Portal 2.25

Advance Review

Our second Portal follows the New Moon.  The Diamond Star Portal concerns more Miracles and our further education around our highest and deepest personal Values.  The Full Moon is about growing our Co-Creation skills and moving our cultures closer to their Tipping Points where we all start washing our food with Cooperation and Community instead of Competition and Avarice.

The Main Act

We’ll consider these two events in reverse order.

The Diamond Star

Our second Portal of the weekend is a Diamond Star that begins lighting up around 4pm  PST on Monday, and spans around six hours.  This one can begin earlier if you’re sensitive to the Energy, but fades fairly rapidly afterward, as Vesta moves out of range of its Quincunx to Pluto, dissolving the central Yod.

The centerpiece of the Diamond Star is the Vesta-Apex Yod with Saturn and Pluto, which we’ve been enjoying since the first week of January.  The other players, Moon and Chiron, are the same as our last Diamond Star Portal at the end of January, but this time the Sun Conjoins Chiron, which will greatly emphasize the Miracles, though of course this means that, if you don’t find those New Eyes, it could amp up the Despair as well.  The highest probability for most of us, I suspect, is that the Full Moon will illuminate our Despair in such a way that we will be able to Separate from it, not least because we’ve recently just been through virtually the same Portal.  You know, the old Fool-me-once routine.

When Despair ‘R’ Us and our Identity is merged with our feeling of Despair, there is no escape.  As with any other all-encompassing Emotion, we have forgotten that we can move our Assemblage Point – our Identity – at will.  I’m always reminded of the dude that introduces this post, discovering the Universe beyond his Birdcage.

The nature of Karma is that we’re tightly wrapped in its Burka, and it’s difficult to find the exit.  But once we remember that we have options, it’s actually very easy to shift from being Victimized by our Karma or Despair, to taking Responsibility for it.  We simply Respond to our Despair (or other Heavies) by stepping outside of our Emotional Body, putting our disembodied arms around our Emotional Self, and Empathizing with our Despair from the outside.  Same as you would do if your best friend or your child was bummed, or if you encountered a lost child in the park.  Once you do that, raise your chin – chances are you’ll be looking through New Eyes.

Wouldn’t hurt to review the Diamond Star – it’s composed of a Yod (the green triangle) and a T-Square (the red triangle) with the same Apex, which results in a “bowl of Grace” (the blue lines) under the T-Square.  While the T-Square represents Challenge, the bowl of Grace helps immensely toward the Mastery that T-Squares also represent.  T-Squares never feel very good, so we keep trying, and as a result our T-Squares are where our greatest experiential skills lie.  It’s just that we seldom appreciate these skills because they don’t provide satisfaction.  Yods are about Curiosity, which as you’ll recall, we regard as a very high vibration, because like Love it’s devoid of Judgment.

Everything focuses on the Apex – in this case Vesta, or that which we hold Sacred.  So the overall Challenge is to explore (the Curiosity) how to create Miracles (the Full Moon Opposite Chiron) by aligning ourselves with what we personally regard as the Energy of the Sacred.  The feet of the Yod – and the sources of Grace – are Saturn (Focus) and Pluto (Trance Reformation), which give us the Opportunity to make this new Wizardry a permanent part of our skillset.  The part about our personal regard is very important, as in most cases Vesta is not about our religious training, but what has Meaning and Value in our Hearts.

Sure, religious formulations started with that, till they got caught up in Politics.  That would be after about five minutes.  The difference between Spirit and Politics lies in the punctuation at the end of the sentence.  Spiritual statements end with a question mark, and Political statements end with an exclamation point.  When someone asks you what has Value and Meaning in your Heart, and listens respectfully, that’s a Spiritual process.  When someone tells you what to Believe and what not to Believe, what to Do and not to Do, what is Moral and what ain’t, that’s a Political process.  The noun form of Political is Power.  As Starhawk would say, it’s the difference between Power with (Spiritual) and Power Over (Political).

Of course there’s always a chance that you were programmed into a religion that aligned perfectly with what has Value and Meaning in your Heart, or that you were able to ignore the Political aspects of your training and focus on the Perennial Wisdom that it embodied.  If that was the case, more Power to you.

The downside lies in getting stuck inside your Karmic Birdcage and believing its lies about your Limitations – the Chironic Despair.  Like I and several friends almost did at the end of January, till we broke free.  Often we’ve said that “Karma is dead” – and the reason we say that is because these episodes of getting tarbabied by our Karma only last a short while – a few hours or days – rather than the years or lifetimes that they had been lasting.

The reason we focus on the Outer Planets and rare Configurations, instead of the Inner Planets and common Configurations, is because the more experience we have with something, the more likely we are to have mastered it.  We see a Full Moon once a month, so we have lots of experience with it.  We only see a Chiron Full Moon every few years, so its more likely to flummox us.  How often would Saturn (the reprogrammer) and Pluto (the programming) team up to make a Yod with Vesta (the Sacred)?  On average probably once every several hundred years, if we’re very lucky.  What’re the odds that this occurs just after an End-of-the-World-as-We-Then-Knew-It Event?  In Challenging alignment with Miracle-worker Chiron?  This is beginning to sound like a once-in-a-Universe Opportunity to tune in to what has Value and Meaning to us personally, and change our Lives accordingly.

The Full Moon

The Full Moon on Monday (half past noon PST) is surrounded by the two Portals we’ve discussed, except for one issue.  Monday’s Diamond Star wraps around the Vesta-Saturn-Pluto Yod.  Jupiter’s now moving forward, and will soon replace Vesta in that Yod, as was the case earlier in the year while Jupiter was Retrograde.  Jupiter’s not back in the Yod yet.  But Jupiter is closely Square to the New Moon.

Erase the green lines in the chart above, and make the red triangle point at Jupiter instead of Vesta, and you have the meat of the chart for the Chiron Full Moon itself – a T-Square atop a bowl of Grace, a Challenge with plenty of juice for being Present with it.  But now we have Jupiter rather than Vesta – Expansion rather than the Sacred, at the Apex of the T-Square.  The Challenge to Expand our Miracles, aided and abetted by Focus on reforming our Trance.  You can think of your Trance as a loose parallel to your Birdcage, and a loose parallel to your Unconscious Identity.  Our Trance has a much larger cultural component than the other correlates.

The Opportunity for us is to help Co-Create a reprogramming of the culture we live in, not just by changing our own psychic contribution to it, but also by communicating with our fellow Community members.  With Mercury turning Retrograde a few hours from this writing, we won’t be saying a whole lot – but what we do say will contribute to the Tipping Point that our cultures are inching closer to every day.

Summary

While not a classical Learning Opportunity like a closely coordinated herd of Quintiles, the Diamond Star is also a Learning Opportunity by virtue of triggering our Curiosity.  Both are Manifesters, Hexagrams, the traditional magical symbol for Manifestation.  But the Diamond Star has more Action in it, more potential for direct Change in our lives.  Our chief antagonists here are Despair and Karma.  Our beliefs that we don’t have Control, and that we don’t have Leverage to Change.  They’re Paper Tigers, celluloid only, with no real substance except for their alliance with our Astral Body.  We defuse them by simply stepping outside of the theater.

Portal 2.24

What’s Up?

As there were at the end of January, there are two Big-Deal Portals coming up, one on Sunday-becoming-Monday (2/24), and the other on Monday-becoming-Tuesday (2/25).  That’s in addition to a Mercury Station turning Retrograde on Friday-becoming-Saturday (2/23), and a Full Moon on Monday.  Our first Big Deal, the 2.24 Portal, is a Grand Quintile that threatens to illuminate a good deal of our Self-Rejection.  It’s important that we stay alert and reject our habit of believing the line of Bullshit behind our Self-Rejection.  He also talks a bit about how astrology and Human psychology interact to keep us out of the Present Moment and hence out of our Power.

The Heavy Weekend

He’s already talked about Saturday’s Mercury Station.  It’s probably good that Mercury’s Retrograde while the rest of the weekend happens, since we’ll be more inclined to think it over rather than just living it and taking it for granted.

He’ll talk about Monday’s Full Moon a bit later; for now, realize that since the two Big Deals he’s about to discuss bracket the Full Moon, we could feel their impact for several weeks.  Mostly they’re short and intense – “Portals” is an apt word – but they could tint our spectacles for longer.  Astrological events usually rise to a peak and then fade quickly.  When they linger, it’s often because of two phenomena, one astrological and one mental.

Tarbabies

First, the event can take place very near the Initiation of an astrological Cycle, and hence color the entire Cycle.  Initiations are normally Conjunctions, but there are more subtle Cycles begun at other points as well, particularly Oppositions like the Full Moon.  As we discovered last fall while descending into the End-of-the-World-as-We-Then-Knew-It, the Full Moons can carry a lot more weight than the New Moons.  Conjunction-Initiations may not even be consciously felt by those who aren’t sensitive to the Energy of the Initiation, although Non-Sensitives are often deeply invested in Resistance to the Energy as expressed by the Sensitives!

Oppositions are about Awareness, so it’s common for Oppositions to introduce apparent dichotomies to Consciousness, accompanied by potential for Growth in Consciousness.  For instance, a New Moon in Aries makes no sense even to Arians, because it’s a creative spark without tinder, but an Aries-Libra Opposition, whoa, that makes it clear as a bell that there’s Me and then there’s You.  That can blow up a lot of Projections and Introjections.  This Full Moon is a Virgo-Pisces Opposition, where we get to differentiate between old memories that need to be Blessed and sent on their way, and old actions for which we need to make Amends.  So the impact of the two Big Deals may linger because they embrace this Full Moon.

Second, we can make Decisions under the influence of the event, and those Decisions can change our life for a while, and quite possibly for a long while.  For instance, a common Decision that might be made in our childhood under the influence of strong Virgo elements in the sky or in our horoscope or in our environment, is that We Aren’t Worth Much.  Strong Leo Energies might lead on the other hand to Decisions more like Hey, I’m Pretty Neat.  Of course we’re talking about human psychology here, and since only the mind is dualistic, we expect to see the opposite of what’s indicated almost as often as we see the indicated.  Decisions like these will have serious impact on the rest of our lives.

For instance, in the Diamond Star (Portal 2.25) below and the Full Moon, Chiron and the Sun Square Vesta.  Well, Chiron represents Miracles, but only if we have New Eyes to see through the Veil that covers our Birdcage.  Without New Eyes, Chiron represents Despair, because from the perspective of our Limitations, Chiron represents the Unhealable Healer, or Problems that do not have Solutions.  Vesta symbolizes What We Hold Sacred.  So if we are in Despair that what we hold Sacred has been irretrievably despoiled, we might easily question whether there is anything left that is worth living for.  The Square Challenges us to find New Eyes, but we may not, or we may not find them in time.

If we make Decisions based on our Despair, then that Energy can linger until we unmake the Decisions, and that can be a looong time, sometimes many lifetimes.  Karma, that’s called.  On the other hand, some Decisions are healthy, even Decisions based on Despair.  For instance, if we’re in our fifties and still holding on to the Relationship fantasies that our raging hormones created when we were sixteen, the Decision that

It’s too late, we’ve missed that and the opportunity will never return!

is a healthy release that frees us to Dream more age-appropriate Relationship scenarios – that is, to seek New Eyes beyond the bars of our Birdcage.

Bottom line, while it’s appropriate to consider the following two Big Deals as Portals, opportunities for us to emerge into a World of Higher Dimension, it also behooves us to keep in mind that “this too shall pass.”  As Portals, it would be useful to Meditate through them with our Inner Eye wide open.  As Moments, it will be useful for us to maintain the position of the Observer.  Oh My, look what She or He is experiencing! rather than Oh Shit, I feel like that again!

The Grand Quintile

Portal 2.24, which is in full glory for five or six hours starting about 8pm PST on Sunday, is the Grand Quintile we see below.  If you’re sensitive to the Energy, it could begin earlier and end later – by as much as a day or two.

Lovely, isn’t she?  Quintiles are about Learning and Teaching.  When we Learn something New, the bars in our Cage come loose, and at the very least we’ll experience Confusion, if not Fear (the whole reason for our Birdcage is Safety), or some other feeling like Anger.  If Confusion isn’t Safe, and our Boundaries are dissolving, Anger is an appropriate emotion, as it prepares us to Defend.

Like Despair, Confusion is a Red Flag that tells us Miracles are just behind the Hedge.

We just need to know where to find our New Eyes.  One of the best ways to do that is Surrender.  Not as in Giving Up, but as in Giving Over.  Let Go and Let Goddess.  We don’t find Miracles where the Light is better, we find Miracles where we dropped our keys.  An excellent place for PIAVA.

So who’s dancing in this lovely Hexagram?  Uranus, Saturn, Lilith, Juno, and the Moon…

• Uranus (our Soul Connection, Yin Integrity on a macro scale),
• Saturn (Focus, Discipline),
• Lilith (the Deep Feminine),
• Juno (Unconscious Identity), and the
• Moon (Authenticity, Yin Integrity on a micro scale).

Pair them up – we’re Learning to

• Be Disciplined about our Yin Integrity
• Collaborate with our Soul Connection
• Align our Yin Integrity with our Unconscious Identity
• Act Out who we Really Are
• Focus on Collaboration and Community
• Make a Habit of Discipline
• Bring Consistency to expression of our True Self
• Stop Self-Sabotage
• Stop covering up our Feelings
• Be Honest with Ourself

Then the trios…

• Align our Yin Integrity with our Discipline
• Be compassionate with gaps in that Alignment
• Be Honest about our Integrity and our gaps
• Be Disciplined about rooting out Resentments
• Focus on promoting our Truth
• Let It All Hang Out

And the foursomes…

• Focus on locating programming that’s not aligned with our True Self and loving it to death
• Stop restraining our actions, so that they reveal this programming
• Use theater to explore these edges
• Use theater to practice acting out our True Self
• Let It All Hang Out

And finally the whole Grand Quintile in all its fiveness…

We all have misalignments between our programming (Juno) and our Yin Integrity (Uranus).  That’s the basis of self-sabotage.  If we allow ourselves to Act Out without restraining ourselves (Moon), while Paying Attention (Saturn), it will illuminate these misalignments.  It will help if we solicit collaborative friends (Lilith) to witness and help interpret.  Then we can be Disciplined (Saturn) about being Honest (Moon) about these misalignments of ours, as they are likely to be self-correcting if we maintain our Attention and Honesty. 

It is important to maintain Collaboration (Lilith) between

• our current-moment Observer,
• our True Self (what we’re unquestioningly proud of taking to our grave), and
  
• our Karma and programming,

as it is Love that Heals.  We are a Community, these three of us, bound by flesh and herstory, and it is only by supporting one another unwaveringly that we thrive.  Like King Solomon ordering the disputed child to be cut in half, we die without one another.  When any of these three of us goes into Competition or Judgment, we sabotage ourselves.

Now, most of us feel poorly when we sense misalignment, because we were programmed to feel Guilt or Shame when we misbehaved, and misalignment feels like misbehavior.  We confuse Who We Are with How We Behave because we are trapped in a Culture where Doing trumps Being.  So we feel Shame about Who We Are, which is the ultimate Self-Betrayal.  And not by accident – those who had Power over us, and those who want Power over us, have a much easier job when they can find our Shame.  It turns out that Self-Betrayal is precisely what we need to Heal if we are to squeeze through these post-End-of-World Portals into a Wider Universe – as well as what we need to Heal if we are to discover our New-Paradigm Community and thrive within it.

So what do we need to do to survive a Grand Quintile, Ultimate-Learning-Opportunity Portal?  We need to be watchful for Confusion, Fear, Shame, and Guilt, and tap them out.  We need to be Relentless (Saturn in Scorpio is nothing if not Relentless) about refusing to depart from uncompromising Self-Love.  We do that by “going meta,” or moving our Sense of Self outside of our current Self, so we can look back at ourself with Compassion.

You poor Dear, you really feel like Shit, don’t you!  Let me hug you and comfort you, because I Love you dearly! 

Keep stepping outside of Yourself until you can be genuine about that, and you feel the shift in your feelings.  We are Onions of many layers.

Responsibility

Which brings us back to Responsibility.  A friend recently advised that they see “Responsibility as an Answer-to-Conscience, i.e. looking at life thru the lens of the Higher Self” rather than the distinction he was using – Responsibility looking to the future, Blame looking toward the past.  Yes, that is perfect, as long as our Higher Self and our Operating Self are aligned.  But that’s not fully the case for most of us.  Most of us have places where, if we aren’t in Blame per se, we’re in if-only mode, If only my childhood had been different, for instance.

Blame, along with its various subspecies, is a Universe unto itself – a Black Hole for a Birdcage.  If you apply a “moral” argument like Answering to Conscience to a person living in Blame, what you get is Anger, and appropriately so, because you aren’t supporting their Operating Self, and their Operating Self is always doing the best they can with the resources they have at that moment.  Consider disease.  You take Responsibility for disease not by questioning how you’ve been contrary to Conscience (past), or even by correcting behavior that may be contrary to Conscience (present), but by devoting whatever resources you have available to the tasks of seeking possible causes and testing ways to change habits to see if the change addresses the causes effectively – you Act in the future-becoming-present.  You take Responsibility to change the future.

This approach, by the way, is adapted from Gay Hendricks and Kate Ludeman’s wonderful book The Corporate Mystic: A Guidebook for Visionaries with Their Feet on the Ground.

He doesn’t routinely use the concept of Conscience because more often than not, Conscience is part of our programming, not part of our True Self.  He’s heard people say that Integrity is never doing anything that would make you feel Guilty.  To him that’s not Integrity, that’s the bars on our Birdcage.  And it’s especially not Yin Integrity (Uranus), which means always doing what you damn well feel like doing in the moment – while making Amends whenever appropriate.  Obviously if Yin Integrity includes cruelty, then that’s a fabulous topic for our theater exploring the edges of our misalignments.  The Perennial Wisdom tells him that the True Self is Loving.  And if we can be Loving with ourselves exactly where we are at any and every given moment, then he doesn’t think there’s more that we can ask for.

Now yes, a case can be made for Karma as retribution – that if we always followed our Conscience there would be no disharmony to manifest.  And if by Conscience you mean the voice of the Higher Self, as suggested, then of course the notion is worthy.  But how many of us actually routinely channel our Higher Self, as opposed to channeling the introjected voices of the Significant Others who taught us how to behave in our tender and impressionable youth?  For most of us, Conscience is programmed by our culture.  In the language he grew up in, it’s not his Conscience that speaks for his Higher Self, it’s his Intuition, and yes, he does self-sabotage when he ignores his Intuition.

So he thinks we’re using different words to express the same thing.  However, teaching someone to Answer to their Intuition is much harder than teaching someone to Answer to their Conscience – you’re talking Psychic Training, rather than Sunday School.  So the idea of Answering to Intuition is not what you teach, it’s what you hope to have taught.  And Answering to their Intuition would have little value in helping someone molt out of a Blame Universe, since their Intuition would always be bumping up against their Blame, with no instruction about how to resolve the boundary, except to hope for a Grand Quintile.  Responsibility as Future Action does have potential to break someone free from Blame, by demonstrating that there is an alternative.

Jamesonite

On Clear Quartz, probably Tibetan – Lead Iron Antimony Sulfide, heavy iridescent needle-crystals.  Antimony helps keep our thinking clear when we’re faced with heavy emotions, and actually facilitates following our Inner Voice, by any name.  Iron promotes honesty and gives us the Energy and motivation to finish unfinished business.  Lead provides Discipline, and can free us from Despair.  Sulfur illuminates our Shadow and paves the path to reconciliation.  Jamesonite can Heal defects in DNA and reorient misalignments that began with our Ancestors.  Very timely – as well as being a great visual image of how held Emotions clog our microtubules and blind our access to the Zero Point Field and it’s wealth of information, including the Akashic Records.

What’d He Say?

Sunday’s 2.24 Portal is about getting our Soul Connection, our Discipline, our Collaboration, our Habit Patterns, and our Moment-to-Moment Authenticity all into alignment.  That may not be something we can finish in a weekend, but on the other hand, we do aver that Miracles are hiding just behind the Hedgerow.

Next – Portal 2.25, the Diamond Star on the far side of the Full Moon.

Heavy Weekend Ahead

We’ll write more on Thursday, but we wanted to forewarn that it’s likely to be another heavy weekend coming up.

Mercury turns Retrograde on Saturday (2am PST) at 20 Pisces, reviewing the territory back to 6 of Pisces over the following three weeks.  Pisces is a slow version of your-life-flashing-before-your-eyes, and this section of Pisces is basically the forming-a-personality-and-then-seeing-if-other-people-will-let-you-get-away-with-it stage of life.  Mercury will be conferring with Mars (February 26), the Sun (March 4), and Chiron (March 9) for advice while it’s weighing the feathers.  That would be about Assertion or Aggression, Self-Appreciation or Self-Rejection, and Despair or Risking Miracles.

Remember, we all do the best we can with the resources we have at the moment, so don’t go judging your historical teenager by your current standards, or believing that the horrendous emotional swings that she or he went through had anything to do with your behavior.  That was all just hormone swings; the alleged behavior was just an excuse so you wouldn’t think you were going crazy.  You went through it again in your forties.  Keep track of what’s really happening in the Present Moment.  What color was the wallpaper when that was going on?  What color is the wallpaper in the room you’re in now?  Keep your two yous separate, and make a special effort to be kind to both.

Then we come into a phase similar to those nasty times we had at the end of January.  On Sunday a Grand Quintile forms, the grandaddy of Learning Opportunities.  Your self-love and Present-Moment practice with Mercury will serve you well there.

The Full Moon arrives Monday, and it introduces a Diamond Star around the Vesta-Saturn-Pluto Yod, that runs into Tuesday, bouncing off the Mercury-Mars event on its way out.

Couple of nice Portals there for us to squeeze through.  Little room for extra baggage, and there’s a baggage fee anyway.  Baggage is anything you haven’t fully Loved yet.  More Thursday.

All Aboard II

Saturn Eclipsing the Sun, as seen from Spacecraft Cassini, photo borrowed from CICLOPS.  Hard to imagine how they could get the distance just right to make Saturn as small as the Sun would be at that distance, but you can even see the “Diamond Ring Effect” at the lower left, like we see when our Moon eats the Sun.  The white glow is probably Sunlight illuminating Saturn’s atmosphere, and the Sun probably isn’t much bigger than the “Diamond.”

Overview

I know you love it when I talk about Identity, but you know, our Identities are changing.  Our Consciousness will struggle to keep up with the Changes that have already been made, and continue to be made, on Unconscious levels.  Changes like these make Relationships of all kinds more complicated, as we may no longer be able to depend on what we would consider to be consistent behavior from Others.  As has been our salvation for a while now, Curiosity is what will help maintain our bearings.

Change does not mean that we’ve been wrong in the past – our operating principles have changed, and our personal history ran on different operating principles.  No blame – Don’t fall for any temptation to Doubt Yourself!  Be a Curious Observer of what’s happening, including of yourself.  A long time ago a friend of mine, riffing off a Chinese philosopher, practiced referring to himself as “He” rather than “Me.”  That’d be a great practice for the rest of February.

The Juicy Details

To find out more about the Saturn Station that we’re living in this week, let’s look at the Angles Saturn makes with its fellow travelers.

Great Yods

Here’s our first picture, showing the integer-number-of-Signs Angles…

You can see the green-lined Quincunxes tracing out the double Yods that we mentioned yesterday.  And on the left, the Moon joining Vesta.  And the green-red-blue Pythagorean Triangle with both Mars and Chiron as foci at top left in the chart.  The red lines represent Challenge and Motivation (Squares), the blue lines Grace (Sextiles and Trines), and the green lines Curiosity (Quincunxes).  So?  Well,

• Moon-Vesta means we’ll be feeling Emotionally attached to the Most Important of our Deepest Values.
• The Mars Triangle implies we’ll be motivated to Act to protect the Most Important of our Deepest Values.
• The Chiron Triangle suggests that we needn’t be surprised to witness Miracles around the Most Important of our Deepest Values.

We’ve already talked about the Double Yod, but it wouldn’t hurt to review…

• The Saturn-Apex Yod with Pallas and Moon-Vesta makes us relentless about defending the Most Important of our Deepest Values.
• The Moon-Vesta-Apex Yod with Saturn and Pluto will be illuminating the Most Important of our Deepest Values with sharp contrast.
• The Pallas-Pluto Square across the top of the Double Yod motivates us to spontaneously defend our Spiritual Transformation.

When we newly illuminate our connection to the Deepest Values that we hold Sacred, and cement it with Emotion, the Transformation is indeed Spiritual.

When we Change, it can destabilize other people, if their image of Reality is anchored partly by who they believe us to be.  And their Changes may destabilize us!  Hence the need for defending who we’ve Become.  And when we meet defensiveness in others, we need to respect it, and gently inquire about what they’re defending – though they may not be able to explain!  We may also find ourselves without words if we’re asked to explain why we’re defensive.  Know that there is no need to explain yourself, just say that things seem to be different here in 2013.

We are Curious Observers here, noticing the Changes that are occurring.  We may also be making Conscious Changes, but most of what’s going on is happening to us.  This is not an affront to our Ego, or loss of Control, it’s evidence that we have surrendered Control to our Higher Self.  When you find yourself doing or saying things that surprise you, stand back and watch.  This is where you may find Confusion that is an early stage of Growth, if you’re willing to Let It Be.

Quints Galore

Then there’s this picture, of the non-integer-number-of-Signs Angles, the Quintiles and Septiles…

A Double Quintile Yod, or 80% of a Grand Quintile!  The Quintiled planets, besides our poster child Saturn, are Juno, Uranus, and Lilith.  Quintiles (in orange) are about Learning and Teaching, Wisdom, Intuition, Perception, and often involve a Test of Faith.  We learned about that Test of Faith at the end of January, when a Grand Quintile joined a Diamond Star.  Mostly a Test of Faith in ourselves – that is after all one of our two Big Issues here, isn’t it – honoring and defending our True Self (Uranus-Pluto) and respecting the Changes She’s asking us to make in our Conscious Lives.  Of course the other Big Issue is adapting to the not-yet-fully-Co-Created New socioeconomic Paradigm (Chiron-Neptune).

So what can we expect from Quintiles between Saturn (Focus on Priority #1), Juno (Unconscious Identity), Uranus (I Gotta Be Me), and Lilith (Give Me Liberty or Give Me Annulment)?  Well, since Lilith and Eris are in the midst of restructuring the Gender Balance on the Planet, and since Juno is in a Waning Square to Eris (the Deep Feminine), meaning that their previous treaty is expiring, we can expect to be confronted with any places where we don’t sufficiently respect our Inner Female.  And of course if The Most Important of our Deepest Values include Justice or Equality, and if in our Sacred Values we regard Yin as a legitimate half of the YingYang, then significant issues may arise.  The Gender orientation of our newly discovered and defended True Self may also complicate things.

The bottom line: our True Self and our Inner Female conspire to revise our Unconscious Identity by forcing contradictions into our Consciousness, contradictions around The Most Important of our Deepest Values.  We are moving toward greater Authenticity.

Where was the previous treaty between Eris and Juno signed?  Hmm, Aries 21, “A pugilist enters the ring” (February 2010), which Rudhyar extends as “The release and glorification of social aggressiveness.”  Next year’s new treaty will be a lot more friendly, but in the interim we’ll be dealing with folks who continue to defend the old treaty even though it’s expiring.  Folks who refuse to descend into the Void can be a real pain, because as the ground beneath them dissolves they become hollower and shriller.  In institutions like Western Cultures, where the Void is considered sinful, Deniers can frighten a lot of people into following them.  This is how folks who call themselves Christians can preach Intolerance so vociferously.  So it may be April 2014 before we reach the Tipping Point around Women’s Rights and related issues.

The Triseptile

Then there’s the light-green line on the second picture, the Waning Triseptile from Jupiter to Saturn.  The Jupiter-Saturn Cycle, recall, is a prime mover in our socioeconomic circumstances.  The Waning Triseptile is about using “Magic” to take advantage of the Flowering of the Cycle.  So what’s the current Jupiter-Saturn Cycle about?  It’s about harvesting what needs to be preserved from the Industrial Revolution, and it’s “A jewelry shop filled with valuable gems” (23 Taurus, May 28, 2000).  So basically,

Whatever material and social assistance you need to support The Most Important of your Deepest Values, don’t hesitate to PIAVA it.  Dream Big!

In several weeks Jupiter replaces Vesta at the Apex of the Saturn-Pluto Yod.  Taking advantage of the Triseptile this week will put us way ahead in March.

The Rest of February

As you may have guessed, the Moon keeps moving ahead, which means that in a week it completes a Diamond Star and a Grand Septile with these Configurations, preceded by Mercury turning Retrograde.  We’ll have to write about all that once we finish Focusing on Saturn.

Summing It Up

Our Unconscious Identity has shifted, and it continues to shift.  We’re called upon to Focus on The Most Important of our Deep Values as we bring portions of our New Selves into Consciousness, and struggle to hold the space for our New Selves to be themselves.  Others may resist our Changes, and we need to be careful not to resist the Changes that others are making.

Station of Saturn – All Aboard!

The Top Line

What’s changed in your Priorities since August 2010?  How are those Changes related to your Mission on the Planet in this lifetime?  What Priority do you give to your Mission?  How well do you understand it?  (Hint: keep it vague – if you intellectualize it too much you’ll kill it.)

The Middle Way

Saturn turns Retrograde next Monday (February 18, 9am PST), so we’ll be feeling it very soon if we aren’t already.  The Most Important Thing you need to know about Saturn, is that

Saturn always asks us to Focus on The Most Important Thing.

Not that any two folks would agree on what that is – and Vive la Difference.  A planet is felt Strongly when it’s Stationary, or almost Stationary.  Today Saturn is two minutes of arc from its location at next Monday’s Station – that is, virtually Standing Still.  For comparison, horizon-to-horizon on the open prairie is more than 11,000 arcminutes, and the Full Moon is thirty arcminutes wide.

Saturn moves backwards (from our perspective) for twenty weeks, till early July, backing over the span of 12 to 5 degrees of Scorpio.  These degrees comprise the Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces “Dwads” of Scorpio.  A Dwad is one twelfth of a Sign.

These Dwads personify Scorpio’s deep desire to Finish Business, clear Karma and other limitations, and prepare the roadbed into the future for paving.

As Saturn turns introspective, where our Focus will be more on who we are than what we are doing, that’s likely to seem like The Most Important Thing.  Saturn’s been crossing this space (forward) since mid-November, so we’ll be reviewing our World-Ending Solstice and all of the other excitements that we’ve been through since then.

If you experience Saturn as Limitation, as many do, it’s probably because you hesitate to let go of things of secondary importance.  Saturn is also connected to the father.  Did your father encourage you to take risks and teach you how to learn from “failure”?  Did you often overhear your father putting down other people for not being clever or relentless enough?  We often fear to commit our full Attention and Energy to The Most Important Thing (to us) because we don’t want to be devastated by failing at The Most Important Thing.  So we strive after secondary goals that appear more achievable.

The folks who talk about the way collaborative New-Paradigm Communities can work, like Gar Alperovitz, often emphasize failure as something to be expected.

Who gets everything right on the first try?  We fail, adjust, and try again.  That’s called Learning, and without it we don’t thrive.

The old socioeconomic paradigm is long dead, held up only by the ongoing strenuous effort of the few who were enriched by it.  Look at it through Darwin’s eyes – without trying thousands of new ways to connect and support one another, the Species won’t survive, let alone the Empire.  If we spend our Attention and Focus and Energy on our secondary goals, we never Attend to our Mission, which means that the Planetary puzzle never gets put back into Balance.

In a subsequent post we’ll look in detail at what this Station is all about.  For now, let’s just Focus on The Most Important Thing about the Station chart.  That would be the Quincunx Angle between Saturn and Vesta.  That’s the common Angle in the Vesta Yod with Saturn and Pluto, and the Saturn Yod with Vesta and Pallas.  This is a Waning Quincunx, so while it’s still about Curiosity – Curiosity about what we personally hold to be Sacred (Vesta), it’s more about What did we Learn? than What are we Learning?

How have our Values changed since the Summer of 2010?

That’s an important question to explore, because it provides strong clues about our personal Mission about The Most Important Thing.

The Waning Quincunx is the last Big Angle before the Phitile.  The Phitile, the Golden Angle of Sacred Geometry, is only twelve and a half degrees further down the Cycle.  An astrological Cycle unfolds like so…

• Conjunction (0 degrees) – a New Energy is Strong at its Birth, as is Resistance to it, but then it goes back underground till the…
• Waxing Square (90 degrees) – the Energy becomes permanent, and we’re Challenged to Master it to our advantage
• Waxing Quincunx (150 degrees) – we become intensely Curious about what we’re learning in the Cycle; what we learn we take with us beyond the Cycle, while what we earn in the Cycle we often lose as the Cycle wanes
• Oppositition (180 degrees) – the Cycle Flowers
• Waning Quincunx (210 degrees) – a second opportunity to review and retrieve what we’ve learned from the Flowering of the Cycle
• Phitile (222 and a half degrees) – harvesting the Fruit of the Cycle
• Waning Square (270 degrees) – The Energy is spent, and we’re Challenged to Let Go into the Void of pure potential, where what we’ve learned becomes an Eye of Newt for the Cauldron of the Unformed; Eye is Perspective and Newt is Salamander – the Transformer, and the more unrestrained is our descent into the Dreamtime, the greater is our potential for creating Miracles in the next Cycle

So what Cycle are we looking at here?  The Vesta-Saturn Cycle that began on August 13, 2010 at 3 degrees of Libra, “The dawn of a new day reveals everything changed.”  That’s pretty profound, given the circumstances.  So,

What have we learned about how everything has changed, and how are we adapting to it?

And Most Importantly,

How has our understanding of what is Sacred to us, and the degree to which we Focus on it, changed for the better?

With Saturn turning Retrograde and Vesta continuing on her merry way, the Quincunx fades at the end of February, the Phitile forms in the first few days of April, and the Waning Square in mid-July, just after Saturn goes Direct again.  So we only have a short time to finish bringing this Most Important component of our Mission up into Consciousness.

Muscovite

Grandmother Muscovite is the perfect Guide for us here.  She’ll connect you with your Spirit Guides who can tell you all about your Mission, should you choose to accept it – yet.  She’ll filter the information you receive, no more and no less than what you need to know just now, assuaging confusion.  Confusion is the first step of Growth, but Saturn and the Waning Quincunx are both about consolidating and stabilizing the Growth you’ve already received, lest you lose it in the muck.  Too much Clarity can be dangerous because it can deceive, but not when Saturn is afoot.  In Muscovite Micas, Potassium (Intuitive Perception) and Aluminum (Clarity) provide the positive ions that separate the Silicate layers and allow it to cleave into transparent sheets with their unique electrical (insulator) and thermal (conductor) properties.

The Bottom Line

Like it or not, for the next week we’re going to be Focusing on The Most Important Thing, and while that will be different for each of us, it appears likely to be around what we’ve learned about our Deepest Values over the last couple of years – which will be a beacon pointing us toward our Mission.  We learn from trial and error, so it’s critically important to not let fear of failure keep us from exploring our Most Important Thing – and giving it Priority-One Attention.  Priorities Two through Many will be alive and well waiting for us after Saturn goes Retrograde; we can let them slide for the week, and then reassess their importance relative to our Mission.

Trapezia

Overview

Curiosity Rules!  The Yods are multiplying, and what we’re likely to get from them is a demand for greater Authenticity, and an urgency about defending what’s bottom-line for us.

The Ceres Yod

Here’s one of the two primary Configurations we labor under in early February, a double-Yod Isosceles Trapezoid…

The Vesta Yod is still in effect, but since Saturn is one of its legs and Saturn is stationary on February 18, we’ll deal with that in a few days.

This Trapezoid is pretty straightforward – a Ceres-focused Yod and a North Node-focused Yod that share one of the Quincunxes (green lines).  It means we’re coming around to making our Mission (North Node) a more fundamental (Ceres) basis for our lives.  The other two corners are Juno and Eris – Unconscious Identity and the Deep Feminine.  The nature of a Yod is Curiosity, so it’s not like the Yods are necessarily stressful.  But Juno does Square Eris (red line), so there is a Challenge involved.  Eris can’t stand subterfuge, so this is mostly about getting Unconscious contradictions into Consciousness.

Many of us were programmed to denounce our Mission.  On a dualistic planet, we learn most quickly by studying opposites, mirror images, and vacancies.  Like Bilbo, we need to put some experience under our belts before we risk everything, because we’re otherwise too vulnerable.  And in many cases our Mission is time-critical; if we pushed into it before the World was ready for us, we’d blow it.  Of course you could say that our Mission is to clear our Karma, but that’s secondary, and too focused on the individual Ego.  We are not separate.  A goalie’s Mission is not to embrace her Past Deaths, it’s to prevent the ball from finding the net.  Sure, she might have to deal with her fear of Death to do that, but that’s not her Mission.

So as we get ready to move our Mission into priority #1 (Saturn and the North Node collide head-on in September), we throw off the various disguises we’ve taken on to stay safe and preserve the element of Surprise, and begin to visualize ourselves as who we really are.  Letting go of some of that programming and admitting that we actually are what we’ve been rejecting all of our lives, can be difficult.  It won’t be as difficult as you imagine it’s going to be, but getting beyond our expectations is what growth is all about.

So that’s where we are,

Dropping our disguises, we’ll be outing our True Self and preparing ourselves for our real Mission, the reason we came here.  We may have a little trouble wriggling out of the false personas that are most comfortable and most safe.

We’re likely to be particularly challenged to take an opportunity to practice outing our True Self on February 14, when the Moon crosses Eris.  That should build to a peak by around 10am PST on Thursday.

The Vesta Yod

Not to diminish our Vesta Yod with Saturn and Pluto, which persists through most of February – that’s the one where we’re inspired to Focus (Saturn) on Transforming (Pluto) our lives so we’re more respectful of what our Heart holds Sacred (Vesta).    And what do you know, starting just about now, Pallas moves into position to make a Yod with Saturn at the helm and Vesta at the other foot, to create the same double-Yod Trapezoid as the Ceres-North Node pattern, but with Cat’s-Ears…

If you look close you can see that these two patterns sit right on top of one another, just slightly offset.  The second Configuration is a bit more complex.

The Saturn Yod tells us that our newfound need to defend our newfound individuality combines with our newly prominent sense of the Sacred, to force us to attend to our Number One Priority.  Which, given the first pattern, is probably our Mission.  Think of it this way – if you had two months to live, you’d finished business around your commitments, and you didn’t have any limitations from health or finances, how would you change the World?  The Challenge in this Configuration is between Pallas and Pluto – we need to change our Trance in such as way that we become willing to defend our individuality vigorously.

The Cat’s-Ears are made up of Quincunx-Trine-Square (green-blue-red) Triangles, both riffing off of the Vesta-Saturn Quincunx.  These isoceles Triangles are nice – the Square provides Motivation, the Quincunx Curiosity, and the Trine Grace, and the tree complement one another.  One Ear is Venus – the Square to Saturn says we’re going to have to confront our desire to play nice when doing so would be a sellout.  The Trine says that our focus on what’s Sacred to us will make that easier.  The other Ear is Chiron, and the Challenge is dropping our old expectations long enough to allow Miracles into our Field.  The Grace is our Focus on our need for Miracles and our willingness to PIAVA them.

This pattern gets more complex as we move toward next weekend and start to feel Saturn’s Station.

Summing Up

For most of the rest of February, we’ll be preparing our armor and selecting our Steed as we prepare to march off to whatever Crusade is closest to our Hearts.  Not that it’s about war or conquest or even competition – not at all.  But it’ll probably feel that way, as our Heart says, No, you’ve gone too far this time, and I can no longer take this sitting down!  Tavis Smiley has been reviewing poignant and touching and painful moments from the Civil Rights Movement, like the day and night Martin Luther King Jr. spent meditating in Mahatma Gandhi’s room.  Here’s some very inspiring material..

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/mlk-a-call-to-conscience/

It will behoove us to pray for a loving and gentle transition from here to there.

Spinel

Everybody knows Rubies and Sapphires.  They’re simple Aluminum Oxides.  Add some Magnesium, and you have Spinel.  The crystals are usually smaller, but they can be just as gemmy and facetable.  Spinel can be red or pink or blue or black, but the pink form is quintessential for letting your True Self out of the closet.  This is the one, there are no substitutes.

The Saturn Station

In a few days we’ll look at the Saturn Station coming up on February 18, including the Grand Quintile that forms February 24.  I missed it last month, but there was also another Grand Quintile on January 28, just as the Vesta Yod was morphing into a Diamond Star.  We said then,

This [Diamond Star] should be very exciting, with Jupiter Stationary and the Moon triggering our Emotional involvement with the Sacred – and Chiron showing the way to Miracles!  This could easily be life-changing for many of us!

The way I and several friends experienced that period felt more life-devastating than life-changing – but that’s what Ego Death is all about, isn’t it.  We got fully involved in the Present Moment (which wasn’t Present at all, but a Regression) and forgot that it was about Letting Go of our old patterns – till we got deep enough into them that it became obvious to us that we were roboting an ancient pattern.  Once we de-tranced, it was life-changing.

In retrospect, I’d say the Grand Quintile had a lot to do with those adventures, and maybe when it visits again around February 24 we’ll be more Aware.  I saw a car the other day with a good-size dent in the fender, and someone has plastered a sticker across the dent that said, “Oh No, Not Another Learning Experience.”  That’s the nature of the Quintile, Learning and Teaching, and a Grand Quintile would be a profound Teachable Moment.

Sustaining Sustenance

The Big Issue for the last couple of days and the next several is about Focusing on hearing, expressing, and defending the voice of our Inner Female, and making that a permanent part of our persona.  In case you haven’t met Her yet, she’s likely to be more interested in Collaboration and Communication than in Competition and Control.  Two brothers fighting to defeat one another in the Super Bowl is a perfect analogy for the paradigm that we’re leaving behind.

Ceres is Stationary (Direct) and Out of Bounds and Conjunct Lilith.  There’s a Quintile Yod between Ceres-Lilith, Pallas-Uranus, and Saturn, with Saturn at the Apex.  The Quintile Yod runs through February 6.  The Ceres Station occurs at 1am PST on February 4.  The Moon crossed Saturn and triggered the Q-Yod about 24 hours prior to the Station.

We’re still studying our Heart’s interpretation of what’s Sacred, and revising our Trance accordingly.  “We” mostly don’t have control over the Trance we live our lives from, as it’s given to us by our cultural programming and the Zeitgeist, among other currents.  But we do have some impact on it, depending on how Conscious we are.  We’re all outraged or horrified by some things more than others, and defending those things is important, because they’re either part of our Mission, or Karma that we need to work through in order to find our Mission.  Our Journey is how we discover the difference.

The Vesta-Apex Quincunx Yod, with Saturn and Pluto for feet, remains.

We’re discovering places where we need to be more open and vulnerable, areas where we need to set better boundaries, and circumstances where more honesty is needed, in order to communicate effectively, defend our True Self, collaborate better, and contribute our skills to Community efforts that will help sustain us.

Jupiter is Triseptile Saturn, and Mercury crosses their far Midpoint today (February 3), where it forms Biseptiles to both, creating a complete Seventh-Harmonic triangle.  It’s not a Septile Yod, as that would have a single Septile  for a base rather than a Triseptile, but it’s a strong Configuration akin to a Seventh-Harmonic version of a Trine or T-Square.  The Seventh Harmonic is about Shamanic Power.

The three complete Triangles look like this…

Where the orange lines trace the Quintile Yod, the dark-green-and-blue Triangle is the Quincunx Yod, and the lighter-green lines show the Triseptile-T.  Where do these names come from?  In the picture above we’ve drawn lines connecting the vertices of the three Triangles.  In the picture below we’ve drawn the lines from the center of the circle to each corner of each Triangle.

You can see the near-horizontal orange “Y” and the partly-inverted dark-green “Y” – these are the Yods – “Y” as in Yod.  The light-green lines make more of a “T” than a “Y,” though the top (Triseptile) bar is kinked, hence we’re calling it a Triseptile-T.

Drawing the Configurations this way emphasizes how Saturn sits on a corner of all three Triangles.  It won’t hurt to review Saturn a bit, especially since it’s Stationary during the third week of February.  Saturn asks us to Focus on Priority #1, and let go of Plan B (and C and D).  This can easily feel like limitation, as we might be depending on our secondary priorities as fallbacks, or as the sources of release or joy that provide relief from Priority #1 – which will certainly involve effort and risk.  But as with any other astrological process, this too shall pass – when Saturn’s lit up, Focus on Priority #1 – there will be lots of other times, when Saturn isn’t lit up, where you can enjoy or indulge multi-tasking.

In the current case, this week, Priority #1 is clearly hearing, expressing, and defending the voice of our Inner Female, and making that a permanent part of our persona.  It helps that the Sacred is lit up as well, as the Sacred will illuminate the Inner Female – either by contrast or by reinforcement.  Expect to encounter Resistance, as folks who are invested heavily in their Outer Males, and the obsolete ways of exercising Power and Competition and Control, express their concern over their unwanted retirement.  Don’t argue.  Listen politely and compassionately to what they have to say.

It would even help to mirror them a little.  Ask yourself what kind of verbs they have been using – do they focus on feeling, seeing, hearing, or other ways of experiencing the World?  Match their verbs – I hear you! – or I see what you mean! – or I understand how you feel!  But then be clear and straightforward and brief about what you see or hear or feel or find to be important.  Again, don’t argue.  If they yes-but you, just calmly say…

I know, you feel differently, but I feel this way.  It’s okay if we don’t see the World the same way, as long as we can tolerate other perspectives.  It’s a big World, there are lots of different points of view!  As the World gets more interconnected – as it is, daily – it gets more and more important that we respect the benefits of diversity.

We make space for our True Selves on the Planet by honoring our Uniqueness, and by honoring the Uniqueness of others.  When we do this we greatly increase the potency of Collaboration and Community.

Thulite is a Calcium Aluminum Silicate.  This sample shows three of its four forms.  Most of this Stone is Manganese-rich pink Thulite, with the green Anyolite form around the edges, and a nice vein of brown Zoisite crystal in the left center.  The fourth form, not present, is Tanzanite, a highly-valued blue-purple gemmy form.  Thulite is one of few minerals that combine the two colors of the Heart – pink and green.  It symbolizes Partnership, emphasizing the advantages of mutual respect and collaboration, or Vive la Difference! as the French would say.

It’s not just Marriage and Community that Thulite represents, but the Inner Marriage between our own Anima and Animus, our Inner Female and Inner Male.  Without this Inner Marriage and androgyny, we cannot achieve Wholeness, and our Inner Lovers compete and sabotage one another.  Without internal collaboration, we can’t do outer Collaboration effectively.  So a good deal of our work here – and/or the trance reformations that we undergo above and beyond the level of Will – will be inside of us.