Uranus-Eris II+

As is often the case, our Chief Asteroid Officer noticed something I missed.  Our second layer of the Eris-Uranus Initiation horrorscope, the one where The Most Important Things are…

• Embracing Confusion
• Respect for All Things
• Being Willing to Stretch
• Staying Alert for Habits that no longer Serve

(see the previous post), and of course one that applies to the rest of the Century, stays lit up a bit longer.

To whit…

(1)  On 11 June we’re likely to be asked to Stretch a bit more.

(2)  Expect Confusion to remain Strong till 13 June – Embrace it, Wallow in it, don’t try to Change it.

I knocked over a full glass of Water today – twice.  Not wanting to think my Confusion was due to a TIA, I figured I must be Regressed to infancy, to a time before I knew that those wiggly things, on the end of that pink stick-like thing that keeps waving around randomly, were “my” fingers.

Once our CAO enlightened me, I knew instantly that it was a Poltergeist.  We create Poltergeists (seemingly independent actions by Material objects) by thoroughly Repressing an Emotion.  We do everything we can to Avoid some Emotions (like Confusion, often); bringing those into our Embrace will Expand our Emotional range and Open our Awareness to new Blessings.

But we don’t even know we’re Avoiding the Emotions that we’ve thoroughly Repressed.  Those are the Held Emotions that prevent our Awareness of the Lost Skills that are hiding behind our Karmic Limiting Beliefs – the ones that are Unconscious.  Recovering those is a Treasure bigger than Smaug’s, as we won’t achieve our Mission without them.

So be Mindful of anything unusual happening this weekend, especially if Water is involved.  What’s your immediate Reaction to it?  Mine was Irritation.    Call up that Feeling, then PIAVA “I Wonder what that was all about.”

(3)  Through 14 June, be prepared for major Breakthroughs in Innovation and Creativity.  If there’s a major project or hassle you’re working on… 

• PIAVA a huge leap forward on 10 or 11 June (don’t be too specific, so you can be surprised),
• Change the Subject on 12 and 13 June, then
• Pay Attention on 14 June.

Good chance there’s a connection between (2) and (3) – and (1) as well.  In fact it would be surprising if there wasn’t.  What if I was able to Revert an Unconscious Limiting Belief that was installed before I was even Aware of my Physicality, let alone Verbal.  That would have a monumental impact on my Life.  It’s very difficult to approach preverbal Trauma for Healing, because the organization of our Worldview is so organized around our Languaging.

 

The Astrology

(1)  The Moon lights up Jupiter and the North Node for about eight hours starting around 8am PDT on 11 June.

(2)  Neptune (Material Confusion, Spiritual Clarity, and our Relationship to anything larger than ourself, Emotion, Water), which Squares Saturn and Vesta while Opposing Jupiter and hanging out near the South Node, is Stationary, turning Retrograde around 2pm PDT on 13 June.

(3)  The dwarf planet Makemake (Manifestation) is Standing Still and Waxing Quintile to Saturn.  The Station occurs around 7am PDT 14 June.  The Insights will probably be most Fruitful between the Neptune and Makemake Stations, though the Moon crosses the Stationary Makemake at around 7pm PDT on 12 June.  The current Saturn-Makemake Cycle began in mid-September 2009 in 26 Virgo, a Degree devoted to Learning new, potentially Life-Changing Rituals.

It’s very significant when a Station makes few Angles with other planets.  Besides the Saturn Quintile, the only other close Angle that Makemake makes is a Waxing Unx (one Sign) by Lilith.  The Lilith-Makemake Cycle began at the end of last August, in the same 1 Libra as Makemake’s current Station – virtually the same arcminute!  The Moon crosses Lilith around noon PDT on 15 June.

Libra 1 is about how Observation Stops The Flow.  It’s an apparent fact of Quantum Physics – the Future (or even the Present) is indeterminate until it is Observed.  It’s interesting that 1 Aries, the beginning of the Personal half of the Zodiac, is about Discrete Form emerging from the Background Matrix (ie, Consciousness), while the beginning of the Relational half of the Zodiac is about The Flow, or The Zone, or Time.

Yindependence (Lilith) is of course about The Flow, about Staying in the Present Moment, Staying Present.  Being Here Now, as Ram Dass puts it.  And it’s appropriate that the Relational half of the Zodiac should begin with Yin and the Feminine.  Libra, like Aries, is a Dynamic or Masculine Sign, but it begins with the Yin.  And the Form that is Manifesting at 1 Aries is the Female form.  Like the Dao, or Taijitu, Duality Unfolding from Unity, or Duality Stopping The Flow.

The Unx Angle (one twelfth of the Zodiac) is about Changing Patterns.  Manifesting Yin by Changing Patterns to Cease Stopping the Flow.  This is getting Deep.  And of course, whatever minor or major Trauma befell me as a Newborn (which would be a Mirror for Past-Life Trauma), would have Created an Observer – Manifested Consciousness – and Stopped the Flow.  Changing Patterns – I think that’s a Stephen Stills song.  

“Stop, children, what’s that sound?
Everybody look what’s going down.”

Back to the Ouija Board ’60s!

To Portal 6.26 and Beyond

Orb

Have you gained a sense of your Sensitivity?  Around here there was a definite shift at around four degrees, then a huge change at about two degrees, as the Grand Trine reformed.

Chiron Retrospective

As Mercury Stands Still and turns Backwards under a Solstice SuperMoon with Jupiter entering Cancer, it would be an excellent time to list every event, circumstance, drama, Emotion, or Pattern that Challenged you during the first half of 2013.   Then over the next three weeks take at least an hour a week to flesh out some details about each Challenge –

• What happened,
• What you were doing before it happened,
• What you felt,
• Who if anyone (or any thing) you felt like blaming for it,
• What you did about it,
• Whether you can detect any likely warning signs that could provide advance notice in the future,
• What you might do differently next time,
• How you might handle it if you were fully competent to do so.

No question that we’re going to be re-experiencing these Challenges over the next six months, and the purpose of the whole adventure is for you to become competent at dealing with them.  So a little directed Attention while Mercury is in a contemplative mood will be very powerful.

The difference between Karma and Consciousness is Choice.  When something sneaks up on us and we aren’t prepared to deal with it, we react from Habit, and it’s usually a Habit that fits the situation poorly, if not catastrophically.  We don’t have the opportunity to Choose – largely because, since it’s Unconscious, we don’t see it coming.  When the same Pattern approaches and we know it’s coming, we’ve dealt with it successfully before, we have some degree of confidence, and we have an array of strategies for dealing with it, then we have time to assess how the drama is unfolding, Choose a response, stay attuned to whether or not it’s working, and if not try an alternate response.

Keep your list handy, and Pay Attention when any of the Challenges repeat.  It’s going to happen anyway, but if you’re Paying Attention, you can make the process of ditching self-sabotage much easier and more powerful.

Gemini and Cancer

As we write this, Jupiter is crossing from Gemini into Cancer.  Jupiter represents Amplification, Expansion, Extension, Extroversion, Openness.  It’s not all that Signs are about, but each Sign is a reaction to excesses of the previous Sign.  Gemini is flibbertigibbet, to quote Sally.  Aries creates something brand new, then casts it in concrete in Taurus (in reaction to everyone’s complaint that they don’t know what it is – since Aries is all Intuitive, there’s no explaining and justifying), till it’s suddenly realized that it’s only a half-baked prototype, probably won’t work, and could be done a lot more effectively.  So Gemini tears it apart.

Nothing amiss there; Gemini is performing a very useful service – scienterrific types would call it reverse engineering, with improvement in mind.  The Gemini stage is equivalent to brainstorming – collecting ideas without prejudgment, as a first step toward version 2.0.  Ranking  and vetting the ideas comes later, but in the brainstorming stage no critique is allowed, in order to assure that no idea is intimidated before it gets onto the whiteboard.

Can you correlate any of these timespans with events or processes in your own life, or on any larger stages?

• Jupiter in Aries (Intuitive Creativity) – June 2010 to June 2011
• Jupiter in Taurus (Casting in Concrete) – June 2011 to June 2012
• Jupiter in Gemini (Disassembly) – June 2012 to June 2013

The US Supreme Court is certainly disassembling voting rights, for instance.  Of course the US Congress has been Disassembling democracy for far longer than a year, but has it stepped up its efforts since June 2012?

Now Jupiter is in Cancer.  By the time we get to Cancer, folks are quite sick of indecision, apparent disregard for consequences (Gemini can be very impersonal), and apparent obstructiveness.  They want to see something built rather than torn apart, they want to see some consistency, and they want to see some compassion.  It will be easier to go back to Creating, but with some knowledge about what we’re building and why, and with some experience under our belt about what might work and what apparently won’t.

Think It Over

It’s several hours before Mercury turns Retrograde, at 6am PDT on June 26.  Mercury asks us to review our Rhetoric three times a year, for three weeks at a shot.  Of course by the time Mercury – or any other planet – goes Retrograde, it has already crossed the area of review, and by the time it turns Direct again and then recrosses the same territory for the third time, it’s an eight-week process.  This time around, Mercury is asking us to review the Scorpio-through-Pisces zones of Cancer.

Just as each day has a morning that resembles Spring, an afternoon that’s like Summer, an evening that parallels Autumn, and a night that reminds us of Winter, each Sign contains a miniature version of the entire Zodiac.  The Sign of Cancer starts with the Cancer segment (pure Creative Compassion), moves to the Leo zone (Compassion for the Self), Virgo (Recognition of Hubris), Libra (Compassion for Other), and so on.  The Scorpio through Pisces zones of Cancer are about Understanding Compassion (Scorpio), Releasing Attachment (Sadge), Balancing Self-Care with Compassion for Other (Capricorn), Codifying Compassion (Aqua), and Opening the Heart (Pisces).

Starting June 26, we walk through this process backwards, starting with Opening the Heart (Pisces), then moving on to rewriting the “rules” for what Compassion is and isn’t (Aqua), and so on.  As you can imagine, a Retrograde period is an intense learning experience, as we, for instance, have to rewrite our conceptualizations about Compassion three times.  Keep in mind that this is Mercury – Intellectuality, Communication, and Trickster Magic.  So in the Pisces zone of Cancer we’re reviewing how our thoughts and words, and unseen Intentions and Prayers and Wishes, influence the way we nurture ourselves and others, and to what degree we do.

So all in all this Review, starting June 9, then backward till July 21, then forward again through August 8, is about how our thoughts and words put Compassion into our day-to-day lives, and impact other people.

Now that we understand Orb and Sensitivity, we can make sense of the fact that one degree of Orb around a Mercury Station lasts about a week prior to the Station, and half a week after the Station.  In other words, we spend one and a half of the eight weeks exploring the degree of the Retrograde Station, and one and a half weeks exploring the degree of the Direct Station – and the other five weeks reviewing the space in between.

Tomorrow’s Retro Station occurs at 24 Cancer, “A woman and two men castaways on a small island of the South Seas.”  While the span of the Retrogradation covers Scorpio through Pisces, the Station degree itself is actually within the Aries zone of Cancer – in the Aries zone we open to Accepting an entirely new way to live and express Compassion.  It’s not something we do, it’s something we Accept or Resist, though of course Resistance is futile.  So on balance, it sounds like we’re getting Conscious about how Competition and Manipulation impact our ability to be Compassionate and Collaborative.

The Wide Septile Yod

We first encountered the Wide Septile Yod in Midsummer Night’s Portal.  This “Yod” is still here, and dominates the Mercury Station chart, as all three of its corners are involved in the Big Configurations of the day.

• One corner is the Mercury Station itself, tightly Square to Eris.
• A second corner is Saturn, which is also a corner of the Grand Trine with Neptune and Sun-Lilith.
• The third corner is Moon-Juno, which is still the apex of a T-Square with the Nodes.

The tight Square from Mercury to Eris (confronting Denial) means that the Mercury Retro period will be bringing a good quantity of the clandestine into the light of day.  This revelation will feed the Septile Yod, which is about Occult Power.  In other words, expect the revealed information to have impact far beyond how it appears.

Saturn is tails when Jupiter is heads – as Jupiter represents Expansion, Saturn symbolizes Contraction.  But not in any negative sense – Saturn means Focus Your Attention on the First Priority, just as Cancer reigns in Gemini’s intellectual wanderlust.  While the Grand Trine (using three degrees of Orb) includes Neptune (Spiritual Clarity) and Sun-Lilith (pre-intellectual Instincts) along with Saturn (Focus), Jupiter is within five degrees of its impending Trine to Saturn, and Jupiter Trine Saturn means that Expansion and Contraction work together (contradiction occurs only in the Mind, not in Reality), Gracefully.  What’s the Jupiter-Saturn Coin?  Growth in Social Consciousness.

At the moment when Mercury is Stationary, the Moon is only a fourth of a degree shy of being Initiated by Juno.  Juno’s ongoing T-Square with the Nodes implies that our Unconscious Identity (Juno), through no overt action of our own, is shifting in such a way to bring us into clarity about our Karma and our Mission (the Nodes).  The Moon is a trigger-finger.  In other words, this Mercury Station could be a major Tipping Point for our adventures in Consciousness.

So the Septile “Yod” (Occult Power) unifies all three of the Big Events that are on tap astrologically – our

• Consciousness Growth and Activation of our Mission (Moon-Juno T-Square),
• The effortlessness (Grand Trine) of our Focus (Saturn) on Collaboration (Sun-Lilith-Jupiter) and Spirit (Neptune), and
• Revelation of hidden Manipulation and Competition (Mercury Stationary Square to Eris)

Such a unification could represent a great leap forward, personally, culturally, and Planetarily.

And Beyond

From June 28 till August 2, Mars steps Out of Bounds.  A planet has a stronger impact when it’s Out of Bounds (beyond the Tropic of Cancer or Capricorn, in this case the Tropic of Cancer).  Mars represents Action.  While it’s Out of Bounds it traverses 21 Gemini to 14 Cancer – once again emphasis on the transition from hunting broadly for new Ideas, to focusing on Nurturance.  For a week or so around July 20, Mars joins Lilith and Jupiter in the Saturn-Neptune Grand Trine.  That will be very dynamic.  We should see major changes happening in our Lives and in the World in mid-July.

Saturn, Lord of our Grand Trine, takes its own Station on July 7, turning Direct at 5 degrees of Scorpio, “A massive rocky shore resists the pounding of the Sea.”  Just to provide another lesson in Orb and Sensitivity, as we write this, Saturn is only seven arcminutes (less than one eighth of one degree) from the location of its Station.  Which is to say, Saturn is really Stationary (very Strong) as we speak.   Saturn has been within one degree of its Station since June 2.  If you’re wondering why you’ve been feeling like you need to Focus on The Most Important Thing (or figure out what that is!), this is why!

So the Saturn Station is Septile to the Mercury Station, meaning that getting Conscious about how Competition and Manipulation impact our ability to be Compassionate and Collaborative (Mercury) and Focusing on what will withstand the assault of extreme Emotion (Saturn) reinforce one another in unseen ways that are more powerful than we know.

Uvarovite

Love the name, Uvarovite!  Garnet isn’t a Mineral, it’s a fairly large family of Minerals.  Uvarovite fills up one branch of the Garnet family, the Calcium-Chromium branch.  It’s not only a Heart-Opening Mineral, but a Crystal that invites Magic.  It’s a yang version of Dioptase, the favored Crystal of the Faerie Kingdom.  Like Chiron and Miracles, Magic is just action that we don’t understand.  The less Conscious we are, the more we have to disallow Magic because we don’t know how it works.  Much Magic and Miracle occur in Dimensions that Muggles Deny the existence of.  Just because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Midsummer Night’s Portal

Or, of course, Midwinter Night’s Portal if you’re upside down.  Same diff, just a little less Puckish.

The Solstice Portal

The Solstice horoscope features four prominent and tightly related features…

• Juno Square to the Nodes – Huge changes in our Unconscious Identity.  Old news, we been doing it for a while – except that now Juno has gone Retro.

• Mercury Conjunct Venus and Venus Conjunct Vesta – Potential for serious personal Integration.

• A wide Septile “Yod” – Lots of Magic afoot.

• Several days without a Grand Trine! – We’ve been Grand Trined for most of 2013, and we’ll continue to be through October.  But here we have a few days without.

The Solstice horoscope to some extent describes the year to follow, but most immediately, we’ve got a 3-day Portal defined by these four basically-simultaneous features.

Juno Retrograde

Turns out Juno went Retrograde when I wasn’t looking, on June 14.  We’ve been talking about Juno (Unconscious Identity) for a while now, since it’s been T-Squaring (Mastery through Challenge) the Nodes (our Karma and Mission) since early May.  Because the timing was so close to Chiron’s June 16 Station, and since it’s oxymoronic to name what’s Unconscious, we’ll consider Juno’s Backwardation as an embellishment to the Chiron Retrogradation.

One way to get a handle on the Unconscious is to Pay Attention.  Those Hidden Patterns are identifiable if you’re willing to look for them, or ask your friends to help.  One warning – don’t accept the temptation to richochet!  When you see a self-sabotaging Pattern, don’t suddenly try to switch to its opposite or avoid repeating it – by avoiding it you never leave the Coin.  Shift it by 10% – watch it while it repeats, but chop 10% out of the middle.  Repeat the Pattern but leave out a step.  Repeat the Pattern with a different Attitude.  Play with it – it has a great deal to teach you!

Mercury-Venus-Vesta

Every once in a while Mercury (Ideals) and Venus (Values) Conjoin, giving us an opportunity to align our Thoughts with our Emotions.  The two aren’t independent, but they sure can get out of whack with one another.  This one occurs just two hours prior to the Solstice, which more or less makes the whole next year such an opportunity.  Be kind to yourself when you notice what an idiot you seem to have been as you discover the places where your Head and Heart misalign.  Well, a lot of folks put Thought into the Third Chakra (which makes more sense) rather than the Sixth, so that would be where your Solar Plexus and Heart misalign.  That has a lot of implications for Power.

Mercury turns Retrograde (on June 26) before it gets to Vesta, but Venus goes on to get Initiated by Vesta on June 22 – close enough that it’ll stretch this Portal into a three-day window.  Venus-Vesta is about aligning the Fourth and Seventh Chakras – the Heart and the Crown, pretty bottom-line spiritually – and that makes the Solstice and year about aligning all three Chakras.  The Initiation occurs at 24 Cancer, “A woman and two men castaways on a small island in the South Seas.”  Doesn’t that sound like trouble!  On the other hand, we’re likely to find out who’s really in charge, eh?

Plus, we’ll have five or six weeks to think it over, as Mercury reviews much of the second half of Cancer.  That’s basically about how we Nurture our Community, and fine-tuning our Attitude so the Energy Exchange is Equal, and we’re neither giving ourselves away, nor holding back.  Both Mercury and Venus have come back In Bounds, so they aren’t as Strong as they were for much of the prior month.

The Wide Septile Yod

It’s actually closer to a T-Square or a Grand Trine in appearance, as this Triangle is made up of two Biseptiles and one Triseptile.  Septiles and other Seventh Harmonic Angles like these are about Occult Power.  The players are quite fascinating – Juno, Mercury-Venus-Vesta, and Saturn.  Well, didn’t we say that one of the best ways to grow Consciousness (Juno) is to Pay Attention! (Saturn), and of course our Unconscious Identity is going to be transformed bigtime when we align Head and Heart and Hearth!  What might that look like, this Occult Power?

As a tyke I drove my father crazy with my constant questions, and one of his habitual answers to my “How do you do that?” was “You have to hold your mouth right.”  And yes, he did occasionally play the harmonica.  But the subtler message is that everything depends on your attitude.  You can repeat one of those newly-recognized Unconscious Patterns using your habitual attitude (what, Anger? Fear? Expectation of Rejection?), or you can walk through it with a different Heartset – maybe Love, or Excitement, or No Expectations).  That’ll certainly inject some Chironian Magic into the situation – Occult just means “hidden” after all.

Grand Trinelessness

It’s only for a few days, but this’ll give us a chance to appreciate how the Grand Trines we’ve been living under are a great Gift, rather than taking them for granted as we’d be otherwise wont to do.  By the time Venus crosses Vesta, the Sun and Lilith will have moved into a new Grand Trine with Saturn and Neptune, and we’ll be back under Grace.  But for these few days we’re on our own.  The Grand Trines went away around June 17 – what in your Life has changed for the worse since then?  Not to worry, they’ll be back by June 23, until October.

You’ve probably noticed that the World has changed.  Sure, Syria is smelling more and more like the Spanish Civil War, but don’t bet on it.  A lot of people haven’t noticed, and they’re going to keep on with the Same Old Same Old, till the Shift hits their fan and they find that their old Power-Over games don’t work any more.

Labradorite

Nothing like the Feldspars, Laboradorite in particular, to illustrate how what you perceive depends on the Angle you’re looking from.  In this Feldspar, the Crystalline units (they aren’t Molecules, but they’re sort of like Molecules in that they’re ordered configurations of Atoms – but rather than being a coherent chemical actor like a Molecule, they’re building blocks, like Legos, that knit together to make Crystals) don’t quite get enough heat and pressure to mix fully, so there are microscopic layers in the Stone, like a Mica (which it’s not).  From some Angles you can see through the top layers into the layers below, which can appear as iridescence.

As the Buddhists would say, Change Your Mind – but in this case we’re Changing our Mind to align with our Heart, and Changing both to align with our individual Sense of the Sacrosanct.

Revelation

Now this is interesting timing on an interesting perspective on the Chiron Coin…

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-real-war-on-reality/

Notice the link (toward the end of the article) to the Greenwald-Snowden Hong Kong interview.

I smell Eris working here too, with her nose for ferreting out Denial.  In our Portal 6.16 catalog of Angles we missed the Ninth-Harmonic relationship between the Chiron Station and Eris.  The Ninth Harmonic is about Introspection and Wisdom, and their use to help bring us into Integrity.

Chiron at Work

Here’s a perfect example of Chiron at work.  Dichotomies – like Security and Privacy – freeze the mind.  They ask us to take sides and make a big noise.  But Reality is not dual, it’s Unitary and Multifarious.  As we said earlier, one of the great ways to escape from a cell with no exit is to empathize with the Self – You poor bugger, your mind is frozen!  But another great way to get from Despair to Miracle, which is Chiron’s modus operandi, is to just stop with the Dualities.  Let’s take Security and Privacy for an example.

Those are the heads and tails – what is the Coin?  In the real world, in a very real sense, my Privacy is my Security.  As rabid as all of the Fundamentalists – of one variety or another – have become in this century, Being Myself Out Loud is a very dangerous thing.  That’s why Uranus has to Square Pluto every once in a while, to pry us out of our shells!  But then, I was programmed to believe that it’s NOT OK to be myself.

Maybe it’s a good thing that 56% of folks in the US prefer Security to Privacy – maybe those are folks who were programmed to believe that it is okay to be themselves.  Uranus-Pluto won’t have as much work to do.  But Uranus-Pluto aside – again, what is the Coin?  For the 56% and the 44% both.  Privacy was not designed into government so you could be a criminal without getting caught.  Privacy was designed in so you could be Opposition without getting disappeared.  Privacy recognizes the tendency of Power to Corrupt.  Privacy has become a luxury for the People, but Privacy – Secrecy – has become a necessity for government?  So much for accountability.

One bottom line must be Fear.  Why do I need Privacy – what am I afraid might happen if I’m seen?  And why do I need Security – what am I afraid will happen?  If you’re grounded (imagine a cable running from the base of your spine to the center of the Earth), is either Privacy or Security an issue?  The Coin could be different for each of us.

Lawrence Lessig is the founder of the Creative Commons – a prepackaged set of legal documents that allow you to specify the level of Privacy and Security you want for Intellectual Property that you create, without having attorneys on retainer.  Whether you want to give it away outright, get paid anytime anyone uses it, get paid only when someone else uses it for financial gain, etc.  He has an excellent nose for the Coin…

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-big-brother%E2%80%99s-prying-eyes/

You can spend the rest of your life battling with Dichotomies on the Despair side of Chiron, the supposed Unhealable Healer.  Or you can choose to stop with the heads and tails and start looking for the Coins.  Chiron dances between Saturn and Uranus – between Ego and Soul.  Ego wrestles with Decisions, Uranus just follows Guidance.

Mercury is half-way into the first phase of it’s triple review of the last third of the Zodiac, as seen through the eyes of Cancer.

Which is to say, if you’re keeping score, in ten days Mercury will begin to Retrograde across the Pisces through Sagittarius Dwads of Cancer.  A Dwad is one twelfth of a Sign.

When we’re stuck on a Dichotomy, there’s an excellent chance that Mercury is involved, as those are the sorts of Dramas that Mercury loves.  Cancer is about Nurturance – You Poor Baby, you’re impaled on a Dichotomy!  And the last third of the Zodiac is about Finishing Business, about allowing evolution and its Tripping Points to make its mark.

Portal 6.16

Another fabulous portrait of the Milky Way Galaxy, this one by Miguel Claro, taken in dawning light.

Our next Big Adventure is already well underway, gradually building to a peak at 2am PDT on June 16th.   Chiron stops dead in its tracks at 14 of Pisces, then meanders backwards till mid-November.  It backs over the Cancer portion of Pisces, which means it just crossed the same portion, and it will again between mid-November and mid-March of next year.  When a planet does something in triplicate, it’s asking us to Pay Attention.  First, what do we know about Chiron?  And second, what do we know about the Cancer portion of Pisces?  That should be informative.

Chiron symbolizes Despair and Miracles.  There are places we can go, emotionally and intellectually, where there is no exit.  Pisces is pretty good at discovering these places, since Pisces’s job is to root them out and heal them.  If we need something that doesn’t exist in these places, we can only Despair that our needs will never get met.  Till we figure out a way to find the secret tunnel that leads out of the Labyrinth.  In some of those places – such as Blame or Fear – the secret tunnel can be almost impossible to locate.

If we do Pisces “right,” we spend the first several degrees wallowing in self-pity about how we’ve been dealt a bum hand.  For Chiron, that was April to July 2010 and February to March 2011.  Not the beginning of the Derivative Depression, but about the time when it became obvious that this was no routine recession.  One of the most reliable ways to move from Despair to Miracle is self-empathy.  There’s a subtle difference between telling ourself Poor Me! and telling ourself You Poor Guy! (or Gal!).  The critical difference is who’s talking.

In Despair, in Poor Me!, our Identity sits in the dumps.  In Empathy, in You Poor Guy!, our Identity sits outside, looking back at ourself in the dumps.  That’s the secret tunnel, moving the locus of our Identity, changing our Perspective.  If we had started with You Poor Guy! in 2010-2011, by now we’d have seen a number of opportunities for rebirthing ourselves, chosen one or a few of them, and started developing them.  At this stage they’ve become semi-independent, and we’re nurturing them.  We’re telling them You Poor Baby! when they encounter difficulty.

If we missed the initial Pisces Wallow, we now have the opportunity to make up for it – by saying You Poor Baby! to ourselves.  We become the project that we’re nurturing.  Folks who follow the Abrahams too literally miss the power of self-empathy, while Tapping puts it to work very powerfully.  Tapping is very good at tunneling us out of Fear – once we learn to recognize Fear in our body.  I’ve never tried Tapping on Blame – that would be an interesting experiment.

At this Station Chiron triggers an unusually large number of Angles…

• It makes a Third-Harmonic Angle to Venus and the North Node.  This is fabulous, as it feeds Grace to our Mission.  Be on the lookout for any place where you feel conflicted about your Values – those are the very places where you can invite Grace in.  The process is simple – “Goddess, please bathe this conflict with Grace” – then Change the Subject.
• It makes a Fourth-Harmonic Angle to Mars and Pallas, giving us the opportunity to discern any habits we have of applying too much Energy or too little Energy – or the wrong kind of Energy – to recurring disruptions in our lives.  The opportunity to discern how we unconsciously collaborate in failing to find the secret tunnel out of Despair.
• It makes a Fifth-Harmonic Angle to Jupiter and the Sun.  This is powerful, though when Learning situations like this first arise we’re likely to feel “Oh no not this again.”  Watch for that sensation, and empathize with it – Oh, you Poor Baby, you feel like Ohnonotthisagain!  You’ll be surprised how quickly you learn, and how liberating it will be.
• Chiron makes Sixth-Harmonic Angles to the South Node and to Pluto.  This is fortunate indeed, as it implies we’ll not only be stumbling into our most persistent habitual Despair places, but that we’ll be surprised at how easy it will be to find the secret tunnel!  And the Changes will be permanent.
• It makes a Seventh-Harmonic Angle to Ceres, which will open our Intuition to places where our Life Energy is wasted by trying to keep unsustainable projects alive, and by striving for what we don’t need.
• It makes a Twelfth-Harmonic Angle to Uranus.  Again, this is a Gift, as the Twelfth Harmonic is about discerning self-sabotage patterns, and Uranus connects us to our Soul Self.  This Angle is potentially Life-Changing.
• Finally, it makes a Fifteenth-Harmonic Angle to Juno, promising changes to our unexamined sense of who we are and what we are capable of doing and experiencing, that will allow us to Follow our Joy with less Resistance.

By the time a planet goes Retrograde, it’s already crossed the area of emphasis.  So it’s not like we’re in for big surprises – what we’re in for is a constructive reworking of all the places in our lives where we’ve found disharmony over the last four months.  It’s exciting, actually.  Think back over the span since late February – what issues have been lit up for you?  Those are precisely the issues that you’re likely to find resolved over the next nine months!  Exciting, eh?  Miracles are afoot!

I hope you’re noticing the Tipping Points that are occurring – see if you can set aside your cynicism about how it’ll all go back to Normal when the heat dies down.  Stay open to the possibility that Normal has changed.  Do notice how the usual line of dichotomy has bent toward the circular, as the far right and the far left merge in their reaction to Big Bro.  That’s a very good sign, as it means that Duality is breaking down.  It could even be replaced by some semblance of Reality!

Here’s a Tipping Point that’s still teetering and could use a little shove…

http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob382.html

This one’s actually probably more important to our evolution than either privacy or security.

Just More Tripping Points

Or was that Tipping Points.  Not  much new in this morning’s New Moon, just the same old same old –

• Uranus T-Square with Pluto and now Mercury – which should be good for becoming Aware (Mercury) of how we betray ourselves (Uranus-Pluto).
• Juno T-Square with the Nodes – this is a long-running Configuration, as Juno turns Retro just as it’s about to leave the T-Square.  It’s also about (becoming Aware of) self-betrayal, but from a completely different angle.  Uranus has to do with Soul Integrity, while the Nodes have to do with our Life Purpose.  Same diff, but astrologically they’re independent actors.
• The North Node remains in a Grand Trine with Chiron and Vesta – this is Grace flowing toward our Mission, aided by Miracles and our Heart’s Truth.  If you run into any Despair, know it’s only there to be embraced and cleared.
• Venus now completes a second Grand Trine, with Saturn and Neptune.  Keep your Focus (Saturn) on Spirit (Neptune) rather than Matter, and what was difficult should become easy.  Walk in Beauty, but with humility; this Energy is a gift.
• Mars is still Conjunct Pallas, as it was in Portal 6.07.

Mercury, Venus, and Vesta are all Out of Bounds (Strong), emphasizing the gifts of Awareness and Clarity.   With both Vesta (what we hold Sacred) and Venus (what we Value) in Grand Trines (Grace), this is a fabulous time to learn to permanently access your Guidance.

The deck is shuffled mid-week, as Venus replaces Mercury in the Uranus T-Square.  An opportunity, using our new-found Awareness, to bring our Values into alignment with our Soul’s Purpose in the Lifetime.

The next Big Deal is a week away, as Chiron Stations Retrograde on June 16.  More to follow on this adventure.  JoAnn sends an example of another Tipping Point – Peak Bullshit…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHl80Wmpj40

Let’s hope he’s right!.

Portal 6.07

What a gorgeous Michael Underwood photo of the rest of our Galaxy!

By now most all of us should be feeling the Neptune Station.  It occurs at half-past 1am PDT on Friday (June 7), but the ancillary events run all day…

• the Moon Squares Neptune while crossing Mars at 7am PDT,
• Pallas Initiates Mars at 2pm PDT, and
• Mars and Pallas Square Neptune at 5pm PDT.

The Pallas-Mars Initiation happens within four arcminutes of the Square to Neptune, and both Pallas and Mars are still within the same arcminute when they exactly Square Neptune.  All three Squares to Neptune are Waxing, Gemini to Pisces.  It’s rare to have this degree of exactitude and coincidence, so we can expect it to be a Big Day.

The Meaning?  We’ll get to the details, but

It wouldn’t hurt to expect healthy Anger to erupt.  Your own, and that of others.  Don’t be surprised if you’re unsure of the trigger, let alone the cause.

They’re obviously feeling it in Turkey.  If you were programmed to believe that there’s no such thing as healthy Anger, then this is a great learning opportunity for you.

For the rest of us it’s about getting into the Present Time and differentiating Triggers from Causes. 

If we’re unaware that we’re angry about some repressed event from our childhood or some unreleased Karma from “past” lives, then we get mad whenever something reminds us of the Cause.  It’s a major contributor to Blame mentality and the resulting Scapegoating.

Let’s start with the Initiations; they’re at Gemini 6, “Workmen drilling for oil,” which Rudhyar hears as “The avidity for knowledge which ensures wealth and power.”  There’s an obvious Edge between service, avarice, and sustainability.  Oil to fire Vesta’s Hearth and provide Light.  Gainful employment and useful Work.  Exploitation of the Commons, almost certainly for private gain.  Likely degradation of the Planet.  It’s a busy symbol.

Mars is one of the Initiates here, and the Actor, the Workmen.  Mars the God of War – since WWI oil has been considered essential for fueling the hardware of War; witness the younger Bush’s Iraqi debacle.  With Neptune as Confusion, we need to see what Energy is becoming permanent, as that’s what happens at a Waxing Square.  The current Mars-Neptune Cycle began in early February at Pisces 3, “Petrified tree trunks lie broken on desert sand” or, per Rudhyar, “The power to preserve records of their achievements which is inherent in mature cultures.”  Hmmm.

I think I’d be more likely to see that symbol in terms of the inevitable failure of all cultures, and their eventual return to dust.  Trees are only petrified when they’re buried by lava or permanent flooding.  Social breakdown has certainly been a common theme this year.  The Moon-Neptune Cycle, which runs only a month, initiated May 31 (Moore OK Day) at 6 Pisces, the same degree as Neptune’s Station, “A parade of army officers in full dress,” which Rudhyar extols as “service to community” and community support.  Us pacifists have a different take, but it’s great that the officers are parading in their Sunday best rather than shooting holes in one another.

What jumps out at me is the high degree of organization and obeisance, as such parades are tightly choreographed.  What about the Pallas-Neptune Cycle?  Neptune last Initiated Pallas in mid-February of 2012, at Pisces 1, “In a crowded marketplace farmers and middlemen display a great variety of products.”  Rudhyar speaks of “healthy community.”  Pallas is constructive here, as Pallas was the Goddess of War, but also the Goddess of Wisdom.  Mars shoots first, Pallas asks questions first.  We think of Pallas as Boundaries.  Elizabeth sees her as Discerning Patterns, certainly an important part of Wisdom.

We can draw the hierarchy…

• Neptune Stationing Retrograde as parading army officers
• Pallas Initiating Mars, drilling for oil
• Pallas Squaring Neptune in a crowded marketplace
• Mars Squaring Neptune in a desertified petrified forest
• The Moon Squaring Neptune on the parade ground
• Pallas and Mars Initiating the Moon while drilling for oil

You can see how the simultaneity amps up the Energy, as the interaction terms multiply.

One more ingredient before we knead the dough – what’s Neptune up to in this Station?  Neptune symbolizes the Cultural Unconscious; it’s Neptune Energy that ties a culture, a community, a People, into an ineffable sense of Belonging and Ownership.  Neptune entered the second Dwad of Pisces in early February 2013, just after it Initiated Mars, and just as Chiron was Initiating Mars.  The Chiron-Neptune Cycle should remain high in our Attention, as it symbolizes the New Paradigm that we’re Co-Creating.

Neptune Retrogrades over 6 to 3 degrees of Pisces.  This is the Aries Dwad of Pisces (a Dwad is one twelfth of a Sign, or two and a half degrees).  Pisces is about Unfinished Business.  As the last Sign, it’s not the Oscars, it’s the inevitable letdown at the end of a project, sweeping the floor after the award ceremony.  No lack of respect here – it takes great skill to execute this stage of the Loop gracefully.  The first Dwad of Pisces is about wallowing in it.  Again, no lack of respect – Grief is a legitimate and necessary process, and it does not proceed without first the wallowing.

So the second Dwad, the Aries Dwad, is about conceiving the possibility of Transcendence.  There’s still much hard work ahead, but at this point we get a premonition of our possible destination, the bright Halls that await us once we finish processing our Destiny.  Destiny is Karmic – till we let it go.  Then it evolves into Creativity.  This is the stage when we begin to see what might be possible on the other end of the journey, the stage where we receive Inspiration.  The stage when we allow ourselves to Dream.  In that context, let’s look at the hierarchy again…

• Neptune Stationing Retrograde as parading army officers
• Pallas Initiating Mars, drilling for oil
• Pallas Squaring Neptune in a crowded marketplace
• Mars Squaring Neptune in a desertified petrified forest
• The Moon Squaring Neptune on the parade ground
• Pallas and Mars Initiating the Moon while drilling for oil

So we’re searching for motivation (drilling for oil), beginning to organize (the parading officers), determined to survive and seeking the wisdom of past failures (the petrified forest), and seeking community (the crowded marketplace), as we prepare to review our objectives.  We’ve brainstormed our list and drafted a rough sketch of where we want to be (while Neptune first crossed the Aries Dwad), and now we’re ready (as Neptune Retros over the same territory) to go back over our manifesto and assign priorities, flesh out details, fill in colors, envision strategies, and determine dependencies and timelines.

All conceptual of course, as this is Neptune and this is Pisces, and this is only the second Dwad.  It’s still a Dream.  But we’re beginning to give the Dream enough substance that it can be our template for motivation.  In Pisces our work is Emotional, not engineering, so we’re ruminating more than taking pencil to paper or hammer to nail.  Remember that Emotion is the Glue that molds and holds Matter into Form.  Without Emotional Commitment we Create nothing.  Emotion is the papier-mache that we’re plastering onto the stick-figure outline of our Dream.

We consider and reconsider how we want to develop the details until Neptune goes direct in mid-November, then we polish it and dot the T’s till next March, when we move into the Taurus Dwad and get serious about construction.  But still, this is Pisces.  We’re a long ways from wood and clay.  We’re building our Emotional Vessel, a blueprint not for how it should look when it’s done, but how we want it to feel.  And much of that building is sculpture – we subtract what we don’t want more than adding what we do want.  Negative Emotions, in other words.  So-called Negative Emotions.

Michelangelo didn’t patch David together from gobs of clay, he hewed away the unwanted bits from a block of solid Marble.  That’s the spiritual equivalent of what we generally consider to be “negative” Emotions – Grief, Fear, Shame – and Anger.  Healthy Anger, grounded in Present Time, sets good Boundaries.  Like this example from the Constitution of the State of Montana, quoted from Paul Cienfuegos’s talk on Ending Corporate Rule…

“All political power is vested in and derived from the people.  All government of right originates with the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole.  The people have the exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent state.  They may alter or abolish the Constitution and form of government whenever they deem it necessary.”

Or Arundati Roy…

“The news item was brief and buried in the back pages: ‘India: Maoists Ambush Patrol, Killing 7 Soldiers.  Thousands of people have been killed in the past decade in violence involving Maoists, who claim they represent India’s dispossessed, particularly indigenous tribal groups.’  You may wonder, What’s going on?  Isn’t India a democracy?  In India, the U.S. and other countries the actual functioning of democracy has largely been hollowed out.  Yes, there are elections and people vote but the nexus of decision-making power lies elsewhere.  Corporations dominate the political process.  With their fistful of dollars they are able to exact outcomes that benefit them.  As environmental destruction continues unabated we must reimagine a different world.  One in which people and the planet are more important than profits.”

Michelangelo started with a block of Marble that someone else had already started sculpting, so he had to adapt to sections that were already missing before he began.  So it is with us, as our “Past” Lives and repressed childhoods are as if hewn by someone else, not by our Ego but by the Unconscious.  Much of Pisces is about Soul Retrieval, getting back the parts of ourselves that were stolen by predators, and Soul Return, giving back the parts of others that we adopted as if our own, by Choice or by Programming.

But we aren’t quite done.  The Square from Mars-Pallas to Neptune is one side of a Pythagorean Triangle – a benefic Triangle composed of a Square, a Trine, and a Quincunx.  The Square provides motivation, the Trine Grace, and the Quincunx Curiosity, all complementing one another – you can’t find a better combination.  The third corner of the Triangle is Saturn, at 6 Scorpio.  Saturn, Mr. Pay Attention, will facilitate Pallas’s efforts to bring the Cultural Unconscious into the Present Moment, and into Consciousness.  Very handy.

Modern History

This is long, but it’s worth every minute…

http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/82001/bill-black-our-system-so-flawed-fraud-mathematically-guaranteed

It’s a blow-by-blow history of the rise of Fascism in the US over the last half-century, told by someone who has been intimately involved in the process, and now teaches law at a large state university in the US.  I don’t know what definition you learned in school, but in my high-school civics class, Fascism was defined as control of government by commercial interests.  A quarter-century ago, as a relatively naive young person, I worked for the same organization as Bill, and while I never met him (he worked in a different region of the US), he was well-known for his broad knowledge, enhanced perspective, and unimpeachable reputation.

Which brings us to this “higher” level.  There’s nothing new in here for seasoned “conspiracy theorist” types, but it’s interesting who’s talking and how they’re going about it…

http://thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/15473-world-bank-insider-blows-whistle-on-corruption-federal-reserve

We saw that the near-Earth asteroid 1998 QE2 was asking us to Pay Attention, while the primary Energies around have to do with increasing Consciousness.  You’d think Eris – with her reputation for calling out Denial – would be acting up with this kind of process occurring, but she hasn’t been making any major Angles lately.  So what is she doing?  She’s making a Biseptile (Shamanic or Hidden Power) to Pluto (the Inevitable), and a Quintile (Learning) to the Mercury-Venus corner (Conscious Awareness) of the Mercury/Venus-Saturn-Neptune Grand Trine (What say we define what’s Really going on here!?!) that’s forming to celebrate next week’s Neptune Station (Realigning Culture).

Meanwhile, long-term bond yields are rising, which is the primary signal that fiat currencies like the Dollar and Euro and Yen may be entering their End of Days.  As interest rates rise, tax revenue, diminished by lack of economic growth, no longer covers the interest on the monstrous pile of debt left over from the “Bail-Outs,” or gifts to the Banksters that Bill so eloquently describes.  The result is default, or failing to make payments on the debt.  When that happens there is a chain reaction because all of the Reptile banks and governments are duct-taped together in a giant reciprocal knot of derivatives, now many times larger than they were in the 2007-08 crisis.  The News could get a lot more in-teresting in the days and weeks ahead, in the worst Chinese-curse sense of the word.

Past the Ring

By the way, that near-Earth asteroid that’s passing today (Friday May 31), 1998 QE2, is Conjunct Saturn when it’s at it’s closest approach.  Whatever Energy it’s carrying, it’s clearly asking us to Pay Attention!  It’s about 20 Moon-distances from the Earth, so not a worry on the Apocalypse front.  I believe QE is just an ordinal (ie, between QD and QF), not short for Queen Elizabeth.

So Where Are We Now?

Now that we’re past the most current Ring-Pass-Not, or Through the Ringer if that fits better, shall we…

“slide into an alternate universe where every word has a new definition?”

Or shall we stretch our minds into new perspectives?  Or maybe both?

Having as many perspectives as possible is the Survival equivalent of biodiversity.  It’s dangerous to stretch the Limiting-Belief bars on our Worldview Birdcage, because our Birdcage not only helps us make sense of our Limitless Universe, it also keeps us feeling Safe.  While the feeling of Safety isn’t all we need to stay Safe, it is helpful, as a feeling of Unsafety can draw danger to us.  Like the molt of the Cancer Crab and the Scorpio Serpent, we’re vulnerable when we first demolish a Birdcage wall, till we get the foundation expanded and the new bars and roof in place.  It’s better to do this while Granny is home or Sylvester is otherwise engaged, just not always possible.

We still have four major astro-indications tickling the ivories –

• The Learning Opportunity about Our Mission,
• Reorientation of Our Unconscious Mission,
• Our Yintegrity Exercises, and
• Reorientation of Our Conscious Mission.

In case we’ve forgotten, Yintegrity means being Authentic with what we feel in each moment, as opposed to managing other people’s impressions of us or seeking (Consciously or Unconsciously) to meet other people’s expectations.  We’ve talked about all these indications before, but review won’t hurt.  Plus there’s one more new process coming on strong toward the end of next week –

• Cultural Realignment.

Let’s take them one by one…

1. The Learning Opportunity about Our Mission

We’re learning how our Soul Chord and our Mission are related, and we’re learning it in a Big way.

That is, the North-Node-focused Quintile Yod with Uranus and Jupiter, which endures through the first few days of June.  Mercury and Venus are joining Jupiter.  We can call a Quintile Yod a Learning Opportunity, with all of the positive and negative implications we usually associate with that phrase.  Uranus and Jupiter are about expanding our connection with our own Soul.  The North Node is the Treasure we seek at the end of the rainbow, aka our Mission in the Lifetime.  Mercury and Venus will make the process more available to our Consciousness, and both are Out of Bounds, which means, Strong.  In other words we’re…

Learning Big things that bring us more into alignment with our Purpose on the Planet.

A Quintile Yod can be irritating, as it may disrupt our routines.  If it does, surrender into the disruption – Resistance is futile.

2. Reorientation of Our Unconscious Mission

Just who the devil do we think we are?  Get an acquaintance to go around and ask all of your friends and enemies who you really are, and see what kind of book they write. 

This is Juno T-Squaring the Moon’s Nodes.  Note that the North Node of the previous indication is one of the Moon’s Nodes; these four indications are entangled.  A T-Square means Mastery through Challenge.  T-Squares rarely feel good, but there’s no better teacher, as we’re driven to keep trying and be creative.  Juno is our Unconscious Identity.  Often that’s about who we’re merged with (often Mom or Dad), without knowing it.  When we’re trying to live Mom’s life instead of our own, it can introduce all sorts of misalignments, especially when Mom may well have been merged with Grandma.

We could easily be out of synch by a couple of generations, and when we simultaneously act out past-life Karma, just plain living in the wrong century.  If we can get out of Blame long enough to notice a Pattern, we may be able to get Conscious enough to realign our life into the current century.  There are a lot of the people who seem to be living in the wrong century and Blaming others for it these days – let’s pray that they receive some Enlightenment from this astroEnergy and start becoming part of the solution instead of a big part of the problem.

One of the difficulties with acting from our Unconscious Identity – rather than acting from our Instincts or our Emotions or our Soul Connection or our Ideals or our Values or even our Ego – is self-sabotage and lack of Choice.  So any reorientation of our Unconscious Identity is a boon.  The third corner of the T-Square triangle is the Moon’s South Node.  While the North Node represents where we’re going, the South Node symbolizes where we’ve been.  Typically the South Node is a repertoire of Held Emotions, Unfinished Business, and old past-life Patterns.  And hidden beneath those Limitations are skills – everything we learned in those past lives – that we need to execute our Mission.  So basically this is about…

Getting Conscious about the Patterns that no longer serve us or the Planet, and developing alternatives that are more constructive to our Desires.

Our Desires being key signposts leading to our Mission.

3. Our Yintegrity Exercises

Getting caught in places where we are not aligned with our Soul’s Intention and what our Heart regards as Sacred.

You well know that we’re in the midst of Uranus Squaring Pluto, from 2012 to 2015 – return of the 1960s, I gotta be me, Don’t Tread on Me, and that sort of thing.  Pluto represents compulsory change of Trance, and Uranus a deeper connection to our Individual Soul.  And we have an Out of Bounds Vesta Opposing Pluto, making a T-Square focused on Uranus.  Vesta stands for that which we personally hold Sacred, so while the T-Square means Mastery through Challenge, the players are mutually reinforcing.

The Challenge arrives because Uranus disrupts old Patterns that are no longer constructive, and Patterns which no longer serve that which we hold Sacred.  Combined with the North Node-Uranus-Jupiter Quintile Yod, the North Node-Chiron-Vesta Grand Trine, and the Juno-Nodes T-Square…

In a few months we will hardly recognize ourselves – if we even remember who we used to be.

Expect a lot of Tipping Points, where long-simmering trends erupt into full-blown shifts in Consciousness – like the recent wholesale collapse of sanctified homophobia in the USofA.

4. Reorientation of Our Conscious Mission

Grace flows when we PIAVA Miracles to heal dysfunction in our lives.

The Grand Trine between the North Node, Chiron, and Vesta-ISON persists.  In addition, since April 9 (several days before the Boston Marathon), Vesta has been Out of Bounds, or Stronger than usual.  It’s Out of Bounds until June 13.  Vesta symbolizes that which we hold Sacred, Chiron stands for converting Despair into Miracles by changing the underlying Paradigm, and ISON is way too new to be well-defined, but one justifiable representation could be reaching for the Stars, or stealing Fire.  That’s certainly a game-changer worthy of a Waxing Vesta-Chiron Trine.

We’ll have to write more about that.  Just as a hypothetical, assuming the Out of Bounds Vesta is heightening the conflict between the various shades of Fundamentalism (which means taking your metaphors literally) that run feral on the Planet, what if the underlying Paradigms of the perennial combatants changed to

Whoa, that’s a mirror!

What an epiphany that would be.  The downside of a Grand Trine is the ease with which Grace can be confused with Confidence.  The Ego is so hungry for validation that it easily mistakes every example of Grace for its own cleverness.  I’ve actually met folks who believe that Wealth is the measure of Spiritual progress!  Can you believe that!?!

5. Cultural Realignment

Hmmm, I guess I was wrong about that!

As if it’s not enough for the Collective Consciousness to be shifting one individual Consciousness at a time, next Friday (June 7) Neptune Stands Still and turns Retrograde.  When a planet Stations (Stands Still), its Energy is at its Strongest.  We’ll write more about all this as we get closer to the portal, but Neptune represents the Cultural layer of the Collective Unconscious.  It’s not cumulative, it’s exogenous to the individual, an Energy in its own right.  Like Pluto (the Universal Unconscious or Planetary Consciousness), we as individuals don’t Co-Create it, we experience it as an Energy approaching us from outside of ourselves.

For instance, the global clash between “conservative” and “progressive” Worldviews isn’t just a clash of individual Values, it’s a confrontation between two autonomous Cultural Energies.  The point is that both Energies are obsolete as we enter the Age of Aquarius.  Aborning Energies are usually invisible to all except those sensitive to them, as they don’t fit into the preconception of the prior Ages’ Muggles.  It’s the keening of dying Energies that scream in the headlines.

Neptune symbolizes Confusion when seeing the World through Material Eyes, and Clarity when looking through Spiritual Eyes.  Confusion, recall, is the first step in personal Growth.  Confusion results when one of the bars of our Birdcage comes loose, and information leaks in that we would otherwise reject as incompatible with our preconceptions.  It means we need to surrender to the inevitable search for broader perspectives, and the sooner the better.  Meanwhile, Pallas Initiates Mars (with the Moon close by) on the same day, closely Square to the Stationary Neptune.  Lots to write about there.

All Together Now…

When we line up these five different Energies side by side, the picture they paint is remarkably consistent – it’s all about Humanity starting to “grow up” a little, in the sense of no longer hitting back, and beginning to treat Other as worthy of some respect.

You don’t find Five-Symmetry in the Stone World, you have to talk to the Plants, like this ready-to-be-realigned Rock Rose, or an Apple.  The Fifth Harmonic is about Learning, so maybe that’s why the Stone World is so stable.  It’s not an accident that the Serpent gave an Apple to Adam’s second choice, and not a Cherimoya – which would have been much more appropriate.