The Capricorn archetype prominently featured in current transits connects with the potential that we can climb a mountain or overcome great odds in pursuit of a personal ambition, only to find within our successful achievement that it was not a goal that could bring us a sense of fulfillment. Venus and Mercury joining Pluto in Capricorn can facilitate a plunge into our fathomless depths to change our structural nature, so we can assume a regenerated presence of form more naturally attuned to our desires that intrinsically motivate and satisfy our whole being.
Going along with this idea of deep re-structuring, Mercury in Capricorn is sextile to Neptune in Pisces at this Solstice, and the Capricorn New Moon that arrives about two and a half hours after the Solstice is also sextile to Neptune in Pisces. Furthermore, Venus and Pluto in Capricorn are sextile Chiron in Pisces, and Vesta in Capricorn is at the mid-point of a sextile to both Neptune and Chiron in Pisces. The sextile between Capricorn and Pisces is insightful to ponder now, and brings to mind the sea-goat symbol of Capricorn with it's watery tail dipped into an ocean of collective unconscious. Capricorn and Pisces are both much stronger and effective when each draws upon the strengths of the other: for Capricorn, it is letting go of control and manipulation in order to open their emotions with empathy to both nurture others through their striving as well as to flow with where the watery currents of their true soul desires lead them, instead of where their cultural conditioning expects them to go. For Pisces, the harmonious help from Capricorn comes through making the unmanifest manifest, taking concrete steps to bring structure and form to their visions and ideals so that their imaginative impulses enter our reality to impact others through a creative expression of some sort, as well as owning the responsibility to be accountable to the demands of life in order to sustain a more stable life from which to continue to produce work.
In the recent past there were a number of planets passing through Sagittarius in square to Neptune and then Chiron in Pisces, and so now that we have a group of planets in Capricorn passing through sextile to Neptune and Chiron in Pisces, we can utilize any disillusionment and dissolving we have experienced to re-align and re-structure our lives at a source level so we can live closer to our personal truth. If we became unbalanced on the Sagittarius side of things, we may also need to reflect upon how we became too dogmatic, too self-centered and narcissistic, or too over-confident that a belief system we felt encapsulates the truth holds more weight than other perspectives, becoming a self-proclaimed guru or fanatic in the process. In comparison, if we became unbalanced on the Pisces side of things, we may need to realize that we have been victimizing ourselves to an unhealthy extent through our oversensitivity, or becoming so wrapped up in a self-centered illusion that we became completely in denial to vital issues in our environment that require our full awareness. Since we remain in the wake of a square between Uranus and Pluto, with Uranus stationing direct, there is no doubt something very significant that has been dislodged from our depths for us to work with, confront, or integrate.
Indeed, a week ago we experienced the sixth of the seven squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn that have been ongoing since 2012. We only have one more exact square in this cycle, which will occur days before the Aries Equinox and a Solar Eclipse. The seven squares between Uranus and Pluto bring to mind our seven traditional planets and our seven chakras, and the associated symbolism. As a result, the sixth square connects to the sixth chakra as well as the sixth planet, Jupiter. This symbolism works out perfectly, as Jupiter stationed retrograde in Leo prior to the sixth square, bringing the Jupiter archetype into prominence as well as the intuitive shift that comes with its station into a retrograde perspective. When Jupiter stations and turns retrograde, we have a greater capacity to turn away from the expectations of others and the conditioning of our culture that cause us to act from a false sense of self to meet outside demands, in order to turn within to recover our personal truth and motivation to pursue desires that bring us genuine vitality and fuel our passions.
The traditional symbolism of the sixth chakra also resonates with the astrological aspects surrounding the sixth square between Uranus and Pluto, as issues such as intuition, imagination, insight, image, dreams, and visualization come to mind. Anodea Judith's Eastern Body, Western Mind analyzed the developmental tasks associated with this chakra to be about the establishment of our personal identity as well as our capacity to perceive the patterns of our life. If balanced, we can have a perceptive intuition that can think symbolically, visualize, and both recall and work with the material found within our memories and dreams. In contrast, if out of balance we can have issues around insensitivity and difficulty with our memories, vision, and imagination. We can also find ourselves in denial, delusional, obsessive, and becoming fixated that our way is the only way. Judith also analyzed associated traumas and abuse that I find resonate with the potential danger of this sixth square: "what you see doesn't go with what you're told," "invalidation of intuition and psychic occurrences," and "ugly or frightening environment (war zone, violence)." These same concepts further connect with the sixth planet Jupiter's rulership of Sagittarius, an archetype featured strongly at this sixth square, as the chart below reveals:
When the sixth square between Uranus and Pluto became exact on December 14, the Moon was at the beginning of Libra with Jupiter retrograde conjunct Juno in Leo, highlighting an additional link between the intensity of this square and all of our personal relationships, including our relationship to our surrounding collective culture and conditioning. In fact, this last Pluto and Uranus square has a relational impact within our psyche that truly goes beyond the ability of words to capture in its intensity, since the lunar nodes are in the relational signs of Aries and Libra, with Uranus conjunct the South Node of the Moon and opposite the North Node of the Moon, and Pluto in Capricorn square both the South and North Nodes of the Moon. Moreover, the North Node ruler is a Venus in Capricorn conjunct Pluto and also in square to the lunar nodes, and the South Node ruler is a Mars in Aquarius that is in sextile to Uranus and the South Node in Aries and in trine to the North Node in Libra.
In plain English, this symbology points to the most primal issues connected to our relationship choices, no matter how hidden they have previously been in the far reaches of our consciousness, erupting forward into our present mindset and surrounding environment for us to face. The silver lining of serendipity within this intensity is the Mars in Aquarius making the previously mentioned harmonious aspects, bringing with it the potential to liberate ourselves from our previous patterns that have disempowered us in relationship, in order to integrate our burgeoning self-awareness into re-structuring our present conditions into a transformed presence more attuned to the vision of life we hold dear to our hearts. Mars in Aquarius brings a detached objectivity that enables us to step back from the past conditioning that has influenced our sense of will in the direction of consensus reality structures. With Mars in Aquarius we can feel and realize what about our recent identity and behavior is not truly who we are at heart, giving us the chance to experiment with, rebel against, and change the circumstances that have led up to our present moment. Mars in Aquarius can sense the future and in correspondence we can make modifications to creatively actualize more of the unique purpose we were born with in order to serve our surrounding collective.
With Saturn at the very end of Scorpio, preparing to enter Sagittarius in a few days, all of the deep rooted feelings we have not yet faced and addressed are coming up now with an intensity to match the level of resistance we have been projecting onto them. Saturn rules Capricorn where Venus is currently conjunct Pluto in square to the lunar nodes, and so our collective north node direction in Libra demands that we do this important inner work, realize what aspects of our shadow have been impacting our relationships despite our denial, and realize how we have been acting in order to meet the expectations of family or culture instead of our own Self. Mars in Aquarius has a polarity of Leo, where Jupiter is retrograde conjunct Juno, and so we must take the courage of the Lion to heart in order to break free from the old structures of our life and the status quo we have become acclimated and attached to.
Finding and living from a true sense of personal justice in our relationships is an important theme of this Capricorn Solstice, not only because of the North Node of Libra ruled by a Venus conjunct Pluto and in square to Uranus, but also because of the asteroid goddess Themis #24 being at zero degrees of Sagittarius on the day of the Solstice and New Moon, and so conjunct Saturn as it leaves Scorpio to enter Sagittarius. Themis is the Titaness of natural law, divine order, justice, and custom, the daughter of Gaia who is connected with "divine law" more so than "human-made law." Themis connects to the principle that conditioning and law is not necessarily bad, for it is necessary for many to learn how to act and think in accordance with the highest good for all beings in all of our dimensions. In fact, when we go against the divine law of Themis, we invite the wrathful retribution of Nemesis. Unfortunately, not all human-made laws and conditioning factors of our culture are actually in harmony with Themis and divine law, and so it is necessary at this Solstice and New Moon to make intentions to re-discover our personal truth liberated from the oppressive aspects of surrounding culture. Themis was also a mediator of oracular power, and so also connects to the potential of using Mars in Aquarius to guide us toward our liberated future vision.
Black Buddha Mandala (1944) by Morris Graves
It is important to further reflect upon the meaning of the New Moon lunation occurring on the day of the Solstice. Unlike the powerful Capricorn Solstice of 2010 that was a Total Lunar Eclipse and so a Full Moon of peaking polarity, the Capricorn Solstice of 2014 is more of a New Moon born out of dark, waning lunar tides. Therefore it is insightful to reflect back upon events surrounding the pivotal peak of this past lunation cycle, the Gemini Full Moon that occurred on December 6, 2014. This Gemini Full Moon was a catalytic spark to the issues erupting during this time of Solstice and the square between Uranus and Pluto (I was on Kristin Fontana's Guiding Stars radio show discussing this Gemini Full Moon that you can find an archived recording of here). Especially important to the context of Uranus stationing direct on the Solstice, the Gemini Full Moon of December 6 was conjunct the North Node of Uranus in Gemini, and the Sun at the time was conjunct the South Node of Uranus. This means that the entire arc of how the Uranus archetype impacts our life has been completely lit up and illuminated with all of its shattering spectacle in these past few weeks, culminating in Uranus stationing direct at this Solstice.
Working with Uranus can be difficult for many because Uranus demands change and liberation despite your current attachments, and so the things we possess and cling to tightly can explode in the face of a Uranus transit. In situations in which we have felt oppressed or restricted and yearned for a change of conditions, the implosions of Uranus can also create space and opportunities for us to finally make the changes to our structure that have felt long overdue from a soul perspective. Following the Gemini Full Moon that lit up the Uranus archetype a couple of weeks ago, two further important astrological events occurred: (1) Jupiter stationed retrograde in Leo as previously mentioned, and (2) there was a superior conjunction of Mercury with the Sun in Sagittarius. This visionary Mercury transit gave us an opportunity to perceive a vision of our future that we can now work to develop with Mercury in Capricorn and conjunct Pluto.
Interestingly in connection to current events, the superior conjunction of Mercury in Sagittarius on December 8 was in trine to the superior conjunction of Mercury in Leo that occurred around the time of the Aquarius Full Moon of August 10, 2014 that was furthermore in trine to the Gemini Full Moon of December 6. It was at the time of this Aquarius Full Moon that the eruption of events and protests surrounding the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri occurred. While there is nothing new about police brutality and inequitable treatment of people of color by law enforcement, something about the incredible liberating energy of that Aquarius Full Moon and Superior Conjunction of Mercury illuminated awareness that elevated public protest was necessary. The trines from that time to the recent Gemini Full Moon correlate to the further intensification of public protest following the non-guilty verdicts for the officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner. As additional episodes of police killing people of color entered the news cycle, public protest and acts of civil disobedience in connection intensified. This public movement has direct symbolic correlation with the astrology of this time, in particular the prominence that the Uranus archetype has been demanding.
Mars entered Aquarius on the same day that the non-guilty verdict of the officer who strangled Eric Garner to death was announced. Mars in Aquarius brings with it an energy of potential rebellion and radical action, but when working with Mars in Aquarius on personal levels as well as with intention to create change in the collective, it is vital to use Aquarian foresight in order to structure focused, impactful choices for protest and rebellion. One of the shadow sides of Mars in Aquarius can be in becoming so intense in the face of oppressive conditions that our desire for change and protest leads us to rebel against not only the system but also our own well-being, or the greater well-being. For example, in public protest acts of civil disobedience can be very powerful in certain circumstances, but they have the greatest impact when carefully designed to hit a target while spreading a message, instead of simply being about blowing something up. In our personal lives, we will want to work with the shattering energy of Uranus to carefully re-build our lives and the surrounding system from the inside out, instead of simply rebelling for the sake of rebelling without purposeful intention.
In addition, Mars in Aquarius can become so detached that we emotionally disassociate from the impact of our behavior on the feelings of others, or we do not allow ourselves to feel all of the emotions that can help us nurture the needs of our relationships. Similar to how we need to integrate the nurturing archetype of Cancer to the polarity of Pluto, Venus, and Mercury in Capricorn now, we also need to bridge the personal archetype of Leo to the impersonal collective polarity of Mars in Aquarius. From a place of Aquarian actualization that is heart-centered, we can regain our solar Leo luminosity to radiate our pure Self in a manner that lights a path of inspiration for others.
The Great Sun by William Blake
In the evolutionary astrology system developed by Jeff Green, Uranus has an additional meaning connected to our long-term soul memory, meaning not only all of the memories we have stored from our present lifetime that we may or may not consciously remember in this moment, but also all of our memories from past incarnations that we do not consciously remember. Some people do gain awareness for past life memories, however, and the potent astrological context that Uranus is stationing within now points to the potential for deep soul memories to emerge from our unconscious. Whether these are memories from past lives, or memories from the current lifetime that have been buried, or a new perspective gained regarding our present behavior that we had previously been in denial of, this Uranus stationing will be bringing something extremely significant to the forefront of our consciousness. We need to take time out to nurture ourselves with loving care, feel compassion for where we currently are in our development and not be overly critical of ourselves for not being where we think we should be. Wherever we are, it is a necessary place in our process to be in, and with loving care we can facilitate growth within that will take us beyond any disheartening, distressing, restrictive, or oppressive circumstances in our present or recent past.
"Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads ―at least that's where I imagine it― there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library."
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
This awareness of something from our past being recycled and stirred up in order to help us embody a reborn presence is further reflected in the current balsamic phase between Mars in Aquarius and Venus in Capricorn, with Uranus in Aries being sextile Mars in Aquarius. Mars and Venus in a balsamic phase will bring significant relationship issues and partners to the surface that are connected with our past patterns. This is a time of facing the way we have been in the past with relationships with an open heart, allowing us to feel all of our emotions no matter how dark or discomforting. By taking it all in now, we can dissolve and release the relationship patterns that no longer serve us so we can create the relationships that will serve our needs as well as gain a clearer capacity to listen to the needs of all of our relationships.
Following the Solstice New Moon, Saturn will enter the sign of Sagittarius and Mercury will re-ignite the square between Uranus and Pluto by becoming conjunct Pluto, in square to Uranus and the South Node of the Moon in Aries, and also in square to the North Node of the Moon in Libra. When a pivotal planet like Saturn ingresses into a new sign, we get an immediate sense of some of the major issues that will be coming our way in the next phase of life, and the information we receive through our interactions with others could be very intense considering the fact that Mercury will be conjunct Pluto and in square to Uranus and the lunar nodes at the same time. As a result, this next week is another important threshold for us to enter with Mercury present as our guide. With Mercury and Venus both still in Capricorn, taking personal responsibility for our responses to what is coming at us in our life will be paramount, integrating the Cancer polarity of nurturing our Self and our loved ones.
Mystery of Stillness
October 26, 2014 October 26, 2014 / grayastrology	/ 12 Comments
The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra, 2nd Century Alexandria: "One is the All"
OthI
g can
urPas
the m
tiLnes
— e.e. cummings
In the last few days our Moon has eclipsed Mercury, Venus, the Sun, and Saturn in order. Writing in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America, I am looking through a window upon the Japanese Maple in my front yard releasing its flaming red astral leaves in the wind. A stormy gale is blowing through the tall trees and evergreens in view, with intermittent showers of rain descending upon the soaring crows, broken up at times by a white cloud break of sky blue. Similar to a reflective response to today's tumultuous weather, there is not much more we can do to prepare for eclipse season than to center in our being within the field of chaos and change. While we are still in range of eclipse aftershocks, the eclipses of this season are now finished until the next equinox (there will be a solar eclipse on March 20, 2015). If we can create a sacred or womb like sphere of contemplation, insight is beckoning discovery.
Although this recent solar eclipse was partial and not full, the fact that Venus was also involved in the eclipse in the same period of the superior conjunction of Venus with the Sun, with Mercury simultaneously stationing direct in the sign of Venus, means that the ripples of this time will have far reaching effect. The superior conjunction of Venus and the Sun happens when Venus is moving direct, on the other side of the Sun from our home planet, uniting in the same degree of the zodiac as the Sun and beginning a new cycle that will lead to Venus arising nightly as an evening star. In the thirty or so days before and after this moment, Venus disappears from our view in the sky under the rays of the Sun, and so the superior conjunction is a sort of wintery solstice moment in the sense of promising a return of her light. Archetypal and mythic astrologers are especially prone to link the cycle of Venus with underworld goddess myths such as the story of Inanna and Ishtar, and Her descent to the underworld to face Ereshkigal, the Great Goddess in the land under the earth, the land of the dead. From this perspective the superior conjunction of Venus is a pivotal moment of soul searching and regeneration in her cycle.
However, I feel a key to tune into is Mercury, our winged angel at the threshold, our soul guide in between boundaries of the upper and underworld, as Mercury from our perspective on Earth is as still as it ever gets, stationing to move forward again. If you remember, Mercury originally stationed retrograde conjunct the point of the Solar Eclipse and the superior conjunction of Venus on October 4, 2014. Now, it has completed its retrograde and stationed direct conjunct the North Node of the Moon, and opposite Uranus and the South Node of the Moon. Corresponding with Dane Rudhyar's description of Mercury as the weaver of patterns of relationship, commingling meaning out of commerce with the multitude of information sources accessible to our perception, we have a unique moment now to cut through our awareness of past patterns of relationship in order to weave together new patterns of relationship connected with our future, ever changing sense of self.
Mercury stationing direct is not always interpreted as being the most "razor sharp" moment of thought and consciousness, yet I feel that has to do with your perspective on consciousness. Mercury stationing direct is similar in my mind to waking consciousness, when we emerge from our dream world into an awakened world, yet we are still connected to our time in dreams and we may have moments of not knowing what is dream and what is waking. At this time we are beyond the duality, we are both at once, and each is all of our awareness. Yet far from fogginess, we may receive a startling comprehension as described by William Blake: "Knowledge is not by deduction but Immediate by Perception or Sense at once . . . Forms must be apprehended by Sense or the Eye of Imagination." The more we open to this sense of Blake's that "Man is All Imagination," the more Mercurial knowledge into our deep nature will be revealed in line with Blake's understanding that "The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself" (Damrosch, p. 14 – 16).
Mercury stationing direct now is fortuitous as it will allow for greater integration of the recent lunar eclipse in Aries, and the solar eclipse in Scorpio. My understanding of eclipses is heavily influenced by Demetra George's workbook Finding Our Way Through The Dark as she succinctly crystallized an essential message regarding eclipses through the lens of two intellectual figures I admire, Carl Jung and Dane Rudhyar:
In general, eclipses are said to be negative, but this is a misunderstanding of the shadow function. In both solar and lunar eclipses, the light of either the Sun or Moon is obstructed from reaching the Earth. When the light of consciousness is temporarily blocked, something else is revealed- that which is normally hidden. Called windows into secret realms and open doorways into the subconscious, eclipses allow us to access that which has been concealed or repressed in our lives. Eclipses are said to be karmic in nature, because they relate to issues that lie outside of our consciousness.
If we are out of touch with this hidden material which Carl Jung calls "the shadow," then we may judge it as bad and destructive. We are shocked because this material seems to come out of nowhere, when in fact it was with us all along. To the extent that we have tried to repress the shadow material, we will call the results of the eclipse disastrous. But to the extent that we are open to the unconscious and the surfacing of hidden problems, we will experience the emergence of this material as neutral, revelatory or healing.
Dane Rudhyar said that at the New Moon solar eclipse, the present is blotted out by the past, while at the Full Moon lunar eclipse, the past is obscured by the present. This statement suggests that at a solar eclipse, the Sun- which represent our consciousness awareness- when obscured, allows the forces of the past which lie buried in the unconscious as psychic complexes, to be seen, confronted, and experienced with the possibility of integrating these previously unconscious energies into the present awareness. During a lunar eclipse, it is the past, symbolized by the Moon, which is obscured and can be released. In the absence of the conditioning of the past, the possibility emerges of meeting experiences in a new manner.
Of further importance is the fact that the Sun in these last two eclipses was conjunct the North Node of the Moon in Libra, suggesting forward drive through the chaos toward our desire, and a stirring up of new ways to approach future-oriented growth. Mars also ruled both eclipses, from the perspective that the Moon was in Aries in the lunar eclipse and the Sun and Moon were in Scorpio during the solar eclipse: another sign of desire compelling our will forward. Since the lunar eclipse was in the cardinal sign of Aries and conjunct Uranus, it may have had more of an immediate impact on our perception through a dislodging of past patterns to be released. In contrast, the partial solar eclipse occurring at the very beginning of the fixed sign of Scorpio may not have made such an instantaneous effect in your life, unless the beginning degrees of Scorpio make significant aspects in your natal chart. However, the deep, fixed nature of Scorpio, as well as the additional power of Venus and Mercury in association, means that the solar eclipse could have sweeping, extended, and drawn out repercussions.
Again, Mercury is an important focus as it has stationed direct more tightly conjunct the North Node of the Moon than the solar eclipse, closely opposite Uranus and the South Node of the Moon in Aries. Fascinatingly, the Moon eclipsed Saturn in Scorpio at the same time Mercury stationed direct, symbolically opening the gates of Saturn to the Uranian, transpersonal vision of the outer planetary bodies. Many astrologers believe that Uranus is a higher octave to Mercury, and in this moment of Mercury stationing direct opposite Uranus, there can be no argument that Mercury in Libra is actively receptive to Uranus and weaving new patterns of inter-relationship that go beyond our usual conditioning of culture and Saturnine boundaries. Mercury can be our guide, but Mercury can also serve us and other components of astrology like Jupiter- the consciousness we apply to Mercury, the way we look through Mercury at our world matters. If we are wrapped up in fear now, we may weave together new ways to be afraid; if we are overcome by greed and motivation for greater status, we may weave together new ways of manipulating other people to serve our own benefit.
Moreover, since Pluto in Capricorn is also in square to Mercury in Libra, meaning that there is a t-square between Pluto in Capricorn, Uranus with the South Node of the Moon in Aries, and Mercury with the North Node of the Moon in Libra, the full effect of all of this on us can be cathartic and shattering. The more we claim this moment to go deeper into our nature if we have already been soul searching, or choose to engage in a new pattern that is more about our Self than our fears or compensation for our insecurity like greed, the more we will participate in the active change serving the higher good that is possible in the collective now. Unfortunately, since many people are not doing this hard work of Self, these same astrology aspects going forward could correspond with continued and increasing warfare, violence, and oppression in our collective consciousness.
Chrysopoea of Cleopatra
Venus was also part of the Scorpio solar eclipse, though not part of the visual phenomenon as she was on the other side of the Sun from the Moon and already invisible. However, since Venus recently was conjunct the North Node of the Moon in Libra as well as Mercury retrograde in Libra, Venus beginning a new cycle through the heart of the Sun holds a new relationship we can have with our future development that at the same time involves confronting our past patterns of relating. We may be reminded of a past relationship behavior, we may be triggered by something that has more to do with an old relation than our present heart and mind, but in any case these associations with our previous values and ways of relating are here to reveal to us that we can release what has held us back in the past: we are not stuck or incapable of change and evolution.
As previously mentioned, the Venus superior conjunction at the beginning of Scorpio is also a strong link to the underworld goddess myths and tests of diverse cultures, bringing a sense of the heroine's journey and the need to answer the call. Yet Venus is known to be in detriment in Scorpio traditionally in astrology, and Venus being eclipsed by the Moon in Scorpio shortly before her superior conjunction has an added dimension that the Moon is considered to be in its fall in Scorpio. Piercing through these labels, the lessons we may find here revolve around our deepest, core, unconscious feelings and values, emotions that may feel unsettling to unearth from our psyche. Give yourself at least a month of focused intent to burn off the past issues or karma that no longer serve you. In thirty days or so, at the end of November, Venus will arise again with her brilliant white light, illuminating our evening sky momentarily at first, staying with us longer in the evening hours each successive day.
From the perspective of declination in astrology, what is even more amazing about the end of November will be that at the time Venus arises again as an evening star, she will be united with Mars in declination, barely within the bounds of the Tropic of Capricorn. In this same period Venus in Sagittarius will be in a Grand Fire Trine with Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries, more closely in trine with Uranus. On an archetypal level, this could be a time of integration between masculine and feminine energies within, our receptive magnetism and active energy, the Jungian concepts of the animus and the anima. It also makes me think of the Axiom of Maria concept from alchemy that Carl Jung took into his concept of individuation, that out of the One (unconscious wholeness) comes Two (conflict of opposites), Two becomes Three (transcendent resolution), and the Third becomes the One as the Fourth (transformed, whole consciousness). This process represents the idea of all the unconscious energy that has become stimulated now eventually leading us into a more fully realized individual consciousness: just remember it is a process that takes time.
"Stars and dec" by Tfr000 (talk) 16:58, 13 June 2012 (UTC) – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-via Wikimedia Commons
In case you do not understand the concept of declination illustrated flatly above, in declination we pay attention to the location of celestial objects within the relationship between the Earth's equator and the ecliptic, the apparent motion of the Sun on our celestial sphere. The high and low points shown in the red ecliptic line on the above graphic are important, as they are the Tropic of Cancer to the north and the Tropic of Capricorn to the south. The Tropic of Cancer is 23º26′ north of the equator, and the place of the Sun at the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere that occurs in June. Similarly, the Tropic of Capricorn is 23º26′ south of the equator, and the place of the Sun at the Summer Solstice in the Souther Hemisphere that occurs in December. Using Mars as an example, if Mars goes further than 23°26′ north or south of the equator it would mean that Mars is "out of bounds" or in extreme declination. This gives a wild, maverick, independent streak to whatever celestial object is out of bounds, essentially meaning that the associated archetype is going to be its own ruler, think for itself, and go after what it wants.
Since the beginning of October 2014, Mars has been in extreme declination, meaning that the wild bounding nature of the centaur associated with Mars being in Sagittarius has been even more intense, further adding a wild personal will into the Grand Fire Trine that happened between Mars in Sagittarius, Jupiter in Leo, and Uranus in Aries. Mars reached its peak extreme in declination at about the same time as the solar eclipse in Scorpio, and current events in North America revealed the shadow side of the aggressive red planet out of bounds: the shooting at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, another attempt to jump the fence at the White House in Washington D.C. (this one taken down by security dogs), and a horrific shooting at a high school in Marysville, Washington that ended in suicide. Yet the other side to this out of bounds Mars is an out-of-the-box sense of will, power, and desire that is essentially out-of-this-galaxy, as Mars at the end of Sagittarius has been conjunct our Galactic Center. In combination with Mercury stationing direct opposite Uranus and conjunct the North Node of the Moon, this could be difficult chaos or liberating illumination depending upon how you respond or in what environment you enter.
During this time of Mars in extreme declination, as well as its time in the Grand Fire Trine, Mars has been in a balsamic or dark phase with Pluto in Capricorn. And now we enter a period in which Mars enters the sign of Capricorn, the sign of its exaltation, in order to conjunct Pluto on November 10, 2014 and begin a new cycle. As a result, we are currently at the close of a Mars and Pluto cycle that began at the end of November in 2012, and so a dissolution of our deep soul desires that have arisen in the past two years. In Pluto Volume II: The Soul's Evolution through Relationships, Jeffrey Wolf Green wrote the following about the balsamic semi-sextile aspect between Mars and Pluto that we entered around the time that Mars went out of bounds:
Some individuals will experience this as a sense of meaninglessness and emptiness, and will manifest a diffuse or undefined personal identity or purpose . . . The key is to let go of the past and to allow new patterns, ideas and impulses to enter the consciousness of their own accord. Approached in this way, these new thoughts, ideas, and impulses become the light that illuminates the path to the individual's future.
Continuing the amazing 2014 theme of Mars and Venus, when Mars conjuncts Pluto in Capricorn on November 10, Venus will be approaching a conjunction with Saturn in Scorpio. From now until then, coming out of the insights gained from the eclipses and Mercury stationing, become as clear as possible about the future life you want to live and do the hard inner work to clear whatever obstacles are getting in your way of pursuing your desired life. As Neptune in Pisces will also be stationing direct in mid November, it could be a great time to set a powerful intention for a new beginning.
page 54 in Carl Jung's Liber Novus
On page 54 of his Liber Novus, Carl Jung illustrated the above image with the translated words:
Amen, you are the lord of the beginning.
Amen, you are the star of the East.
Amen, you are the flower that blooms over everything.
Amen, you are the deer that breaks out of the forest.
Amen, you are the song that sounds far over the water.
Amen, you are the beginning and the end.
In The Red Book: Liber Novus, Carl Jung in a section labeled "Refinding Soul" recounted the impact of his vision of a flood in October 1913 when he was thirty-eight years old. At this time, Jung said "I had achieved everything that I had wished for myself. I had achieved honor, power, wealth, knowledge, and every human happiness. Then my desire for the increase of these trappings ceased, the desire ebbed from me and horror came over me" (p. 232). Jung went on to describe his "unbearable inner longing" in his search for his soul that included the following passage:
He whose desire turns away from outer things, reaches the place of the soul. If he does not find the soul, the horror of emptiness will overcome him, and fear will drive him with a whip lashing time and again in a desperate endeavor and a blind desire for the hollow things of the world. He becomes a fool through his endless desire, and forgets the way of his soul, never to find her again. He will run after all things, and will seize hold of them, but he will not find his soul, since he would find her only in himself. Truly his soul lies in things and men, but the blind one seizes things and men, yet not his soul in things and men. He has no knowledge of his soul. How could he tell her apart from things and men? He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not possess him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul.
Damrosch, Leopold. (1980). Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth. Princeton University Press.
George, Demetra. (1994). Finding Our Way Through the Dark. AFA.
Green, Jeff. (2009). Pluto Volume II: The Soul's Evolution through Relationships. Wessex.
Jung, Carl. (2009). The Red Book: Liber Novus. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani. Norton.
Mercury retrograde: a forest dark in liminal twilight
October 3, 2014 October 5, 2014 / grayastrology	/ 8 Comments
Yaroslav Gerzhedovich
"I go along dreaming roads of the twilight"
Between thought and expression, between the colors of the sunset and the eye of the beholder, in the liminal light of twilight we feel the atmosphere of Mercury retrograde. Mercury retrograde is a three week period in which we can surrender to opening our awareness beyond our usual habitual reactions, interfacing with our environment in different ways that surprise us. Mercury retrograde is the magical air we feel on our skin when we watch the sun disappear on the horizon with shifting hues, the shifting frame of perspective that invites epiphanies. In astrology, the setting sun is also a symbol for a death of self-absorption through the meeting of another in relationship or partnership. On October 4, 2014 Mercury will station retrograde at 3° of Scorpio (a sign of soul relationship), and move all the way back to 17° of Libra (a sign of social relations and social justice) on October 25, 2014. If we include the "shadow zone" before the retrograde station and following the stationing direct, between September 15 and November 10, 2014 Hermes is guiding us to a deepening of self-knowledge through our interactions with our environment and every relationship formed.
Mercury stationing retrograde in Scorpio draws us into a spiral of Desire. Whether you have or have not already felt yourself pulled into an intense gravity of focus, an object or other drawing forth a surge of yearning from within, it will happen, and it will continue to be felt with expanding intensity in the weeks ahead. All the consequences of desire, all the lessons learned from wanting something out of reach, the questions dawning once we finally reach, acquire, or merge with our craving, will be part of our experience traversing through not only a Mercury retrograde, but a particularly shattering Lunar Eclipse and Solar Eclipse. Unless we have somehow done the miraculous work of lining our life up so that we are completely available to the focus of our desire, we will also come across all the limitations and habitual reactions of our past mind-frame restricting our ability to respond fully to the present passion. If you want to use astrology to help discern the nature of your desire, look in your chart to what house holds the first few degrees of Scorpio, and what aspects these degrees make in your chart. You can also then move clockwise in your chart to the middle of Libra and see what additional house or aspects in your chart will be further impacted as the Mercury retrograde continues.
Research on habits has supported that the easiest time to break a habit is on vacation. This theory revolves around the concept that on holiday in a new environment, all the familiar surroundings we partially fixate our identity around are gone, the triggers of our habit have been removed, and we are more vulnerable to initiating a new pattern of behavior. This same concept goes well with Mercury retrograde: even though all of our usual triggers will still be in place, the atmosphere invites a different response to them. Additionally, as this retrograde cycle is initiated in Scorpio, there is potential for a death of old reactive patterns. Scorpio has the courage to enter the darkness where the past can be felt to our deepest core, without our usual defense mechanisms operating in the light of day. In this darkness our inability to possess or be present with the desire we yearn for burns from within with such magnitude that a release of past attachments can occur that ultimately opens us up to the real possibility of having or merging with our desire in the future. In Scorpio, the phoenix pulls us through the fear of abandonment, the terror of the focus of our past sense of security being destroyed, and Mercury stationing here facilitates the integration of the dualities within us like the light and the dark, the conscious and unconscious, in order to synthesize the birth of a new identity or presence in the world.
Virginia Woolf contemplated this same concept when she wrote, "The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think," in a journal entry on January 18, 1915. This journal entry of Woolf's was analyzed in a lovely essay by Rebecca Solnit entitled Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable, as well as the following:
The evening hour, too, gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out of the house on a fine evening between four and six, we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room. For there we sit surrounded by objects which enforce the memories of our own experience. But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central pearl of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. —Virginia Woolf
This idea Virginia Woolf journaled about, that to close the door on the attachment of our possessions, to walk the streets in twilight among strangers, is an opening of our personality to the limitless depth of soul. Mercury retrograde is likewise an opportunity to go for an evening walk under a canopy of dark trees, above a network of deep roots, into an awakening of who we are and where we desire to go.
With those we share our most intimate essence with, there will be a more ardent interchange than usual, leading to an intensification in interaction that could be chaotic yet essentially revealing if we can avoid becoming so wrapped up in melodrama that we block our capacity to discern meaning. We do not want to be afraid of the dark, because there will be no avoiding the shadow or the dark night of the soul necessary to birth the insight we desperately need to actualize our purest passions. If there is anything we have been consciously avoiding from past relationships, the time of denial will be over as there will be no escape from suppressed thoughts and feelings emerging that will demand our attention.
"Love goes toward love" William Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, and when we fall enflamed in our heart's rapture, we can feel like Romeo musing about Juliet, that the Other we desire is a "Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!" It seems that as much as we project and idealize an illusion in romantic folly, we negate a true desire of our soul for a love that terrifies us as much as it enchants our wildest passions. This is because great love dissolves and destroys our former sense of self, and we change and shift in the embrace of true love. Or, if we risk taking on the transformation of love, the work needed to sustain a relationship lovingly further challenges our sense of self, as it involves making compromises and listening to the needs of the Other. We get used to focusing on our old needs like a bad habit, instead of opening to how these needs can shift in every moment, guided by the wholeheartedness of desire. Since Mercury retrograde can facilitate shifting habits out of a changing place of perspective, we can realize which relationships we truly desire to focus on going forward, and cultivate the faculty needed for our mind to respond to the arising needs associated with our yearning.
Since Mercury will move from the beginning of Scorpio back into the heart of Libra, and then forward again back into Scorpio, we will feel a surging ebb and flow of subconscious shadow in all of our relationships. In the eye of the present partner we may catch a glimpse of a childhood emotion, in a conversation with a passing passerby we may hear the echo of an issue that feels like it has been with us for an eternity. If we open to this process, there is something deep within to unearth through dialogue and attention to the needs of our relationships. In this way while our desires may be pulling us into a space of new perception, another major meaning of this Mercury retrograde will be Power. Where, when, and with whom do we feel powerful, where, when, and to whom do we give our power away, and how can we find the balance of feeling secure in our own power yet interacting with others so that we are not overpowering them or projecting our issues of power on to them.
In addition, Mercury stationing at the beginning of Scorpio means that there are three generations of people on our planet right now who may be especially impacted subconsciously: those with Neptune at the beginning of Scorpio (1956-58), those with Uranus at the beginning of Scorpio (1974-76), and those with Pluto at the beginning of Scorpio (1983-85). As there will additionally be a potent Solar Eclipse occurring at the end of October in these same degrees, right now with Mercury stationing retrograde at the beginning of Scorpio is a tremendous opportunity to sense what some of the coming changes may center around.
Yaroslav Gerzehedovich
In the space of retrograde Mercury we can be more sensitive to signs, symbols, and omens in our environment. While our relationships with other humans will come into play, it will also be about our relationship with the world. The more we take the "I-Thou" relationship of honoring the soulful nature of everything in our environment, and less the "I-It" relationship of viewing our surroundings as resources to meet our own needs, the more we will be able to recognize and realize the significant meaning this Mercury retrograde is bringing into our life. There is a good chance we will feel upside down, with our emotions in total disarray as our old identity and attachments dissolve within a liminal state. In this in-between we can find our way through reading the symbols and signs around us and balance within the flow of the life streaming in front of us.
In the next month there will be obvious events and conversations that we know are pivotal; there will also be less obvious symbols surrounding us with a message to integrate if we keep our awareness open to them. Let the Mercury retrograde allow information to come in that you would normally rationalize away, and see where it takes you. Here below is a chart for Mercury stationing retrograde: Uranus in Aries being involved in both a grand fire trine with Jupiter in Leo and Mars in Sagittarius, and a t-square with the Sun and Pluto, means that there is something especially Uranian about Mercury stationing retrograde. This is also a plutonic Mercury full of explosive energy that can blow up our previous perception of our world and what is occurring within it. Meanwhile, there is also a huge uplifting, dynamic energy that can synthesize meaning from both our impulses and our experience and weave them together into a tapestry that can seemingly transport us into a deeper dimension of perception, not unlike the magic carpets of fairy tales. The ticket for entry into this process involves a willingness to go into the dark and persist through fears or feelings of dissolution.
Just as Mercury is plutonic now, so is Mars, as the red planet of desire is in a balsamic phase with Pluto. Mars is a centaur bounding forward from a source of strong desire that will help us expand beyond previous confinements created from our conditioned personality. Yet the expansive energy of Mars in a grand fire trine with Jupiter and Uranus will also be catalyzing us within the fluctuating back and forth of old desires arising to be released or re-integrated as new desires emerge from our inner fire. With Saturn and Ceres closely conjunct in Scorpio, and Mercury stationing retrograde in Scorpio, our structural source will generate a Mercurial mediation into our depths and the death of an old identification. This is a time of becoming unbound amid disintegration, as Mars will take us deeper into our desires stirred by a Lunar Eclipse and Solar Eclipse, each of which is further ruled by Mars. A chart for the Lunar Eclipse in Aries is below, a polarizing lunation in which Uranus is also prominently conjunct the brilliant Moon:
Mercury will be descending into the underworld in Scorpio at the Lunar Eclipse, as the eclipse occurs around the time of Mercury's heliacal set at sunset in which it disappears below the earth, becoming invisible. This is truly an extraordinary leap of a Lunar Eclipse managed by the structure of Ceres and Saturn united in the fertile darkness of Scorpio. Fittingly, the timing of this eclipse goes well with this being the initiation of the most magical of all the Mercury phases, the time in which Mercury becomes more of a mystical guide into our inner realm. This is the phase in which we can be more receptive to signs, omens, and symbols, and we can receive information intuitively more easily than rationally explain anything. In this time of Mercury as the Magician, Hermes guides us through accumulating and then releasing our old patterns of thought in preparation for a new vision. I don't mean to suggest this will be smooth sailing for our Hermetic navigator, however, as Venus in Libra is in a harsh last quarter square to Pluto at this eclipse, adding additional climatic intensity of outer events forcing profound inner reflection.
There is an imaginal link between this Lunar Eclipse and a High Priestess using her Dark Moon envisioning skills within the brilliance of a Full Moon Eclipse. Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, has a rarely discussed link to the Aries II decan where the Lunar Eclipse is occurring. In the "Tables of Correspondence" in 36 Faces by Austin Coppock, it is listed that Persephone is the God/Spirit connected to the Aries II decan in the Hellenistic text translated as The 36 Airs of the Zodiac. Although Persephone is not mentioned in Austin Coppick's analysis of Aries II, Coppock did give the following description of this decan that is befitting the Queen of Spirit:
Applied magically, this decan has tremendous power. It is the power to generate the world of your choosing, and to be its sovereign. It is the key to creating pocket realities which do not obey the laws of the collective reality field in which they exist. — Austin Coppock
Eclipses are known to throw everything into disarray, and are not known to be times best for laying carefully designed plans. Yet this eclipse is so full of break-through aspects and force that it seems an air of liberation will be part of the chaotic atmosphere. It will be a time of sensing the power within a polarity of feelings, integrating the subconscious with the conscious, and owning our authority to heal the previous fracturing of our soul like Persephone. This will be a time to believe in our capacity to create a life aligned with our deepest soulful passions more so than the expectations of the consensus reality dominating our environment.
The inferior conjunction of Mercury is a magical moment in which Mercury aligns with the Sun, in between our orbit and the fiery center of our solar system. This is a moment in which Hermes transmits a message from Spirit to us, and with Mercury in Libra we will have information to integrate about the Other our Self is in relationship with. However, Libra is not only about social relations but also social justice. As usual, there have been many stories involving oppression in the news and many traumatic events occurring around us whose story is untold by anyone other than the participants. What is frightening about our world is all of the abuse not covered by the media, that people suffer in isolation without anyone to reach out to for help. I do not mean to suggest that this Mercury inferior conjunction in Libra will be some sort of magic pill to heal all the societal ills in the world, but I do suggest that a window of insight will open giving us a very deep look into the source of our collective trauma and oppression.
Nonetheless, this inferior conjunction will also be about our personal relationships and intimate partnerships, as the Leo Moon will be conjunct Juno and Venus, Mercury, and the Sun will all be conjunct in Libra. The insight we can gain will have something to do with all of the underworld mythology involving the pursuit of love and desire. Most of the stories involving a mythic figure being capable of descending to the underworld and back involve the character having such a powerful desire of love that they manage to somehow survive: Persephone, Psyche, Dionysus, Orpheus, Inanna, Ishtar, and Isis. We may be rocked and rolled over from where want and lust lead us, or from the desire and passion we attempt to repress or suppress, but in the end there is a more wholehearted sense of self in relationship to gain.
This solar eclipse conjunct Venus at the beginning of Scopio is happening close to the same time as the Superior Conjunction of Venus with the Sun. This is Venus as Inanna following her descent into the underworld, and these Scorpio aspects bring to mind the Dark Goddess who will be with us during an especially intense balsamic moon phase leading up to this solar eclipse. In contrast to Mercury who is close to rising again at dawn as a morning star, Venus is on her way to becoming an evening star. The future promise of Venus rising again in our night skies with her brilliant white light is an apt symbol for inspiration that will eventually arise out of our current darkness, no matter the difficulties and disorientation we experience at this time.
Traditionally Mars is also ruling this eclipse, and in modern rulership Pluto in Capricorn is ruling it. Either way, with Mercury stationing direct in the underworld at this time in Libra, and so ruled by Venus at the heart of her descent, this is a Solar Eclipse taking us into our core inner world. Change will come from within this core, sourced by our deepest desire, as we begin re-integrating the messages and information received from this Mercury retrograde cycle. It is an excellent time to set an intention for who and what we want to magnetize and attract into our life going forward from the inner vibration we are cultivating. However, this time will not just be about ourselves and our inner world, as this eclipse has clear aspects indicating a huge impact from the relationships in our life. Out of the challenging and uplifting experiences of this time, there appears to be a sharper sense of our essential nature to realize and embody.
As Mercury finally stations direct, he turns to re-ascend to the upper world as a morning star harbinger of dawn. Hermes welcomes a new reality for us now, symbolized by Venus in Scorpio entering a new phase with the Sun, symbol of our Spirit. In addition, Pallas Athena in Scorpio remains conjunct Venus as Mercury stations, a sign that we could have greater access than normal to the ingenious insight available from Mercury stationing direct. The important quality to access the wisdom available here is honesty, and a willingness to take responsibility to both nurture our own needs linked to our desire, as well as listen to and respect the needs of others we are in relationship with.
Amazingly in epic proportion, there will be a lunar occultation of Saturn in Scorpio occurring as Mercury stations direct, and following Mercury stationing direct the Moon will move on to a conjunction with Ceres. The myth of Persephone and Ceres seems strong in these symbols, and the compromise that Ceres managed to create enabling her to have her desire fulfilled of spending time with her daughter for half a year. This desire did not come easy, and followed inner disorientation, outer torment, and soul searching from the goddess. Yet as this myth served as a vehicle for rituals of epiphany in ancient times, there was also an inner revelation revealed, and so will there will be for us.
Mercury will leave the shadow zone on November 10, 2014 at a time that Venus will be conjunct Saturn in Scorpio and Mars will be conjunct Pluto in Capricorn. As Mercury moves forward through Libra, focus on re-integrating all of the messages gained regarding our desires, relationships, and sense of self within relationships. The astrology of this time suggest there is something profound to build and cultivate from the rumination of our inner mind.
Inanna and Dumuzi
Coppock, Austin. (2014). 36 Faces: The History, Astrology, and Magic of the Decans. Three Hands Press.
Muchado, Antonio. (1902). Soledades. Translated by Eugenio Florit.
Solnit, Rebecca. (2014). Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable. The New Yorker. 24 April 2014.
The Jupiter and Uranus Cycle
September 16, 2014 May 9, 2017 / grayastrology	/ 18 Comments
Harlequin at a Table by Juan Gris (1919)
Jupiter in Leo trine Uranus in Aries at 15 degrees on September 25, 2014.
Grand Fire Trine of Mars in Sagittarius, Jupiter in Leo, and Uranus in Aries: from October 1 through October 15, 2014 between the degrees of 12 and 21 in the Fire signs. This is with about a two degree orb for Mars with either Jupiter or Uranus.
Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries will again trine March 3, 2015 at 14°35′. Jupiter will be retrograde.
Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries will again trine on June 22, 2015 at 20°03′.
Jupiter in Cancer square Uranus in Aries included the Cardinal Cross of April 2014 with Pluto in Capricorn, Uranus in Aries, Jupiter in Cancer, and Mars in Libra. Actual dates:
Jupiter in Cancer was square Uranus in Aries on August 21, 2013 at 12°04′ with Uranus retrograde.
February 26, 2014 at 10°33′ with Jupiter retrograde as Mercury was stationing direct.
April 20, 2014 at 13°34′ of Aries and Cancer.
The current Jupiter and Uranus cycle began in 2010, when Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct at the zero degree Aries point and at the end of Pisces:
Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct at 0°18′ Aries on June 8, 2010.
Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct at 28°43′ Pisces on September 19, 2010. Both Jupiter and Uranus were retrograde at this time.
Jupiter and Uranus were conjunct at 27°02′ Pisces on January 4, 2011.
The previous Jupiter and Uranus cycle began on February 5, 1997 at 5°53′ Aquarius.
The opposition point of this cycle was on August 30, 2003 with Jupiter at zero degrees of Virgo and Uranus retrograde at zero degrees of Pisces.
The cycle and interplay between Jupiter and Uranus connects us with transformative breakthroughs in thoughts, behaviors, and events that can feel unsettling and liberating. Here the word "transformative" is not used lightly, as Uranus is force that can enflame Jupiter beyond the boundaries of Saturn to grasp insight unavailable in our former framework. Now is a time to light your creative fire from within, as Jupiter in Leo is entering a trine with Uranus in Aries and unfolding a revelatory opportunity for a new vision of our purpose in life. As the next month develops we will have an especially potent fire to cultivate as Mars in Sagittarius will create a Grand Fire Trine with Jupiter and Uranus. Things may get steamy, as this fire trine will occur within the dense atmosphere of Pluto in Capricorn and Saturn in Scorpio.
To Dane Rudhyar, Jupiter is the soulful function of our purpose within the form of our Saturn structure. Removing patriarchal religion associations, in this way Jupiter is like our High Priestess receiving, managing, and initiating within the boundaries of Saturn as our Great Mother. Jupiter organizes the chaos within the structure of our consciousness through love and yearning, through our senses and feelings, through our intuition and imagination. Jupiter helps us integrate what the external world has to offer that will contribute to our inner structure, just as Jupiter needs the same protective structure of Saturn in order to operate within.
Rudhyar astutely cautioned that "the inertia of Saturn always tries to pull back to old forms and to old techniques the Jupiterian flights toward the beyond and the vaster wholeness," and yet it takes strong Saturnian walls bolstered by Jupiter to prevent us from becoming overwhelmed and lost by Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, archetypes that Rudhyar called the "messengers of the beyond." Though Jupiter in this upcoming time period will not reach an exact square with Saturn in Scorpio, Jupiter is only six degrees away from a square and closing now, evoking the crisis of consciousness that can come when Jupiter urges us to breakthrough the gates of Saturn to an immense beyond:
Often it is said of Jupiter that he is the polar opposite of Saturn. This however is true only insofar as Jupiter represents a trend of development that leads in the opposite direction from that of the Saturn process. But Jupiter operates always in terms of Saturn's prior determination of the form of the being. Saturn contracts, while Jupiter expands. But what Jupiter expands is that to which Saturn gave form. A small sphere may expand into a large sphere; yet it remains always a sphere. . . The basic form thereof is not changed by the Jupiterian action, even though its outer shape may be distorted or distended as it expands. Jupiter cannot change radically the structure set by Saturn. It can only "modify" its outer appearance and the quality and balance of the organic forces which operate within that structure.
Uranus, on the contrary, deliberately and directly challenges Saturn's power: its exclusivism, its particularity, its rigidity. It "pierces through" Saturn and throws upon the inside walls of the conscious ego images of the more universal and freer world which extends outside of these walls. Thus a two-fold operation: the piercing through — then the projection of images. The first phase may manifest in many ways; perhaps through slow stages of progressive thinning out of the Saturnian shells — so that these become finally like translucent window-panes through which the consciousness centered within the shells may behold vistas of the beyond. In other cases, the Uranian action is sharp and explosive. It bores, through the walls of the ego, holes, telescopes, microscopes, channels through which the "flashes of intuition", the "inspiration of genius", may suddenly reveal themselves to the Saturn-bound consciousness. Then there is also the most general process, to which the most vivid and convincing of our dreams bear witness.
–Dane Rudhyar, Uranus- Master of Transformations
Uranus is a galactic interface that can shatter our Saturn structure and when this happens we may be thrown into delusions of grandeur or illusions of psychosis unless we utilize Jupiter to balance our shifting perceptions and their lunar impact on how we are functioning within our changing form. As Dane Rudhyar imagined, "where the walls of consciousness are strong, the Jupiterian urge opens the gates, that caravans loaded with Uranian gifts from the farther lands may enter." While the trine between Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries is happening in the next month, we will have a Mercury retrograde phase occur from the beginning of Scorpio back into the middle of Libra. This will create potential for us to go deep within and integrate the wild perceptions entering our mind through a more symbolic approach resonant with the dreams of our psyche.
On a global level, our personal epiphanies will be happening within the whole of the paradigm shifts associated with the first quarter square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn. Leading up to December 15, 2014, we will experience a ripening of the sixth out of the seven exact squares between Uranus and Pluto (look to twelve to thirteen degrees of the cardinal signs in your chart to see how you can be dramatically impacted by this transit). In Cosmos and Psyche Richard Tarnas spent years thoroughly researching cycles of world events associated not only with the catalytic cycle between Uranus and Pluto, but also the intermediary cycle between Uranus and Jupiter that appeared to inspire creative actualization and liberation within the far-reaching cycles Uranus has with Neptune and Pluto:
"In world transits, the cyclical alignments of Jupiter and Uranus correlated consistently with condensed waves of celebrated milestones of creative or emancipatory activity across many fields. The conjunction of the two planets occurs approximately every fourteen years. During each of these, as well as during the intervening oppositions, decisive crests of remarkably synchronous breakthroughs and innovations appeared to take place within a brief period of time in many areas of human activity. The evidence suggested that the continuing long-term cultural developments that we saw associated with the longer Uranus-Pluto cycle (and with other longer outer planet cycles . . . such as Uranus-Neptune) consistently burst forth in a more frequent cyclical efflorescence in coincidence with the Jupiter-Uranus alignments. These cyclical waves of creative and emancipatory cultural activity occurred either as intervening crests between the longer, less frequent Uranus-Pluto alignments or as climactic moments during or just after the period of the longer alignment."
–Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche, p. 294
As the Jupiter and Uranus cycle can be an emancipatory one, being emancipatory necessitates oppressive conditions one must liberate oneself from in the first place. On the global stage, we do not need to listen to current events broadcast from any source for very long without hearing about tragedy of the most oppressive nature. In the context of the Jupiter and Uranus cycle, we are not at one of it's "peak" periods like the conjunction that occurred in 2010, or the square that began occurring a year ago and lasted through this past May. This past April, the astrology world was abuzz with warnings regarding the Cardinal Cross that formed with squares between Pluto, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars, and while many chaotic and traumatic events occurred at that time, events continued to develop with greater severity as Mars crossed into Scorpio and across the scythe of Saturn.
Now, with Mars in Sagittarius and approaching a grand fire trine with Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries, it is time to reclaim our sense of will from wherever we have realized we lost it or gave it away to someone or something else. Now we can envision our future free from the obstacles we have allowed to restrict our intensifying growth, and take the risk to seize the moment in pursuit of our deepest passions and sense of what will bring our entire being alive with electrical life.
Creation of humanity by Prometheus as Athena looks on (3rd century AD)
Richard Tarnas has previously established a strong archetypal link between Uranus and Prometheus. In myth, Prometheus is a Titan who initially supported Zeus (Jupiter) in his revolution against Cronus and the ruling Titans, only to become a trickster foil to the power grabbing strategies of a Zeus who grew into a tyrannical power not unlike the Cronus he had overthrown. This trickster energy of Prometheus was directed to help liberate the humans Zeus could delight in controlling through manipulation, since in creation stories Prometheus was the artist who manifested the human race out of clay. The fact that Prometheus ultimately stole the fire that Zeus was attempting to withhold in order to empower humanity with this flaming resource, can be seen in the emancipatory archetypal force generated by the Jupiter and Uranus cycle. To Richard Tarnas, in the interplay between Jupiter and Uranus in their cycle, we can discover "Jupiter's principle of expansion and growth supporting the Promethean impulse of new beginnings" (p. 300).
Indeed, in the many folds of myth Prometheus not only created humans and gave them the gift of fire, he has also been said to be humanity's benefactor of the arts of civilization such as writing, mathematics, science, agriculture, and medicine. In the Platonic view that a high esteem for justice is vital in order to manage civilization, we can see how significant the etymology of Prometheus was to their culture: the Greek pro meaning before, combined with manthano meaning intelligence, forged together with the suffix -eus to create a symbolic meaning of forethinker or foresight. This meaning is in contrast to the twin of Prometheus named Epimetheus, who was associated with hindsight and being an after thinker because he tended to think about events after the fact, or lacked the ability to successfully strategize action beforehand. In contrast, Prometheus had the ability to not only strategize action in advance, but to successfully strike back at the oppressive powers in control in order to create a liberating impact.
While this dynamic ability to think of how to create radical change can lead one operating with the Promethean impulse to become impassioned with peak experiences, it can also lead one to suffer the consequences of enraging the power structure, just as Zeus attempted to not only punish but torture Prometheus for eternity. Yet this is the nature of the trickster and the romantic hero who is willing to risk all for their ideal, their true love and calling, no matter the consequences. When Jupiter and Uranus come together in their cycle it can not only give one courage to pursue their ideal, it can also correlate to times in which one's perception is opened to receiving a message showing how the ideal will be achieved. This is the sudden flash of insight famous throughout history, like the story of Nikola Tesla seeing an image of a waterfall as a young boy and becoming filled with the knowing that he would one day figure out how to harness its power as electricity, as he did decades later.
It is worth remembering that while astrologers have known about the planet Uranus for a few centuries now, in the expanse of astrology's history it has been a relatively short time of existence. Richard Tarnas found through his exhaustive research into historical patterns correlating with the Uranus cycle that it's nature was similar to Prometheus because it encompasses "sudden radical change, creative breakthroughs, rebellion against constraints and the status quo, the impulse for freedom and the new, sudden openings and awakenings, a tendency to constellate the unexpected and disruptive" (p. 294). In contrast, thought regarding Jupiter stretches back as far as the entire expanse of time astrology has existed within. Richard Tarnas gave a brilliant synopsis of Jupiter's meaning in the context of it's more ancient use in astrology in Cosmos and Psyche:
As with the other planets known to the ancients, the archetypal significance of the planet Jupiter seems to have been established in the earliest origins of the classical astrological tradition. Linked with specific qualities of the corresponding mythic figures- the Greek deity Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods, the Babylonian Marduk, the Roman Jupiter- it received as well certain symbolic amplifications that emerged in the various contributing traditions: Platonic, Hermetic, Arabic, and Renaissance. Throughout this historical development, Jupiter has been associated with the principle of expansion and magnitude, providence and plenitude, liberality, elevation and ascendancy, and with the tendency to experience growth and progress, success, honor, good fortune, abundance, aggrandizement, prodigality, excess and inflation. It also has a frequent association with the realm and aspirations of culture, especially high culture: high principle, higher learning, breadth of knowledge, liberal education, cultured erudition, a wide and encompassing vision. In general, it seems to impel a movement towards encompassing greater wholes and enlarging one's world, embracing higher principles of order, higher orders of magnitude, broader horizons of experience (p. 294).
Combined with Uranus, we can see how this expansion toward a greater whole and a higher order of magnitude may appear on the surface as paradoxical when linked to the shattering change wrought by Uranus that can feel like chaos or the dismantling of an old secure order or framework. Yet this is the necessary urge for creation and change underlying our reality, and the change brought by Jupiter and Uranus take us beyond our previous restricted worldview into a new reality giving us goosebumps with the surge of electricity available from the new surroundings. We realize that our previous conception of the greater whole was a minuscule fraction of our potential existence, and a more expansive whole holding our radically shifting perceptions emerges.
Dove of the Inner Eye by Morris Graves (1941)
For a different perspective on Uranus, in the evolutionary astrology taught by Jeffrey Wolf Green Uranus is the long-term memory mind of our soul- meaning not just all of the memories from our own lifetime beyond the ones we consciously remember this moment, but also all of the memories from all of the past incarnations of our soul. Green explained this is similar to how we do not even consciously remember every single thing that happened to us yesterday, and our long-term memory becomes even more imprecise every following day, week, year, and decade. Yet those memories are still there held by Uranus, and a memory we had forgotten can suddenly come like a bolt of Uranian lightning into our consciousness. This phenomenon also accounts for why some people can suddenly feel like they are remembering something that has to do with a past incarnation of their soul.
It is primarily our Saturn, our structure of consciousness, that to Green filters out these soul memories covering immense periods of time, so as not to overwhelm us. As we have all collectively through ages experienced great trauma in past incarnations, this also serves a purpose of protecting us, yet there can also be a phenomenon wherein parts of us freeze as a result of unprocessed and unresolved traumatic soul memories. Thus we can have a feeling like being struck by lightning by a moment that triggers a deep soul memory- yet this triggering can lead to an awareness that can ultimately liberate us in the true Uranian way.
In his recently revised and re-published Uranus: Freedom from the Known, Jeff Green analyzed the meaning of a natal Uranus in Aries that has some resonance with the current transit of Uranus through Aries:
Mental trauma can occur to these individuals because of an inability to accept physically, psychologically or karmically prescribed limitations that create the effect of blocking them from achieving their inner sense of special destiny, of not being able to do anything or everything that they feel they could do. Typically, these individuals have a "superhuman" complex that requires circumstantial restraint in order to realign the ego into a state of balance or equality with other individuals. The natural power of leadership and breaking new ground exists within these people, yet they must learn how to integrate this capacity within the "system" as currently defined so that these intrinsic abilities can be actualized. (p. 91)
This natal interpretation of Uranus in Aries to me fits the current transit of Uranus in Aries being in square to Pluto in Capricorn, as we are all being confronted with how we can manage to integrate the ideal vision we have for our life into the current reality of the power structure, such as economic and political conditions in our surroundings. Jupiter in Leo in trine to Uranus in Aries, with Mars in Sagittarius forming a Grand Fire Trine in the next month, is a perfect time to embody the heart of the lion and push past the fears we have had of not being able to manifest our vision in our current circumstances. For some of us this may look like dynamic outward action, for others this may be an intense inner journey opening immense new worlds within: no matter the method, we must also be aware that we are only one of many in our collective, with a vision as important but no more important than anyone else's dream. We will need to discern what aspects of our ideal we can compromise to fit into the current system while maintaining the essential meaning of purpose.
A further interesting aspect of the current first quarter trine phase between Jupiter in Leo and Uranus in Aries, is that Jupiter in Leo is conjunct the North Node of Neptune. I recently saw a talk given by astrologer Mark Jones in Seattle in which he expressed his feeling that the North Node of Neptune correlates with an evolutionary choice to re-integrate our personal and collective traumatic memories through a creative actualization in some way. This is a worthy idea, and one of the possible meanings found within this fiery vastness. With Jupiter conjunct the North Node of Neptune, and Uranus in Aries in trine, with Mars in Sagittarius also coming in for a trine, the entire evolutionary trajectory of Neptune will be electrified in the next month. This is another sign of a beautiful opportunity to seize for creative visualization and corresponding action.
And so a trinity of fire unfolds before us, with an individuating force beckoning creative actualization. As we sense our collective history of trauma and tyranny in world events, and from within feel how we judge and tyrannize our own personal power, we gain the awareness necessary to light the spark that will burn it all down into ash. Purified, what do you want to create? What do you believe has been holding you back? What if it were no longer there? Who would you be? What would you do? Who are you now? What will you do?
Green, Jeff. (2014). Uranus: Freedom from the Known. The School of Evolutionary Astrology.
Rudhyar, Dane. Jupiter: Organizer of Functions.
Rudhyar, Dane. Uranus: Master of Transformations.
Tarnas, Richard. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche. Plume.
Wikipedia. Prometheus.
Wesak Full Moon 2014
May 14, 2014 April 20, 2016 / grayastrology	/ 12 Comments
Double Tetrahedron Mandala http://www.himalayanart.org/image.cfm/21472.html
The Wesak Full Moon occurring on May 14 in Buddhist culture is a celebration of the birth of Buddha, as well as his enlightenment and death. The connection between Wesak and the Full Moon that occurs when the Sun is in Taurus and the Moon is opposite in Scorpio is evident through the lens of esoteric astrology, a system in which Taurus, Scorpio, and the Moon are all associated with the 4th Ray and the crises of experience and consciousness we experience as a result of being incarnated in a human body. Alan Oken has taught that the 4th Ray is known as "the art of living," a ray connected to the "fourth plane of Buddhi" and an "Intuition" developed through hard won growth in the face of conflicts that polarize and contrast our "lower" and "higher" nature (Oken, 120). Just as in the double tetrahedron image above, also commonly known as a "Star of David," in the center, in the heart, we can integrate the essence of the contrasting movements of the lower to the higher, and the higher to the lower (similar to how the 4th chakra, the heart chakra, integrates the energy from the three lower and the three higher chakras). From the soul-centered perspective, this integration also connects to the alignment of the personality with the soul and the wisdom gained to help us discern a path forward to devote ourselves toward. In the life of the Buddha, we see an individual facing one crisis after another involving his human form and desires, creating new forms of belief and existence to live from only to destroy them in order to create another form anew. As a result of experiencing many material and spiritual crises, however, Buddha was able to integrate the wisdom he found in his experience in order to reach enlightenment.
Every Full Moon shines it's light on our path forward and what forms we have created to anchor and express our purpose in the world, as the Sun in astrology is connected to our soul purpose, and the Moon in astrology is connected to our personality, the human form and vehicle of our soul purpose. Along these lines, during times in which the forms we have created in our lives align harmoniously with our soul purpose, we often experience a blissful sense of euphoria at times of a Full Moon. In contrast, during times in which the forms we have created and are living from in our daily life do not adequately align with our soul purpose, we dramatically realize what feels wrong about our life, where it seems we have failed or where we feel a loss of meaning because of the discrepancy between our soul purpose and the forms our personality has been living from in our life.
This self-awareness of the degree to which the structures in our life integrate our soul purpose will be intensified at this year's Wesak Full Moon because Saturn retrograde in Scorpio will be conjunct the Moon and opposite the Sun. We recently experienced the exact opposition between the Sun in Taurus and Saturn retrograde in Scorpio on May 10, 2014. Furthermore, the degree of Scorpio that the Full Moon will hold is the same degree of Scorpio at which Saturn stationed retrograde on March 2, 2014. Thus on one level, this Full Moon is shining light on our experience of the current Saturn retrograde transit through Scorpio, a transit that began at the same time that Mars stationed retrograde. Since Mars is beginning to station direct right now, and is ruling the Scorpio Full Moon, Mars will be getting a lot of attention at this time. However, keep in mind that this Full Moon is not only conjunct Saturn but is aligned with the Saturn retrograde transit: as a result, we will also want to closely examine where 24 to 19 degrees of Scorpio is in our charts, including aspects, and reflect upon how our experiences since March connect to Saturn. For example, Saturn retrograde in Scorpio has a strong link to themes of soul purpose and personality form and how the limitations of time and space test each. In the language of esoteric astrology as taught by Alan Oken, Scorpio is a transformational archetype arising out of the destruction of form. One may reach a state of relative harmony in one's life, only to experience a movement of change which rocks our equilibrium and introduces a crisis of our attachment to the past, and our calling toward the future. Through this crisis a destruction of our previous form commences, and out of this death of form we re-construct a new form that aligns with our developing soul purpose. This transformational aspect of Scorpio was beautifully summarized by Dane Rudhyar in Zodiacal Signatures:
When Mars' passion becomes conscious it flings itself, eagle-like, to the source of life and light; or else, frightened, it collapses into meaninglessness and ravenous hunger for the products of death. The sun is so low in late autumn that the eagle may tear from it sparks of divinity; but will the wings collapse burnt by the fire, or will they become translucent poems chanted to the rhythm of light? Will they stir men that are but human into seekers of the star that is their apocalyptic self? Scorpio is the eternal question tearing at the core of all roots under autumnal skies. Will it be death; will it be rebirth?
On the one hand, this Taurus – Scorpio Full Moon illuminates our past process leading to now, including our recent experiences with the Cardinal Cross that occurred in April, as Venus is exactly square Pluto and entering into a conjunction with Uranus at the time of the lunation. On the other hand, this Full Moon also illuminates the future we enter in every moment, including the next big astrological alignment: the Grand Water Trine of Saturn retrograde in Scorpio, Jupiter in Cancer, and Chiron in Pisces. In addition, one can see above that the true node of Black Moon Lilith is also involved in this Grand Water Trine at the time of the Full Moon, being conjunct Jupiter in Cancer. Since this Full Moon is conjunct Saturn, and the Sun at this time is opposite Saturn, however, it will be beneficial to integrate those qualities that please Saturn, such as discipline, persistence, diligence, organization, structure, and the creation of necessary, appropriate boundaries. Although Jupiter and Chiron are culminating into an exact trine at this time, it will be another week or so before Chiron and Jupiter reach exact trines with Saturn. In totality, these harmonious aspects bring a potential for structured expansion closely aligned with our authentic nature and desires linked to our soul purpose, as long as we choose to heroically face down our fears and courageously open ourselves to the universe enfolding ahead of us, despite past wounding that tends to keep us limited to a comfort zone of the status quo. It is very possible that fears and anxieties arising at this time are directly connected to our process of realizing our authentic nature; it is only through owning these scars and wounds, unashamedly stepping forward on our path, that we will be able to release ourselves from the grip of our past and open ourselves to the future to come that is more closely bound to our soul purpose. Saturn retrograde in Scorpio also does not expect us to quickly overcome these past patterns, but rather has a plodding fixed quality that allows us to take our time as longs as we remain steadfastly dedicated to resurrecting our authentic self from the past wounds that have oppressed our full expression.
At the same time, Mars is stationing direct this week and ruling the Full Moon, saturating the astrological landscape in the process. The Scorpio theme of destruction of form present at this Full Moon can also be viewed through the connection in tarot Mars has with the XVI Tower arcanum, a card aligned with shattering and complete destruction of matter:
In the past three and a half months we have traversed a chaotic Mars retrograde transit that took us through the Cardinal Cross alignment, an exact square between Uranus and Pluto, and two eclipses. At the time of this Full Moon, Mercury moving fast in Gemini will be separating away from an exact trine with the red planet, an aspect that in combination with the Scorpio Full Moon can help us reflect upon and integrate our experiences since the beginning of March that have correlated with the Mars retrograde phase. In connection with the XVI Tower arcanum image above, dramatic change will occur in line with Mars stationing direct, change that could feel unsettling or devastating; yet, in the process a huge amount of energy will be made available, energy released through the destruction of past form. Open yourself at this Full Moon to sense what changes are underway in your life, and where you need to take action. In this next week following the Full Moon, as Mars finally stations direct on May 19, you will want to be prepared to shift from a mode of inner reflection about what actions to take into an active process of making decisive choices to move forward on the path that calls to you.
Mars is also continuing its intense dance with Venus in mutual reception, as Mars is in the sign of Venus and Venus is in the sign of Mars, moving away from an exact opposition a few days ago. Venus and Mars at their opposition point, with Mars stationing direct in Libra, and Venus moving direct in Aries, emphasizes listening in the evolutionary astrology paradigm taught by Jeffrey Wolf Green. At this time we are called to strike a balance between focusing on the willful assertion of our unique values and vision (Venus in Aries) and listening to the needs and values of others we are in relationship with (Mars in Libra). In this process, we will also need to utilize Saturn in Scorpio to help us create boundaries in our relationships that protect our authentic nature from manipulation from others, while interacting and at times merging resources with others in the world around us. Through the recent waxing gibbous phase between Venus and Mars retrograde, we have had the opportunity to utilize the retrograde Mars energy to inwardly adjust how our soul relates to itself and others. We can now reap the benefit of this inward adjustment by learning to relate to others as an equal in relationship, learning how to give, and to receive what the soul needs through the giving. Through this process, we will likewise be learning how to integrate our specific soul values, needs, and desires into society and our surrounding social reality. We will benefit from cultivating an ability to truly listen to others, because as a result we will be able to give to others what they truly need, instead of what we think that they need.
Yet, with Venus in Aries this means maintaining boundaries to support our own well-being and sustain connection with our unique self, in order to not lose touch with our authenticity through our interactions with others. It is important to remember that truly listening to others, learning to give what others truly need, does not make us a push-over but rather allows us to create truly mutually beneficial relationships with others. Venus in Aries can get upset when it does not get its way, while Mars in Libra is more likely to be offensively charming in order to ensure that it gets its way. In contrast, we can use the polarity between these personal planets to destroy our attachment to getting our way or arguing to come out on top, instead standing strong in our self while truly listening to the values and views of others without feeling competitive or threatened if their views are not only different from ours, but critical of our own views. Instead, through listening to others we may hear a new perspective to help shift our own perspective into greater alignment with our soul purpose, a missing piece to not only our own puzzle, but a universal one.
Adding to the intensity at the time of the Full Moon, Venus will be conjunct Uranus in Aries. The Sun being in Taurus, the sign of Venus, at the time of the Full Moon further adds to her influence at this time. In Zodiacal Signatures, Dane Rudhyar gave an illuminating description of Taurus through focusing on Venus:
Out of the cubic Stone of matter, differentiated into a myriad of crystalline structures, the flowing curves of living bodies take form. They open themselves to the power of light, carrying within its compassionate song the promise of individual existence. Venus, builder of magnetic fields that capture the electrical impulses of the creative spirit, brings to a focus the promise of wholeness, of fulfillment in love – a love that forever sings of the overcoming of pain and crucifixion.
The "cross" of this "crucifixion" symbolically connects not only to the recent Cardinal Cross alignment in astrology, but also to the 4th Ray nature of the Taurus – Scorpio polarity of the current Full Moon. Any cross has a meeting in the center, the core, or the heart: and so, no matter how many obstacles appear to be surrounding us in our environment, the electrifying union of Venus and Uranus in Aries at this time has the power to burn through obstructions in our outer and inner experience. Out of the flames of this destruction, a more fully realized sense of self may emerge.
A strong embodiment to me of Taurus solar energy combined with a Venus in Aries marked by Uranus is the artist Kim Gordon (pictured below). Through her work in past avant garde bands like Sonic Youth and current ones like Body/Head, Kim remained dedicated to her own vision of art and music with the personal integrity to take strong stands against the status quo and in support of feminism and segments of society lacking an equal voice, creating a unique form of music that deconstructed past patterns of rock and roll. By staying dedicated to her personal values, across time Kim was able to integrate her work deeper into mainstream society and influence multitudes of youth across international boundaries and borders. Indeed, at the age of sixty-one, Kim recently rocked at least as hard as any much younger rock star when she fronted the remaining members of Nirvana at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, singing and screaming the song, "Aneurysm" (you can find this online).
Kim Gordon, born April 28, 1953
In this week of the Full Moon, Venus in Aries is incredibly active and vital to pay attention to:
May 11, 2014: Venus in Aries opposite Mars retrograde in Libra
May 14, 2014: Venus in Aries square Pluto retrograde in Capricorn
May 15, 2014: Venus in Aries conjunct Uranus in Aries
Venus in Aries sextile Mercury in Gemini
May 17, 2014: Venus in Aries opposite Vesta retrograde in Libra
May 18, 2014: Venus in Aries square Jupiter in Cancer
May 19, 2014: Venus in Aries opposite Ceres retrograde in Libra
May 22, 2014: Venus in Aries conjunct Eris in Aries
May 26, 2014: Venus in Aries conjunct the South Node of the Moon in Aries
Look for the movement from the location of 10 degrees to 28 degrees of Aries in your chart to see where Venus is transiting during the above series of aspects. Working with Venus at this time toward the issues connecting with the house she is moving across in your chart can result in tremendous growth for you in the associated areas of your life. Indeed, as Venus moves away from her opposition with Mars, she makes the most powerful aspects to a series of pivotal planets, asteroids, and outer celestial bodies in roughly a week, to be followed a few days later by a union with the South Node of the Moon. Venus is taking us into the heart of the matter, our core patterns and issues, and in Aries she will be one demanding goddess. Venus wants nothing less of us than to face our fears, release our attachment to vengeance and past betrayals, and to boldly step forward into a Grand Water Trine as Mars finally stations direct to move forward again.
In addition to being the Wesak Full Moon, this time is also a Lunar Beltane, the Full Moon of the Full Season (Spring or Autumn, depending upon your hemisphere). This traditional pagan holiday connects with the past pagan holiday of Candlemas on January 31, when Venus stationed direct conjunct Pluto. The exact beginning of the current Venus and Pluto cycle began in November 2013, but the New Moon that occurred on Candlemas with them closely conjunct after a long Venus retrograde cycle is an important moment in time to return to in reflection now. What has transpired since then? At the time of this Full Moon we have finally reached the first quarter square aspect between Venus and Pluto, all the more electric and shocking to our system with a conjunction between Venus and Uranus. No matter what obstacles appear to be in our way at this time, know that this is not a time to back down in fear but instead to live in passion from our heart, in alignment with our authenticity. If we are on our path, and truly listening to others in our environment, no doubt we can also create some new alliances and friendships at this time to help propel us further into our soul purpose.
The rising crescendo of the impending Full Moon, the feeling of expansion and contraction that correlates with a Venus – Uranus union in square to Pluto, with Jupiter in trine to Saturn, is found in my opinion in this song by Sonic Youth sung by Kim Gordon:
Taking it all to heart. Feel it in your bones. Listen with your heart. Feel it in your soul. Know your truth. Walk your truth.
Next week as Venus aligns first with Eris and then the South Node of the Moon in Aries, we will experience an exact disseminating trine between Jupiter in Cancer and Saturn in Scorpio. As a result, at this time we are entering a Grand Water Trine involving Jupiter, Saturn, and Chiron, and so to get the most out of this we want to be on our path and focused on the beloved desires of our soul. Keep in mind that a Grand Water Trine can cause emotional swirling – this can be like a blissful, adventurous float down a river, a lazy day getting burned by the sun lake-side, or more like the experience of a tumultuous typhoon. No doubt there will be stress and sources of potential fear emerging around us, given the nature of recent astrological and world events. Yet if we can focus on what we truly want to manifest, what strikes us to the core of our soul and being, we could end up in the arms of our true beloved sooner than we may realize.
Marc Chagall (1948) Then said the King in himself
Oken, Alan. (1990). Soul Centered Astrology: A Key to Your Expanding Self. Ibis.
Rudhyar, Dane. (1976). Zodiacal Signatures. Stellar Energy Exchange.
Asteria Alchemy of Asteroid Goddesses
November 24, 2013 December 8, 2013 / grayastrology	/ 17 Comments
Emotional transformative crises are changing our psychospiritual vibrations so that we may attune our individual frequency to the spiritual core which resonates with the whole of creation. The positions of Ceres, Pallas Athene, Juno, and Vesta in our charts describe a personal way whereby we can effect this change.
–Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses, page 5
Asteria or the "starry one" is a Titan Goddess of oracles found in the night such as the interpretation of dreams or the reading of the wandering celestial spheres in the stars above. From the same "Greek" traditions come Ceres, Vesta, Juno, and Pallas Athene, Goddesses represented in astrology through being the first four asteroids discovered, their archetypal meaning described in the classic text Asteroid Goddesses written by Demetra George with Douglas Bloch. Astrology is "read" by many through a concept defined by humans to represent Mystery- archetypally– and it is important to remember that the term archetype was created to reflect the ever changing nature of the primordial themes astrological terminology attempts to describe. Embedded in the concept of archetypes is the paradoxical significance that the power symbolized by our astrological concepts can never adequately be defined into crystallization by human language, that although there are repetitive patterns we can recognize through time that seem similar in operation to the concept of fractals in chaos theory, they are at the same time always changing in a process of creation. Demetra George intended for her work on the many Goddesses we can find among the asteroids to deepen our understanding of archetypal themes operating within our own chart and in the greater world around us, including how archetypal understanding in astrology is currently changing and has changed across time (for example at the time Asteroid Goddesses was published in 1986 it reflected a previous wave of feminism, and today we have movements around gender that are not limited into binary definitions such as masculine and feminine). Some feel that integrating asteroids can muddle or murk up the clarity of focusing solely on the traditional seven wanderers or the modern ten that integrates Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto- however, in my opinion while bringing in too many asteroids into astrological analysis can indeed become overwhelming for clear comprehension, at the same time ignoring the Goddesses of the asteroids means missing out on cosmic magic. Today is no different, as amazing as the current complex brew of traditional astrological planets is at the moment, it is even more extraordinary once realizing where the fabulous four of Vesta, Juno, Ceres and Pallas Athene are at the moment.
The sattelite image of typhoon Haiyan above gives a small sense of the immense magnitude of this cataclysmic storm that has devastated a global region, an event that occurred in the same time period of nuclear radiation fears connected to repairs at the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan. Apocalyptical themes have been rampant in popular cultures for years, and continue today such as the Radiolab Live tour from NPR simply called "Apocalyptical" that just passed through the Pacific Northwest of the USA this past week. I recently realized that the term apocalypse is also connected to ancient Greek culture, but that instead of it meaning an "End of Time" scenario it actually means an "uncovering" or a "revelation." I first came across this definition in an article by Kate Petty which included a number of astrology charts examining the nuclear radiation situation in Japan, and have since come across many other writers focused upon archetypal themes connected to an apocalypse such as this chapter from an academic thesis entitled "Modern Apocalypse: Expanding the Nuclear Metaphor."
With the heavy concentration of Scorpio energy through a Solar Eclipse conjunct Saturn in Scorpio as well as the recent Scorpio Mercury retrograde cycle that criss-crossed over the North Node of the Moon in Scorpio, we have been experiencing an uncovering of many frightening concerns on our planet that can be difficult to fully acknowledge and face, and yet recent events have made it much more difficult to remain in denial of the need for us to re-structure in order to re-align with the changes occurring on our planet. For example, we may continue to argue in our culture whether global warming is caused by humans or not, but we can no longer argue against the unavoidable fact that ocean temperatures are rising and so is the magnitude of storms that are making complete devastation of human communities more likely. We likewise can no longer honestly argue that nuclear energy is safe and clean and poses no great risk to our environment, as the cataclysmic danger of another great storm striking Japan or a different nuclear reactor somewhere else on the planet makes obvious. Planet Earth will survive with or without us, there is no end game with regards to Earth except for whether or not as a human species we will be able to re-align ourselves and our societies in order to survive here.
The planets above reflect an opportunity for us to make deep modifications to how our personal path impacts our collective path, as there are a number of significant current transits bridging the personal issues of the inner planets with the collective issues of the outer planets, such as the current movement of Mercury in Scorpio becoming exactly conjunct Saturn in Scorpio again, as Mercury afterwards will begin to move out of its retrograde shadow zone in trine to Jupiter retrograde in Cancer. If you are reading this article you are likely to already know we are in the middle of a series of seven squares between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, and part of this greater collective meaning is the birth of new archetypes and understanding through Uranus in Aries to confront the break-down and re-generation of systematic structure through Pluto in Capricorn. At the recent "Plants and Planets" talk by my astrology teacher Rosie Finn, she illuminated me to the fact that as we shift into the calendar year 2014 there will be significant higher octave activation of personal planets, that potentially can help us on an inner level align with the huge outer shifts occurring: Venus in Capricorn will station retrograde on the Winter Solstice of 2013 and will work with Pluto as a higher octave on our desires, in February the messenger planet Mercury will station retrograde in Pisces and work with Neptune as a higher octave on our perceptions, and then in March the willful planet Mars will station retrograde in Libra and work with Uranus as a higher octave on our ability to take leadership of our lives, an opportunity to step into our authentic power amid unexpected drama and shifting.
In synchronicity, at this time we have the aid of the Goddesses in our personal transformation work: Ceres and Vesta in Libra working directly with Pluto and Uranus, Pallas Athene in Virgo working directly with Neptune and Chiron, and Juno in Aquarius working directly with Saturn in Scorpio (and Mercury too this next week in Scorpio). In Asteroid Goddesses Demetra George explained how the asteroids Ceres, Juno, Vesta, and Pallas Athene have rulership associations with the signs Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio because they function as agents facilitating our transformation between personal issues associated with the first five signs of the zodiac (Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo) with the more collective issues associated with the final four signs of the zodiac (Sagitarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces) similar to how they are located in the asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter in outer space. If you do not like the binary gender labeling of the Goddesses being linked to a feminine archetype then it may be more helpful to think of these Goddesses as being yin archetypes that reflect themes of receiving, gestating, and giving birth. Like yin energy, the asteroid Goddesses in our charts and by transit reveal how we can receive impressions from our environment to activate our self-transformation from personal to collective awareness:
The essence of the feminine principle is symbolized by the moon. As the motion of the physical moon is cyclical in nature, phases of waxing and waning affecting the ebbs and flows of the tides, so essential teachings of the asteroid goddesses relate to the cycle of coming and going. This is also known as the cycle of transformation. Not only do the asteroids relate to new archetypal principles that are currently being activated and integrated into the psyche, but also they serve as agents in the transformative process of individuals.
–Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses, page 5 -6
Ceres in Libra
Ceres has now been elevated from asteroid to dwarf planet status, and is correspondingly beginning to take on a more significant role in astrological interpretation. At the moment she is holding her ground with two of the heavyweights of astrology: in the sign of Libra, she is opposite Uranus in Aries and in square to Pluto in Capricorn. In addition, she is conjunct her sister Vesta in Libra. At the moment, Ceres is pretty much exactly in opposition to Uranus, and so will become a tighter square with Pluto next week on November 28. All through the first week of December 2013, however, Ceres will remain in a fairly close t-square with Uranus and Pluto.
Ceres during this time in Libra is ruled by a Venus in Capricorn that was recently conjunct Pluto, will station retrograde on the Winter Solstice of 2013, and then around Candlemas of 2014 (January 31) station direct conjunct Pluto again in Capricorn. In myth, Pluto is the nemesis of Ceres who takes her daughter Persephone away from her and the upperworld she rules in order to rule with him from the underworld during part of the year. Similar to how there are myths associated with Venus and the underworld such as Inanna's descent and trials, or the test given by Aphrodite to Psyche to face Persephone, we will all be entering an upcoming time of deep descent of our Venusian nature into our personal and collective underworld. Ceres in myth is the Great Goddess of Abundant Life on Earth who reacts to the underworld descent of her daughter with such powerful emotions that she loses her sense of productivity, refusing to create new life on earth, and attempts to cope with strategies similar to what many continue to do today: the use of opiates to numb her pain, the ebb and flow between denial and depression. Ultimately, Ceres had to face the ultimate questions of life and death, and accept that creation and transformation involves both life and death, loss and birth.
Ceres in Libra will bring greater focus on relationships, and the necessity of interacting with others triggering whatever relationship issues we are currently facing. Harmoniously, Ceres in Libra can connect with nurturing others, cooperating with others, and learning to initiate and respond in relational dynamics in a manner to create greater equity or an egalitarian quality. Ceres in Libra can also connect with social justice issues such as oppression and how our various social identities play into us becoming targets or agents of oppression: again, in a more harmonious intent, we can work through our own personal issues to discern how to be an ally for others or ourselves to overcome oppression. None of the above will be exactly easy at this time, however, as the opposition to Uranus and square to Pluto can coincide with extreme grief over the loss of loved ones or other cherished personal objects of desire; or, with difficulty forming deep intimate bonds with others due to a lack of emotional nurturing from one's early or recent home environment; or, with a feeling of hopelessness with the state of environmental destruction and human oppression that begins to constrain our ability to be effectively productive. There could be a temptation to reach for coping strategies such as drugs or other escapism from the pain of emotional attachment and connection, or difficulty breaking a cycle of depression or social anxiety that keeps one within limiting confines of relation.
I'm sensing one of the great potential transformations that can come from these intense aspects to Ceres could take us from an initial reaction that is imbalanced into a process of re-aligning ourselves with the structural and systematic destruction going on in society and the environment. Moving through this tension will strengthen our capacity to birth a new presence in the world in which we are vibrating our being in greater connection with how to respond to what we are receiving for the highest good of all beings in all dimensions. Ceres can create profound beauty everywhere she goes, artistically directing energy at all times into everything, sustaining an energy of abundance. We may ebb away at times from this feeling into clearing times of depression that feel stagnated, but cyclically we will flow back into resiliently re-aligning our ability to feel productive, abundant, or grateful. At the same time, we do not want to lose ourselves in an imbalanced Libra use of the Ceres archetype by overly focusing on the needs of others to such an extent that we stop living in accordance with our own values or well-being, either. Sister Vesta being nearby in Libra should help with this, as Vesta adds an archetypal energy that is aware of how to take time alone to re-center, from a spiritual practice to a walk in the green world. However, since Vesta is also in Libra it still warns of a potential danger of losing ourselves in our interactions with others.
Vesta in Libra
Vesta is currently in Libra conjunct her sister Ceres, and is moving toward her own t-square with Uranus and Pluto like Ceres is currently experiencing. Vesta will more strongly enter the t-square in the first couple of weeks in December, but she is still in range of being conjunct Ceres in Libra and not very far from an opposition to Uranus in Aries at the moment- her opposition to Uranus will be gaining in strength the next few weeks and so the Vesta archetype may become visible to a greater extent in the collective culture as we move into December.
Vesta is the sacred Hestia, the keeper of the sacred flame, a priestess of sacred sexuality, a visionary mystic. She will be lending a more focused and determined energy to Ceres through their conjunction in Libra this next month, impacting relationships through more of a tendency to move away from partnership at times to be alone. However, Vesta in Libra desires to be in relationship and to focus energy through collaboration with others. Vesta coming into range of an opposition to Uranus with a square to Pluto could create a more competitive energy in our work environment with an over-emphasis on wanting others to like us or admire us, all of which takes us out of alignment with our true way of being in the world. Yet if we can successfully re-balance our focus on personal priorities versus the needs of others, a triggered Vesta in Libra archetype can harness extraordinary energy into dynamic collaboration with others that draws on the strengths of all members. Vesta in Libra can help activate our perceptions of who we can team up with, collaborate with, or partner with at this time in order to achieve mutually beneficial goals. Vesta and Ceres together in Libra gives desire to devote time to the needs of one's family, nurture others through service in our work, or nurture ourselves through spiritual practices or visioning time in nature.
However, we may be challenged in our ability to do this at this time by the intense context of collective destruction and transformation occurring around us. In particular with the strengthening opposition between Vesta and Uranus, we may need to stop ourselves from angrily over-reacting with a waste of rebellious energy that is more destructive than regenerative. We will have strong energy available to us through Vesta facing Uranus, and so we can be most productive with it by focusing it at targets in the system that will create the greatest effect with our energy. We will want to center and aim before taking action, but Vesta in Libra promises ample focus and determination to get the job done. We may be able to make innovations into the old structure of things, or instead build a new order or structure that will bring healing or constructive changes.
In relationships, the deep issues of sexuality connected to the Vesta archetype could also correspond to sexual obsessions or compulsions with the square to Pluto and opposition to Uranus. We could go to the depths of sexual desire or instead experience repression, isolation, or self-absorption with a stressed Vesta in Libra. Yet if we can use the deep Scorpio energy of this time to not just uncover a deeper layer of our sexuality but to uncover a deeper layer of reality and understanding, we can use Vesta focus to penetrate to the core of current issues in order to problem solve a solution to work toward. Having a broader social cause, a social ideal of justice to work toward, finding a community of like-minded collaborators to work with toward a humanitarian social change and transformation will help us with Vesta being in Libra, and these same social change agents will also be helpful for us with Pallas Athene being in Virgo.
Pallas Athene in Virgo
It pleases Pallas Athene to be in Virgo, a zodiac sign with strong associations to her archetype. However, she must now face the Ocean God as Pallas Athene in Virgo is opposite Neptune in Pisces. In myth, Pallas Athene has already proven herself worthy of defeating Poseidon as they each competed to be the ruler of Athens and Pallas Athene won through her gift of the olive tree that was selected for its beauty and functionality, its practical use in healing, shelter, and other expressions that benefit society. Similarly, Pallas Athene being in Virgo at this time also lends us a powerful archetypal tool-set to utilize in our personal and collective projects. Just as Jupiter along with Pallas Athene were held in highest regard in classical Greece, so today can we not only utilize Jupiter being in Cancer to assist us in our endeavors, but also draw from Pallas Athene in Virgo to help us, in her case through a sharpened focus and discernment to penetrate to the core of any issue with her analysis. In opposition to Neptune in Pisces, however, she must be careful of delusion and illusion, falling under the influence of blind faith or an inability to distinguish between what is real and unreal in our environment. Yet, these potential pitfalls of Neptune being in opposition to Pallas Athene are the exact sort of obstacles that Pallas Athene being in Virgo is equipped to combat: in Virgo, according to Demetra George, Pallas Athene has an "analytical perception" that can sense "the essence of things in their simplest forms apart from the surrounding superfluous complications," like "separating the wheat from the chaff" or "the wisdom of discrimination" (page 103).
Therefore, we can have no greater ally in our personal transformation at this time than Pallas Athene in the development of our ability to scan our collective environment for the root causes of societal ills and to begin devising practical solutions to help us on both personal and collective levels. Whether we are focused on food and nutrition, creativity and the arts, protest, activism, or political change- in all areas of life Pallas Athene can give us a laser focus of penetrating to the heart of the matter, as long as we are also aware of the need for us to question our own beliefs and possible illusions since she is in opposition to Neptune in Pisces. If we can examine our perceptions enough to discriminate whether or not we are being delusional, we can use the opposition of Neptune in Pisces to make our Pallas Athene perception divinely inspired and even more powerfully attuned to the needs of the moment in all dimensions.
In myth, according to Demetra George in Asteroid Goddesses after Poseidon lost to Pallas Athene in their contest to win the hearts of the people of Athens, Poseidon created a great flood to demand attention, and in the process of appeasing him the male rulers of Athens deprived Athenian women of their citizenship, voting rights, and the right to pass their family name down generations through their children. In addition, in the classic Greek version of myth, Pallas Athene is given birth through the head of her father, Zeus, instead of through the womb of her mother. This symbolic aspect of her myth parallels the use of her wisdom by the Greek patriarchy in their military strategies and conquests, as Pallas Athene originally is more of a Libyan Warrior Queen who was then integrated into the Greek pantheon of deities. Today, we tend to view the Pallas Athene archetype as a result with the sort of gender issues that female consciousness faces in a male dominated society. Pallas Athene is with the woman who feels like she is taking on more of a professional "masculine" or "yang" identity in the work environment in order to compete or collaborate with male rivals or co-workers, and she is also with any of us who face conflicts pursuing our vocational goals in the outer world in a culture that tends to reward logical and rational thinking and behavior we have been conditioned to associate with "masculine" behavior. Pallas Athene reminds us that whether we identify as male, female, queer, or another gender label, we all have within us the intelligence and creativity necessary to be successful, and that more "intuitive" or "receptive" skills we have been conditioned to associate wtih being "feminine" are of equal benefit to those we have been conditioned to view as being "masculine."
As Pallas Athene over the next month will begin to move away from an opposition to Neptune in Pisces and into an opposition with Chiron in Pisces, issues around our gender identity could become part of the collective Chironic wound that gains more attention. No matter what personal or collective issue we will be facing however, Pallas Athene is the type of mystic warrior, visionary activist, and artistic worker who will be able to hold her own with an opposition to Chiron and utilize whatever sort of wounds or triggers arise inside us to make our work in the world even more powerful and deep. Her opposition with Chiron also points to the importance of paying attention to the impact of our mind-body connection on our health more so than normal- techniques such as acupuncture, yoga, tai chi, meditation, mind-based practices such as guided visualization, or therapeutic practices focusing on holistic approaches to our psyche, can all assist us at this time to help re-balance ourselves in order to re-align with changing events. The deep creative wisdom embodied by Pallas Athene is highly attuned to the worlds of the arts, healing, and political activism- all areas that Chiron also enjoys working with, all areas of supreme importance to focus on in the world at this time of cataclysmic change.
Juno in Aquarius
Juno is on her throne in Aquarius at this time, and the Great Goddess has her hands full with an intense square to Saturn in Scorpio that at the moment also involves Mercury conjunct Saturn in Scorpio. The added intensity of Mercury in Scorpio finishing off the end of its retrograde shadow movement in conjunction with Saturn today is giving our Queen Juno all she can handle from her humanitarian seat in Aquarius- this added intensity will dissipate over the next week, but Juno will remain in a square to Saturn through our last month of 2013. This intense square between Juno with Saturn and Mercury in Scorpio to me represents the alchemist image of the King and Queen melting together- we may feel extreme weight and heaviness at this time from Saturn and Mercury teaming up in Scorpio in their square to Juno in Aquarius, but remember Juno is also the Great Goddess who can melt the hearts of even the Scorpio duo of Mercury and Saturn together. The sacred heart of Juno may give one the impression of being coldly objective or detached in the sign of Aquarius, but our lady Juno always has a burning heart and she will help us move through any floods of watery depression or emotions at this time to re-focus our energy on a greater social cause that will benefit us on both a personal and collective level. Her seat in Aquarius at this time will let us use a more detached and objective perspective to help us re-align with our deepest passions.
Jealous Juno is an image of this Goddess we have been collectively conditioned to think of, and indeed a square between Mercury-Saturn in Scorpio to her can certainly correlate to tremendous feelings of jealousy if we have not been working on personal issues relating to our insecurity or possessiveness in general. Juno being in the sign of Aquarius can also connect with a feeling of being too frozen to melt into a deep commitment of intimacy with a potential partner at this time, a fear of attachment rooted in the fear of loss, like when the death of a loved ones makes us afraid of creating another bond we will ultimately lose again in heartbreak. However, any limiting beliefs we carry within us connected to our relationships can be exposed at this time, with a square from Scorpio to Aquarius this can further mean in an intense manner that rocks us to our core. As a result, we may realize how much we are limiting our ability to form a new relationship in connection to fears of abandonment, intimacy, loss, or dependency, or it may dawn on us that we have been staying in a relationship that has not been meeting our true needs out of a sense of societal expectation, an obedient sense that we are expected to remain in this partnership even if it is making us incredibly upset. If we wish to sustain a relationship that has been creating oppression or frustration in our lives, we may be forced by events to break down the belief systems of each partner about the relationship in order to discover if the relational dynamic can be re-built in a manner that will benefit each partner. If we wish to enter into a new relationship, we may be forced to confront the limiting beliefs about relationships we have accumulated from our past in order to clear the space for a new partnership to be born in 2014 that can fulfill us to a greater extent than past relationships. In all relationships, we will want to listen without judgment to the concerns of the person we are interacting with and avoid attempting to manipulate the situation purely for our own benefit- the square from Mercury-Saturn in Scorpio to Juno in Aquarius otherwise could place us into some intense confrontations at this time.
Juno in Aquarius will also focus our relationship needs on finding a community of like-minded people who are commited workers, serious partners of deep work and dedication who will assist us in boldly confronting reality and devising creative solutions to address our collective concerns. If we have been focusing a lot of our energy into an intimate partnership or into a limited number of relationships, the energy of Juno in Aquarius will bring a desire for greater freedom in our relationships to us. This could for some creating the sense of wanting a more "open" relationship, but for others this will simply mean expanding the scope of our relationships, expanding our community of people we network and collaborate with. We may be called upon at this time to experiment with the form our relationships take, or experiment with joining a new community of collaborators to test if we can discover greater inspiration for ourselves.
George, Demetra with Bloch, Douglas. (1986). Asteroid Goddesses. ACS.
Solar Eclipse Clearing on a Hekate Moon
November 1, 2013 November 2, 2013 / grayastrology	/ 12 Comments
Samhain Threshold
Samhain is the ancient Celtic celebration of the mid-point between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice that is traditionally celebrated on the night of October 31 or dawn of November 1, our traditional Halloween holiday in Western culture, similar to how Beltane is traditionally celebrated on May 1. If you want to get all Virgo on this Pisces astrologer, you could also look at the time when the Scorpio Sun reaches 15 degrees of Scorpio (which will not be until next week around November 6th), but since we continue today to celebrate Halloween on October 31 and the Day of the Dead or All Saint's Day on November 1, we have already entered the time to focus with our Samhain intentions. Samhain traditionally is the night in which the veils between our material dimension and the "other" dimensions become more thin and open, a threshold that is more easily crossed at this time than any other:
Samhain (prounounced sow-en), the Celtic New Year, now celebrated as Halloween, is a night that falls in neither the old year nor the new one. It is a "time outside of time," when the veils between the worlds are lifted and much trafficking takes place between spirits and mortals. Boundaries are eliminated, spirits are afoot. In Scotland it is called a "night of mischief and confusion" . . . Property can be damaged, food and treats can be demanded, hospitality overrules the locked door and gated fence, boundaries between what is mine and yours are temporarily repealed. Tricksters seek admittance to others' homes, even as spirits from the Otherworld seek entry into this world. On Samhain we are reminded that doorways are open, thresholds are bridgeable, and the ordinary and nonordinary intermingle . . . Traditionally Samhain is a night for divination . . . The reason divinatory practices are so successful on this night is that the boundaries between time are lifted. On November's Eve the present and the future merge, and what lies ahead can be foreseen on the present moment.
–Tom Cowan, Fire in the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit, p. 55
On Halloween the Washington Post published an excellent and concise article on the past and present meaning of Samhain by Starhawk in which she writes, "The time of death is also the year's rebirth," "Halloween tells us to connect, to forge bonds of love that death cannot sever, to support one another as we face those things that are hard to face alone," and "Know that you are an ancestor of the future, and your choices, your actions, your human hands can turn the wheel of fate."
In astrology, the times of eclipses are also considered threshold experiences, as well as Mercury retrograde time periods, particularly when Mercury has it's inferior conjunction with the Sun. Dark Moons in general also have an association with threshold experiences such as disorientation and Great Mystery that can source a rebirth for our being while in reception with otherworldy transmissions. Amazingly, all of these occurrences are happening simultaneously on Samhain this year, at the same time as an exact square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, the fourth of the current cycle of seven squares ending in 2015.
Recent news events have continued to be intense and cataclysmic, even reaching to the apocalyptic such as the Japances plans to clear radioactive used fuel assemblies that could trigger unprecedented radiation explosion and exposure if mishandled. On a personal level, we may have been receiving invitations from our environment to enter into drama by impulsively reacting to triggers on our emotions. The more we can release, clear, and let go of at this time, the better we will be able to navigate through the portal of astrological intensity and use the upcoming Solar Eclipse to help birth a new vision for ourselves rather than drown inside currents of past despair. Of course advising someone to let go, or even saying to yourself that you are letting go, are all much easier said than done as most of us human beings grasp to our personal status quo or comfort zones with all of our might. Indeed, many astrologers have taken a cautionary stance of trepidation toward the energy symbolized within the chart of the November 3 Solar Eclipse you can see below, which does indeed contain many signs of intensity:
However, although in the outer world there may indeed be some tragic tales we will hear about, on a personal level this need not be a doom and gloom time. The Great Awakener Uranus is shaking things up, but if we can clear the space to receive, channel, and direct this energy, we could catalyze ourselves forward into unprecedented dimensions from our previous experiences. Our consensus reality is shifting into the unknown, and part of the great fear and paranoia visible in commercial media and social media could be tied to the inability of many to fully reckon with the changes set in motion. If we are resisting the implications of our changing reality, if we have been fixated on an entrenched belief system or thought pattern from our past, if we have become overly attached to possessions or people against all signs that a letting go aligns with our actual growth, then the square to Uranus from Pluto could bring some cataclysmic crisis that could force us to lose what we have been resisting releasing. Yet if we can move into a space to let go of and release aspects of our past identity, relationships, and beliefs, branches of our tree of life that are ready to be blown off by the impending ecliptic storm, then we will be able to integrate the regenerative aspect of Pluto into our life and find the gem inside of what could otherwise feel like a disruptive and rocky experience.
If you have planets in between seven and fourteen degrees of Scorpio you will need to pay particular attention to how this solar eclipse is impacting your chart, but in general it is helpful to pinpoint where in your chart this eclipse at twelve degrees of Scorpio is occurring and any aspects it is making. Combined with the other transits of this time, you will be especially impacted if you have any planets in between seven and fourteen degrees of fixed or cardinal signs, but people with planets between seven and fourteen degrees of mutable signs will also be impacted by the role of Mars in Virgo and Chiron in Pisces in this witches brew of celestial spheres.
At a recent talk my astrology teacher Rosie Finn described the square between Uranus and Pluto during this Dark Moon as being about the fourth chakra and giving us the opportunity between now and the next square between Uranus and Pluto to work on bridging the work of our lower chakras with the transmissions from the upper chakras we could potentially integrate from Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. To do this lower chakra work means working on our personal issues represented by the personal planets of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, all of which will be extremely active in the upcoming time period: the Moon with these eclipses, Mercury with its current retrograde and rebirth, Mars being sextile to Mercury retrograde and the solar eclipse, and Venus as a bright evening star that will eventually station retrograde on the Winter Solstice of 2013. At this time of a Dark Moon leading into a Solar Eclipse, I want to focus on the lunar aspect of our personal clearing, and the synchronicity that two of the most powerful Goddesses of myth, Hekate and Artemis, are both active at the time of the Solar Eclipse through their manifestations as asteroids in astrology.
Hekate Dark Moon
. . . Hecate, crow black and with a shining crown . . . No woman knew the paths that linked earth and underworld better than she.
— Roberto Calasso The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, page 221
It is during this final waning phase [of the Moon] that the Goddess manifests as the crone or wise old woman. Hecate, the so-called goddess of the witches, represents this phase. She had knowledge of herbs and magic elixirs, folk healing and the control of weather . . . Hecate was also the goddess of the crossroads (where witches were believed to perform their rituals), and this is reminiscent of the neolithic, for the cross of the four directions was a lunar symbol in those days.
–Ariel Guttman & Kenneth Johnson, Mythic Astrology, page 68
The synchronicity of asteroid transits with their mythic meaning within the larger context of celestial patterns continues to astound me anytime I begin to question whether or not paying attention to the asteroids is important. A perfect example at the moment is that the Libra Dark Moon that occured on the night of Halloween in the Pacific time zone where I live was conjunct the asteroid Hecate (#100) at the exact time it was opposite Uranus in Aries and in square to Pluto in Capricorn. The exact square between Uranus and Pluto occured exactly five hours later after they were each triggered by this Hekate Dark Moon. At the time of the Solar Eclipse on November 3, the Hecate asteroid will still be in opposition to Uranus and in square to Pluto.
Hekate is a goddess of the Moon and crossroads who is associated chiefly with the Dark Moon phase by modern astrologer and mythologists. Some of us may be obviously facing an important decision between different paths at this time, whereas for others the fact that you are at a crossroads may feel more subtle on the surface. Yet the deep Scorpio and Plutonic transits at this time means that all of us are going to be experiencing core shifts of our circumstances in the upcoming time. A sense of divination, the feeling that one can intuit the path into the future at this time of crossroads is fitting for Hekate, as she is one of the most ancient goddesses with a myth saturated in Mystery. If you are interested in reading more of an analysis of Hekate's mythic meaning, please check the following link to a recent article written by Monika of the Symbol Reader blog: http://symbolreader.net/2013/10/27/hekate-the-goddess-of-the-crossroads/
As Monika pointed out in the blog article linked above, there is a clear affinity that both Hekate and Hermes share for navigating between the upper and underworlds and to transmit messages divinated from signs, symbols, and omens. This is especially the case now, as Mercury is invisible and in the underworld phase of its retrograde journey, reaching its conception point for rebirth (or inferior conjunction with the Sun) on November 1 about ten hours after the exact square between Uranus and Pluto. In order to rebirth our Mercury function and vision at this time we need to effectively do the dark moon clearing and releasing of Hekate, and in case you are having trouble figuring out what to release make sure you are opening your mind to what sorts of symbols, signs, synchronicity, and omens are pointing you toward in your environment. Change is extremely difficult for most people, but there are most likely significant shifts occurring under the surface of your reality even if on the surface it may seem in the moment like your normal routine. The more we let go of who or what needs releasing now, the more we open to ourselves to the potential of a profound and catalytic growth we can seed at the Solar Eclipse on November 3.
Artemis Guides through the Dark
In contrast to Hekate, Artemis aka Diana is often associated with the Maiden or New Moon phase instead of the Crone or Dark Moon phase, with her bow symbolizing the early stage waxing of a Crescent Moon. The Solar Eclipse of November 3 will be one of the most intense New Moons imaginable, and it's waxing into a Crescent phase will correspond with the last week of the current Mercury retrograde phase in Scorpio, with the Sun becoming conjunct Saturn in Scorpio, and Jupiter stationing retrograde in Cancer. Artemis is further linked into this time through her asteroid #105 at the time of the Solar Eclipse being tightly conjunct Saturn in Scorpio at 13°44′, only nine minutes away from Saturn. Almost exactly conjunct Saturn in Scorpio by minutes, the Artemis asteroid is also conjunct the Solar Eclipse, only two degrees away, and also in range of being conjunct Mercury and the North Node of the Moon in Scorpio.
Artemis being conjunct Saturn, the Solar Eclipse, Mercury retrograde, and the North Node of the Moon in Scorpio carries the meaning of us re-connecting with our true instinctual Self, our inner Artemis who runs free through the forests of the night with a pure heart and her animal companions. In Mythic Astrology Ariel Guttman and Kenneth Johnson describe the new and crescent phase of the Lunar Goddess as being "complete unto herself," "apart from committed relationships," "sexually active (the nymph) or virginal (the maiden), but in either case she is still pure, innocent, hopeful" (p. 67). Thus, the timing of us re-conceiving our Mercury into rebirth through the Scorpio conjunction of the Sun with Mercury retrograde is coinciding with us taking the responsibility to release the weight of our past in order to return to our pure instinctual Artemis Self, corresponding with the conjunction between the Artemis asteroid and Saturn in Scorpio. I certainly do not mean by this that you should feel hopeful about life because of the trauma or oppression you have experienced, but instead mean the visceral and vital state of mind we can reach when we are fully done with a past issue that has weighed us down heavily, or maybe sometimes the tragedies just somehow make us feel more alive and in love with the future potential of the moment than ever before. Instead of cynically rebuking life and refusing to live, through Artemis we courageously charge forward with an equine grace to our stride, like a deer effortlessly surmounting an obstacle. Perhaps our rebirth necessitates us facing the End, or at least feeling like we are approaching Death; perhaps it is easier for us at times of chaos or crisis to access the kundalini current inside us and actualize our full creative, instinctual Self. What may feel at first like the leaden weight of Saturn at this time may ultimately be what centers and opens us to the Artemis inside.
Ariel Guttman and Kenneth Johnson in Mythic Astrology further analyze the mythic associations of Artemis by explaining that her link with the Moon came from the Romans connecting Diana with the Moon, as to the Greeks she was known more as the "Lady of Wild Beasts," a mythic archetype that further links her with the astrological sign of Sagitarius (p. 63). Linking Artemis with Sagitarius further connects Artemis with Venus at this time, shining bright in the night as an Evening Star in Sagitarius. At the time of the Solar Eclipse, Venus will be near the end of her journey through Sagitarius and conjunct the Galactic Center.
Venus in Sagitarius burning so bright and so beautiful to behold in the night sky is a fitting guide through the darkness of this time. In connection with Artemis, we can sense how returning to nature at this time, making sure we make time to re-connect with the woods and the Earth perhaps on a solitary walk or run that Artemis herself would adore, could be an opportune way for us to clear and recharge our being. A fierce protector of wildlife and nature, the archetype of Artemis emerging at this time is a further sign of the importance of taking direct action to protect our natural environment during a time of great pollution and environmental degradation. Artemis is a sign that we have the instinctual nature inside of us to make the choice at the crossroads to embark upon the path we are meant to take.
Aries and Individuation
April 2, 2013 April 8, 2013 / grayastrology	/ 5 Comments
The Birth of Archetypes
In Botticelli's masterwork The Birth of Venus we can sense the initiatory impulse of Aries: a Goddess arising out of an oceanic expanse, naked and primal, radiant and yet revealing an inclination to slightly cover up her exposed beauty. Or perhaps that slight insecurity is coming from the woman rushing in to cloth her, a woman who seemingly is from consensus culture because she seems to be frantically attempting to uphold the consensus rule that a woman should not be revealing her full glorious form so openly in public. In popular astrology we are familiar with linking the sign of Aries with the sort of bravado that could lead one to skinny dipping in public, but the deeper astrological symbolism of the sign links it with the courage necessary to fully individuate ourselves, open ourselves to exposing our pure Soul and living our True Path in the world, despite influences of societal conditioning that would have us conform to consensus expectations of behavior rooted in the past and present. In this way Aries is linked to the initial impulse to emerge in the process of Individuation developed by Carl Jung, a transformative process in which we develop an identity of our true Self through integrating different elements of our psyche into a functioning whole and holistically healing ourselves as a result.
The image of The Birth of Venus is reflected in the Sabian Symbol for the very first degree of the zodiac, the first degree of Aries: "A woman just risen from the sea" who is embraced by a seal, and represents the "Emergence of new forms and of the potentiality of consciousness" (Rudyar, p.49). Dane Rudhyar's An Astrological Mandala works with the Sabian Symbols originally written about by Marc Edmund Jones, re-interpreting them as an American I-Ching in which there is a symbolic image and description for every one of the 360 degrees of the zodiac, "considered as a cyclic and structured series which formalizes and reveals the archetypal meaning of 360 basic phases of human experience" (Rudhyar, p.5). Rudhyar gives this analysis of the first degree of Aries:
This is the first of the 360 phases of a universal and multi-level cyclic process which aims at the actualization of a particular set of potentialities. These potentialities, in the Sabian symbols, refer to the development of man's individualized consciousness- the consciousness of being an individual person with a place and function (a "destiny") in the planetary organism of the Earth, and in a particular type of human society and culture.
To be individually conscious means to emerge out of the sea of generic and collective consciousness- which to the emerged mind appears to be unconsciousness. Such an emergence is the primary event. It is the result of some basic action: a leaving behind, an emerging from a womb or matrix, here symbolized by the sea (p. 49-50).
In Evolutionary Astrology taught by Jeffrey Wolf Green, the cardinal archetypes like Aries have an energy of two steps forward, one step back. This new initiation of energy that is prone to reenacting past patterns at the same time, can be found in the first Sabian Symbol of Aries in the form of the seal who is embracing the woman who has emerged from the sea. According to Rudhyar, the seal symbolizes a "regressive step" since it is a creature of the ocean clinging to the woman attempting to emerge from the deep water. Rudhyar illustrated this symbol as a representation that "every emergent process at first is susceptible to failure," and that when initiating new changes we become surrounded by memories and "the ghosts of past failures during previous cycles," and in danger of falling prey to "regressive fear or insecurity" (p. 50). In the painting The Birth of Venus by Botticelli above, we can see this sense of insecurity even in the Goddess Venus herself, as she feels a need to slightly begin to cover herself. However, this is exactly why the strong "impulse to be" of Aries is so important, to propel us forward into birthing our true selves into the world through actualizing new choices more aligned with our true desires, a sense of self that is not limited by past negative thought patterns or restrictive habits of behavior, and that carries the courage necessary to break free from outside expectations.
In Esoteric Astrology, Aries is directly linked to the idea of birthing new archetypal ideas into collective consciousness. Alice Bailey in Esoteric Astrology described Aries as the "searchlight of the Logos" and the "Light of Life Itself . . . where the Will of God is known" (p. 329-30). Alan Oken expanded on this idea in his Soul Centered Astrology by claiming that this "initiating focus" of Aries makes it "the birthplace of ideas, according to the Ancient Wisdom Teachings, as all of manifestation has its beginnings as Divine Ideas" (p. 162). Oken explained that Mercury is the esoteric ruler of Aries because "Aries is the fiery channel that provides for mercury's expression, allowing for the birthing of a true Idea coming from the Mind of God . . . a spiritual impulse taking form" (p. 165). In this way, Oken described Mercury as linking "the Higher Mind with the lower so that the inner realization of one's place in the Plan of Life may be recognized and then, through the use of applied logic, externalized" into the lower realms of our personality (p. 162-3). This esoteric view of Mercury is similar to the Hermes of ancient myth who was capable of crossing back and forth between the thresholds of the underworld and the upperworld.
Uranus being the higher octave of Mercury, and Uranus being in Aries and being triggered by numerous intense transits recently, it would seem we are in a period of time in which new archetypal ideas could be entering our collective consciousness. On March 28, 2013 there were several incredibly potent conjunctions in Aries: the Sun and Venus at 8 degrees of Aries, Venus and Uranus at 9 degrees of Aries, and the Sun conjunct Uranus at 9 degrees of Aries. In addition, Venus, Uranus, and the Sun were also conjunct Mars within an approximate orb of four degrees. Since this stellium conjunction also happened to be in orb of a square to Pluto in Capricorn, and also happened to form a yod with Jupiter in Gemini pointing to Saturn in Scorpio, the week of Easter this year has been fertile with fateful astrological energy. If you lack extensive knowledge of astrology and do not really understand the significance of the astrological transits I just mentioned, just know that if ever Aries could be linked to the idea of birthing new forms of archetypes in our collective consciousness, this would clearly be the time. At the time of this writing we still remain with the vortex of incredible Aries energy, as Venus at the moment is headed for her cyclic two year or so conjunction with Mars, which will happen on April 6 at 20 degrees of Aries, here in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The term "archetypes" at this point in the history of astrology is usually tossed around by writers without reflecting upon the origins of the word, which in published authorship can be traced to one Carl Jung. In Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas explained that it was in part through his research on synchroncities that "Jung came to regard archetypes as expressions not only of a collective unconscious shared by all human beings but also of a larger matrix of being and meaning that informs and encompasses both the physical world and the human psyche" (p. 82-3). Tarnas goes on to explain that he believes astrology primarily effects our lives as humans through an archetypal process, noting that while "the original Jungian archetypes were primarily considered to be the basic formal principles of the human psyche, the original Platonic archetypes were regarded as the essential principles of reality itself, rooted in the very nature of the cosmos . . . Integrating these two views (much as Jung began to do in his final years under the influence of synchronicities), contemporary astrology suggest that archetypes possess a reality that is both objective and subjective, one that informs both outer cosmos and inner human psyche, 'as above, so below'" (p. 85-6).
Recently, I have felt compelled to read some of Jung's own original writing regarding archetypes and how he came to describe them. In his book Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung criticized the connotation of the term "archaic remnants" created by Freud to describe dream imagery evoking ancient myths because it suggested that they were psychic unconscious elements collected by the conscious mind like a trash can. Instead, Jung argued that his term "archetypes" carried the meaning that instead of being lifeless "remnants," that these archetypal associations and images "are an integral part of the unconscious, and can be observed everywhere," and that they "form a bridge between the ways in which we consciously express our thoughts and a more primitive, more colorful and pictorial form . . . that appeals directly to feeling and emotion" (p. 47-49). Jung believed that archetypal images and associations connect our "rational world of consciousness" with our "world of instinct" (p. 49).
My views about the "archaic remnants," which I call "archetypes" or "primordial images," have been constantly criticized by people who lack a sufficient knowledge of the psychology of dreams and of mythology. The term "archetype" is often misunderstood as meaning certain definite mythological images or motifs. But these are nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited.
The archetype is a tendency to form such representations of a motif- representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern. There are, for instance, many representations of the motif of the hostile brethren, but the motif itself remains the same. . . .
Here I must clarify the relation between instincts and archetypes: what we properly call instincts are physiological urges, and are perceived by the senses. But at the same time, they also manifest themselves in fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbolic images. These manifestations are what I call the archetypes. They are without known origin; and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world- even where transmission by direct descent or "cross fertilization" through migration must be ruled out. (p.67-69)
–Carl Jung from Man and His Symbols (1964)
Thus according to the man who coined the term "archetypes," they are not in fact locked in to rigid definitions or classifications, but are indeed open to being birthed into new representations like the Esoteric Astrology interpretation of Aries, as long as they retain their basic pattern. In Cosmos and Psyche, Richard Tarnas highlights the "factor of human co-creative participation" in contemporary astrology, and how "planetary archetypes . . . not only endure as timeless universals but are also co-creatively enacted and recursively affected through human participation" (p.86). Tarnas emphasized that planetary archetypes "must be formulated not as literal concretely definable entities but rather as dynamic potentialities and essences of meaning that cannot be localized or restricted to a specific dimension," and so archetypes should be "evoked" instead of "defined," and are "better conveyed through a wide range of examples that collectively illustrate and suggest the enduring intangible essense that is variously inflected through the archetype's diverse embodiments" (p. 89).
Fittingly enough, I had the opportunity to hear Alan Oken speak for the first time on Easter Sunday of 2012 at the NORWAC astrology convention here in the Pacific Northwest. He spoke of the ancient battle between Kronus or Saturn, one who is frightened of the timeless and wants to create finite strucutres, and Ouranos or Uranus, one who wants to break finite structures up. He referenced the mythology of The Birth of Venus painting by Botticelli, describing how when Saturn castrated his father Uranus, the Sky God who was the father of the archetypes, he threw his testes into the oceanic realm of Poseidon or Neptune, creating a fertile matrix in the process that gave birth to Aphrodite or Venus. Oken said as the father of the archetypes, Uranus breathes new creative fields and has no more powerful place than its current residence in Aries, as new ideas will pour into the collective consciousness. This influx of new images and insights, Oken elaborated, is due to the fact that Uranus individuates and is the place of the unexpected where you do not follow the norm. Like I previously mentioned, the link between Uranus, Aries, and Individuation is fascinating from an esoteric perspective since Mercury rules Aries in Esoteric Astrology, and Uranus is the higher octave of Mercury. With these dynamic descriptions of archetypes in mind, and in consideration of the intense Aries focalizing of energy at this time in the form of the Sun, Venus, Uranus and Mars, the time appears to be ripe to individuate a new sense of the archetypes for ourselves that can likewise be integrated into the greater collective consciousness. For example, in our modern astrological context, we tend to view Saturn as being the representation of consensus rules, regulations, and expectations of behavior. What this consensus reality looks like is constantly shifting in modern times, with each new generation ascending with all of its myriad fractals of individuation occurring inside. In Evolutionary Astrology and other teachings, Uranus carries an energy of collective trauma that can be seen in the myth by Uranus being castrated by Saturn, while also carrying an unstoppable energy of individuation as a result of overcoming the societal conditioning of Saturn, as seen in this castration giving birth to the radiant Goddess Venus. How each of us interprets this myth in our own time, the specific images that may come to mind as representations, will vary widely and will be shifting with time. However, the basic pattern remains nonetheless.
Individuation
The archetype of Aries has been linked with individuation in many works of astrological literature. In Pluto: the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul, Jeffrey Wolf Green describes the evolved Aries archetype as having the "intrinsic courage and capacity to break new ground in whatever aspect of life that they apply themselves to, and can give courage to others to do the same thing" (p. 51). Green describes people with Pluto in Aries or the First House as sensing that they have a "special destiny on a very instinctual basis," and that as a result they desire to have the "freedom and independence to initiate and fulfill any desire or experience they deem necessary, because experience is the vehicle through which they discover or become who and what they are" (p. 43). Thus, in Evolutionary Astrology, Aries embodies an instinctual "sense of personal self-discovery that is felt at every moment" (Green, p. 43). Whether we have planets in Aries or not, when we follow our instinctual inner drive to fulfill our desires, we begin to set off on our own personal path toward individuation, much like the Fool in the tarot.
When terminology like "individuation" becomes so popular and commonplace in astrology and psychology that we talk and write about it like it is already understood by everyone in the same manner, it can be helpful to research the roots of the words and when it entered the mainstream of psychological literature. In Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols, Marie Louise von Franz wrote a series of articles brilliantly illuminating the definition and meaning of individuation. Especially compelling to me is her use of a pine tree seed as a symbol for individuation, and how the totality of a full-grown pine tree lies latent within the being of the seed:
The seed of a mountain pine contains the whole future tree in a latent form; but each seed falls at a certain time onto a particular place in which there are a number of special factors, such as the quality of the soil and the stones, the slope of the land, and its exposure to sun and wind. The latent totatlity of the pine in the seed reacts to these circumstances by avoiding the stones and inclining toward the sun, with the result that the tree's growth is shaped. Thus an individual pine slowly comes into existence, constituting the fulfillment of its totality, its emergence into the realm of reality. Without the living tree, the image of the pine is only a possibility or an abstract idea. Again, the realization of this uniqueness in the individual man is the goal of the process of individuation.
From one point of view this process takes place in man (as well as in every other living being) by itself and in the unconscious; it is a process by which man lives out his innate human nature. Strictly speaking, however, the process of individuation is real only if the individual is aware of it and consciously makes a living connection with it. We do not know whether the pine tree is aware of its own growth, whether it enjoys and suffers the different vicissitudes that shape it. But man certainly is able to participate consciously in his development. He even feels that from time to time, by making free decisions, he can cooperate actively with it. This co-operation belongs to the process of individuation in the narrower sense of the word.
Man, however, experiences something that is not contained in our metaphor of the pine tree. The individuation process is more than a coming to terms between the inborn germ of wholeness and the outer acts of fate. Its subjective experience conveys the feeling that some supra-personal force is actively interfering in a creative way. Once sometimes feels that the unconscious is leading the way in accordance with a secret design. It is a as if something is looking at me, something that I do not see but that sees me- perhaps that Great Man in the heart, who tells me his opinions about me by means of dreams.
But this creatively active aspect of the psychic nucleus can come into play only when the ego gets rid of all purposive and wishful aims and tries to get to a deeper, more basic form of existence. The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth. Many existentialist philosophers try to describe this state, but they go only as far as stripping off the illusions of consciousness: they go right up to the door of the unconscious and then fail to open it (p. 162-163).
–Marie Louise von Franz, from Man and His Symbols
Because of the dominance of popular astrology and the use of pop astrology stereotypes, for example associating an infantile, headstrong, or selfish egotist with the sign of Aries, people can make the mistake of assuming that Aries energy is meant to come off as pushy and aggressive. Aries energy can be headstrong in the sense of being determined to follow an individuation process in the face of cultural pressure to conform, but the manner in which Aries energy can initiate this process can be more of a surrendering to one's inner nature than a forceful assertion of one's inner nature. Again, in Man and His Symbols, Marie Louise von Franz uses the pine tree seed as an apt metaphor for this individuating process:
….in order to bring the individuation process into reality, one must surrender consciously to the power of the unconscious, instead of thinking in terms of what one should do, or of what is generally thought right, or of what usually happens. One must simply listen, in order to learn what the inner totality- the Self- wants one to do here and now in a particular situation.
Our attitude must be like of the mountain pine mentioned above: It does not get annoyed when its growth is obstructed by a stone, nor does it make plans about how to overcome the obstacles. It merely tries to feel whether it should grow more toward the left or the right, toward the slope or away from it. Like the tree, we should give in to this almost imperceptible, yet powerfully dominating, impulse- an impulse that comes from the urge toward unique, creative self-realization. And this is a process in which one must repeatedly seek out and find something that is not yet known to anyone. The guiding hints or impulses come, not from the ego, but from the totality of the psyche: the Self.
It is, moreover, useless to cast furtive glances at the way someone else is developing, because each of us has a unique task of self-realization. Although many human problems are similar, they are never identical. All pine trees are very much alike (otherwise we should not recognize them as pines), yet none is exactly the same as another. Because of these factors of sameness and difference, it is difficult to summarize the infinite variations of the process of individuation. The fact is that each person has to do something different, something that is uniquely his own (p. 162-164).
This idea of surrendering to the perhaps unconscious potential of the Self fits well with the current astrological time period and the acceleration of Aries energy occurring, having come after a time period with excessive astrological energy in Pisces. The long Mercury retrograde in Pisces combined with Neptune, Chiron, Mars, Venus, the Moon, and the Sun all moving through Pisces may have coincided with us discovering at least a hint, if not a definitive calling, from our Soul purpose in the world, the latent potential of a glorious mountain pine tree that could grow from the seeds of our current thoughts and desires.
In ancient myths and spiritual texts such as the Bible, shepherds often receive divine messages, such as in the painting above by William Blake of angels appearing to shepherds. The tending of sheep is important in all of the Abraham faiths, since Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, and Muhammad were all shepherds. In his Complete Astrology, Alan Oken noted that the symbol of Aries, the ram, was always the sacficial animal in ancient works such as the Golden Fleece and Moses. Moreover, Oken cites the fact that many believe that "Moses, the leader of the Exodus, was born under the sign of Aries" (p.59). As the Christian version of Easter occurs during the time of Aries, it is fitting that we are used to associating the image of the "Lamb of God" with Jesus of Nazareth. Alan Oken in his Complete Astrology brilliantly analyzes this connection between Jesus and lambs with the individuating purpose of Aries individuals:
In the Christian ethic, Christ was known as the "Lamb of God." The crucifixion was symbolic of the ancient sacrificial rites in which a lamb or a ram was offered to the Deity. Jesus used his physical body to represent the ego of Man (the lamb) on the altar of sacrifice (the cross, representing the nature of the material world). Through His death and resurrection, Christ illustrated that man must transcend the desires of his personality so that he can gain admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven (conscious immortality in the Spirit).
Thus the Aries individual, although always seeking to express himself in some new aspect of the life experience, is often obliged to disregard his or her own personal desires in order to make a bright future for others. He must give of his own life-energy so that Mankind may be recharged by the force of life which the Ram embodies (p. 60)
In this time of Easter, with a potent conjunction of Venus, the Sun, Uranus, and Mars all occurring in Aries (not to mention that this Aries stellium is square Capricorn Pluto and forms a yod with Jupiter in Gemini pointing toward Saturn in Scorpio), we can resurrect our true Self or Soul, our true Genius or Juno, however you want to describe it, but the soulful callings of our life purpose we can hear in the wind, which may have fallen dormant in years past, now is burning like the bush calling out to Moses, calling on us to liberate our true being from within and actualize our true Path in the World at this time.
Agnus Dei or "Lamb of God"
by Gabriel Fauré
Bailey, Alice. Esoteric Astrology.
Green, Jeff. (1984). Pluto: the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul. Llewellyn.
Jung, Carl and M-L von Franz, Joseph Henderson, Jolande Jacobi, & Aniela Jaffe. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Aldus.
Oken, Alan (1980). Alan Oken's Complete Astrology. Ibis.
Oken, Alan. (1990). Soul-Centered Astrology: a key to your expanding self.
Rudhyar, Dane. (1973). An Astrological Mandala: the cycle of transformations and its 360 symbolic phases.
Saint Francis: by way of Neptune and Uranus
March 20, 2013 March 18, 2014 / grayastrology	/ 17 Comments
On March 13, 2013 the story of Saint Francis re-entered mass consciousness with the birthing of Pope Francis. No matter your opinion regarding the political scandal and gossip concerning the Vatican and the Catholic Church, the horrific accusations and coverings up of sexual abuse amongst priests and other acts of oppression, the choice of the precedent shattering name Pope Francis has brought Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) back into collective consciousness on a massive scale, and there are important insights to be gained from paying attention to him.
Addressing the media for the first time on March 16, 2013, Pope Francis said he chose to evoke Saint Francis of Assisi with his name because he was "the man of poverty, of peace" and that he wants "a poor church for the poor"². In his installation Mass on March 19, the atmosphere was described by media as electric and he transformed the papacy priorities with calls for protecting the environment and helping the most disenfranchised in our communities, pledging that he will serve "the poorest, the weakest, the least important" and that "amid so much darkness, we need to see the light of hope and to be men and women who bring hope to others"³. These themes, like much of the life of Saint Francis, link with the archetypes of Uranus and Neptune.
In relation to Uranus, Saint Francis of Assisi led a life of intense individuation, dissolving an identity of privilege in which he enthusiastically joined the crusades as a Knight, metamorphosing through intense contact and communication with nature and creatures of nature, like birds. He was a radical who honored Natural Law more so than the human-made laws of the status quo, for example encouraging women to take leadership roles and organize communities in Spirit. He had Neptunian visions of the Holy Spirit in his inner space, while in his explorations of the outer space around him he found God in a tree, or in the apprearance of a rabbit. He integrated his Neptune connection with divinity into Uranus work of shifting the consciousness of those around him, being a Spiritual warrior who could battle the elements and build a church and spiritual community from the ground up with his own resources.
Saint Francis is perhaps most special because of his "tender beholding of aspects of Nature as living beings," as described by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. He is the Patron Saint of Animals and the Environment, and his connection with a new Pope and hope amongst the Church to re-connect with younger generations is fitting because Saint Francis came into his personal power during an opposition between Uranus and Neptune, and the generation coming of age at this time (born between 1988 and 1998) all have a conjunction of Uranus and Neptune in their natal birth charts. I teach in a program in which all of my students have been born so far between 1991 and 1996 with this conjunction, and a notable amount of them have dreams and career goals related to working with animals, healing and protecting animals. Many of my students hope to become veterinarians, and many also hope to travel to specific regions of the world to protect specific species of animals (New Zealand or Australia for example).
Saint Francis embodied the archetypes of Uranus and Neptune not just because there was an opposition between Uranus and Neptune when his work and disciples were really catching on, but through his intention of being an instrument of Spirit, his communal activism on behalf of the poor and outcast, and in his refusal to join the organized Christian church. Though the Pope eventually gave him approval, he never actually became a "priest," never took vows of chastity or demanded all of the regulated rules of the Christian Church upon his followers. He only asked to love God, love Nature, and asked each to love and know God according to their own capacity. He saw the connection between birds, animals, the natural world, and God- he didn't see the duality of separateness, and intended to live from this belief. He was communal and collective in his spirituality, choosing to live a life of poverty and live by natural law and the true message of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, there was a collective Uranus-Aquarius nature to the Franciscan order he developed, the brotherhood and sisterhood of his followers willing to live in poverty and serve others and find their own spiritual understanding. Radical for the times, he broke away from traditional norms regarding women, helping women form their own spiritual order and find a place within his spiritual following. In Cosmos and Psyche Richard Tarnas analyzed the link between the life of Saint Francis and the orbital cycle of Uranus and Neptune:
The…Uranus-Neptune opposition of 1214-30 coincided with the widespread evangelical awakening led by Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic and the rapid dissemination throughout Europe of the Franciscan and Dominican orders. Here the characteristic archetypal themes of the Uranus-Neptune cycle were visible not only in the decisive spiritual quickening of the era but also in the Franciscans' and Dominicans' innovative dissolving of the boundaries between the lay world and the religious, bringing the dynamism of the Christian faith out of the cloister and into the world; in the more democratic forms of government within these religious orders that affirmed greater individual autonomy; in Francis's sense of universal compassion that extended to a mystical participation in nature as an expression of divinity, subverting traditional Christian tendencies towards a dualism of spirit and nature… (p. 367)
Franco Zeffirelli's portrait of Saint Francis, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, shows Francis growing up in wealth and privilege, crusading off to war, and then experiencing a mental break in which he questions the entire power paradigm underlying the reality surrounding him since birth, leading him to connect with the natural world, Spirit, God, and the true life and work of Jesus of Nazareth, even experiencing ecstatic visions. The film poetically illustrates how he dedicated himself to a life of poverty and serving those in poverty and those cast out as lepers and other exiles, connecting with animals as well, and emphatically refusing the trappings of wealth and power associated with the organized Christian Church. In the climatic scene in which Francis meets the Pope in person, he catalyzes the Pope to re-connect with his core sense of spiritual self through mere contact. The film was released in 1972 and has an aesthetic informed by the counterculture movements of the 1960s, showing the radical spirituality of this Saint who really was radical and a threat to the established order. The scene below is from his early process of breaking from his past to connect with Spirit:
As in the scene above, Brother Sun Sister Moon portrays a deepening relationship between Clare and Francis, eventually immortalized by the Chuch as St. Clare and St. Francis. Later in the film, Clare is called to join Francis in his work and calls out to him: "I am not seeking to be understood, I want to understand! I am not asking to be loved, I want to love!" This line reflects one of the major themes of the famous "Prayer of St. Francis" which is attributed to St. Francis, but according to historical records was not actually written by St. Francis (although it does encapsulate the major themes of his life and work)¹.
One of the most famous prayers/poems that Saint Francis actually did write is the "Canticle of the Sun," written when he was recovering from an intense illness in a cottage built by his dear friend Saint Clare. The poem evokes Uranus and Neptune through lyrically describing elements of nature and spirituality as a community of beings he has a personal relationship with. The following translation of it is by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who noted that the "ancient word canticle means to sing," and so this poem was written in a rhythm meant to be chanted:
To Creator:
the Great Elder of Highest Good–
You're so deserving of our tender thanks…
You're so easy to recognize,
and so deserving of fragrant bouquets,
so made happy by our blessings
and offerings of beauty
In you alone, Great Elder,
are all our offerings held by You
in all right ways.
No unawakened human mouth
yet knows how to pronounce
the depths of your name.
Be thanked our dear Creator,
through all your creatures…
especially through *my lord Brother Sun,*
who brings illumination.
And thank you,
for You give us Light
through him.
*Brother Sun* is beautiful
and radiant in all his fiery magnitude!
Of You, in your highest altitude,
*Brother Sun* bears your likeness.
Thank you too, through *Sister Moon and the Stars*;
In the heavens you have made them flashing,
so dear to us, and engaging with us.
Thank you dear Elder,
through *Brothers Wind and Air,*
and *Clouds and Storms, and all the Weather*
through which You
offer Your creatures shelter, food, and livelihood.
Thank you also, through *Sister Water;*
for she is so helpful to many
and so without vanity, so precious to us,
and unsullied from first source.
Thank you Creator, through *Brother Fire,*
whom You give to blaze light into the night.
He is beautiful and cheerful,
and commanding and unafraid.
Thank you too, through our *sister Mother Earth,*
who nourishes us and shapes us,
and creates endless fruits
with colored flowers and herbs***.
Thank You Creator
through those who forgive others
out of Love for You,
and thank You also
through those who endure
sickness and trial.
Content are those who endure in peace,
for by You, Creator, they will be garlanded.
Thank You too, through our Sister, *Death of the Body,*
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Distress comes to those who die separated
from Creator…
Fittingly enough, the times during which Pope Benedict resigned and Pope Francis ascended have been dominated by archetypal themes of Neptune and Uranus. On February 11, 2013 when the resignation of Pope Benedict was announced, there was a conjunction between Mercury, Mars, Neptune, Chiron, and the Moon in Pisces. It didn't take much of a leap of an astrologer's imagination to connect this intense stellium of Piscean energy with the presence of the Holy Spirit in this shocking decision and announcement. In addition to this Neptune archetypal link, there was also a Uranian omen in the form of this striking sign from nature on this day as St. Peter's Basilica was literally struck from above:
In the following month, during much projection and prediction among pundits regarding exactly what the Cardinals would choose to do and exactly whom they would choose to anoint as the new Pope, there was an intense wave of Pisces energy with the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Chiron, Neptune, and the Moon moving through Pisces. Mercury in particular stationed retrograde conjunct Mars and then moved backward to form conjunctions for the second time with the Sun, Chiron, and Venus. All of this Pisces energy evoked the Neptune archetype of Saint Francis.
Interestingly, by the time the Cardinals finally made their decision the Uranus archetype of Saint Francis was activated, as Mars had just broken through into Aries and was moving into a conjunction with Uranus, evoking the initiating Uranus archetype of Saint Francis of Assisi. The chart for the announcement of Pope Francis has a balsamic conjunction of Uranus and Mars in Aries conjunct the Descendant- an electric drive that is in service through a relationship with the World. There is an Aries Mars-Uranus drive of Pope Francis to individuate his role from past papacy privileges by making choices like choosing a name without precedent and riding the city bus to be with the people instead of an isolated luxury transport.
The Neptune archetype can be seen through the karmic release and resolution signified by the balsamic Mars-Uranus, the Sun and Venus conjunct in Pisces, and Neptune in Pisces conjunct Mercury retrograde and Chiron in Pisces at the time of the selection of Pope Francis. It has been noted that as a Jesuit he could perhaps "think differently" and there are signs in the announcement chart that indicate an intention to transform some of the set patterns of perspective from the papacy (Pisces Chiron-Mercury-Neptune in trine to Scorpio Saturn retrograde in 2nd), while at the same time there are signs he could stubbornly cling to some of the old dogmatic papacy beliefs that critics of the Church have felt have been oppressive toward women, among others (Pisces Sun-Venus square Gemini Ceres-Lilith-Vesta in 9th; Gemini Jupiter-Vesta in 9th square Pisces Chiron-Mercury-Neptune in 5th). Yet at the same time, these same symbols, plus the potent Uranus energy, reflect a purpose he could have to individuate the Papal role in a true role of service to the People through creatively actualizing his Pisces Mercury-Neptune faith, and many of his early statements reflect this intention:
"Let us never forget that authentic power is service . . . and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison." — Pope Francis³
Just as the selection of the Pope is supposed to be guided by the Holy Spirit, there does seem to be an energy of Divine Intervention about the selection of this new Pope who brings the symbol of Saint Francis of Assisi prominently into our collective consciousness.
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-p-horan-ofm/living-the-prayer-of-st-francis-with-all-of-creation_b_1937279.html
2. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/16/17336851-pope-francis-describes-wish-for-poor-church-for-the-poor?lite
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/europe/installation-of-pope-francis.html?_r=0