A Gift from the Heavens

Our ever-watchful Chief Asteroid Officer has noticed that 45 minutes before the 22-23 January 2023 Station (Prominence) of Uranus (Our Soul), Venus (Our Values) and Saturn (The Most Important Thing) Convene and Initiate a New Cycle. The Venus-Saturn Cycle should Obviously be ranked among our Most Critical Cycles. At the times when our Values are NOT The Most Important Thing to Us, we Betray Ourself. While such Self-Sabotage is a result of our Programming, our Programming is a Mirror for our Karma, since Programming is how much of our Karma was installed into the Current Lifetime.

If you’re reading this, one of your Most Important Values is Enlightenment, aka Ascension or 5D. A primary prerequisite for Enlightenment is to Clear our Karma. That’s more Difficult while our Karma remains Unconscious, so Noticing our Karmic Patterns becomes Bottom Line. We get this Opportunity every time our Karma is Triggered, which includes every time we React from our Programming rather than Responding from our Values. Enlightenment means that our Ego and our Soul are Merging, and that can’t happen as long as Karma has a Leghold Trap on our Ego, which is exactly what Karma does for a Living.

This is a particularly Important Window for those of us who were Programmed to favor Thinking over Feeling, because as Jung said, People who Prioritize Thinking are Irrational, because they’re not in Touch with their own Emotions and therefore not in Touch with their own Values, since Values arise from the Heart, not the Mind. Many of us are much more Aware of Our Thoughts About Our Feelings than we are of Our Feelings themselves. Too many of us haven’t yet Learned to tell the difference.

Many of us first need to Learn to Find our Emotions, buried under the Thoughtstorm that they evoke. It can help to Focus on the Sensations that arise with Emotion. When we’re trying to Think Through a particularly difficult Conundrum, we can Ask ourself, What Is my Body Telling me through its Sensations? rather than What is my Mind Telling me through its Thoughts? Emotions (Water) and Sensations (Earth) share the same Style (Magnetic), as we explained in the previous post, so they tend to Collaborate.

Emotions and Thoughts (Air) have Opposite Styles, so they tend to Conflict. So Emotions and Thoughts are in Competition with one another before we even Feel or Think. And thanks to Western Medicine, with its ban on Intuition and its Intense Advertising Campaigns, we also have to Struggle with and get beyond our Thoughts about our Sensations (“O My Goddess, is that Cancer?”). We have to Focus on Where our Sensation Resides in the Body and What It Feels Like there, while Rejecting Thoughts the same way we do when they Intrude on our Meditations – “Oh, there’s Thinking Again. Thanks for Contributing, but we’re Doing Something Else now. Where was I?“

Venus-Saturn Value-Priority Cycles last about a year. The Cycle that’s Ending spanned 10 months, but the New Cycle will last 14 months, till the Aries Equinox of 2024, because Venus slows down and turns Retrograde in the Northern Summer and Southern Winter. Angles between Retrograde planets are called Expositions because they Expose the internal workings of a planetary Relationship. Consequently, they’re more educational. In this Retrograde part of the Cycle¹ we may be more Alone than we usually prefer, because we’ll be Learning to Appreciate our own Unique Strengths, some of which we’ve theretofore never Appreciated or even Noticed.² Knowing Ourself – our Natural Strengths and the situations where we’re better off Delegating to Others or to Spirit – is an Essential Foundation for Enlightenment.

The New Cycle Begins in 25 Aquarius (Honing the Inner Witness in order to Rebirth Intelligence). Without Realizing the Connection to Lonsdale’s interpretation for the Degree, in note ¹ below we’ve already written a lot about the Inner Witness! An Initiation is the Birth or a New Cycle, so it’s chart is a Birth Chart. So we shouldn’t be surprised when a Retrograde Period in the Cycle reiterates the Birth Reading for the Cycle. But the Cycle and the Degree are Independent of one another, so the “Coincidence” is still Remarkable.

We’ll look at the chart tomorrow. “Chrysanthemum Stone” is a good Rock to Contemplate for bringing forth the Inner Witness. The mineral composition can vary quite a bit. The Stone is so unusual that it’s known more by its Morphology and Mythology (of Immortal Love between Stones and Flowers) than for its chemistry. The fact that it appears in only a few places in the World, and appears with a mix of Chemistries when it does, speaks loudly that it’s Meaning lies in its Mythology. It’s also a Metaphor for the Bright and Focused Soul breaking through the Dark and Amorphous Matrix of the Ego and Karma.

¹ Venus is actually Retrograde from 24 July to 4 September 2023 and 29 to 13 Leo, but the Shadow Period spans 19 June through 7 October. A Retrogradation is like a Remedial Course – we have to take it three times to pass, and sometimes we don’t. That’s the case when we don’t Learn from an astroevent. When we do Learn, it’s not Remedial at all. A Retrograde Shadow Period has three stages. The Retrograde period, here 24/7-4/9 and 29-13 Leo, is stage 2. Stage 1 is when the planet crosses this Degree Zone the first time, while Direct. That will be 19 June to 23 July and 13 to 29 Leo. Stage 1, called the Can-Opener, is when we get Blindsided by the Lesson Plan, often quite Stressfully. So we may hit Loneliness and Self-Doubt during the Can-Opener.

Stage 2 is the Exposition, where since the planet is Retrograde, the Curriculum is Repeated, more Slowly this time, Step by Step, allowing us to Learn the Lesson. If we’re Paying Attention. If we aren’t Paying Attention, we’ll Re-Experience the Stress of the Can-Opener, and remain its Victim. Stage 3 is the Confidence-Builder, where the Curriculum is Repeated Again, and this time we Sail Right Through it, because we’ve Learned How! If we noticed the Correlation between the Can-Opener and the Exposition. It not, we could have a third Stressful Victim Episode.

Karma and Unconscious Limitations are Created when we Remain in Blame, making our Stress Someone or Something Else’s Fault rather than our own Curriculum, and make a Decision or Vow or Oath or Promise that we’ll Never Put Ourself in that Position again. Of course, it’s unlikely we’ll have a strong Negative Reaction unless it’s already Karmic for us. So we don’t Create New Karma nearly as often as we “just” add Fresh Cement to our Old Karma. If we are Accountable for our Reaction to the original Stressful event rather than Blaming or Projecting it onto Something Else, or if we Notice the Repetition and Become Accountable, we can Learn and Practice Changing our Original Reaction to a Different Response. Then we really do Gain Confidence in the third Stage. Our Skills don’t mean much without our Confidence in them!

Many people misunderstand this Process as Blaming the Victim, which it’s not. We’re Expecting the Victim to take Ownership of their own Reactions to Repeating Stimuli. We can all be Blindsided by New Can-Openers, and since our Karma is many-dimensional, we often have to Re-Experience it in many different Arenas before we Let It Go Completely. We may React with Blame to a Relationship Hassle once, and then React with Blame to a Job Hassle another time, without Realizing that our Reactions are Repeating. That happens to all of us all the time, as we have many Karmic Patterns happening in many different Arenas. But if we’re Alert to Noticing the Similarities between two Reactions, we can Become Conscious that it’s Karma and Choose to Change it.

² The Angles made between Venus and Saturn while they’re Retrograde are closest to four ninths and five elevenths of the Zodiac (the Quadrinovile and Quinelvile, 160 and 164 Degrees), which are about Mastering (4) Contemplation and Introspection (9) and Learning (5) to Appreciate our own Gifts and Talents (11). We derive the meaning of odd (indeed, all ) astrological Angles through the Correlation between the Tarot Major Arcana (Angeles Arrien, The Tarot Handbook) to the Harmonics of the Angles. For instance, the Quadrinovile is four ninths, or a combination of the 4th and 9th Harmonics (360/4=90° and 360/9=40°), equated to the 4th and 9th members of the Major Arcana (Emperor = Dominion and Hermit = Meditation). So the Quadrinovile implies Healthy Control over Meditation).

August 2020 Cycles 2 – About Cycles

The development of an astrological Cycle is Nonlinear.  The nature of the New Cycle is very strong before and after the Initiation.  Then it goes underground, as the Status-Quo Seekers of the Old Cycle work to try to Protect their Investments, controlling the headlines in the process.  The Energy of the New Cycle grows in the background until the Faster planet is three Signs ahead of (Squares) the Slower planet.  At that point the New Cycle forces its way into Prominence, and the Protectors of Old Cycle Investments (if they’re smart enough to figure out that it’s long past the time to Adapt or Fold) have to Cover their Losses and Move On.

Between that point (the Waxing Square) and the time when the Faster planet is 5/8ths of the way ’round the Zodiac from the Slower planet (the Waning Trioctile [225°], approximating the Phitile [222½°]), the New Energy leaves its mark on the World at large.  After that, the New Energy slowly wanes, ideally (but seldom in Stasis-Loving Real Life) to make room for the Next Cycle.  Roughly like this (assuming for illustration that the slower planet doesn’t move)…

Let’s say you’re an Entrepreneur, or you want to start a Non-Profit NGO.  You’d find your Business or Charitable Theme in the headlines at the Initiation.  Gather your entire Nest-Egg at that point, because soon thereafter you won’t be able to.  Between the Initiation and the Activation, you’d ignore the fact that the headlines have Forgotten about the Need you’re addressing, while you Develop your Operations.  You can make sales and take donations in this phase, but with low Expectations and no Hype (you’d be shouting into the Wind).

At the Activation, you’d Open your Operations for business and Advertise heavily.  By the Culmination, you’d have your Operations on Autopilot so you can Clear your own decks, Rest Up, and begin to make Space for your Next Big Idea.  You can collect candidates, but Avoid tentative Decisions till after you see the New-Cycle headlines start to form, near the end of the Void phase.  As you approach the Void, you can Decide to Adapt or Close your previous Business/Non-Profit.  Avoid actual Investment in your New Venture till the Next-Cycle headlines are clear, at the Initiation.

The astrological Angles at each of these three Stages – Initiation (Conjunction), Activation (Waxing Square), Culmination (Waning Trioctile) – can recur several times, as the planets involved stutter through Retrogradations.  From the Perspective of the astrology, the Initiation occurs only once, at the first Conjunction, but the Conjunctions can occur multiple times.  From the Perspective of your Response, you’d consider the Initiation to last through the last Conjunction in the sequence.

A common situation is that the astrological Angles at each of these Stages occurs three times – the Faster planet will cross, Stop, Back Up and cross again, Stop again, then go forward again and cross for the third time.  We call the first crossing the “Can-Opener,” because it usually opens a “Can of Worms.”  We call the second crossing (and subsequent Conjunctions if there are more than three) “Expositions,” because they Expose the inner workings of the Process that’s being Initiated.  We call the last Conjunction in the series the “Confidence-Builder,” because the Issue Lights Up again, but this time you have Experience with it, so you Realize that the Worms were really Linguini, and make yourself a Marinara to go with it.

With the Lachesis-Orcus Cycle that Initiated yesterday, Lachesis does not go Retrograde till April 2021, and by then it’s two Degrees past Orcus.  It backs up only ten Degrees, so the Initiation is a one-off.  That’s common when inner planets or asteroids interact with outer planets.  Also, when two asteroids interact, their Cycles can be almost infinitely long, because they’re traveling at approximately the same speed, and with their Retrogradations, constantly swapping positions.

Transformation 1

Remember this “Tumultuous Week“? …

That was the first week of April 2020, when Our Willingness to Accept our Forbidden Genius in order to Respond to Climate Change was all Lit Up (Ixion [Forbidden Genius], Pholus [Response or Denial], and Quaoar [Survival Instincts] all Stationary [Strong]).  And of course we were busily Reliving “9/11” (Moon beginning a decade going Out of Bounds for a few days every two weeks, after staying In Bounds for a decade), disguised as a Virus this time around.  And beginning to Recover from (the first decline of?) the fastest “Bear Market” in recorded history, in the US stock market.  It was so busy that we didn’t have time to write about what would otherwise be a Big Deal, the Merging (Conjunction) or the Energy of Expansion (Jupiter) and the Energy of Compulsory Transformation (Pluto).

Here’s the chart of that 4 April 2020 (7:40 pm PDT) Jupiter-Pluto Conjunction in 25 Capricorn…

Why are we thinking about this 3-month-old chart?  Turns out we’re Reliving it, as the Energies of Expansion and Compulsory Transformation are Merging (Retrograde Jupiter Conjunct Retrograde Pluto in 25 Capricorn) for the second time, culminating 29 June (9:30 pm PDT).  As many of you know, when two planets Merge, they often Dance the Three-Step – they cross, then stop and back up to cross a second time, then stop again and then finally cross for a third time (some planets even do the Five-Step or Seven-Step and more).  We have names to distinguish these three crossings from one another.

We call the first crossing the “Can-Opener” because it usually introduces a Problem of some kind.  The Energy of the current Three-Step Dance is about Expanding into Compulsory Transformation.  Well, we definitely saw the Planet as a Whole Expanding into Compulsory Transformation, didn’t we.  You can even see the Sky in Beijing and Los Angeles!  Many of us as individuals Experienced this Transformation as a Problem, all right, and those of us without effective Community still do.  Not to mention those of us who were Challenged directly by the Virus.

We name the second crossing of the Three-Step Dance – the current one – the “Exposition,” because the Problem repeats itself, but this time (with at least the faster, Active planet Retrograde) it unfolds more slowly, giving us the Opportunity to Grok the issue, and make some attempts to Respond to the Problem rather than just Reacting.  The Exposition phase of the Three-Step is when we Learn more about how to handle the Issue.  (In the case of the Five-Step, Seven-Step, and More-Step Dances, all of the crossings except the first one and the final one are multiple Expositions.)

This particular Issue, Expanding into Compulsory Transformation (Jupiter-Pluto), reccurs every 12-13 years, so we do have Experience with it, at least if we’re over 30 (we may not be Trustworthy, but we are Experienced).  If we look back in herstory and history, the last time it occurred was in 2007 – the Derivatives Crash that most folks, following the propaganda of the time, referred to as the “Housing Crisis.”  That tells us that current Transformation events aren’t really about the Virus, as the headlines would have us Believe.  They’re about what John Perkins in Touching the Jaguar calls the Death Economy, often called Predatory Capitalism, or the modern version of Colonialism.

If you haven’t read any of John’s books, now would be an excellent time to start, beginning with Touching the Jaguar.  If you’re at all curious about any of the Conspiracy Theories around the Virus, it will be very educational.  And you’ll end up Grokking much more of what Expanding into Compulsory Transformation is all about.

We highly recommended this book recently, along with Larry Korn’s One-Straw Revolutionary, but we weren’t explicit about why we recommended them – because they’re the best Expositions of 5D I’ve run across so far.  Michael Roads’s Through the Eyes of Love series goes into more depth, but it’s far beyond the Skillset of many of us, thus easily dismissed as Fantasy by folks who don’t understand much about the Spirit Realms.  Touching the Jaguar and One-Straw Revolutionary may be ambitious, but they’re completely feasible from the 3D Perspective.  And I’ve found another book to join these two – Masanobu Fukuoka’s Planting Seeds in the Desert.

Previous episodes of Expanding into Compulsory Transformation occurred in 1906, 1918, 1931, 1943, 1956, 1968, 1981, and 1994.  Many of those years were indeed significantly Transformative.  In addition to the obvious, we might note that 1918 included the Spanish Flu, 1943 included race riots, and 1981 included the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.  Intriguing that Microsoft Bing chose this evening to put the Empire State Building on it’s headline page, as it was completed in 1931.  On the page it’s illuminated in rainbows for Pride Week in 2014.

The third crossing of the Three-Step Dance is called the “Confidence-Builder” because at that point we re-Experience the Issue but this time we have enough Experience to sail through it.  In this case that will occur in mid-November.  That would be a good Timeline for putting the current Virus behind us, if we’re ever in a position where we have to make a prediction.  With luck, and if enough of us PIAVA it, we may be able to put other current issues behind us as well.

Remember that the Energy comes first and the Physical follows.  The more time we spend Meditating on How we’ll Feel when we’re in 5D, the faster we’ll get there.

This is an Initiation – a Can-Opener of a Merger between two planets (first Conjunction in a Three-Step).  That means that the chart above will define how we will Expand into Compulsory Transformation for the next dozen years.  This Cycle begins at 25 Capricorn, “A store filled with precious Oriental rugs.”  While Oriental rugs are luxury items today, their original use was as large very tightly woven rugs used by desert nomads to keep their tent floors from being overwhelmed by Sand.  So it’s reasonable to Believe we might see politics “Cleaned Up” a bit over the next decade (the Active portion of a 12-year Cycle lasts about 10 years).  On the other hand, the desert nomads were terribly Patriarchal.  However, the rugs are displayed in a store – the original use is no more.

The 29 June chart (next post) then will tell us about how we’re Learning about Expanding into Compulsory Transformation here at this Exposition, but the 4 April chart above will tell us about the next dozen years.  So to interpret the next few days, we should start by interpreting the 4 April chart.  The nature of the Initiation of a new astrological Cycle is that the Energy of the new Cycle is Lit Up around the time of the Initiation, but then goes underground for a while (until the Waxing Square, which will occur in mid-May 2023) as those who are heavily invested in the Old Cycle blast us with propaganda about how superior the Energy of the Old Cycle is.

Or rather, in this era where the Capitalists own the media, pretend that the New Cycle doesn’t exist.  Fortunately, there are a few bastions of actual Journalism left that also report on the New Cycle’s Energy.  So, if we look at what’s been happening over the last 3-4 months, what do we see?

• A bump up in our mortality rate, obviously.
• Severe debilitation by Virus and by treatment.
• Governments acting like “Third-World” countries.
• Minorities banding together to Insist on their Huperity.
• Remarkable Environmental Recovery even while the Antichrist peels away legal protections by the truckload.
• Death Capitalism grinding to a halt.
• Lots of people Threatened with Economic catastrophe.
• Lots of people Helping one another.
• Diminished Materialism and Globalization.
• Massive Confusion as Polarization grows.
• Resistance to Denial and Prevarication.

What am I leaving out?

We Create our own Reality, so we can pick and choose which of these we want to Expand into the New Cycle, which we’ll then want to Experience Directly as Energy, PIAVAing that we Manifest them for ourself.  You can put Energy into What You Want For Others, but that’s thinner ice.  Even if you know what they say they Want, you don’t want to Compete against their Negative Unconscious Wants by trying to “Fix” their Karma for them – guess who will win that contest.  You’ve got more than enough to do to Revert your own Negative Unconscious Wants!

We’ll need to look to see which of these are Supported by the 4 April chart, and emphasize those.  We’ll look at that tomorrow.  Then we want to look at the 29 June chart and see what it contributes.  Mañana.

Cause an Defect Full Moon I

As we said last time, things haven’t felt very satisfying or stable the last several days, as Jupiter Squares Pluto, amplified by the impending 7 August Full-Moon Partial Eclipse, prelude to the 21 August Big One.   The Jupiter-Pluto Cycle is about Expanding our Transformation, and the two Squares in the Cycle are about being Challenged to Master the next stage of our Transmogrification. 

Remember that Pluto astroevents are like floating down a big River.  You can hear the roar of the rapids ahead and you can steer to one bank or the other to portage around them, but if you try to paddle upstream you’ll just get swept backwards over the falls.  So Resistance is not only futile, it’s Self-Destructive.  Go with the Flow.

Of the two Squares in any Cycle (when the two planets are three Signs apart), the first or Waxing Square is about being Challenged to Let Go of the dregs of the previous Cycle and fully Commit to the present one.  The second or Waning Square is about Letting Go of any Attachment you’ve made to the current Cycle, because the Energies of the current Cycle are disintegrating.  Think Barnes & Noble, post-Amazon.

So, what are we Letting Go of – what’s the Current Cycle about?  It was Initiated 12 December 2007 at 29 Sagittarius, “A fat boy mowing the lawn of his house on an elegant suburban street.”  Always a puzzling Symbol.  Rudhyar’s interpretation seems oriented toward Materialism, Ego, and Status-Quo; he sometimes did that.  Sagittarius is itself about Letting Go, Spiritual Fire, burning away what’s Obsolete, before we start over on version 4.0 with a whole new Grounding, and the last Degree of Sagittarius should be a final big Catharsis. 

So the Symbol is Antonymous.  Being Non-Dual, the Unconscious Loves tko be Antonymous.  That’s why She has a reputation as a Trickster.  So what means it?  Well, the “elegant” neighborhood tells us we’re dealing with Materiality and probably Ego-Attachment.  Elsie Channeled these Symbols in the 1930s, so the boy’s heft is probably not a symptom of the modern Salt- and Sugar- and Chemical-laden microwaved synthetic GMO diet, but simply to Over-Indulgence.  Of course it could be genetic; the boy may be on his way to becoming the fastest Offensive Lineman in the NFL, but I don’t think the adjective “fat” would be the most apt word to describe that.

The “fat” conflicts with “mowing,” as we’re used to associating fat with inactivity.  So it’s easy to imagine the lad sweating and grumbling to himself.  Perhaps it’s a punishment – if he did it frequently he’d probably weigh less.  Every time I see that Symbol I can’t help but think of J.R. Simplot’s house in Boise, which is perched on top of a small hillock, 30-40 feet above the elegant suburban street, surrounded by lawn on the slopes, which seem not so far from vertical.  Boise is hot in the summer, when grass grows, so this kid is unlikely to make it through even one mowing without hospitalization.

Now, if we add to this image the fact that since 2007 we’ve seen a vast reorganization of modern Life, the Symbol smacks of the need for Sustainability.  Sustainability and Sustenance are really the same thing, and they imply Letting Go of the Unnecessary.  What it reminds me of is the ongoing Pholus-Quaoar-Galactic Center Stellium, which in no uncertain terms reminds us that we’re Responsible for the Survival of the Planet. 

So Bottom Line, this Jupiter-Pluto Cycle is about Letting Go of our Materialism, and the Waning Square of the Cycle is about Stepping Away from that Letting Go.  The nature of a Waning Square is that we don’t know what comes next.  Our Assignment is to clear away all Expectations so we can be Open to the next Cycle without preconceptions.  If we knew what the next Cycle was about, we’d contaminate it by viewing it through the eyes of the old Cycle.  In other words, our Transformation is no longer about Letting Go of Attachment to Materialism.  It’s about Curiosity and Wonder.

The Waning Square was Exact at half-past 10am PDT on 4 August.  When outer planets make Angles to one another, they often do it three or more times, which gives us Opportunities to practice.  This is the third time Jupiter has Squared Pluto.  We call the third time a “Confidence-Builder” event, because by now we’ve had our practice.  The first Waning Square was 24 November 2016; we call that the “Can-Opener” because if we don’t do astrology, we’re usually caught off guard by the abrupt shift in Energy.

So if you have a journal you can look to see what sort of Experiences you Enjoyed (or otherwise), internally and externally, Circumstances and Reactions, last mid-November, as the Energy was intensifying.  If you don’t have a journal you can look back to https://astrobuss.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/the-thousand-vignettes/ and the several posts preceding it.  It was a very busy time. 

The second Waning Square is usually when the faster planet is Retrograde, so we Experience the same Energies less Dramatically, giving us time and space to Learn more about them.  We call this second recurrence an “Exposition” because it Exposes more information about what’s going on.  Whatever we didn’t resolve at the Can-Opener (when we’re often Overwhelmed by the new Energy) or at the Exposition, will be Lit Up now, at the Confidence-Builder. 

It’s mop-up time around Materialism and Ego-Attachment to it.  There’s a big White House on the east coast of the US where all that’s being Acted Our for us in Real Time on Reality TV.  With a fat boy mowing the greens of his elegant suburban golf course even.

March IV – More Week 1

Other than what we’ve already discussed, the main events during the first week of March are an Exposition of Jupiter-Uranus at 6pm PST on 2 March, and the Station of Venus at 1am PST on 4 March.  

When an astroevent repeats three or more times, the first occurrence usually catches us off guard and introduces Puzzles we need to Resolve.  Since we often become Emotionally Involved with these Puzzles, we call this the “Can-Opener.”  By the last occurrence we’ve hopefully Resolved all the Issues that arose, so we refer to the last occurrence as the “Confidence-Builder.”  Intermediate occurrences we call “Expositions.”  They Expound on the Puzzles aroused by the Can-Opener.

In the case of this Jupiter-Uranus Opposition, the Can-Opener occurred on 27 December 2016.  It’s an extension of the Uranus-Eris and Uranus-Pluto work we’ve been doing for the last one and five years, respectively – namely, Removing our Masks and Exposing our Soul Self.  The Jupiter-Uranus Opposition Confidence-Builder will occur in September.

The Jupiter-Uranus Exposition means that we’re reviewing how well we’ve Removed our Masks, Expanded our Connection with our Soul Self, and Expanded our Comfort with Vulnerability to replace the Safety that our Masks previously provided.  We first Encountered this Energy in late December, so we may be Re-Experiencing whatever Issues we had at that time with our tendencies to camoflage our True Self.  

This is 21 Degrees of Aries-Libra, so it Triggers our Golden-Rectangle Recovering-our-Hidden-Genius Work that’s so closely linked with the current stage of our True-Self-Recovery Work.  Jupiter is backing across 24-14 Degrees of Libra, the territory it’s covered since mid-November.  This territory is about Rebooting our Relationship with Other and finding more avenues for Cooperation.

Of course Uranus is traveling with Eris (Revealing what was Denied), so that’s Lit Up as well, with crises of one degree or another around Jupiter-Eris having occurred in the neighborhoods of 18 January and 23 February.  And Vesta (Unconscious Beliefs) is Squaring the Jupiter-to-Uranus/Eris Opposition, calling our Limiting Beliefs into Question.  Our Beliefs are Up for Evolution during all of the second half of 2016 and the first half of 2017.

Then there are our Values.  How do Values differ from Beliefs?  We have some sense of Right/Wrong around Values, while it’s more about Possible/Impossible when it comes to Beliefs.  When someone Acts contrary to our Values we think they’re really screwed up, if not downright Evil.  When someone Acts contrary to our Beliefs, we absolutely DO NOT understand how they could possibly vote for – no, I mean, how they could possibly see the World that way, whcn it’s SO CLEARLY NOT that way.  Aliens most likely, or at least Lizards.  

As our Beliefs Change, and they have been and are Changing, our Values have to Change along with them.  For instance if we now have a new Belief that Greater Abundance is now Possible for us, we’ll be reconsidering our Values around Sharing.  If we can newly Conceive of Greater Community, we’ll be reviewing our Values around Privacy and Intimacy.  If you’re starting to Take Responsibility for your own role in World Peace, your Values around Anger and how its Expressed may be shifting.

These things are undoubtedly already happening, as Venus has been covering its Shadow Period (the path of its Retrogradation) since the end of January.  The Venus Shadow spans 27 Pisces to 14 Aries, one of the most Powerful zones of the Zodiac, at it involves the Finishing Stages of the Last Emotional Dregs of our Finishing-Business Work around Ego-Attachment to Drama, and the First Half of the process of Rebirthing our Values Directly from Spirit.  

In January our Values sprung largely from our Emotions.  Chances are, to at least some degree, what we most Valued was Resistance to Emotional Situations that we had the least tolerance for – namely our Held Emotions.  Karmic Held Emotions wall us off from our Intuition.  By late May (when the whole Venus Shadow Period will have been traced thrice) more of our Values will derive from our High Heart instead.  One clear Lesson we’re being taught here, like it or not, is that Pain is a Teacher to be Embraced, not a Curse to be Avoided or Reverted.

The Venus Retrogradation triple-Dances with Juno (The Edges of the Unconscious) and Pallas (Boundaries).  The Can-Openers were 5 January for Pallas and 3 February for Juno.  The Exposition revisits will be 14 March for Juno and 2 April for Pallas.  

At Venus-Juno events we expect the hidden doors to the Unconscious to Open and reveal to us shortcomings with our Values that we hadn’t known before, Causing and Allowing us to bring our Values more into Balance with our True Self and the Planet.  

At Venus-Pallas astroevents we’re likely to Encounter places where our Boundaries don’t jive with our Values.  This will be particularly evident as our Appreciation that we’re All One increases and our Tolerance for Diversity is forced to increase.  Unconditional Love eschews Judgment but it doesn’t relax Boundaries.  When we’re fully bulletproof we can let our Boundaries take care of themselves, as lower Frequencies won’t be able to penetrate our Field.  But during the Transition there will be many places where our Distaste and Anger will no longer automatically set a Boundary for us, yet we may not be Physically safe.  We will need to be Conscious of this possibility.

In her book The Lover Within, Julie Henderson provides great wisdom about this.  For instance, on p.34-36…

“Even when danger presents itself unavoidably, most of us are not capable yet of being fully present, loving, relaxed, contained, and capable of right action.  But there are many other situations we are accustomed to finding unpleasant, annoying, angering, frightening, saddening, and so forth; in these situations we can experiment with expanding into life rather than contracting into ‘no.’  Having this choice basically means increasing the number of situations in which we are willing to feel in harmony and capable of appropriate, effective action, instead of freezing or exploding.”

“When you make your energy body dense, it protects you by reducing the influence of other systems ‘outside.’  For example, it slows down the impact of other people’s feelings as they come at you  If you make your energy dense, it also happens often that people tend to experience you as powerful and charismatic (unless, of course, their field is denser and more flexibly contained than yours).

“Diffusing your field sensitizes you and strengthens your awareness of ‘external’ events.  Diffusing your field also increases empathy – that is, feeling other people’s feelings as your own.  If you don’t know that what you’re feeling belongs to someone else, it can be quite confusing and upsetting.  People sometimes diffuse their fields specifically in order to figure out what other people are feeling, especially when they aren’t permitted to ask…

“Since we can never be 100% sure that our guesses are right, this diffusion in order to ‘psych out’ other people can also lead to anxiety and paranoia.  But when you are with people you like and trust, your choice to diffuse your field and merge with them, to become one energetically, creates a whole range of pleasurable feelings, from comfort to bliss to ecstasy…

“Despite the pleasure of diffusion, it isn’t a great habit to have.  Like habitual contraction, habitual diffusion (especially an habitual expanded diffusion) makes some things in life difficult – like feeling separate from other people, like knowing what you feel and what you want, like saying no, asserting an opinion, asking for a raise.  The habit us unfortunate in everyday life; to be able to do it is wonderful.  People who are unable to diffuse and merge have other problems, like feeling so separate they can’t imagine what love is.”

 

 

Repeating Astroevents

One of the reasons I wrote about Anxiety specifically recently, is that several folks have expressed concern recently about whether nightmares of one kind or another that they endured when an astroevent happened, will recur when the event repeats.  Just as an example, the 9 June Uranus-Eris Conjunction will come back to haunt us on 26 September – that will probably be an intense time for Britain.  When we personally have planets in our natal chart triggered by outer planets in the Sky, it’s even more intense.

The way I look at it (from several decades of personal experience), when an astroevent repeats it’s because the Universe wants us to Learn something very well.  If we’ve never experienced the particular event before, of course we’re going to be caught off guard the first time it occurs – at times even shaken to the core!  That’s why we call the first occurrence the “Can-Opener” – it opens Cans of Worms, or venemous Snakes, that we didn’t know about.

The second and subsequent events are usually a little less intense, but if we’re swamped with dread from memories of the Can-Opener, we can actually make it worse through our Anxiety and Expectation.  Expectation turns out to be a lot like Intention (which is what’s most Self-Sabotaging about our Limiting Beliefs), and as we said earlier, Anxiety can actually create Limiting Beliefs, through Decisions.

After we’ve experienced a Can-Opener, we need to take notes on our Internal and External Realities – what were we Feeling, and what Happened (plus, what Happened and how did we React to it).  We refer to the second episode of any astroevent as an “Exposition” – it Exposes a lot more information about the first event.  So as the second event approaches, we can be reviewing our notebook and Expecting to Learn a lot more about those Feelings and Occurrences that the Can-Opener triggered.

The more Experience we have with anything, the more likely we’ll deal with it calmly and confidently.  Sometimes astroevents go on and on, like the Uranus-Pluto Squares of 2012-15.  Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Saturn and Chiron Opposed one another over and over again for eleven years!  The Universe was shouting, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE IS LEARNING HOW TO DEAL WITH DESPAIR!, as Pluto crossed Scorpio.  I grayed that out a bit lest someone think we’re referring to the Present Moment.  What we got from that was the Recovery Movement.

When we’re dealing with planets in the Sky now, like we write about here, both planets are moving, and if they’re moving at similar speeds they can chase each other around playing tag for a long time.  But since our natal planets are fixed, personal astroevents usually happen only three times.  Those new dwarfs out beyond Pluto can move so slow that it takes them several years to go just one Degree, so they’re exceptions, but their impact is deep in the Unconscious, and they may have less direct impact up here on the Surface for many folks.

If we were taking good notes at our Exposition, we probably Learned a great deal about any Overwhelm we experienced at the Can-Opener, and the third occurrence of an astroevent is usually a “Confidence-Builder.”  The same Feelings recur but we’ve now integrated them.  Similar External Events happen, but now we’re a relative pro at dealing with them.  

This approach to “Transits” (as astrologers call interactions between Sky-Now-planets and natal-planets) is one of the strongest gains one can make from following one’s “Stars.”  It converts one from being an unwilling Victim of one’s Transits, to being a willing Student of them.  As a friend of mine once said, “I know that ‘This too shall pass,’ but you’re an astrologer; you know when it will pass.”

The other major impact we can make from knowing our Transits, is Decision Prevention.  Prevention of inappropriate Decisions, that is.  If you were following the in-the-Sky-Now Transits at the time of “9/11,” you’d have understood that The Most Important Thing at the time was Dealing with Your Fear of Death, as the Saturn-Pluto Cycle had just moved past it’s climax.

Instead of being a Student of the astroevents of the time and Learning about Ego Death and Transformation, most folks rushed eagerly into being their Victim, leaving the US open to being manipulated into buying what Dubya called “Perpetual War” by America’s leading export industry, the Arms Industry, and into loss of considerable civil rights through the Patriot Act.  Both of these are still Self-Sabotaging the US fifteen years later.

When we discuss 2020, as we’re planning to do, we’ll have to take into account that the decade begins with Initiation of a new 33-year Saturn-Pluto Cycle centered around Awards for bravery in combat.  We’ll have to see whether the awards go to storm troopers or freedom fighters.

The current Saturn-Pluto Cycle began in 1982 at 28 Libra, Becoming conscious of Spirit.  The next one begins in January 2020 at 23 Capricorn, Awards for bravery in combat.  

The Jupiter-Saturn Cycle that marks the beginning of the Digital Age doesn’t Initiate till the December Solstice in 2020, at 1 Aquarius, An old California adobe mission.  Pluto Initiates Jupiter in early April 2020 in 25 Capricorn, An abundance of Oriental rugs.

If we combine these new beginnings with the Fresh Violets in an Ancient Pottery Bowl Chiron-Neptune Cycle that began at the Derivatives or “Mortgage” Crisis, we have a lot of old Technology surviving into the Digital Age – passive mud-brick buildings, weaving, pottery, Plants; Sustainable technology for a nuclear winter after a Trumpian fit of pique or Planetary climate diaster?  Violets are edible.

Or maybe just Sustainable technology for an expanded Back-to-the-Land Permaculture movement for the billions who won’t find a place in Digital society.

Stations of the Tōkaidō

This is a technical note about astrology, though I think most folks will find it useful.

Because we all go around the Sun at different speeds, for part of the year most of the planets appear to go “backwards,” or “Retrograde.”  

We use “Tropical” astrology, which means we look at the planets as they appear from Earth; in Sidereal astrology (as the planets would appear from the Sun, if you have your asbestos booties on) there are no Retrogradations, everybody’s just in the same roller derby.  Also, in Tropical astrology, we locate the planets in Signs relative to the March Equinox, not relative to the location of a particular Constellation in the Sky, as Sidereal astrology does.

The planets and Moon move in the Sky from west to east; it’s the turning of the Earth that makes it look like they’re moving from east to west.  To see their true movement, you have to take a series of snapshots of the Sky every night at midnight and play them in a zoetrope.  When we pass a slower planet in the derby, that planet will appear in this series of midnight snapshots to stop, go westward for a while, stop again, and then resume its eastward motion.

When a planet stops, it’s said to be “Stationary,” or to be “having a Station” or “Standing Still.”  But there are several important nuances to this term, that we usually gloss over.

The most important thing to know is that the influence of a planet is Strongest in the days (inner planets) or week (outer planets) before it’s Exact Station.  

The influence of any planet is always relative – if there are six Big astroevents going on at the same time, any one of them by itself probably won’t seem as overwhelming.  And the Strength of a Station depends on our Sensitivity – in general, to that planet, and to the Location of its Station.  If it Stands Still on one of the planets in our birth chart, for instance, it may as well be Standing on our toe.

We say a week for the Strong influence of a Stationary outer planet because that’s about as much time as we can get without contamination for a zillion other astrothingies, and because that’s approximately where my span of Sensitivity lies for the average outer planet.  If your Sensitivity is greater, you’ll Feel a Station earlier; if you’re a Muggle, you may not Feel it at all.

It also depends on your ability to distinguish one Energy from another.  If six planets are Stationary at once, like at the Centaur Convention on the Galactic Center a few years back, or if there are a number of Strong Angles going on at the same time (like now), it’ll take a very Discerning eye to separate out the Influences – as if it mattered.

This week Neptune and Makemake were Stationary at the same time, with less than a day between them.  We couldn’t really tune into Makemake while Neptune was still Stationary – the Energy we were experiencing wasn’t Neptune, but Neptune-Makemake.  Once Neptune found its Exact Station, its Strength began to wane, and we could tune in to Makemake more readily.  

Next week Pallas and Juno will do the same trick; Pallas’s Exact Station occurs about half-past 6pm PDT on 21 June, and Juno’s at 1pm on 22 June.  So we’ll be feeling Pallas-Juno for most of the 21st, and Juno after that – though there’s a whole lot else going on next week, so I don’t expect these Energies to stand out prominently, unless they’re Standing on your toes.

While there is a moment of Exact Station, when the planet literally turns about, they don’t screech to a sudden stop, then burn rubber; they slow down and speed up gradually before and after their Stations, and in general the slower they’re moving, the more they’re saying “Hey, Look at Me!”  So we often say that a planet “is Stationary” when it’s within one Degree (inner planets) or one week (outer planets) of it’s Exact Station.

We find the Energy to be Strongest before the Exact Station.  A planet speeds up gradually after the Exact Station, and while it’s still moving very slowly it’s still technically Stationary and still Stronger than usual, but not as Strong as before the Station.  With this week’s Neptune and Makemake Stations, for instance, we mostly talked about how Strong they were leading up to their Exact Stations, not so much afterwards.

As with any astroevent, we’ve found that Consciousness is primary.  If we’re Aware that Pallas is Stationary, for instance, then we won’t be surprised if we see Boundaries coming up for renegotiation.  If we aren’t Conscious of what Pallas is up to, we may be caught off guard, and avoid the suggested renegotiations.  If we renegotiate in a timely fashion, then the Energy is deflated once the Exact Station passes.  If we don’t, then the Energy can drag on.

In particular, Decisions can extend any astroevent.  For instance, if someone insults or harasses us on the 21st and we don’t call them on it (here’s a helpful tool: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/nwrn.org/files/Nw16N/NW16News0316.pdf  ) and instead just Judge them, then we lose our Curiosity and poison our Relationship with that person.  That Energy could last “forever.”  If we renegotiate on the spot and Revert, then Pallas Energy moves back into the background.

The poster child for this is 9/11.  The Saturn-Pluto Energy that provoked 9/11 was finished in August.  But the Lizards had other plans, introducing their 1000-page Patriot Act and US-economy-supporting (as arms merchant to the World) “Perpetual War” within a few days anyway.  So we’re still dealing with that Energy fifteen years later, and it shows no sign of de-escalating.

A planet can be “Stationary Retrograde,” when it’s slowing down to turn backwards, or “Stationary Direct,” when it’s slowing down to turn forward again.  Personally, we find that the Strengthening of a planet’s Energy at either Station is much more important than whether it’s turning Retrograde or Direct, so we usually just focus on the Station.

Similarly, we don’t usually make a big deal out of whether a planet is Direct or Retrograde.  There are some cases where the impact is obvious – as with Mercury – but usually it’s just a matter of whether we’re being Extroverted or Introverted around the planet’s Energy, and we find that whether the planet is Stationary is much more prominent than whether it Retrograde.  Your experience may differ.

One thing that does matter, is that when a planet turns Retrograde it crosses a patch of Sky three (or more, if the planet is far away) times instead of once, implying that the Universe really wants us to get the hang of this piece of Sky.  If the planet makes a triple Angle to another planet in the Sky, or to a planet in our birth chart, that’s a Big Deal.

When a planet makes multiple Angles to another, we refer to the first event as the “Can-Opener,” because the Energy often appears to come out of “left field” and surprise us.  If we’re dealing with slow-moving outer planets, we may have little or no experience with that particular combination of Energies in our Lifetime, so it may really catch us off guard.  The Can-Opener occurs before a planet turns Retrograde.

As the multiple Angle repeats, we gain experience with it, so we refer to the second (Retrograde) and subsequent events as “Expositions,” because they Expose us to the Energies so we can get more comfortable with them.

The last event of a multiple Angle we call a “Confidence-Builder,” because by now we’ve probably gained enough familiarity with the Energy combination that we feel confident dealing with it.  The Confidence-Builder occurs after the planet turns Direct again.

When folks refer to a Retrogradation, they’re usually referring to the timespan when the planet is actually Retrograde.  To an astrologer it’s more important to know when the planet first enters the patch of Sky over which it will later Retrograde, and when it finally exits that patch of Sky, after it turns Direct again.  

This entire span is called a “Shadow Period,” in both time and astrological Degrees.  It’s important because it encompasses the Can-Opener and the Confidence-Builder, while the Retrograde period itself only includes the Expositions.

The two most important things to know about Stations are (1) that a planet’s Influence is Strongest just prior to its Exact Station, whether it’s turning Retrograde or Direct, and (2) that we need to look ahead to find a planet’s Shadow Period, so we can be Conscious of Can-Openers as the arise.

Another Busy Weekend

We have dedicated our Lives to suppressing certain Emotions and Memories and even Thoughts, and for good reason.  They would Overwhelm us, and we have More Important things to do.  Till now.

Thing is, those Emotions and Memories and Thoughts are the doorways to Healing our Limiting Beliefs, making it Safe to Remove our remaining Masks, eliminating Self-Sabotage, uncorking our Forbidden Genius, and to painlessly achieving the Yintegrity and Self-Sovereignty that we so crave, but which we hold back from because we fear it would so Disrupt our Lives and the Lives of those we Love and Depend upon.  That sentence was not approved by the FDA, but I believe it’s True.  And it may even positively impact our Physical Health.

The Universe will bring these Emotions and Memories and Thoughts to us in early June, and the Universe has been, and continues to, give us Opportunities to get a head start.  And every early Opportunity we take advantage of will make June less painful.  If we’re still in Resistance to these Emotions and Memories and Thoughts in June, the process could well be painful.  The Universe is our friend, if we Learn to listen to Her.

As you probably know by now, Eris (Truthtelling) Initiates Uranus (Our Connection to Our Individual Soul) in early June.   We expect this to do a pretty good job of finishing up the Yintegrity work we’ve been doing since 2012.  Well, let’s put it this way – late May and early June will be the Can-Opener phase of this Initiation.  The Initiation occurs at 24 Aries, “Blown inward by the wind, the curtains of an open window take the shape of a cornucopia: Openness to the influx of spiritual energies.“

When an Angle between two planets repeats, as is usually the case with outer planets, the first event always catches us off guard.  The last time this event occurred was in 1926, so very few of us have Experienced it in our current Lifetime.  If you know someone in their 90s who’s freaking out, this is probably why.  The less Experience we have with an Energy, the more likely it is to catch us off guard.  Forewarned is forearmed, however, so even if we’re off guard, knowing in general what the Energy is about can help us make sense out of what’s happening, and can help us step out of the Victim Modality we’d otherwise be in.

Let’s take what we hope will be an extreme example – suppose we were sexually abused as a child.  We don’t remember it, we only notice that in some situations we feel Unsafe or Angry or Scared, or maybe we’re uncomfortable with Intimacy.  If those Memories pop up in late May or early June, we’re going to Regress to the age when the abuse occurred, and to the Skillset and Boundaries that we had – or more accurately didn’t have – at that age.  Victim Modality is a foregone conclusion, most especially if those Memories arise as a result of some similar-feeling Unsafety in the then-Present Moment.

If we are somehow reminded that there is likely to be a “100-year” Regression (a Regression on such a scale that it occurs only once in a century) going on, we’re still going to be caught off guard, but we’re likely to be able to Recover our Present-Moment Skillsets much sooner than if we didn’t get the memo, or as the case may be, the blog post.

We’ve talked before about “Sensitivity” – how Sensitive we are to an astrological event, something astrologers can “Orb,” and I sometimes call “Slop.”  When an event is pending, most folks can certainly begin feeling it when it comes within one Degree of being exact.  Of course the Muggles will be in Denial, finding all manner of excuses, thinking it’s Heartburn.  The more Sensitive among us will begin feeling an event when it comes within three Degrees.  The most Sensitive of us will feel it sooner than that.

The Eris-Uranus Initiation reaches one Degree of Sensitivity in Mid-May.  It reached three Degrees of Sensitivity in late March.  Most folks who read this are likely to be at least three-Degrees Sensitive, so most of us are already Feeling it.  We Feel it through pressure to stop hiding or covering up parts of ourself that we’ve thought were less attractive or less Skillful.  Through Vulnerability.  Through Epiphanies about where we’ve been seeing through a glass darkly.  Through old Identities and Ego-Masks and Archetypes that we’re outgrowing.  Through a Desire to stop “Playing Games.”

An Initiation is a Conjunction.  When Angles repeat three times, as the Uranus-Eris Conjunction does, the first occurrence is a Can-Opener.  It opens a “Can of Worms” that we didn’t know was waiting for us.  The second and third occurrences are also Conjunctions, but they aren’t Initiations – only the first event is an Initiation.  We’re almost always in Victim Mode during a Can-Opener.

The second occurrence is an Exposition – the same Energy recurs front and center, but this time it seems to occur in slow motion (Retrograde), so we have a far better chance of understanding what’s happening “to us,” and consequently a far better chance of moving from Victim Mode to Master Mode.  In Victim Mode things happen to us, we have no Control over them.  In Master Mode, even if things happen to us, we have Skills to deal with them adequately.  

If we Master an Energy during the Exposition, then the third occurrence is a Confidence-Builder.  The Energy and Process recurs, but this time we’re ready and able to deal with it using our now-Present-Moment Skillsets, including those we learned in the previous two events, and we sail through it, feeling great about our new Expertise.  If we didn’t Master the Energy during the Exposition, then the third occurrence becomes another Opportunity, another Exposition.

The Uranus-Pluto Square recurred six times after the Can-Opener, giving us an indication of how Important the Universe thought it was for us to Recover our Yintegrity.  As if Pluto didn’t already symbolize what is Mandatory (Adaptable but not Avoidable).  The Can-Opener (June 2012) was followed by five Expositions (October 2012, May and November 2013, May and December 2014) before the Confidence-Builder (March 2015).  

The Uranus-Eris Exposition peaks in late September, while the Confidence-Builder occurs at the Ides of March next year.

In other words, as Uranus approaches Eris, that section of the Zodiac (now 21-23 Aries) gets very Hot.  The Sun (our Essence) crossed that section last weekend (April 9-11), while Varuna (Cellular Wisdom) and Chariklo (Beauty and Charm) were Stationary.  Venus (our Values) crosses that section two weekends hence, April 22-24.  In between, this coming weekend (April 16-17), Mars (Action) and Pluto (Inevitability) are Stationary (Strong).

There’s a joke about two Olde-Boy psychologists trading stories about “Freudian slips.”  One says his attention was drawn to the bosom of a ticket-seller on a recent trip to Pittsburgh, and he accidentally asked for a picket to his destination instead of a ticket.  The other says, “That’s nothing.  The other day I was having dinner with my mother and when I meant to ask her to pass the butter, what came out instead was ‘Mother, you’ve ruined my Life and I hate you!’ ”  

It would be really appropriate to Mars-Pluto – and fortuitous – if such Freudian slips came out this weekend, because they would constitute bright flashing lights pointing us toward clues about what hasn’t come to the surface of Consciousness yet.  Let your tongue be your Guide this weekend.  Same with “slip-ups” of any sort.  Make a wrong turn on the way to the store?  Where did you end up?  Drop a jar of Honey on a hard floor?  What do you suppose that might mean?  PIAVA the question.  Run into someone you haven’t seen in a long time?  A stranger strikes up an interesting conversation?  Pay Attention this weekend.

In particular, in addition to the Retrograde Stations of Pluto (5am PDT 17 April at 18 Capricorn) and Mars (1am PDT 18 April at 9 Sagittarius), Vesta (Unconscious Beliefs) Initiates Mercury (Communication) at 3pm PDT 16 April, in 17 Taurus, “A symbolic battle between ‘swords’ and ‘torches’.”  Fascinating Symbol, as Swords symbolize mentality, as does Mercury.  That leaves Vesta standing in for Torches, indicating that…

Our Unconscious Limiting Beliefs are Burning their way out of Denial now, and will be for the next fifteen months, while this Mercury-Vesta Cycle moves through.  Just long enough to cover the Eris-Uranus Confidence-Builder.

We’ll talk more about the Vesta-Mercury Initiation – with its two Tricolors and Grand Trine – in the next installment, but note that while it’s occurring, the Sun is crossing the asteroid Mnemosyne – Memory.  What a jokester, this Universe!

Now Retipuj Too

If we look for the most unique news event in the Collective during Mercury’s first crossing of Pallas and Pluto, and Squaring of Uranus, we find the recovery of the SpaceX first-stage rocket.  

Background, if you’ve missed the story: The US Space Agency, NASA, has been inviting private industry and small startups into the “Space Race,” in the effort to spur innovation and reduce cost.  Successful bidders include SpaceX, a rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla, SolarCity), whose primary motivation seems to be to colonize Mars.  

Satellite-launching rockets cost tens of millions to build, and they’ve been considered disposable, used once and discarded.  Musk’s notion is to recover and reuse them.  In mid-December a SpaceX rocket successfully launched eleven communication satellites, then turned ’round and came home, landing nose up in a bed of fire a few miles from its launch site in Florida.  Jeff Bezos’s (Amazon) rocket company, Blue Origin, has also successfully recovered used rockets by landing them vertically, but his rockets don’t reach orbital altitudes.

SpaceX aims to reduce space travel costs by 99% with rocket recovery.  Potential for increased space littering aside, this kind of puts us back in the 1960s, when the Sky was no longer the Limit, and folks purportedly walked on the Moon, before OPEC threw a wet blanket on our plans to emulate the Jetsons.  Global Warming, Syria and Russia, and the rise of China were also prominent at the Mercury-Pluto Can-Opener.

So we can expect more development of the subway-to-Mars story in mid-January, at the Mercury-Pluto Exposition.  Apart from the time-local Mercury Can-Opener template, the SpaceX story is also an excellent example of another phenomenon, the astrological Cycle.  We’ve been referring to 2012-15 as “The Return of the ’60s” because Pluto Initiated a new Cycle with Uranus in 1965, and a characteristic of the astrological Cycle is that a new Energy emerges at the Initiation, then goes underground during the first one fourth of the Cycle, or until the planets “Square” one another.  After this Waxing Square, the new Energy spreads widely.  The Uranus-Pluto Square spanned 2012-2015, and we’ve seen a number of other ’60s themes becoming prominent – civil/human rights and marijuana decriminalization among the most obvious. 

Two planets are said to “Square” one another, or to “be Square” to each other, when they are 90 Degrees apart, or one fourth of the way around the Zodiac from one another.   In “Tropical” astrology, which we practice, the two imaginary lines drawn from Earth to each planet would be perpendicular to each other.  So one of them would be rising or setting when the other was directly overhead.  

A “Waxing” Square is created when the faster planet reaches one fourth of the way around the Zodiacal loop, ahead of the slower planet.  The slower planet is moving too, so the Square doesn’t occur 90 Degrees from where the planets met, but rather when there are 90 Degrees between the two planets in real time.  The “Waning” Square occurs when the faster planet is 270 Degrees ahead of, or 90 Degrees behind, the slower planet.

Keep in mind that the planets move from West to East.  Its the daily turning of the Earth into the East that makes it look to us as though the planets and Stars and Sun and Moon move from East to West.  You can see how the planets themselves move by taking a snapshot of the Sky every night at midnight.

As the name implies, a Square signifies a Fourth Harmonic relationship between the two planets.  The Fourth Harmonic is about Dominion, and the Square is about Mastery through Challenge.  If you think about your frustrations and breakthroughs in trying to Relate to someone who is very different from you in ways that you don’t understand, you’ll get a good handle on the Square.  If you succumb to Preconceptions and Judgments and Other People’s Opinions and Expectations, you won’t get very far in either Relationships or Squares.  If you’re genuinely interested in overcoming the barriers, willing to learn and practice new Skills, able to try something else when one strategy doesn’t work, open to Surprise, able to Suspend Judgment, and willing to give yourself credit for all the hard Work, you’ll find both Relationships and Squares to be Exciting and Rewarding.

Now it’s Jupiter’s turn to face the Mirror at the back of the bus – Retipuj Egardorter.  We pay attention to the Stations, when a planet is changing directions, because that’s one of the times when a planet’s influence is Strongest, and because of these triple-plays, which are often Life-Changing.  Jupiter’s triple-cross spans 14-24 Degrees of Virgo and mid-October 2015 through early August 2016.  Jupiter starts moving forward again on 9 May.  

One of Jupiter’s triple-plays, for instance, is an Opposition to Chiron.  The Can-Opener occurred in early November.  Jupiter may have Expanded your Discouragement then, in an effort to get you to step over the wall into Miracles.  If you allowed Preconceptions and Judgments to slow you down then – this is common for Can-Openers, because they introduce us to new territory – we get another chance at the Exposition in late February.  Expositions are easier, first because we’ve now seen it before, but also because events and feelings unfold more slowly and gradually, giving us a better opportunity to study and understand what’s going on.  Our Confidence-Builder will occur in mid-August.

The Jupiter-Station chart is a busy one…

• The Jupiter-Edargorter Station is Conjunct the North Node, while the Moon and Ixion T-Square the Nodes
• Jupiter is also the focus of a Yod based on the Ceres-Eris Sextile
• It’s also the tail of a South-Node Kite, Grand-Trining Pallas and Sedna
• Sedna’s the focus of a Yod from the Haumea-Moon/Ixion Sextile
• Haumea has it’s own Yod, based on the North Node-Eris Sextile
• Pallas is also the focus of a T-Square across the Haumea-Eris Opposition
• Eris is Stationary, turning Direct in two days at the head of a second Kite with s Chaos-Ceres-Haumea Grand Trine, T-Squared by the New Moon 
• The Eris-Haumea Opposition also forms a Trioctile Box with the Orcus-Neptune Opposition

It’s going to be a hard month for keeping secrets, and for keeping our remaining Masks held tight, as the New Moon extends this chart into the rest of January.  Our “Pathological Genius” – our Unique Skills that have been Shamed into the Dungeon – will be irrepressible.  Fear may be prominent, especially Fear of Abandonment and Annihilation as we move through the Ego Deaths necessary for Rebirth into our own Truth.  There will be Boundaries to be moved, to Allow new parts of our Self to emerge into the Light of Day and to Defend their right to do so.  It won’t feel any better but it will help anyway, if we remember that Courage is not the absence of Fear but the willingness to Act in the face of Fear.  

If you have any natal planets in 14-24 Degrees of any of the mutable Signs (Virgo, Pisces, Gemini, Sagittarius), Jupiter is asking you to Expand around them.

This is basically the Pisces, Aries, and Taurus Duads of Virgo, a Duad being one twelfth of a Sign.  If we regard Virgo (which we do) as the place where we dissemble the individual Ego in order to prepare to meet Other, then this is the area where we’ve pretty much dissembled, and now we’re starting to experiment with rebuilding.  

Edargorter

 ?Edargorter seog tenalp a nehw sneppah tahw

Well, we need a mirror to be able to read what’s going on.  A journal would also be handy.  By the time a planet does go Edargorter, it’s already taken us on a journey.  In case you haven’t noticed, Edargorter is Retrograde spelled, of course, backwards.  By the time a planet turns Retrograde, we’ve already missed the point.

When a planet turns Retro, it crosses a section of the Zodiac, stops, backs up over it again, stops again, then finally runs over this same section of the Zodiac for a third time, before moving on.  If we happen to be Ego-identified with that section of the Zodiac (let’s say we have a natal planet there), and the Gnidargorter planet happens to be as Heavy as a Mack Truck, we want to know when it’s coming through the first time, so we can step out of the way then.  By the time it’s backing up, our Ego is already just a grease spot.

We use a simple rule, the Experience Rule.  It says that the more times we’ve Experienced a particular astroevent, the easier it is, simply because we have more practice dealing with it.  

That’s one reason why we say that if you have a Square and especially a T-Square in your natal chart, you’re the Expert on that subject, because you have more Experience with it than anyone else around.  Squares never Feel good, especially if we have a perfectionistic streak, or if we compare our Life to that of Others.  So you probably discount your Skill.  But you are the Expert, and once you begin to understand that, your Life Changes forever, because you’re no longer the Victim of your own Life.  You become the Master instead.

This rule is also why we pretty much ignore the inner planets, because they zip around the Zodiac so often that we all have plenty of Experience with them.  Yes, Mercury’s turning Edargorter, but that happens three times a year, so we’re all Experts already on Mercury Edargorter.  Of course, Mercury doesn’t thrice cross the second half of Capricorn three times a year, it only does that once every six years.  But Mercury crosses your natal Capricorn planets every year, and Squares them twice a year.  

Compare that to Pluto, which only crosses anyone’s natal planets every 250 years – most of us go a Lifetime without Experiencing that, so it’s a Big Deal.  When one of those outer planets takes a mind to triple-cross one of your natal planets, this is a whole new Experience for you.  One of the guidelines of Time Management says that you can’t estimate how long something will take to do if you’ve never done it before.  Similarly, you can’t know how to deal with Pluto crossing your natal Mercury if you’ve never Experienced it before.

Mercury crossing Pluto isn’t nearly so intense as Pluto crossing Mercury, but it’s a good example of how to deal with Sedargorter.  Mercury will be Retrograding over the last half of Capricorn this month, and in the process Retrograding over – that is, thrice crossing – Pluto and Pallas.  It’s already run over them once, so while Mercury’s more like a Smart Car than a Mack Truck, it’s already knocked down Pluto and Pallas for the first time.

We consider that first crossing the Can-Opener crossing, because it introduces whatever Difficulty we have with the two planets.  Mercury crossing Pluto might Challenge us to find a new, Transformed way of thinking, for instance, or it might force us to think about something we don’t like to think about, or make us talk about something that makes us very uncomfortable, because we don’t have much practice at it.  That happened on 19th December, so it’s Water under the bridge.

Except that whatever unfinished business we have around that – maybe someone feels insulted by what you said on 19 December, or maybe your Mother’s Ghost stands at your shoulder, eyes like ice, a little bit colder, saying to you, “You cannot do that, it breaks all the rules you learned in school” – will be revisited during the second and third crossings.  Mercury will cross Pluto again on 21st January.  We call that second crossing the Exposition phase.  We get to Experience the Can-Opener again, but this time having seen it once already, we’re a bit wiser, and it happens in slow motion.  The process is Exposed, and we get to practice with it – maybe make amends, or tell our Mother’s Ghost where to go.

Mercury crosses Pluto for the third time on 28 January.  By then we’ll be old hands at this.  We’ll just thank Mom’s Ghost for contributing, we’ll have learned how to Speak our Truth without insulting anyone, and the Transformation of our thinking will be complete.  So we call this third crossing the Confidence-Builder stage.

Mercury over Pallas works the same way.  Can-Opener 22 December, when we were probably forced to make new Discernments, or more likely, got in trouble for not making a Discernment we didn’t know we were supposed to make.  The Exposition is 12 January, when you’re likely to figure out why they’re mad at you.  And the Confidence-Builder is 21 February.  We can make a big deal out of the Roman Caristia holiday on the 22nd, and make amends for whatever faux pas we committed at the Solstice – or maybe let that person who took our omission so seriously then know that they were out of line to Blame us for their Expectations.

Pluto’s just entering the second half of Capricorn.  Pluto in Capricorn means “Just fix it!”  We all know it’s a problem, and we know how to fix it, so let’s just get to work and get it done.  The first half of Capricorn is all business, completely pragmatic.  But the second half is the Cancer half of Capricorn.  In the second half we remember that there’s more to Life than business or engineering; we have to make sure the results are nurturing for the People and the Planet.  So this is our first introduction to softening the hard edges of our “Just fix it” efforts, where we start to think about what needs to be done and how we might do it.

Mercury also Squared Uranus on 20 December, the Can-Opener Square, probably when we realized that we’ve still got a few Masks to take off before we can be True to ourSelf.  Those’ll be Exposed more on 20 January, and we’re likely to find the Confidence to remove them on 30 January.

Bottom Line: if we want to be able to step out of the path of those Mack Trucks, we need to know about these Sedargorter before they happen, not while they’re happening.