Another Cusp Event

The “Square,”¹ which is astrologuese for Hassle or Challenge, gives us headaches because it attempts to join two parts of ourself that are in Fierce Competition – our Physicality v. our Spirituality v. our Emotionality v. our Mentality² – which aren’t likely to want to Compromise. It’s like the Heart and the Brain arguing over who’s More Important, when in walks the Anus.

On the other hand, the “Trine,”³ astrojargon for Sympathy and Understanding, Harmony and Trust Abounding, contributes to our Joy and Ease and Confidence because it links different parts of ourself that Love to Rock Out Together when they Team Up – like our Creativity, our Certainty, and our Evolution.⁴ Imagine our Dancer joining our Musician, our Writer collaborating with our Illustrator, our Artist enjoying Critical Acclaim and Financial Success.

When planets linger on Cusps, these traditional Relationships get crossed up. For instance, instead of our Creative Spirituality happily Dancing with our Evolutionary Spirituality, we might have our Creative Spirituality Dancing clumsily with our Emotional Certainty, where we might find (and Examine or Deny) our Bigotry.⁵ Or the Confusion of our Emotional Certainty encountering our Physical Evolution (Remember in our youth when we didn’t want anything to do with the Opposite Gender, till Puberty kicked in?) instead of the routine Challenges of the little Demons and Angels on our shoulders juggling our Emotional Certainty with our Spiritual Certainty.⁶

¹ Shown in our charts by a short red line between planets three Signs apart.

² Respectively, Earth, Fire, Water, Air Signs [Matter, Spirit, Emotion, Thought] – eg Leo 🥊 Scorpio 🥊 Aquarius 🥊 Taurus, or Capricorn 🥊 Aries 🥊 Cancer 🥊 Libra, or Virgo 🥊 Sagittarius 🥊 Pisces 🥊 Gemini.

³ Shown as long blue lines between planets four Signs apart.

⁴ Respectively, Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable Signs [Creative, Stable, Changing] – eg. Aries ❤️ Leo ❤️ Sagittarius, Taurus ❤️ Virgo ❤️ Capricorn, Gemini ❤️ Libra ❤️ Aquarius, Cancer ❤️ Scorpio ❤️ Pisces.

⁵ Instead of early Aries to early Sagittarius, early Aries Trine to late Scorpio.

⁶ Late Scorpio Square to early Virgo, instead of late Scorpio to late Leo.

In addition, Cusps are by their nature times of Change, so in addition to the potential Confusion created by these crossovers, we don’t have our History or Herstory to fall back on.

For instance, in the 30 August 2021 Converting Fear to Power chart, Fear Challenges and/or is Challenged by both Trust and Domination. The Trust Challenge is a “Traditional” Challenge – the Material Certainty of Fear (we can Feel it in our Physical Bodies) versus the Spiritual Certainty of Trust. It’s about finding a Balance between Fear and Trust that works to keep us out of Fight/Flight/Freeze and allows us to Differentiate “Real” from Karmic Threats and Act Effectively in Response to each, parrying the Real and Becoming Conscious of the Karmic. But the Challenge of Domination is different. It’s about Physical Stability versus Physical Evolution – it’s about Fear of Change. Do we know what makes the Karmic Real? Do we know what can make the Real Karmic? ⁷

That’s not all. The Merging of Trust and Domination is also Cuspal. The Trust issue is about Self-Trust. We’d been working since early June on Trusting that our Ego can Handle the Changes, as part of Healing our Unconditional Self-Love. We were in the final stages of that process when Fear Tested us. The Domination issue is about Change. Change in our Willingness to be Dominated or Abused, and Change in our use of Domination (Abuse) in our approach to Getting Our Needs Met. We just started that three-year project, so we’re in the early stages of Discovering the Unknown Unknowns that we need to work on.⁸

⁷ In the Sedna [Fear to Power] Station chart, Sedna at the end of Taurus [Fixed Earth] is Squared by both asteroid Eurydike [Trust] at the end of Leo [Fixed Fire] and dwarf planet Thereus [Domination] in early Virgo [Mutable Earth].

⁸ Eurydike in Leo [Self-Trust] since early June, through 6 September 2021. Thereus in Virgo from early August 2021 through September 2024.

So if we maxed our Benefit from this Challenge (one of many) in the 30 August Fear-Power Curriculum, we were perhaps Discovering where Domination – Bullying or Codependence – fit into our Multidimensional and Unitary Karmic jigsaw puzzle. Are we Creating new Karma or Deepening old Karma through Repetition of Unconscious (or Semi-Conscious and Uncorrected) Domination or Codependence Patterns, and does that Frighten us, or maybe should it Frighten us? Are we Trusting too much that the Victims of our Domination Patterns aren’t hiding Conscious or Unconscious Resentment? Might our Codependence partners Resent our depending on them for Psychological or other “Services” that we should be handling ourself?

What’s the nature of our Karmic Contracts with these “Partners”? As the Planet Descends further into Disorder on way too many fronts all at once, how will this impact our Relationships with and within the Communities we’ll Need for Survival?⁹

⁹ A new five-year Eurydike-Thereus [Trust-Equality, Power Dynamics] Cycle begins on 21 September 2021 (7:12 am PDT), in 5 Virgo, “A person becoming aware of Nature Spirits and normally unseen Spiritual Agencies.” These people (the Nature Spirits and Spiritual Agencies) are Distressed that Hupers are not doing their essential part in Reanimating the Planet (ie, working with the Nature Spirits rather than ignoring them).

I just finished Thomas Mayer’s recently-translated book Answering the Call of the Elementals: Practices for Connecting with Nature Spirits, and I highly recommend it. I’ve been working and studying for many years to recover the Connection I had with them in my youth, before my father shamed it into Hiding, and the practices in Mayer’s book are the most Practical and Powerful that I’ve found. There’s also a promising 18 September online workshop sponsored by the Fairy and Human Relations Congress; see https://www.fairycongress.com/monthly-workshops/.

From here I’d like, if I find the time, to examine the Transcuspal Relationship between the dwarf planets that symbolize Unconstrained Freedom (Ixion in the last Degree of Sagittarius) and Taking Full Responsibility for our Survival (Pholus and Quaoar in early Capricorn). The influence of Unconstrained Freedom is Exaggerated (Stationary) until 12 September, and of Taking Full Responsibility for our Survival until 17 September 2021.

The Most Important Thing 2

Yay!  Kristin Metcalfe has directed us to https://serennu.com/astrology/ephemeris.php as a place to get lists of asteroids and dwarf planets sorted by Degree, so we can find Heavenly Bodies that we don’t normally use, which will fill out an Almost-Big-Configuration!  Hooray!  Thanks a million, Kristin!  For example, our 7 May 2020 Full Moon 19 Virgo Vacancy in the Potential-Grand-Sextile, is occupied by an asteroid (Asclepius) named after the Greek God of Healing.  Goddess knows we can use that!

Meanwhile, let’s take the most intense Challenge (T-Square) in today’s 10 May (9:09 pm PDT) Priorities astroevent (Station of Saturn in 2 Aquarius – Yay Again!  I discovered how to use this color without having to post-process the whole post), and see what happens if we consider it an Almost-Complete-Configuration.

I’ll start with our traditional interpretation process, where the planet at the focus of the Challenge (in this case asteroid Sappho [Self-Love] at 30 Virgo) is Worried by a False Dichotomy (Opposition or Duality, False because the Universe isn’t Dual; here the Nodal Axis [our Life Path], with a Big Party on the South Node – dwarf planets Ixion, Pholus, and Quaoar [Climate Change and how our Unique Genius will handle it]).  The Challenge is basically then, How are we going to Love Ourselves Unconditionally when we know that our Culture and most of our Species is on a Suicidal trajectory and people just Glaze Over when we point out that the Sky is Falling? 

But of course we have to Take Responsibility for our own Unique Genius, “Save Ourself,” let our Tribe find us, and Let Go of the folks that the Sky will Fall upon.  They have their own Free Will, whether they Recognize it or not.  They who Fart in Church sit in their own Pew.  We can have Empathy and Compassion for them, but do we really want to Follow them to their Self-Genocide.  You can Martyr yourself in front of their bulldozers if you want, but that’ll just Bloody things up.

I know, we Fear that they will Destroy our Planet and leave us without a decent Home, but the Planet we Live on is a Mirror for our own Inner Peace or Lack thereof.  The notion that our Planet is Only Physical, and therefore unable to Manifest Differently to each Observer, is a 3D Trance that we need to be willing to shed.  Life is an Interaction between the Consciousness Constellated around our Identity (ie, “Me”) and the Rest of the Universe (from our Viewpoint, “the Unconscious”).  In Energy terms, it’s a complex Diffraction Pattern (Hologram) Created when these two complex Energy Waves cross one another.

So then, can we find a planet that Opposes the symbol for Self-Love and Completes the Grand Cross, which would then be Balanced?  Yes we can.  It’s the symbol for The Lord of the Wind (Trans-Neptunian Object Manwë, aka 385446, aka 2003QW [Tolkien’s Lord of Wind, Air, and Birds] at 29 Pisces).  Wind is Uranian, the Higher Manifestation of Mentality.

In its Discovery chart (25 August 2003 in Chile), 150km-wide Manwë is Conjoined by a Retrograde Mars [Action Behind the Scenes] and Opposed by asteroid Arachne [Grandmother Spider, who Weaves the Web of Life that we Live in] and Worried (T-Squared) by dwarf planet Chaos [Unlimited Potential] on one side and Ixion-Quaoar [Survival of our Unique Genius] on the other, making a Grand Cross.  Which is to say that the Actions of our Unique Genius (Ixion) will Open Doors that will never again be Closed (Chaos) – if we Allow our Genius out of its Cage.

The Mars-Manwë T-Square in the Manwë Discovery chart is also Self-Resolving (a Diamond Star) that will Resolve the Issues that it Opens.  The Path which the Resolution follows will Lead through (the feet of the Manwë Finger of the Goddess, namely) Rebirth (dwarf planet Haumea) and Trust (asteroid Eurydike).  That is, we need to be Willing to Abandon Ourself (Eurydike) to the Dark Unknown in the Rabbit Hole of Ego Death (Haumea) in order to Coax our Genius out of Their Closet.

So to give this symbol for the Lord of the Wind (Manwë) a one-breath phrase or keyword to use should we encounter it again, we might use Stepping Off into the Unknown, also a reminder that this Lord Lives on a Mountaintop.

So then, How are we going to Love Ourselves Unconditionally when we know that our Culture and most of our Species is on a Suicidal trajectory and people just Glaze Over when we point out that the Sky is Falling?  We’re going to Trust that our Hidden, probably Forbidden, Unique Genius will plot an Effective Course for us, if we Give ourselves Permission to Break the Rules that imprison Her, or Him, or Them.

Thus Emboldened, let’s Risk going a step further.  There’s one planet five Signs away (a Quincunx) from the Focus of the Challenge (the Sappho T-Square).  If there was a second planet also five Signs away in the other direction (making a Finger of the Goddess), we’d have a Self-Resolving Challenge (a Diamond Star)!  Why not make it Easy on ourself?

Well, turns out there is a planet there, an asteroid.  The symbol for the Goddess of the Soul Completes this Major Configuration (asteroid Psyche at 1 Taurus).  We’ve met this lady before, though it’s been a while.

So now, Where will we Look to see How Unconditional Love Heals our Culture and our Species from its Suicidal trajectory so we don’t have to Run Around shouting that the Sky is Falling?  We’re going to Trust that as the Goddess of the Soul (asteroid Psyche) Merges with Our Own Soul as it Descends into Matter (Uranus in Taurus), our Forbidden Unique Genius (Ixion) will Break Free from its Hiding and Find its True Effortless Role in Creating a Safe Place for Us and Others on Earth.

This Merger (Uranus Initiating / Conjunct Psyche) occurs on 26 May at 3pm PDT (in 9 Taurus, “A fully decorated Christmas Tree“) and Begins a New 5-year Cycle where we may Learn to Celebrate Ego Death as a Rainbow of Light Penetrating the Darkness of our Unfulfilled Desires.  Each time we Lovingly Embrace an Ego Death we get closer to EnLightenment.

This is more Indirect than I prefer to go, but it verifies that the process works.  Next time I will probably go directly to Filling a Vacancy in a Self-Resolving Challenge rather than Filling a Grand Cross Vacancy, if there’s already one five-Sign connection.

Over the course of writing these blogs we’ve tried to make a Big Deal out of our Reaction to Confusion, hoping to Learn and Teach us to Embrace Confusion Directly as an Emotion, without trying to Fix it or Change it or Trying to Figure It Out.  When we succeed in Eliminating Confusion we Eliminate personal Growth, and it we have a Goal of EnLightenment or Ascension or any other form of Growth, we Sabotage ourself.

And separately, over the course of writing these blogs we’ve tried to make a Big Deal out of how we deal with Curiosity.  Many or most of us have been trained to Believe that Curiosity should Inspire us toward Knowledge, that Curiosity automatically seeks Understanding, that it’s a Question seeking an Answer.  We’ve tried to Shift that to Curiosity in the Infantile sense of Wonder or Awe.  More “Wow, isn’t that Amazing!” than “I need to Figure Out how that works.”  More “I Wonder at that!” than “I Wonder How That Works.”

Curiosity is the primary keyword assigned to the five-Sign Angle (Quincunx), in both Ego astrology and Growth astrology.  But in Growth astrology we want you to replace the Question Mark that follows Curiosity in Ego astrology, with a period.  With PIAVA, if we don’t Change the Subject after our Prayer, Thinking rapidly removes the Opportunity for Change by reinstating our old Limiting Belief System, fencing out what we’ve PIAVAed.  It’s Thinking that considers Curiosity to be a Question and does the dirtywork of reinstating our old Limiting Belief System and blocking what we could have Learned.

The other Major Angles connect Signs that are Related…

• Three-Sign Angles (Squares) connect planets in the same Quality – Creative (Cardinal), Stabilizing (Fixed), Changing (Mutable).
• Four-Sign Angles (Trines) connect planets in the same Element – Spirit (Fire), Matter (Earth), Emotion (Water), Mind (Air).
• Two-Sign Angles (Sextiles) connect planets in the same Polarity – Dynamic (Masculine) or Magnetic (Feminine).

But Five-Sign Angles (Quincunxes) Connect planets in Different Elements and Different Qualities.  Categories and Judgments are useful, but they are also Arbitrary, and Inhibit us from Recognizing the Unity and Infinite Variety of Reality.  They are products of Thought and its need to reduce everything to Duality.

The Five-Sign Quincunx Angle offers us Opportunities to Look at the World a little Differently, subtly slipping out of our Habit of Naming and Constraining and Limiting everything we Encounter.  When we Ask a Biomancer to Teach us how to Listen to Plants, the first thing they tell us is to Let Go of any Names we’ve associated with the Plant.  Try it – unless you’re having Senior Moments (which have their advantages), that’s not easy to do.  But when we consider Curiosity to be a Question seeking an Answer, we blithely Discard that Opportunity to Learn and Grow in Consciousness.

Is your Life absolutely Perfect the way it is?  Then don’t Change your Habits of dealing with Confusion and Curiosity as Invitations to Research.  Otherwise, PIAVA to Disrupt them, post-haste.

The current Priority astroevent (Saturn Station at 2 Aquarius) happens close to a Sign Cusp.  We usually use three Degrees of Sensitivity (“Orb” in astrologuese).  That means that we may have Major Angles between planets in Different Qualities or Elements.  For instance,

• The Self-Love symbol (Sappho) at the End of the Ego-Death Sign (30 Virgo)

makes a Major Angle (Trine) to

• The Top-Priority symbol (Stationary Saturn) Early in the Group Relationships Sign (2 Aquarius).

There’s less than three Degrees Difference between them, but they Connect Changing Matter (Mutable Earth) to Stabilized Thought (Fixed Air) – Different Qualities and Different Elements.  Another Opportunity to see the World through Different Eyes and Potentially Crack Open our Ossified Perspective on “Reality.”

Since Four-Sign Angles (Trines) are considered Benefic precisely because they Connect Signs in the same Element, there’s even a legitimate Question whether Cuspal Trines are Trines at all.  All six Angles that the Self-Love symbol (Sappho) makes include Cross-Cuspal Angles.

Here, by the way, is the chart for the Saturn Station – a Flying Squirrel with one ear missing…

It’s a bit crude, but you’ll have to bear with me.  It’s been more than 50 years since my Cartography degree – I looked for my tools but couldn’t find them, so I had to draw it by hand.  My Canon printer turned ink-cartridge up, and thanks to the Spumonivirus the same brand wasn’t available, so I had to buy an HP printer.  Of course it wouldn’t talk to the ancient HP laptop that makes my charts.  So we’ll have to make do for a while.

Blessing Full Moon Eclipse

Two planets are “Sextile” to one another when they’re within a few Degrees of being two Signs apart, or one sixth of the way ’round the Zodiac from one another.  The Angle from one planet to another determines how their Energies are Relating to one another.  One sixth of the way ’round the Loop is a 60-Degree Angle, and it’s a very positive Angle.  

The Sixth Harmonic (ie, one sixth of the Circle) is about Partnership, Collaboration with Others, and particularly with a Special Other.  Well-functioning Partnership makes Life a lot Easier – with two cats in the yard and all.

The Trine (Third Harmonic, 120 Degrees or four Signs apart, a third of the Loop) represents “Dumb-Luck” Grace – things flow so Effortlessly that we don’t even know that there could be Resistance.  Personalizing a Trine – thinking the Ease is a result of our own special heroism – creates insufferable Arrogance.  

The Sextile is more subtle.  It only Opens the door to Grace after we’ve taken the “first step.”  If we don’t take the first step, nothing happens.  Kind of the way Partnership works – one of us has to take the first step.  There’s generally no Arrogance involved, more like Surprise and Gratitude instead.

We use the term “Grand” when any set of Angles fills the Circle – three Trines back-to-back is called a “Grand Trine,” six Sextiles end-to-end a “Grand Sextile.”  Generally, the “Grand” Configurations are Blessings.  Even the Grand Cross, which is four Squares (each 90 Degrees, one fourth of the Loop), is a Benefic, even though it’s made up of four Angles which by themselves would be Challenging.  It’s Benefic because, like the other “Grands,” it’s Balanced.

Many folks consider the Grand Sextile – a six-pointed Star – to be the greatest Configuration of all.  A Grand Sextile contains two Grand Trines, so there’s plenty of Dumb-Luck Grace.  But there’s also all that Collaboration flowing from six Sextiles all working together, once we set it all in motion.

The long-lived Ixion Golden Rectangle we’ve been touting for months is made of two Trines and two Sextiles, so while it doesn’t include a Grand Trine, it does fill the Circle and is relatively Balanced, so it’s also fairly “Grand,” it’s a very beneficial Configuration.  Well, the 10 February (4:30 pm PST) Full Moon Eclipse, at 23 Leo-Aquarius, turns that Golden Rectangle into a Grand Sextile.  Break out the Champagne!  It’s short-lived, since it’s the fast-moving Moon that forms the Configuration, but we get a solid half-day out of it, from around 11am till 11pm PST on 10 February.

Grand Sextiles occur in either the Dynamic Signs or the Magnetic Signs, this one in the Dynamics.  So Action is implied as our strategy most likely to be successful.  That means Brave and Brash.  The six points on the Star represent the six Energies that will Dance hand in hand on 10 February…

• Trusting Intuition, Trusting Self (Moon in Leo)
• Big Rebirth – take the Risk to meet new People and Be a new Person (Jupiter-Haumea in Libra)
• Forbidden Creativity – take the Risk to loose the chains and really Be Your Scariest Self (Saturn-Ixion in Sagittarius)
• Party it Up and Celebrate Community (Sun in Aquarius)
• Be Unabashedly Yourself, no holding back or thinking about Consequences (Uranus-Eris in Aries)
• Whenever you Feel a Should coming on, Cancel-Neutralize-Upgrade it before it can get past the Sh-h- (Atropos-Chaos in Gemini)

Any Full Moon Eclipse is Stronger than the average Full Moon.  This one is a “Penumbral” Eclipse, which means you have to look very closely to notice the slight darkening of one side of the Moon.  While a Full Moon does its work by Illuminating what was hidden, an Eclipse does its work by making absent what was there all along but not differentiated.  If all you see is a Forest, then they log half the Trees, suddenly you see, through their absence, that there were Trees there too, not just a Forest.

So a Penumbral Eclipse does double duty.  The Full Moon is almost as bright as usual, illuminating what we need to see to make our next jump in Growth of Consciousness.  It’s also Eclipsed – we may have to squint to notice, but the Eclipse Energy is there – so what’s been hiding in plain sight suddenly becomes obvious by its absence – and that is our next jump in Consciousness.  

We don’t Grow in Consciousness through Discovery; we Grow through Differentiation, through Noticing what we hadn’t Noticed before.  That’s what Meditation is all about.  You might Notice that you’ve been Shoulding on yourself without Realizing it till now, for instance.  Or you may find that your Limits are Illuminated in such a way that you Realize that they’re your Limiting Beliefs, not the “Laws of Nature” you thought they were.

There’s a lot more to this Full Moon and Eclipse; we’ll take that up in the next couple of posts.

Curiosity and Desire

It’s hard to overemphasize how important it is to maintain our Curiosity about how our newfound Vulnerability (ie, Loss of our Masks) will impact our Mission (and Deepest Desires).  

As always, we don’t mean Curiosity as a means to an end – Questions seeking Answers.  We mean Curiosity as an end in itself – Wonder and Awe, eyes wide and mouth ajar.

Since our Deepest Desires are often a source of Vexation – we Want it but we can’t seem to Get it, or Keep it when we do – we might well find our mind grinding away on our Lifelong Frustrations.  If that’s the case, this grinding is exactly the Pattern that we need to Replace.  That’s why it’s Lit Up.

Which is the Key to the Temple, to Realize that when any Bummer is Lit Up, it’s Lit Up to inform us that we have Work to do on our Limiting Beliefs.  And the Work is easy – we just Embrace ourself.  “You poor Sweetheart, you’re really Bummed by this, aren’t you.”  The apparently difficult part is Discerning that Oh Yeah, we’re Feeling here, and we don’t like the Feeling!  We need to Learn to Love ALL of our Feelings, and this is The Opportunity to Practice just that!!  Hooray!!

Chances are we’ve built up Stories around why our Deepest Desires elude us – because of some quirk of our childhood perhaps, or maybe we’ve concluded that Huper Nature just works that way, or some Pattern that we believe Limits us but we’ve never been able to Change.  Mindstuff.  Let it all Go.  Come to Curiosity instead…

“I Wonder why my Deepest Desires always elude me.”

Just that simple.  Make it a Mantra, a Ritual.  Carve it into your mirrors, your refrigerator door, your smartphone, write it on the inside of your eyelids.  Don’t let it become rote.  Close your eyes when you say it to yourself (except when driving or operating machinery), and really Feel that Energy bubbling up from the Deeps.

While this particularly applies next week to our Deepest Desires, it’s an excellent strategy for dealing with any stuck Pattern we have.  What if we want to Eat less, or less often, or less Sugar, for instance.  Then whenever we have a moment of Awareness before or during our urge to Eat, we can pause a minute and…

I Wonder why I always want to Eat while I’m writing.

Followed by a pause.  This is a PIAVA – an invitation to Intuition – so we need to pause and Change the Subject.  We could go back to Eating 

(we Change the Subject to prevent the mind from constraining us to our existing Limiting Beliefs; Eating is quite different from Analyzing Eating),

for instance, or back to writing.  The Intuition will surprise us later.

We mentioned in passing that Jupiter’s Initiation of the North Node (Exact 3pm PDT 24 June at 17 Virgo – Volcanos) Biquintiles (Learning New Rituals) Uranus’s and Eris’s Initiation of Ceres (Exact 8pm 21 June and 5am 23 June, respectively, both at 24 Aries – Abundance), but it deserves more than a mention.  

These are Waxing Biquintiles.  

In the evolution of a Cycle, the Waxing 

• Trioctile (8th Harmonic/Rebalancing, and 3rd Harmonic/Compassion) precedes the 
• Biquintile (5th Harmonic/Learning, and 2nd Harmonic/Ritual), which in turn precedes the 
• Quincunx (12th Harmonic/Pattern-Breaking, and 5th Harmonic/Learning).

So once a new Energy

• Becomes Permanent (Square) and
• Blesses us for Acknowledging it (Trine – without Acknowledgement, the Trine denotes Arrogance),
• We Lovingly Adapt to it (Trioctile),
• Learn and Practice new Rituals that match the new Energy (Biquintile), and 
• Break any old Habits that would get in our way (Quincunx).  

By choosing Magnetism (PIAVA – Curiosity) instead of Dynamism (Plan-Do), we gain Free Attention to use on our Seva rather than our Process.

So it would behoove to see what our Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Eris Cycles are about.  The current Jupiter-Uranus Cycle (Expanding into greater Connection to Soul) began in June 2010 at 1 Aries (Manifesting Form).  The current Jupiter-Eris Cycle (Amplifying Truth) was Initiated at the end of April 2011 in 22 Aries (“The gate to the garden of all fulfilled desires“).  Intense.

What a “Coincidence” that Desire arises.  Not to mention the hint that Truth leads to fulfillment of Desire.

For a while on 23 June (approximately 6am to 11am PDT), the Jupiter/North Node to Uranus/Eris/Ceres Biquintile is joined by Venus and the Moon to form four-fifths of a Grand Quintile (Learning Made Easy).  The Vacancy – the Energy we’d Supply Consciously in order to complete the Grand Quintile and remove the Stress – is the last degree of Scorpio (Mischievousness).  So it’s important to Play, perhaps just a bit impolitely.

At the same time, Chiron and Saturn join Venus in an intertwined Septangle – Venus Triseptiles Saturn which Biseptiles Chiron which in turn Biseptiles Venus.

The Biseptile is about Timing our Rituals for maximum Effect, and the Triseptile is about Timing our Compassion so it’s neither Taken for Granted nor Abused.

We could read this as, The Most Important Thing (Saturn) is to be Loving and Gentle with ourself (Venus) whenever we find ourself touching our Despair (Chiron).  Venus occupies the inflection point between the Septangle and the incipient Grand Sextile, telling us that the Key is Magnetic.

Native American New Moon I

As we mentioned in the last post…

“There are actually two other Configurations in … Monday’s New Moon chart, [which] color it strongly.  One of them will provide Epiphanies about our Soul Self and [about] how [we might] adjust our Values and Identity to manifest [our Soul Self into our current Lifetime] more strongly (which Epiphanies will be multiplied by our intervening success at achieving Beginner’s Mind).  

“The other is about being Reborn into the Unimaginable through taking small steps toward Embracing our Orphaned Forbidden Genius.”

“Which are in turn, (1) a Uranus Mjolnir (a third planet at the far Midpoint between two planets that Square one another) on a base of Venus Square Saturn, and (2) a Golden Rectangle between dwarf planets Eris, Chaos, Haumea, and Ixion, with Centaur Pholus Conjunct Ixion, the New Moon Conjunct Haumea, and Uranus Conjunct Eris.”

A Mjolnir is two Trioctiles from each end of a Square, merging on a third planet, which becomes the focus of the Mjolnir.  The Configuration is sometimes called “Thor’s Hammer,” and the term Mjolnir is Norwegian for just that.  Thor’s Hammer is often associated with destructive force, but that’s not quite accurate.  In the same sense that Uranus represents Disruption – Disruption of what is no longer in alignment with the Soul’s path for us in the Lifetime, Thor’s Hammer represents penetration of any Defense – as in any Defensiveness that protects the Ego from following the Soul’s path in the Lifetime.  Lightning is a good representation of the Mjolnir, as it is for the corresponding symbol in the Hindu tradition, the Vajra – sudden illumination of the Darkness, or Epiphany.

The Waxing Trioctile, 135 Degrees, combines the Eighth and Third Harmonics – Adjustment/Rebalancing and Love with Wisdom.  In the evolution of a Cycle, it sits between the Trine (120 Degrees) and the Biquintile (144); between the Grace that follows from aligning one’s path with the Zeitgeist (Trine), and the Realization of the Value of Tradition and the Power of Ritual (Biquintile).  The Biquintile in turn is followed closely by the Quincunx (150, Curiosity), the Triseptile (154) – Shamanic Power exercised for the Good of All, and the Quadrinovile (160) – Mastery gained through Self-Examination in Contemplation.  

This is a powerful section of the Zodiac, corresponding to Leo and early Virgo.  There are massive Changes going on, but they’re faced with the Courage of Leo, because the Uncertainty and Confusion of the earlier sections of the Zodiac have passed under the Bridge, and by now we kind of have a feel for what’s going down.  The notion that a Trioctile is a minor Square (often called a “Sesqui-Square”) is valid in only one sense: the sense that the Ego is a Trickster that can point one in the wrong direction if one focuses on Greed or Revenge.  Of course the zone of the Waning Trioctile and its near neighbors corresponds to Scorpio – the Debriefing that follows the Phitile.  While Leo embodies Courage, the defining quality of Scorpio is Fearlessness.

In today’s Mjolnir, the Waxing Trioctile is Venus to Uranus: Adjusting and Rebalancing our Values to better reflect the ongoing Descent of our Soul Self.  The Cycle Initiated in March at 15 Aries, “A Native American weaving a ceremonial blanket.”

The Waning Trioctile is Saturn to Uranus: Debriefing the Ego to discover what it has Learned about the Soul’s Intention as a result of its Experience with the Cycle that is beginning to unwind – which was “The Pope Blessing the Faithful,” 30 Sagittarius, February 1988, part of the Harmonic Convergence.

The Square is Waning, Venus to Saturn: Challenge to Ease up on the Ego’s role as the Protector of our Physical Vehicle.  The Cycle is “Native Americans making camp after moving into new territory,” – 26 Scorpio, November 2014.  In other words, some of our Beliefs about what we need to Survive have become Limiting Beliefs, that we’re Challenged to Let Go of.

So really, there are Big Questions here…

• Ritual and Tradition are strong here.  What a “coincidence” that this New Moon occurs on Native American Day.
• Since March, what have you connected or reconnected with, that you Feel is Sacred?  Have you established a Ritual, or Ritual Object, of some sort to honor it?
• What has the Ego Learned since the Harmonic Convergence!  Wow.  Who were you in 1986?  What’s Changed in your Field since then?  What’s different now about the way you Defend your Health and your “turf” and the externalities that you Identify with (work? Relationship? Family? Money? Religion? Sports? Politics?)?  Does your current Perspective seem like Growth, or backsliding, compared to where you were in 1986?  Of course it’s Both/And; in what ways is it Growth, and in what ways is it backsliding?  Where are the razor-wire fences you can Levitate over?
• Things in your Life were Changing rapidly in late 2014 and early 2015.  You made some Decisions about what you needed to do to Support yourself.  Decisions are like Instant Karma; they create Patterns that are useful in the short run, but which seldom come with their own Sunset Provisions.  We forget we made them, and we don’t revisit them to see if they’re still relevant.  What Decisions about Survival did you make in late 2014 and early 2015, and are they still relevant?  Or are they holding you back?  Both/And?  How to Rebalance/Adjust them to bring them into the Present Moment.  

Decisions don’t have to be explicit; recurring thoughts can have the same Power.  What were you thinking about in late 2014 and early 2015?  Were your thoughts Constructive, or Fearful in nature?  

So you don’t have to get bogged down in details, you may want to just PIAVA that obsolete Decisions and Patterns come to your Attention, gently and lovingly, and Adjustments appropriate to Now become Clear.  Make sure you include the gently and lovingly, because a PIAVA like this could turn your Life upside down if you didn’t also ask for Grace.  You may want to limit it to recent Decisions and Patterns, or, if you don’t, be watchful for Overwhelm, and respond to it with a compensatory PIAVA on the order of Visualizing or Affirming that the Changes in your Life occur at exactly the right speed, so you’re neither too early nor too late to synch with the Planetary Changes.  Or, you can just Levitate over the fence.

In the next installment, we’ll go into “The other [Configuration] is about being Reborn into the Unimaginable through taking small steps toward Embracing our Orphaned Forbidden Genius.”

Square Planets Up Your Nodes

Manganvesuvianite – the Manganese-rich form of Vesuvianite, named for the Volcano that decimated Roman Pompeii.  Vesuvianite symbolizes the Mother Goddess, Creator of All That Is, and her Power to Heal “Miraculously.”  It appears as a Miracle to the Limited mind; it’s everyday to the Goddess.  The Manganese clears away Confusion so we can see the Growth that’s hiding behind it and Embrace it.

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A reader asks…

“Can you talk more about those of us who have a planet squaring the nodes?”

Which is an excellent question.  It’s a similar situation for folks with planets Conjunct either Node. 

A “Square” is two planets that are separated by one fourth of the Zodiac; they’re near the same Degree but three Signs apart.  A T-Square is two Squares connected end-to-end, or two planets Opposing one another with a third planet halfway between them.  Both mean Mastery through Challenge, the T-Square’s Challenge being more Challenging than a single Square’s Challenge.

First though, let me address another reader comment…

“That discussion of squares/Tsquares got me – depressed – no, actually, I recognized that feeling as despair when I read it.  Your writings have taught me to recognize that feeling –  despair.  And unconscious despair.  I never knew what that darkness was.  It’s been interesting to note where, when, how often it comes.  That’s helped clear a fair amount of it to an extent…just recognizing it for what it is.  That post brought it on.  Condemnation.  I always thought squares were Mastery Through Challenge.  So there is no ‘never.’  Mastery comes.  Not just ‘getting it’ but MASTERY!!  I feel like they should be called Infinitely Perpetual Challenge then.  Give it up.  You ain’t getting anywhere.”

Well, Infinitely Perpetual Challenge isn’t far off – till you Change your Objective.  Let’s take any of us that have Squares to Mars or Venus for an example – that’s timely, with Mars Initiating Venus and Wabi-Sabi Stationary.  We don’t even need a Square between Mars and Venus, just some other planet Squaring Mars or Venus.  Those movie scenes and ads about Perfect Romance and Perfect Bodies and Perfect Faces are irresistible to us.  Pant, Pant.  And that’s the whole idea – it ain’t Real, it’s a Trance.  I’ll wager that every Relationship you’ve ever been in had some positive feature.  If you cut out each one of those boons and pasted it on your Ken or Barbie doll, you’ll witness your Mastery first-hand.  You just haven’t put them together all at once.

That’s actually a great way to move toward What You Want – list the pieces or characteristics of your Desire, check to see which ones you’ve already Manifested, and then work on the others.  When you get most of them checked off, list all the combinations – A+B, A+C, B+C, etc. and start working on those – you can Plan and Execute, or PIAVFA, or both.  Then if you need to, work on the triplets – A+B+C, A+B+D, B+C+D, etc. – and the quadruplets.  Sound too complex?  Hmmm.  Maybe it’s your Desire that’s too complex.  Maybe you need to Prioritize a little.

Let’s try a thought experiment.  Think about your unfulfilled Desire.  Now pick its two most important characteristics.  Just for the sake of illustration we’ll call them Passion and Security.  Sound contradictory? 

That may be part of your Frustration.  Contradiction exists only in the mind, not in Reality.  In Reality it’s Both/And; in Real Life it’s called Paradox, not Contradiction.  If we’re striving for two Paradoxical qualities that we Believe are Contradictory, we will be doomed to Infinitely Perpetual Challenge.  It’s very difficult to Manifest what we don’t Believe – this is part of the Powerful “Placebo” effect.  So the first thing we may need to PIAFA is that we Believe our Desire is Possible.

Back to Passion and Security.  Ever feel Passion toward your Desire?  If not, Imagine it (Feelize or Visualize or …).  Shake It Off, take a drink of Water, and then think about the times you’ve felt Security around your Desire.  You may not have met any of your other requirements, but you felt Security.  If you haven’t Experienced Security around your Desire, not even for a few minutes, then Imagine what it’ll feel like when you do.  (If it’s a Relationship Desire, think Friendship.)  Then Let It Go, Dance a bit, another drink of Water, then recall or Imagine Manifesting both Security and Passion around your Desire.  Add Belief if you need to.

Feel good?  Or are their Yesbuts squeaking in the background – or shrieking in the foreground?  Yesbuts can feel Frustrating, but they’re just information about what else your Desire needs.  A frequently Unconscious Yesbut is whether or not you Deserve to Manifest Your Heart’s Desire. 

Virtually all of us went to the same Obedience School, where we were given a biscuit if we got the right answer, and if we’re very lucky only fingerwagged when we got the wrong answer.  Lots of folks would consider it Sociopathic if you Believed that you just Deserved things without having to Earn them.  Well, you do Deserve to Manifest your Heart’s Desire, right or wrong.  If your Heart’s Desire is punishable by Life or the Chair, so be it, you’ll just have to face the music.  But that’s not about Deserving; it’s about what your Culture permits and how well you finesse it.

Okay, you’ve Shaken It Off and Let It Go again and danced around the Fire, and now you’re sitting there feeling what it’s like to Believe in and Deserve to Manifest Safety and Passion around your Desire. 

I know, they’re still Yesbutting you, but Imagine that Belief, Deserving, Security, and Excitement are all you Want, that they’re Enough.

Ahhhhh! – Wonderful, isn’t it!

No?  Well, that’s it then. 

Desire is indeed an Infinitely Perpetual Challenge.  The basic problem is that Desire is misspelled.  It’s really spelled M-o-t-i-v-a-t-i-o-n.  Now there has to be a Balance between Motivation and Satisfaction, or else we’ll never feel good about Life.  So what to do?  Well, we certainly don’t need to give up our Desire, that would be the equivalent of Death.  We might need to dial it back a little, and approach it one piece or characteristic at a time, or set intermediate and achievable Goals that we can Celebrate along the way, so we can enjoy the Journey and not just the possibly hallucinatory Destination.

But the real key to Enjoying a Square or T-Square is shifting our Objective from Desire to Learning.  We’re always Learning, so we can Celebrate some quantity of Learning (even if we don’t understand yet what it is) from every Experience.  So a Square or a T-Square is about Learning about our Desire.  Once we make that shift we’re free to Play.  Learning is usually Surprising – otherwise we’d already be Learned.  So we’re open to Surprise as well as Success.  We really can afford to Play with it, because when Learning is our Objective, the bigger and faster our failures, the more we Learn.

That is MASTERY.  You’ve actually experienced it in your Life, around lesser Frustrations, like Spelling or Story Problems or DiffyQ or Asking for a raise or maintaining your Health.

And in fact, with a Square or T-Square, you are a Master, because you’ve always been Motivated to Explore the Edges of your Infinitely Perpetual Challenging Desire.  Take Music as an example.  If you’re Mozart, you were a Master at Birth.  If you’re Salieri, you’ve been working your butt off all your Life, and he gets all the contracts.  But suppose you’re Vivaldi, and you’re trying to figure out whether you want a minor or major key for your concerto about Spring.  Mozart could tell you in a flash.  But Salieri would be able to tell you why you need a minor key. 

If you were depending on Mozart you’d need to ask him again for each Season.  The answer you got from Salieri would allow you to figure it out on your own.  So who’s the real Master – Mozart or Salieri?

This is Real, it’s not a rationalization or a PR trick.  You may need to start your process by Believing that it’s possible to shift your Objective from your Desire to Learning about your Desire.

Conjunctions and Oppositions are similarly Heuristic.  Oppositions Challenge us to escape Duality by recognizing that while the Heads and the Tails distract us from what’s really happening, focusing on the Coin will trigger our Intuition.  Conjunctions Challenge us to Accept that just because our Perspective on the World isn’t popular, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.  In fact, the more unusual our Perspective, the more Powerful.  You may end up writing things that won’t be understood for 200 years, or that only six people on the Planet will grok, but the Value in that is immeasurable. 

Squares and T-Squares are members of the Fourth Harmonic, which is basically Mastery or Dominion; the Emperor.  But it’s the Fifth Harmonic that’s about Learning, so we must be wrong, eh?  No, we Master each Harmonic by adopting the Perspective of a higher Dimension.  The First Harmonic, Conjunction, is about Self.  The Infinitely Perpetual Challenge about Self is Other, which is introduced by the Second Harmonic, Opposition. 

The Challenge of Self “versus” Other is resolved by Love, the Third Harmonic or Trine.  The Infinitely Perpetual Challenge about Love lies in resolving Codependence, via Healthy Control or Dominion, the Fourth Harmonic – Squares.  We resolve the Frustration of the Fourth Harmonic by using the Fifth, Learning, the Quintile.  We resolve the Paradox of Inequality between the Student and the Teacher by moving to mutually respectful Partnership, the Sixth Harmonic or Sextile.  And so on.

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Squares to the Nodes

Okay, finally we get to the original question.  But I think you’ll agree that the detour was useful. 

We’ve been equating the North Node to Desire and Mission, and now we’re talking about Squares as if they represented Desire.  These are two different flavors of Desire.  A North-Node Desire is hardwired in.  Moving in the direction of a North-Node Desire produces the sense that we’re on the right track, even as Satisfaction avoids us.  North-Node Desires evolve without much Frustration; we don’t recall how different our current North-Node Desires are from our picture of it five or ten years ago.  The basic sense is one of Progress.  A T-Square Desire on the other hand is an unachievable chimera that we set up to Motivate ourselves.  It’s a picture of Perfection.  It probably hasn’t changed substantially since we were five or ten years old.  The basic sense is one of Frustration.

So, if we put them both together, Progress with Frustration, gradual evolution with our Perfect Pictures, the whole process can be very Confusing.  And we may not remember that Confusion is the first stage of Growth.  That’s probably the key we need to resolve a T-Square to the Nodes – remembering that Confusion is the first stage of Growth.

Note that since the Nodes by definition Oppose one another, a Square to the Nodes is always a T-Square.

There are a couple of productive processes for dealing with Confusion.  We can acknowledge it with Gratitude.  “Omigosh, there’s Confusion!  Thank Goddess I’m Growing out of that dilemma!  That’s Exciting!”  And Curiosity.  Unlike the programming we got in school, real Learning is always Surprising.  If we had any idea how a real Life dilemma would be resolved, it wouldn’t be a dilemma.  So acknowledging Confusion as the first step of Growth almost automatically inspires Curiosity.  And Curiosity, like Love, is Goddessly, as both eschew Judgment.  We don’t want to strive for Curiosity about how our T-Square will be resolved – because we’d get stuck to our Perfect Pictures again.  Curiosity about what we’ll Learn next about our Desire fits perfectly, however.

We come to the difference between Desire and Fantasy.  Suppose for instance that we crave Acknowledgement.  If as ankle-biters we weren’t Valued for who we really were, we’ll spend our Lives craving Acknowledgement.  We have a picture of how that might happen.  We might be “Discovered,” for instance.  That’s a very nice alternative to Earning Acknowledgement.  Once who we really are is Discovered, everything else will fall into place, and it will all be easy.  That’s how we know it’s a Fantasy – everything else becomes easy.  Fantasy is a Manifestation-killer. 

When we detect Fantasy we need to substitute Curiosity.  We don’t know what it will look like when we’re Acknowledged – we’ve never been there.  We know the Perfect Picture we daydream about, but our Desire is behind that Picture, not in it.  When that Picture arises and we recognize it (how can we not? – we’ve been daydreaming it all our Life!), we need to pull the cord next to it so it rolls up like an old-fashioned window-shade.  Behind it there’s a Wilderness, and it’s Delightful and Dangerous and Exciting and very Compelling.  You can’t Imagine what’s in there!  But doesn’t it inspire Curiosity!

So let’s take some examples.  Suppose Saturn, which represents The Most Important Thing, Squares our Nodes.  It’s never this simple, because many other influences are afoot – such as the Sign of our Saturn, and other Angles to it from other planets.  But we could have a Lifetime Frustration about knowing what’s The Most Important Thing.  Is it Learning new Skills or collecting boons by using the Skills we have?  Is it Love, or is it Power?  So we need to find a reliable way to move from Confusion to Curiosity around The Most Important Thing.

In Psychic School one of the first tricks you Learn is “What if you did know?”  When Duality wants you to do Either/Or and you aren’t in touch with your Intuition enough to understand how Both/And might work in this circumstance, you can Ask yourself, “What if I did know?”  Chances are you will have already rejected at least one answer to the question, and that answer will probably pop back into Consciousness.  There’s a danger here.  This is an exercise for developing your Intuition, it’s not your Intuition. 

The answer you get is an excellent trial balloon, and a great first guess about what’s The Most Important Thing.  It’s worth trying.  But it may only work for a few steps.  West might be the correct direction for the first three strides, but you need to be alert for when Confusion arises again, and Ask again.  The next four might be North – or West again.  If you decide that one direction is Most Important forever, you’re likely to end up in a swamp.  After you practice this for a while it will become your Intuition, and you’ll develop the habit of recognizing Confusion and shifting immediately to Curiosity.  Eventually you won’t even notice the intervening steps, you’ll just Intuitively know what comes next.

But it’s still a Square; you can never sit on your laurels.  It will always be evolving, and you’ll always be Learning more about how to define The Most Important Thing, on more and more subtle levels, till you finally realize that there’s no one you can compare notes with, because no one else knows as much as you know about it – you are the Master.  It Squares your Nodes, so knowing it is The Most Important Thing in your Life.  When you Celebrate your Certainty about knowing the Most Important Thing, you’re about to step into the muck.  Celebrate Learning more about how to discern The Most Important Thing instead.

Now, think back over your Life.  How many times have you repeated this dance, and how many different ways have you Learned for dealing with it?  Include all the ways you’ve forgotten that you Learned (what if you did remember?).  In truth you’re the Master of this Process.  There’s no one better than you to teach it to others, because you’ve Explored all the blind alleys and discovered all the thoroughfares.  And more important, you know how to find the mainlines that haven’t been discovered yet. 

The primary characteristic of any Square is a shortage of Self-Acknowledgement.

That’s another process for resolving a Square in any given moment – moving to Gratitude – make a list of what is working for you.

Or Jupiter – what if Jupiter Squared our Nodes?  Jupiter is about Fortune, Expansion, Amplification.  When Jupiter dances with your Nodes, your Mission is always foremost in your Attention.  That’s fabulous, as no one will ever be able to accuse you of not immer strebend.  But it’s never Enough, is it.  Jupiter’s the Great Benefic, but Never Enough is a bummer.  So Self-Acknowledgement of your Enoughness has to become your mantra.  You’ve beaten it practically to death, but Enoughness is your Mastery.  Now you need to Master Not-Quite-Enoughness.  Your Challenge is to Learn to feel good about Performing at 90%.  When you get pretty good at that you can try 80%.  You’ll be More Than Enough at 50% – you can spend the other 50% having Fun.  You’re already doing this, aren’t you.  That’s MASTERY! 

We just can’t Acknowledge that we’re actually Manifesting the Power to Serve Effectively when we’re the Victim of our own Unconscious Motivation.  Dominion requires the Ability to Respond to “threats” to our Healthy Control.  As long as the Power to Serve Effectively is our Goal instead of Learning to Use the Power to Serve Effectively, Frustration follows, because Life is a moving target and “those people” – who really are less competent and less dedicated than you because they don’t have Jupiter Squaring their Nodes – are your Teachers, Unconsciously of course.  You’re underemployed, but you won’t be able to leverage yourself into a position where you also have the Authority and Responsibility to Serve Effectively – and the rewards, until you Learn to Honor yourself. 

There’s still time to remember all of the little and big Successes along this course, and Celebrate each one.  They’ll feel burdensome until you reframe them from Frustration about Failure, to Excitement about Learning.  Buy three big sheets of gold-colored cardboard and a “Sharpie” permanent marker.  Take an hour each week, choose one of your historical Frustrations, fully Embrace your Grief about how your hard work was unseen and unacknowledged and even actively thwarted, and then Ask “What did I Learn from this?”  If what you Learned feels negative, Ask “What was the positive function of that?”  “What was one positive thing that came out of it?

When you feel good about that Learning, cut a trophy honoring yourself for that  Success out of the gold cardboard, and give it a title and an approximate date.  As you process each historical Frustration there will be too many trophies (it’s Jupiter after all!) to keep on your mantle or altar all at once, so keep the extras in a box.  Each morning choose one trophy to put back in the box, and replace it with a new one chosen “randomly” from the box.  Spend a minute remembering the Frustration you felt as you climbed that mountain, and find the Relief you felt when you Learned that Lesson.

What about Venus?  Venus stands for our Values, so you’re probably often at odds about which Value of yours to follow.  Having multiple Values is fantastic – no danger of becoming a Zealot, eh?  But boy, those Zealots sure look Satisfied, don’t they?  Compared to my Confusion, that looks like a Blessing!  What if being Multifarious was the Blessing?  It’s a Square, it’s always a moving target.  I think of a Spiral, where we revisit the same issue over and over again but with slightly different circumstances.  A friend and reader uses the metaphor of “an elevator which stops at identical floors, but different things happen depending on where your head/vibes/frequency is.”

But the constant about is this is Constant Learning.  Your Values are Universal, but for every moment a different Hierarchy of Values applies.  If you’re anything like the rest of us, you’ve been programmed to apply the Values that were handed down by your family heritage in every moment.  You’ll be Learning how to stop and reconsider every moment, so you can apply the Values that work best in the circumstances.  You’ll know when you got it right because there will be a short burst of North-Node Satisfaction, the sense that you’re on the right track.  Till the Square’s Never-Quite-Right Energy butts in again.  No worries, it’s just Confusion, the first stage of Growth.  Isn’t that Curious!  I wonder which Values apply here – Growth or Certainty?

The Centaur Nessus Squaring the Nodes?  Confusion over Action, how to meet one’s needs with finesse rather than force, and how to replace that Confusion with Curiosity and Self-Acknowledgement.  Passive Pacifism isn’t worth much.  A Pacifist who knows how to Embrace and Master their own need to Dominate is a Teacher of Value.

The dwarf planet Ceres would tie us in knots over what’s Sustainable, and beg us to replace our Preaching and Self-Abuse about it with frequent PIAVFAs about how to make it stick. 

The poster child of dwarf planets, Pluto?  Sorry, your Life Path is intense, and you won’t bargain your way out of it.  You’ve probably already been in and out of Addiction, as there’s no faster way to understand Control.  Your Hero’s Journey is the Heroin’s Journey, figuratively or literally.  So what if no one listens to you – you see the Future, and they don’t.  Let them stumble; it’s their Learning Experience.  Your Certainty is a hindrance, though.  See if you can reprogram your Trance to seek Curiosity instead – you’re the Master of Trance-Re-Formation after all, even if you haven’t Recognized it yet.

If it’s the Centaur Hylonome Squaring your Nodes, Grief is your constant companion.  She’s just over your left shoulder.  Don’t push her away any more; Embrace Her.  Once you let Her swallow you like Inanna was swallowed by the Sun, over and over again, you’ll emerge Surprisingly quickly, each time having gained deep Insight.  Be Curious about where Grief will lead you next, as it’s a deep service to Humanity and to the Planet.

Inanna’s symbol is the Grand Octile – the Eighth Harmonic is where we go to resolve the puzzles presented by Magic.  This Ouija Board Uranus-Pluto Cycle is about Magic, and you know what comes next.  You are a Visitor from the distance Future, come to try to steer us away from impending disaster.  Embrace that Perspective without succumbing to Certainty or rejecting your constant Grief about being Unrecognized.  Grief is your greatest Tool.

Ah, Lilith.  It feels Confusing only because you’re ahead of your Time.  The World is moving toward Yindependence – Universal Respect for Self-Sovereignty – and you’re the advance guard.  Let yourself be Curious about how you can best help move the Planet forward.  The Hero’s Journey is well documented; it’s up to you to document the Heroine’s Journey for us as well.  Starhawk’s Truth or Dare is a good starting place for you.

Then there’s Uranus!  Yes, there are deep mists between you and your Soul, and many false profits.  You can’t dispel Confusion with Certainty, it must be Embraced.  It’s all Metaphor, Both/And.  What will happen if you Surrender to Confusion? 

Anyone else wanting to come forward?

Karma, Merit, and the Trine

An excellent question from a reader, about the Fez…

“In your delineation of the Fez, what about the trine?  Is it accurate to say that the Grace contained in the trine can be considered as a bank of good karma, or merit, or the treasure chest in which we can collect positivity, positive attitude and the ability to adapt to a situation?  In this case, an innate and almost automatic ability to regenerate our values (Pluto+Venus), or, the gift of having inner and/or outer wealth to transform and regenerate, for instance a relationship?

Yes, your “innate and almost automatic ability to regenerate our values” and “gift of having inner and/or outer wealth to transform and regenerate,” are good interpretations of a Venus-Pluto Trine, for someone who’s Conscious of their Trine.  Having seen many instances where a Trine manifests, at least initially, as Arrogance, though, I’d want to inquire about the possibility of finding Judgment as well. 

If this chart was for a person, I’d try to lead them to Gratitude for the Gift of Regenerative Values and Elegant Transformations, and lead them gently toward recognition that this is a special Skill of theirs, to be seen as complementary to the special Skills of others, and not as a source of Judgment of others because the others lack this Skill.  That’s a very subtle distinction, and for someone who still resides in Arrogance around their Trine, a difficult educational process. 

Since this Fez chart is for a circumstance or time, I’d ask everyone to become Conscious of any tendency to Judge others because those others are not able to see how they are sabotaged by their own asinine Values.  How many cultural chauvinists do I know who see foreigners that way? 

Let me say here that the Universe is Both/And.  When we’re in the realm of Either/Or, we’re in the Dualistic mind, observing the Universe.  It’s the major difference between Religion and Spirituality.  Religions are usually Either/Or games.  Spirituality is a Both/And game.  When we’re in Either/Or mode we’re in the realm of Politics, not the realm of Spirituality.  So I’m not at all interested in saying my view of the World is the best view.  I do want to suggest my view as a viable alternative – in fact I feel a responsibility to suggest it, as one option.  In a Both/And World, one option does not preclude another.

So I would say that it’s a matter of definition, really, how we define Karma.  Personally, I like Alan Watts’s proposal that Karma is not about retribution or reward; Karma is about Inertia.  It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just habits we’ve developed, for whatever reason.  The notion that there is good and bad Karma is sometimes referred to as the “Santa Claus” view of Karma.  Watts thought that the Western mind wanted to associate Karma and retribution because Western Religions are often taught using the Santa Claus model.

I also understand, though not from a great deal of personal experience around the issue, that Eastern Religions often also use the Santa Claus model.  In my limited reading about Eastern Religions, I haven’t encountered that as a major thread.  But, though I’ve told it before, let me interject a story that is from my own experience…

I was on the platform in Bath, England once, waiting for a train to Salisbury, and behind me there was a woman sitting on a bench eating what we Yanks would call a muffin – not sure what she would have called it.  At her feet was a Pigeon with a club foot, dancing about clumsily in obvious hope that a few crumbs would fall.  She was reading or something, and hadn’t noticed the Pigeon – and wasn’t spilling any crumbs. 

I silently asked Sulis Minerva, the Goddess of the Bath Springs, to help this poor Pigeon.  “Her” response was that the World was just the way it is; best not to interfere.  So I asked Krishna to lend a blue hand.  “His” answer was that no, this was Karma at work, it was not something that could be changed.  So no luck for this Pigeon.  Then I asked Christ if he would help the Pigeon.  He said nothing.  But when I turned around, the woman was smiling and breaking off pieces of her muffin, sharing them with her new, overjoyed, club-footed friend.  The Energy between them was literally glowing.   

I don’t call myself a Christian because most of the folks I see hereabouts who do call themselves Christians don’t live Lives that seem to follow what I know of about Christian Values – it’s often just the opposite.  But George Harrison and I agree about Jesus.

Of course what I “heard” and “saw” from these folks was inextricably bound up with my own Beliefs and Expectations, though I wouldn’t have predicted those responses.  I actually expected more generosity from Sulis and Krishna.  I would suggest that in India, the notion of good and bad Karma may be used as a Political mechanism to keep the underclasses from threatening the privileges of the elite.  I don’t mean that as a Judgment of India – they may have first learned it from the British.  And the US has its own extremely well-oiled parallel Political mechanisms.  I suppose we could ask whether Trines were more frequent in the charts of Brahmins and Monks than in the charts of Dalits, but I doubt that this would be the case.

There is no question that when we follow our own Values we may feel good about ourselves, and the resulting Self-Love can create ease in our Lives.  But if we really know (rather than just intellectually understand) that the Square is the place where we Challenge ourselves to Grow and truly Master an arena of Life experientially (rather than simply learn what others consider the right way to be or do), then this sort of Self-Love Grace is available from a Square as well as from a Trine.  That logic would suggest that “merit” is not necessarily a characteristic of the Trine.

Which is not to say that I don’t understand the notion of good and bad Karma, and use it routinely in my approach to Life – I was raised with Santa Claus after all.  I’m suggesting Karma as Inertia as an additional perspective and recommending Both/And.  It took me embarrassingly many years to realize that my own natal Trines were gifts of Grace (or Choices of the Soul when engineering an agenda for a Lifetime), and not badges of Pride that served to elevate me above others.  To the extent that I do realize it today!  So when I say that Trines are more likely to indicate Arrogance until we learn that each of us has our own set of special Skills, I’m talking from personal experience.  Arrogant might be a strong word, but “smug” would certainly fit.

Had I been told by an astrologer early on that my own natal Trines were due to merit, I would have been even more insufferable, to the detriment of my Community.  As it was, my Arrogance about my Trines prevented me from being effective with my Quintiles and the Mission embedded in them.  How can we Teach what we’re Unconscious about, let along Arrogant about?  Maybe by providing a poor example to others.  Community works because everyone respects and works with the natural and developed talents of others.  Community stops when we feel superior to others because they lack the natural Skills that we have.

The notion that Trines represent Arrogance till we learn otherwise is not a popular position to take.  Mention the idea in a room full of astrologers and astrology students, and no one will look you in the eye or talk to you for the rest of the day.  And you can’t use astrology to “accuse” anyone of anything; you just invite Resistance.  So it’s a delicate subject.  I usually say “you may have been Arrogant about this till you learned that this was a special Skill of yours that others didn’t have,” to at least make the accusation subjunctive and past tense. 

And I believe it’s true that we excel not from Grace or Hard Work, but only from both.  Which, I believe, is why astrologers don’t like to see a chart with only “red lines” or only “blue lines,” but with both.  So as astrologers we most benefit our clients by encouraging them to become Conscious of the native effortless talents that they were born with – Trines – and then work hard to improve them.  If Grace is “heads,” then Gratitude is “tails” – two sides of the same coin – and focusing on the coin is always more powerful than focusing on one side of it. 

Just as we most benefit our clients by encouraging them to appreciate what their Squares are teaching them experientially, and to have the courage to acknowledge their own native fearlessness about making a fool of themselves again, by venturing where others don’t tread.  The Fool in Tarot is not a symbol of idiocy, but a symbol of Courage.

There are two other notions I routinely use that conflict with the idea of Karma as retribution.  Conflict is not condemnation; contradiction occurs only in the mind, not in Nature, and we need to be able to hold conflicting ideas in the mind at the same time in order to live Both/And.  After all, we all hold conflicting Values in our Hearts.  The first notion is Linear Time.  If “All There Is Is Now,” then Cause and Effect, which depends on Cause preceding Effect in Linear Time, is a non sequitur.  How do we earn merit in such a Universe?

You can make the case that All There Is Is Now applies to the Spiritual World, while Linear Time applies to the Material World, and of course that’s true.  But I also agree with the Hindu perspective that Energy is Real while Matter is Illusion.  And I aspire to unify the Spiritual World and the Material World in my Life.  Those hierarchies suggest that I should run with All There Is Is Now as much as possible.  Which is not to say that it’s not Both/And.  For instance, I was born nine months to the day after an event I remember quite well, if out of context.

The second notion is that I don’t assume a one-to-one correspondence between Lifetimes and Souls.  Consciousness is more fluid than that.  Not only are we probably living several Lifetimes simultaneously (even in Linear Time), but most of us live with many Soul Fragments from others, and have donated many of our own Soul Fragments to others.  Which means we’d be asking whose merit are we talking about?  Many say that this would be reliable path to Growth in Consciousness – not asking ourselves “What are we thinking about?” but asking, non-rhetorically and iteratively, “Who is doing the thinking?”  

Bottom line, I think that the notion of good and bad Karma serves two basic purposes.  It’s a heuristic – a teaching mechanism that has value for teaching, but may not be valid in and of itself.  And it’s a manipulation – we use it on children to get them to collaborate with our desire to control their behavior.  And on former children that haven’t yet found the “field” that Rumi speaks of.

More Tricolors

We’ll be a little more technical in our bold-italic sections here than we usually are, but bear with us, because this material is bottom line, even if it’s more astrological.  If you run into Confusion because of the geometry or the fractions, just skip that part that’s Confusing, and move on to the next paragraph.  Confusion is the first stage of Growth, but you don’t need to resolve Confusion intellectually.  You don’t need geometry or fractions to understand this, it’s really about Human Nature and Opportunity.

* * * * *

More very welcome questions about the Tricolors…

“It is difficult for me to grasp a subtle distinction between the Major and Minor Tricolors, hence I am submitting three questions to you:

1) Could you please explain how the 4th harmonic, symbolizing dominion and healthy control, is interrelated with the 3rd, 5th and 12th harmonics contained in the Major Tricolor?

“2) As for the Minor Tricolor, I do not understand, according to your definition ‘…teaches us to share Dominion with our partners’, how it works with the principle of Pattern Breaking (12th harmonic), that the Major and Minor Tricolors involve.

“3) Is it relevant to say that the 5th harmonic is related to ‘Learning’?

“Again, thank you so much for your help on these matters.”

Questions are always welcome – thank you!  And namaste!

* * * * *

The correlation between the Major Arcana in Tarot, and the major Angles in astrology, is very strong.  I’m sure there are as many different schools of Tarot as there are different schools of astrology, but I’ve learned from Angeles Arrien’s excellent The Tarot Handbook: Practical Applications of Ancient Visual Symbols.

* * * * *

The Fourth Harmonic

The most Challenging Angle in astrology is the Square – two planets 90 degrees, or three Signs, apart.  The Challenge arises because you have two planets trying to cooperate while they’re in different “Elements” – Fire, Earth, Air, Water. 

Cuspal Squares follow a different Pattern, but that’s a topic for another day.

We’re working in these years, by way of example, with the Uranus-Pluto Square, from Uranus in Aries (Fire) to Pluto in Capricorn (Earth).  So Uranus, which is scarily Spontaneous already, is very excited about flinging itself into all manner of Exoteric Arian Adventures, while Pluto very much wants Capricornian Practicality and Moderation.  That’s a Challenge, eh?  Put any two different Elements – like Fire and Water – in the same sandwich, and you get similar results. 

You get all the way around the Zodiac by putting four Squares end to end.  So the Square is the astrological representative of the Fourth Harmonic.  In the Major Arcana, that’s the Emperor, symbolizing Dominion, or Healthy Control.  We’ve noticed over the years that a Square symbolizes not just Challenge, but Mastery.  Our Squares reveal our greatest Skills, because they show the places where we never feel like we’ve “got it right” – it’s never satisfying enough that we get complacent and feel complete.  So we keep trying different approaches, on ever more subtle levels, and collecting the resulting Experience and Wisdom. 

So, immer strebend (as Goethe put it), we become, as we get older and more experienced, the true Expert on those issues, though we’ll have to work on ourself quite a bit to recognize this, since it doesn’t feel that way.  We’ll always feel like a failure, because our Fourth-Harmonic standards are unreachable.  As the Emperor we’re always dealing with tradeoffs, nothing is ever “black and white” or “cut and dried.”  If it is, we’re deluded.  We’re lucky when the odds in a situation are “60-40” and not six of one and a half dozen of the other.

So we refer to the Square and the Fourth Harmonic as Mastery through Challenge.  The more you recognize that you’re in the game to gather Experience and Wisdom rather than to “get it right,” the better you’ll feel about your Squares.  You might even Consciously make a Choice you know is “wrong,” just to gather experience around that Choice (which would actually just be bringing your true motivation up into Consciousness!).  Squares are primarily Motivating.  Always something else to do to try to make things a little better, or patch up past missteps.

The Square – the noisy, messy, never-fully-resolved issue that demands Attention – is the core of the Tricolor. 

* * * * *

The Quincunx

The Magical portion of a Tricolor is the Quincunx.  A Quincunx symbolizes Curiosity.  Curiosity, Wonder, Awe – those are most Sacred places to reside.  There is no Judgment while we’re in Curiosity, so it’s Unconditional, like Love.  A Quincunx is formed by two planets five Signs apart, or five twelfths of the way ’round the Circle from one another.  So it combines the Fifth Harmonic with the Twelfth Harmonic.

Yes, as your third question avers, the totem for the Fifth Harmonic is the Hierophant, master of Teaching and Learning.   So we have the potential for an Open mind.  The Hanged Person stands for the Twelfth Harmonic.  The Hanged Person is hanging by their heels, not their neck (or fingernails), so the Twelfth Harmonic is about seeing the World through a perspective that’s different from the one we usually use.  That allows the Hanged Person to be the Pattern-Breaker, because they can see newly how they can Change things to better meet their Values and Goals.  Like Chiron, and Einstein’s advice that we can’t solve a problem by using the same thinking that created the problem.

So you can see how the Quincunx and Curiosity get linked intellectually – Learning how to Break Patterns, recognizing that Curiosity is the first requirement for that.  Curiosity means relaxing – nay, disarming – our usual Resistance to Change.  It’s like sneaking up behind the Ego’s usual attachment to the relative security of the status quo and Opening the back door to a fresh breeze.  Experientially, the link between the Quincunx and Curiosity is patently obvious, as we all know what we’re perpetually Curious about, long before we know where our Quincunxes are.

What a combination!  The Square’s indefatigable thirst for unachievable perfection, and Curiosity’s Openness to the New!  It’s no wonder that when we combine 1/4 and 5/12 we’re left with 1/3 – the Square is three Signs (3/12 or 1/4), the Quincunx five Signs (5/12), and there are twelve (12/12 or One) all together, so we have four Signs (4/12 or 1/3) left over.  To close the Circle, we need a Trine.

* * * * *

The Third Harmonic and the Major Tricolor

Four Signs is one third of the Zodiac, or a Trine.  The positive side of a Trine is automatic Grace.  The negative side of the Trine is Arrogance, as until we learn that everyone has different Skills, we’re tempted to think we must be pretty clever to be able to do this (whatever it is) so well without even breaking a sweat, while everyone else must be pretty dumb because they have such a hard time with it.  So we call a Trine “dumb-luck” Grace.  Trines make everything easy.  The only thing we have to do (and unfortunately it’s optional), is remember the flip side of Grace, which is Gratitude.

The Third Harmonic in the Major Arcana is the Empress, symbolizing Love with Wisdom.  She doesn’t encounter the hard 50-50 Choices that the Emperor has to make, so she’s free to dispense Compassion.  Yet there are consequences, so she must use her Compassion with Wisdom.  The Third Harmonic is harmonious because it links Signs of the same Element.

Again, cuspal Trines would operate differently.

So a naked Trine, without any complementary Tension (Square, Conjunction, or even Opposition), can give us a great deal of grief, if we mistake the Grace for Competence.  Just think of the “stuck-up” people you knew in high school, and you’ve got an excellent picture of an unacknowledged Trine.  Some of them ran into real difficulty once they got out into the World and were asked to be less one-dimensional, and had to start dealing with their Squares.  Or, out in the larger World, had to compete or cooperate with people who had genuine Competence.  To excel we need native talent and hard work, and while Trines are an excellent foundation for it, they ill prepare us for that Both/And necessity.

But tie the far ends of a Square and Quincunx together with a Trine, and you combine the Square’s indefatigable thirst for unachievable perfection, Curiosity’s Openness to the New, and Effortless Grace.  A Grand Cross (four Squares end-to-end) can make us super-Competent because we’re always forced to multitask to put out the constant series of brushfires surrounding us.  A Grand Trine (three Trines end to end) can provide so much Grace we seem invincible.  The combination of a Grand Cross and a Grand Trine is one of most powerful Configurations of planets, because it combines this-World Competence with lots of help from beyond the Veil.

But what an opportunity a Tricolor creates!  While the Grand Cross and Grand Trine are scattered all over a chart, the Tricolor is sharply focused on one Square, one contrast between Elements.  Like the 2012-2015 Uranus-Pluto contrast between Truth and Security (Fire and Earth), or the current Mars-Pluto contrast between Mind and Matter (Air and Earth), or the Venus-Lilith contrast (in the current Fez) between Consistency and Desire (Earth and Fire).

* * * * *

The Sixth Harmonic and the Minor Tricolor

The most powerful Configurations are those which fill the Zodiac – that is, their Angles add to 360 degrees.  The Grand Cross is 4×90, the Grand Trine 3×120, the Major Tricolor 90+150+120.  In a Minor Tricolor, a Sextile substitutes for the Trine, so we don’t get to a Full Circle.  However, we do have Challenge combined end-to-end with Curiosity and Grace.  But we have Sixth-Harmonic Grace rather than Third-Harmonic Grace.  That’s Grace through Work and Partnership rather than Grace through “Dumb Luck.”  That’s probably actually better for our Spiritual development, though since it will involve more Effort, probably not as automatic or monumental for accomplishments.

The Sixth Harmonic is The Lovers Archetype.  That brings with it all the Joys and Labors of getting along with another Entity.  Even if that Entity is your Soulmate, there probably won’t be more than a heady glance and a smile until one or the other of you is willing to expend a little effort to open the door.  Hence the understanding that a Sextile usually requires some initial Effort to get the Grace rolling.  And if the other person really is your Soulmate, you’ve got a lot of Work to do, because no one gets along with their Soulmate without doing their Self-Love Work.   Triggering your Self-Love Work is what Soulmates do for a living.

The Sixth Harmonic connects Signs that are not in the same Element, but in the same “gender.”  We don’t use the terms masculine and feminine to distinguish Signs, because those terms are too polluted with cultural bias.  Angeles Arrien uses the terms “Dynamic” and “Magnetic” instead, and we often just call them “Yang” and “Yin.”  The Elements Fire and Air are Dynamic or Active, and the Elements Earth and Air are Magnetic, or Receptive.  So a Sextile connects two Yin Signs or two Yang Signs.  There is mutual understanding, but it requires a handshake or a hug to acknowledge it.

So the Minor Tricolor can actually result in greater Self-development, while the Major Tricolor is more likely to work its magic in the outer World.  With the Minor Tricolor you’ll need to go back and rework that nettlesome Square over and over again, to smooth the Partnership path.  You’ll need to take Responsibility for your own muddle.  Thank goodness we’re Graced with the Curiosity, or the Challenge would be too great.  We should actually look for Minor Tricolors between the charts of Lovers and others in Relationship; it may be where the real value of this Configuration lies.

In the current Fez, it’s the Partnership between our Willingness to actively Support ourSelf in the outer World (Mars) and our Inner Female’s need for Suzerainty (Lilith) – or you could say, our Willingness to actively Support our Inner Female’s Suzerainty – that resolves both the Mars-Pluto (“Go for it!”) and the Venus-Lilith (“What would Momma say?!?”) Challenges.

* * * * *

Now, did I actually answer the questions?

1) Could you please explain how the 4th harmonic, symbolizing dominion and healthy control, is interrelated with the 3rd, 5th and 12th harmonics contained in the Major Tricolor?

The geometry is given to us by the chart – the Square (4th Harmonic), Quincunx (5th and 12th), and Trine (3rd), are presented to us by the Angles between the planets at the moment under consideration.  So it’s up to us as astrologers to combine the ideas of Dominion, Learning and Teaching, Pattern-Breaking, Challenge, Unacknowledged Mastery, Curiosity, Grace, and Potential Arrogance, into some view of the person or situation that provides Insight.  Of course we’ll need to also fold in the Signs and Elements involved, and temper it all by what the rest of the chart says.  Horribly complicated, yes, but that’s the nature of astrology.

That’s why I focus on reading first the Square then the Quincunx as the path to unlocking the Grace.  So for the current Pluto-Mars-Venus Major Tricolor, we can condense that into “We can resolve dilemmas about how vigorously to Act, by consulting our Values.” 

That is, We can resolve (Pluto and Trine) dilemmas (Square) about how vigorously (Mars) to Act, by consulting (Quincunx) our Values (Venus).

Wrapping in the Elements, we might say “When conflict arises between what we Think we need to Do and what is Practical, ask yourself what will create Stability.”

That is, When conflict (Square) arises between what we Think (Air) we need (Pluto) to Do (Mars) and what is Practical (Capricorn), ask yourself (Quincunx) what will create Stability (Venus in Taurus).  We could extend that to, When conflict (Square) arises between what we Think (Air) we need (Pluto) to Do (Mars) to get along (in Libra) and what is Practical (Capricorn), ask yourself (Quincunx) what will create Stability (Venus in Taurus).

Is this helpful?  Astrology is more like an “essay question” than a “multiple-choice” question.

In The Tricolor and the Fez we suggested a couple of alternate ways of looking at the Energy – our comments about the “swelled head” and “dead cats” and being “in the flow.”  But since so few people are at peace with their Squares, I’m betting that the Square-to-Quincunx-to-Trine reading will be the most useful for most people most of the time.

“2) As for the Minor Tricolor, I do not understand, according to your definition ‘…teaches us to share Dominion with our partners’, how it works with the principle of Pattern Breaking (12th harmonic), that the Major and Minor Tricolors involve.

True Partnership entails a degree of Equality that we don’t usually exercise in most of our day-to-day transactions with other Entities.  So I’m guessing that in most Minor-Tricolor situations, once we shift from Problem to Curiosity, the Initiatory Action that the Sextile will require, is that we shift out of Command mode and into Negotiate mode.  We can more or less Command a sales clerk to give us a loaf for a coin, but commanding a Partner to do something is more problematic.  “How do you feel about…” or “Would you be willing to…” or “Can we talk about…” will probably be a lot more effective than “A loaf of sourdough,” even if we were British and added a “please” at the end.

That’s why I emphasized “sharing Dominion” – hypothesizing that most of the time for most of us, sharing Dominion will be a Pattern-Breaker.  We would go from a Challenge to our sense of Healthy Control, into Curiosity about how to resolve it, into an Action that would trigger Grace, one that would most likely involve interaction with a Partner (Sixth Harmonic). 

Does that clarify the Minor Tricolor at all for you?

“3) Is it relevant to say that the 5th harmonic is related to ‘Learning’?

Absolutely.  The Fifth Harmonic is about Learning, and it’s flip side, Teaching.  We don’t really Learn something until we have to Teach it.  That’s when we discover what we’ve been assuming, that may not actually be True or relevant. 

My discussions of the Fourth Harmonic make it sound like I’m talking about Learning there too, but it’s different.  The Fourth Harmonic is about feeling that we’re on the Edge of being out of Control (as any Emperor always is).  I just suggest that we shift our focus from what we haven’t perfected, to what we’re Learning, as a way to defuse our frustration and recognize our accumulated Skills – our experiential Wisdom. 

 

It’s like the difference between the Third and Ninth Houses – the Fifth Harmonic and Third House are about Knowledge, while the Fourth Harmonic and the Ninth House are about Wisdom.  I’m always intrigued by the way Ursula Le Guin divided Knowledge among the faculty at the School on Roke in A Wizard of Earthsea.

 

How’d we do?  Are we making any sense?

Dropping Our Masks II

Small, complex, red Crystals of Galkhaite, a Sulfide made up from three substitution groups – Cesium or Thallium, Mercury or Copper or Zinc, and Arsenic or Antimony.  These components are mostly poisons, but in homeopathic quantities.

Adjuncts to the Uranus T-Square

Here we need to consider the Configurations that relate directly to the Uranus T-Square…

• The T-Square itself – dark red in the picture below – endures till May 9.
• The Pluto-Uranus-Pallas dark red/green/blue Tricolor lasts only till February 3, and the green-and-blue Pallas Yod with Uranus and the Sun only until February 1.
• But the Big Orange Box hangs around till the end of March.

We’ve never dealt with a Big Orange Box before.  A Mystic Rectangle has the Sixth Harmonic on two sides and the Third Harmonic on the other two, and it’s primary characteristics are determined by the two Oppositions, or the big red “X” inside it.  The Big Orange Box has the Fifth Harmonic (Learning) on two sides, and the Tenth Harmonic (Fortune) on the other two.  More specifically, the longer sides are three tenths of the way ’round the Zodiac, Tridectiles, so they combine elements of the Tenth Harmonic and the Third Harmonic (Love with Wisdom).  I think we’ll call it a Quintile Box.

How would we interpret such an animal?  Well, we know Learning is involved, as well as Fortune and Healing.  And extrapolating from the Mystic Rectangle I think we can safely assume that the two Oppositions from it’s corners are important.  So let’s make a stab…

Ignoring for the moment that the Jupiter-Pluto Opposition is the base of the Uranus T-Square, we can just think of a Jupiter-Pluto Axis as an Accelerated (Jupiter) Transformation (Pluto) or a Compulsory (Pluto) Growth Spurt (Jupiter).  Don’t be surprised if your bones ache.  With Uranus adding the tension of course, it’s likely to be an Accelerated failure of our Masks and a Compulsory Growth into Authenticity.  Since it’s often Trauma or Shame or both, or debilitating Fear, that has caused our Authenticity to hide out under the couch, it’s an excellent idea to start practicing being Loving and Gentle with our Traumatized Inner Little Ones as soon as possible.  You don’t want to be caught by surprise out in public, unprepared, when deep Shame arises.

Which is bleeding into the second Opposition, which is the Nodal Axis.  Abetted by Ceres on the North Node.  The Nodal Axis, as we’ve averred frequently, is the path from Karma to Mission, if you’re willing to accept it, and of course if we run that movie in reverse, from Failure of Mission to more Karma.  But it doesn’t really work that way, because as we know from working with our T-Squares, every Failure is a step toward Mastery.  Here’s how Paul Wheaton puts it…

” ‘Do or do not.  There is no try.’ — such bullshit.  Trying stuff is about all we ever do here.  Look at Picard and the gang on the enterprise, they are constantly weighing probabilities and trying stuff.  So maybe Yoda is a bit like what Morphius says about the Oracle: she tells you stuff to nudge you onto a particular path.  It doesn’t mean that what she says is THE TRUTH. “

And Gar Alperovitz…

“The recent economic failure of one of the most important units of the Mondragón cooperatives offers an opportunity to clarify the issue and begin to think more clearly about our own strategy in the United States.  Mondragón Corporation is an extraordinary 80,000-person grouping of worker-owned cooperatives based in Spain’s Basque region that is teaching the world how to move the ideas of worker-ownership and cooperation into high gear and large scale.”

We frequently say that the Nodes are prone to swap positions, North to South as well as South to North.  By that we don’t mean accumulating Karma, though that’s always possible (remember that by Karma we mean Inertia, not Retribution) through avoidance.  We mean that like Frodo our goal shifts from Achieving our Mission, to Acquiring the Tools necessary to Achieve our Mission.  You know how something gets a lot easier when you have the right Tools.  So rather than hammering away at our Mission with the wrong Tools, which most of us are wont to do much of the time when we Follow Our Passion directly, we would hammer away at our Limiting Beliefs and Deferred Emotions, knowing that hidden underneath those are exactly the Tools we need to Accomplish our Mission effortlessly in the Lifetime.

In fact it could be easily argued that this is our Real Mission.

But everybody’s Mission is different, and everyone’s conception of their own Mission is different.

It’s short notice, but there’s a free webinar by Rick Hanson at 8am PST on January 30 pretty much on this topic, at

http://www.onlinemeetingnow.com/seminar/?id=1daf2b00f4

It’s kind of a talking-head lecture like they peppered you with at school, so you might get more out of his book, Hardwiring Happiness…

http://www.rickhanson.net/books/hardwiring-happiness

and you wouldn’t have to worry about missing the webinar.

Back to our original point – how would we interpret this particular Quintile Box then?   Including Ceres (Sustainability) on the North Node?  Well…

For the next two months we’ll be Learning a great deal about Rapidly and Permanently Transforming our orientation toward our Mission and toward our Limiting Beliefs and Held Emotions – and Learning how to profit from what we Learn.  After all, while Avarice won’t do you much good, self-deprivation will do you even less good.  There’s nothing Compassionate about self-deprivation.  When you remember that Abundance is Having Enough to Share, you understand that self-deprivation just deprives everyone.

When we speak of Rapid Transformation, we start to edge into Miracle territory, Chiron’s province.  Well, don’t forget that the Chiron Mjolnir runs through April 2.

The Tricolor would be something like…

The Challenge is to manage Rapid Transformation of our Identity in its shift from focusing on the Ego’s orientation toward Other, to focusing on the Ego’s relationship to our own Soul.  The key to this Challenge lies through paying Attention to our Edges, to the places where we Judge rather than being open to Learning and Collaboration.  That will open us to Grace.

The Yod just adds emphasis to this Energy.

The Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Pluto Cycles

We’ve looked at Jupiter-Pluto before…

The Jupiter-Pluto Cycle began in December 2007 at 29 of Sagittarius…

“A fat boy mowing the lawn of his house on an elegant suburban street“

A Jupiter-Pluto Cycle would be about Accelerating Transformation and I’m not sure why, but every time I run across this image it feels like the drama is about to break wide open.  Maybe because the lad is overweight and thus out of tune with the lawn order implied.

Sagittarius 29 is the Galactic Center.  That explains the fat b0y – in the same sense that the Nagasaki bomb was nicknamed Fat Man.  Meaning an Energy of consequence.  So the current Jupiter-Pluto Cycle is a vehicle for carrying the End of the Mayan Calendar Energy.  December 2007 was a high point in the “Sub-Prime Derivative Crisis” that led to the collapse of the then-current World financial system and it’s replacement with direct taxpayer funding through unlimited debt borrowed from current and future generations and handed to the gamblers who had already gotten rich destroying the former house of cards – the gamblers who mostly lived on elegant suburban streets in Connecticut.

This is the Exposition phase of the Jupiter-Pluto Opposition; the Can-Opener phase occurred at the initial Jupiter-Direct Uranus T-Square of August 2013, and the Confidence-Builder will occur at the Pluto Station in April.  How do we make constructive use of this Energy?

By unhooking ourselves from the tattered ghost of the old debt-based World financial system and orienting ourselves toward Sustainable Collaborative Community.

As long-time readers know, I don’t consider the Opposition to be the Fruiting of a Cycle, I call it the Blooming.  I consider the Phitile to be the Fruiting.  The Jupiter-Pluto Phitile occurs July 2015.  It will be an interesting test of the Phitile to see if the ghost of the World financial system collapses between now and April, or waits until 2015, after the seventh and last Uranus-Pluto Square.  I suspect both will prove relevant.

The timing of the three Waxing Squares in the current Jupiter-Uranus Cycle is the same as that of the Jupiter-Pluto Oppositions – August 2013, now, and April.  Uranus Initiated Jupiter in June 2010 at the Aries Point, the first degree of Aries, “A Woman just risen from the Sea, embraced by a Seal.”  Like 29 Sagittarius, this is a major milepost of the Zodiac.  At the Waxing Square the Energy becomes permanent and reaches the mainstream.

We could see Jupiter-Uranus Cycle as Accelerated Self-Realization.  The Aries Point represents the Zero-Point Field, where nothing is Manifest and all Potential resides.

So anything is possible, limited only by the inertia you’ve created since June 2010.  What is that?  It’s probably about to break open and leap forward.

Portal 10.15

We’re stuck with our much-embellished Juno-Nodes T-Square for a while, so if you’re bummed, better find a way to Witness your Victim and get into the Present Moment, because ten to one you’re regressed deep into your Karma.  And no, it’s not anything you’ve earned, it’s just habits you’ve gotten into, and the longer you continue them, the deeper the ruts get.  As long as your Attention is focused on the bummer, you’re just creating more of it.

You can’t deny it, you have to embrace it, lovingly and gently.  Feel the feelings as deeply as you can, but while you’re doing that, look to see who is doing the feeling.  Or locate them in your body, put you hand there, and warm it up.  Or Tap, or Find Gratitude, or Meditate, or get Shen, or PIAVA what you really want, or ask yourself what color is the wallpaper.  There is a Locus of Energy that is You.  Where is it?  Is it lost in the flashback?  Is it outside of the flashback looking in?

Taking responsibility to Change these places where we get stuck and there’s no exit is what Pi’s post-2012 Earth is all about.  The Juno T-Square goes on for several weeks.  Remember all those Grand Sextiles?  Weren’t they great?  How soon we forget, eh?

Well, we get a break on October 15.  Three Grand Trines (Bigtime Grace), one after the other with a little overlap, lasting almost all day.  Enjoy!

• From around 8am PDT to about 4pm PDT, the Moon (Manifestation) Trines Lilith (Self-Determination) which in turn Trines Saturn (the Most Important Thing), which of course in turn Trines the Moon – that’s what a Grand Trine is, a merry-go-round of Third-Harmonic, Love with Wisdom, Effortless, Dumb Luck Energy.  Moon-Lilith-Saturn means we should easily be able to tune into Guidance; it’ll be Instinctual.
• Then from about 1pm PDT to about 8pm PDT, Mercury (Communication) replaces Saturn.  Don’t be surprised if there is someone you suddenly need to talk to.  Or several someones.
• And from around 7pm PDT till midnight (12 am PDT October 16), Jupiter (Expansion) replaces Lilith.  Moon-Mercury-Jupiter; time to start talking a lot about what we Want, rather than what we endure.  Talking about what we Want is like bulldozing a roadbed; we enlist Other People to help Witness the drama.  When next you meet they won’t ask, How are you doing with that nasty Karma you’ve been carrying around?  They’ll ask, How’s progress on that exciting project you were telling me about? instead.

By October 16 we’re back in the slog.  After October 16, the Ceres Mjolnir fades, then after October 17, the Venus-South Node Trine (Bonus Gift) goes away.  The Ceres Mjolnir (with the Juno-South Node Square) is a fabulous opportunity to blow away that Karma once and for all!  Don’t waste it!

If you were “lucky” enough to be in the dumps on October 14, and you can Witness the difference between October 14 and October 15, you can see clearly how we so easily slump into our Karmic ruts, and how to Take Responsibility for that self-sabotage.  It’s a gift that could keep on giving into Eternity, if you play it right!  Just in case you need to be reminded, “Taking Responsibility” doesn’t mean Taking the Blame, it means you’re Able to Respond.

There are a couple more Windows of Grace later in the Month – a Grand Sextile and Juno Diamond Star on October 23-24, and a Chiron Kite (Grand Trine with an outrigger) October 26-November 2.

I used to think Juno signified what we Deny, but at least for youngsters, it’s clear that it now symbolizes what’s coming into Consciousness.  Both Malala Yousafzai and Edward Snowden were born with Pallas-Juno-Eris T-Squares.  Eris to reveal what’s being Denied, Juno to insist that it be acknowledged, and Pallas to say This has gone far enough!  Malala’s T-Square is part of a far more complex Configuration, including Juno Conjunct Sun – she embodies Juno.  Look what you’re doing, Dumbo! appears to be Juno’s message in the Age of Eris.

That’s certainly the October 14-15 message about self-sabotage, precisely about

  No longer lending our Energy to that which we wish to be free from

as Jewel puts it.  With Juno back into prominence, Malala’s touring the US and brave enough to attempt to educate Obomba about basic common sense (killing innocents makes people mad – Duh!), while Snowden’s recently appeared above ground in Moscow, as have his new revelations about how the NSA hacks your Address Book.

A crystal of blue Celestite, or Celestine – Strontium Sulfate.  Strontium is Calcium’s big brother.  Calcium creates Structure that supports but constrains; Strontium creates Structure that celebrates flexibility.