Warmup for the Digital Age

Jupiter and Saturn are considered the “Social Planets” – the Inner Planets are more or less in charge of Personal Character, and the Outer Planets in charge of the goings-on in the Underwhere. Which, even though it underlies everything, is kind of a Freudian Perspective – we could instead be calling it the Overwhere, as we agree with Jung’s Perspective that the “Unconscious” provides a map to our Wholeness, Integration, Coherence, Enlightenment, Ascension, 5D, nD. It’s a Puzzle Map, not a “Turn Left in 32 Feet” kind of Guide, because if it was so Easy, who would Value it? Hupers are like that.

Many people are in stiff Resistance to this sort of notion, however, so I’ve always found it easier on everyone to assume that some folks are inherently Jungian, and some inherently Freudian. That way we never have to argue with anybody about whether or not they Roll Their Own.

The Political Economy is one of the stalwarts of Society (one of the warts as well of course), and the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions fall into 180-year Cycles that have a reputation for being heavily involved in the Political Economy. Jupiter laps Saturn every twenty years, and seven of their Conjunctions occur (and Cycles Begin) in the same Element, then they toggle, then seven in the next element. Here’s a full Turning of the Spiral…

… Preview in Water (first Conjunction in Water 1444, one Water Cycle 1444-1464),
Debriefing in Air (one last Conjunction in Air 1464, one last Air Cycle 1464-1484),
Age of Water (seven Conjunctions in Water 1484-1603, seven Water Cycles 1484-1623),
Preview in Fire (first Conjunction in Fire 1623; one Fire Cycle 1623-1643),
Debriefing in Water (one last Conjunction in Water 1643; one last Water Cycle 1643-1663),
Age of Fire (seven Fire Conjunctions 1663-1782; seven Fire Cycles 1663-1801),
Preview in Earth (first Conjunction in Earth 1801; one Earth Cycle 1801-1822),
Debriefing in Fire (one last Conjunction in Fire 1822; one last Fire Cycle 1822-1842),
Industrial Age (seven Earth Conjunctions 1842-1961; seven Earth Cycles 1842-1980),
Preview in Air (first Conjunction in Air 1980, one Air Cycle 1980-2000),
Debriefing in Earth (one last Conjunction in Earth 2000, one last Earth Cycle 2000-2020),
Digital Age (seven Conjunctions in Air 2020-2140, seven Air Cycles 2020-2159),
Preview in Water (first Conjunction in Water 2159, first Water Cycle 2159-2179),
Debriefing in Air (one last Conjunction in Air 2179, one last Air Cycle) …

and so on, with variation as always, of course. By “seven Water Cycles” we mean seven Jupiter-Saturn Cycles that Initiated in Water Signs. Like people, we characterize Cycles by the Sign they were born under. Notice we have Columbus and his fellow Colonialists and Thieves Sailing the Ocean Blue during the Age of Water, and Revolution common in the Age of Fire. The Industrial Age was filled with Coal and Iron and Oil and Mechanicals, Stuff of the Earth. The Digital Age will be all about Electromagnetism and Robotics and Stuff of the Mind – as was our 1980-2000 Preview of it.

The IBM PC was introduced in 1980, and the Dot-Com Crash occurred in 2000, both almost to the day of the Conjunctions. A large swath of Kansas (at high altitude) was reserved today for testing of a new generation of commercial supersonic aircraft. Musk and Bezos will be shooting their tin cans to Mars. The electromechanical technological leaps in the coming century-plus will make the 1980s and 1990s look like kindergarden. Unfortunately the next Water Age won’t be about Sailing the Ocean Blue, it’ll be about the Ocean Blue coming to live in our neighborhoods.

The Digital Age starts in earnest at 10:21 am PST 21 December 2020 Saturn-Jupiter Initiation, aka the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction. Conjunctions frequently repeat (as the faster planet turns Retrograde), and it’s the first Conjunction of a sequence that begins a Cycle. We call it a Faster planet-Slower planet Conjunction because the Faster planet is overtaking the Slower planet. And we call it a Slower planet-Faster planet Initiation because at the Initial Conjunction the Slower planet plays the role of the Shaman or Guru or Mentor, conferring Shaktipat on the Faster Planet and giving it an assignment till they meet again. The Faster planet does the Bidding of the Slower planet.

We read the character of a Cycle by reading the chart of the Initiation. When we read the 21 December Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction, which we’ll do soon, it will be a reading about the political economy and social milieu of the next twenty years. There are several Sign Changes this week that we’ll need to talk about, which we intend to do soon, because they’re laying the foundation for the New Cycle – including Saturn and Jupiter entering Air Sign Aquarius. Saturn enters at 9am PST 16 December, and Jupiter at 5am PST 19 December. And of course the Sun enters Capricorn at 2:05 am PST 21 December, defining the Capricorn Solstice, aka the Northern Winter Solstice and the Southern Summer Solstice, when the Sun goes Stationary and our Essence is particularly Strong.

Asteroids Lachesis (Finishing Karmic TimeLines) and Juno (Growth in Consciousness), and dwarf planet Ixion (Our Hidden and Often Forbidden Unique Genius) also Change Signs this week, and the Exaggeration (Station) of asteroid Karma (Karma) dominates the rest of the week, giving us a chance to move into the New Age with a Clean Slate if we’re willing to Let Go of our Karmic Identities and Attachments.

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.

Initiations (2)

We’ve written about Stations, when planets appear to Stand Still, because they’re one of several of the most important astroevents that we watch for.  Another is “Configurations” – when a number of planets line up together in meaningful relationship to one another at the same time.  And a third one is “Initiations.”  Think about your internal and external circumstances in 2005, then compare it to your Experience of 2009.  See any differences?  

At and around the time of an Initiation, the Zeitgeist Changes, and it’s often a significant Change.  

Or, think about how the Zeitgeist in Britain and in the rest of Europe Changed around the time of this month’s Eris-Uranus Initiation.  Some folks couldn’t stand to have their Freedom (Uranus) Denied (Eris) any longer.  Of course, the folks in London fear that their Freedom to make money off of the rest of Europe will be Denied.  

Astrology is like that; you never know which direction a Change is going to turn.  You know which Dimension the Change is going to happen on – here Freedom and Denial.  But you don’t know, a priori, whether Freedom will be Denied, or Denial Liberated from its subterfuges.  It’s usually Both/And.

We are Actors in this Play, and it’s Improv.  Our Intentions are very important to our Future, and to the Future of the Planet.  So when we talk about an Initiation, we play up what we would regard as the Positive side of the Dimension – Releasing Denial from its grasp on our Freedom.  That’s why we emphasize working on our Limiting Beliefs, which are none other than internalized Denials of our Freedom to pursue our True Self.  

If you happen to Believe that making money, or maintaining Control, is more important than pursuing your True Self, feel free to flip our Interpretations upside down.  We happen to Believe that Liberating our True Self will, after a period of Reaction, end up making us more Abundant, and giving us greater Healthy Control.  As they say, if you don’t have to lie, you don’t have to remember everything you’ve ever told anybody.

An Initiation – when a faster planet passes a slower planet (from the Perspective of Mother Earth) – begins a new Cycle.  A New Moon is an Initiation; the faster “planet” (the Moon) Conjoins the slower “planet” (the Sun) once a month.  Then the Moon zips around the Zodiac till it catches up to the Sun again and Initiates a new Cycle.  

A technical point; when we refer to an Initiation, we put the slower planet first, because it’s Initiating the faster planet the way a Guru Initiates an Aspirant.  When we refer to a Cycle, we put the faster planet first, as it’s the faster planet that’s making the Zodiacal loop in between new assignments from its Guru.

Uranus (84 years per loop) is faster than Eris (560 years), so we speak of the Eris-Uranus Initiation but the Uranus-Eris Cycle.  Not a biggie, just the way we say things.  It’s Uranus and Eris, or Eris and Uranus, either way.  

In a Cycle, the faster planet implements the program or pogrom suggested by the slower planet.  Each fast planet has many Gurus, and each slow planet many Aspirants.  Of course fast and slow are relative.  

We usually read the “Sabian Symbol” of the Degree in which the Initiation occurred.  As the 12 Signs each have their usual Interpretations, each of the 360 Degrees of the Zodiac also have Interpretations, called the Sabian Symbols.

The germinal text on Cycles is Dane Rudhyar’s Lunation Cycle.

For convenience, we refer to everybody in the Sky, whether they’re a planet like Uranus, an asteroid like Ceres, a satellite like the Moon, a dwarf planet like Eris, a Centaur like Chiron, or just a symbolic point like Lilith, as a “planet.”  It just saves us having to say “planet or asteroid or symbolic point or Light” all the time.  (The Sun and the Moon are sometimes collectively called “the Lights.”)

One of our most basic guiding principles is that the scarcer an astroevent is, the stronger will be its impact upon us.  

That’s just because our real Teacher is Experience, and if we have little or no Experience with an event, then we’re Deer in the headlights.  For instance, as we mentioned last time, the last Eris-Uranus Initiation occurred in 1937, so precious few of us have any Experience with such a Change, and even fewer of us have Experience with it as an adult.  

I always thought it was kind of cruel to put Children through Challenging astroevents.  If you were one year old this month, can you imagine how this Initiation would impact your Life, with all of your caretakers freaking out?  Or if you’re nine and just going into puberty?

The immediate impact of the average astroevent increases up to the exact moment of the event, then drops off sharply.  The immediate impact of an Initiation works the same way, but the Change in the Zeitgeist begins in earnest after the Initiation.  For instance, most of us were Challenged by our own Denial to one degree or another as we were led up to the 9 June Eris-Uranus Initiation.  We Reacted and Responded to that in various ways, and now that we’re downwind, we’ll begin to see the Changes reflected in our Lives.  The “Brexit” is an obvious example.

Because of the timing, we more or less regard the Eris-Uranus Revelation of Denial as an adjunct to the Mask-shedding 2012-2015 Uranus-Pluto Square.  We could easily see it the other way around.  Because Pluto moves twice as fast as Eris, Uranus catches up to Eris more often than it does to Pluto.  If we’re chasing a Tortoise and a Hare, we’ll catch the Tortoise before we catch the Hare – though Pluto would make a very slow Hare.

The prior Uranus-Eris Cycle spanned 89 years, from 1927 till 2016, while the prior Uranus-Pluto Cycle took 115 years, from 1850 through 1965.  So we have less Experience with Uranus-Pluto events than we do with Uranus-Eris events.  These orbits are not circles, they’re ellipses, so Cycles vary in length.  

It would be fun, but take a book – and a big one at that, to catalog all the current Cycles of the major planets.

Fun story: Stan Grof’s colleague and student, historian Richard Tarnas, wrote a book on Colonial history, The Passion of the Western Mind, that was widely acclaimed by his peers.  After this success he wrote a followup book, Cosmos and Psyche, describing the astrological Energies underlying his historical interpretations.

Neptune represents our Relationship with Everything Larger than Ourself, including with our Culture and with the Godhead.  

Chiron represents Despair and Miracle.  

I equate our mental Concept Set to a Birdcage.  We don’t allow into our Cage any idea that doesn’t agree with what we already know.  And we don’t allow Ourself to go out of our Cage.  Unless we’re wearing one of our Alternate Personas.

If we have a Shouldn’t about Chocolate, for instance, but we Love Chocolate (actually, it’s the Sugar; Chocolate itself is bitter, and most folks don’t like bitter).  So when we’re in our Chocolate Cage, we don’t eat Chocolate, but that just makes our Alter lust for it even more.  Chiron lights up when we’re at these places, where two parts of ourself are locked in a Power struggle and we can’t get out; Despair is the result.

We get out of this dilemma by adding a Chocolate wing to our Birdcage.  We introduce our Alters to one another, in such a way that they Empathize with each other.  Gestalt Psychology does this with its two chairs.  We do this with “You poor Sweetheart, you really Love Chocolate, don’t you” and “You poor Sweetheart, you Love your Ideas more than yourself, don’t you.”  Or, if it’s after our diabetes diagnosis, “You poor Sweetheart, you Love Chocolate as much as your Health, don’t you.”

We Change Perspective.  This is why we always recommend having as many Perspectives in our quiver as possible.

In 1945, Neptune Initiated Chiron.  With the dance between Chiron and Neptune, we’d expect that we’d encounter places in our cultures where we were up against Power struggles that were unresolvable – we’d either have to come up with some new Perspectives, or we’d explode from the pressure.  Here’s a timeline…

• 16 July 1945 – First A-bomb exploded at Alamagordo New Mexico
• 6 August – US drops A-bomb on Hiroshima, Japan
• 9 August – US drops A-bomb on Nagasaki, Japan
• 15 August – Japanese surrender announced
• 2 September – Surrender agreement signed
• 4 September – Neptune Initiates Chiron
• 24 October – United Nations formed

A note on Sensitivity (“Orb” in astrologuese) – Chiron entered within three Degrees of Neptune on 6 August.  Three Degrees is often used as the Boundary within which the impact of a current astroevent is perceived.

You can see the tension building up to the Initiation, and the Change of Zeitgeist after it.  Here’s a fascinating story about these few months…

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a21382/how-kodak-accidentally-discovered-radioactive-fallout/

Even though the Zeitgeist has Changed, those who were heavily invested in the Old Cycle still cling to their Privileges, causing the Energy of the New Cycle to “go underground” for a while, as the New Energy builds.  Typically, the buildup to the Initiation is chaotic, so the stability of the Olde Guard is welcomed as a restoration of order.

Once the faster planet moves one fourth of a loop ahead of the slower planet, however, the New Energy takes its place as a permanent feature of the visible landscape.  Astrologers call this one-fourth point in a Cycle a “Square.”

This term is used because the Angle between the two planets is now 90 Degrees, making a right or “square” Angle.  This Angle represents the Fourth Harmonic (360 Degrees divided by Four), symbolized by the Fourth Archetype of the Tarot Major Arcana, the Emperor – Dominion, or Healthy Control.  Since a Square signifies a time of Change and disruption of the status quo, it creates difficulty for many.  We therefore refer to a Square as “Mastery through Challenge.”

The Chiron-Neptune Cycle that was Initiated in 1945 reached its Square in 1954.  Look at what occurred in 1953-54…

• The USSR tested its first nuclear bomb
• The US launched the first nuclear submarine
• The US tested the first Hydrogen bomb
• The USSR opened the first nuclear power plant
• Boeing introduced its first commercial jetliner
• The Korean War ended
• Red-baiter Senator Joe McCarthy was dethroned
• Nikita Kruschev replaced Joseph Stalin as head of the USSR
• France lost the Indochina War, surrendering its Colonies in Southeast Asia, opening space for the Vietnam War
• Algerian Revolution begins
• US Supreme Court declares Segregation illegal
• Bilderberg Group formed
• Bill Haley, Elvis Presley create Rock and Roll 
• Dow Jones Industrial Average tops 1929 peak for first time

 Which is to say, the New Energy “became permanent.”

The Sabian Symbol of the 1945 Initiation was about Visualization.  Shakti Gawain was six in 1954.

At the prior Neptune-Chiron Initiation, in 1879, overextended US transcontinental railroad corporations melted down, as excessive competition met its ultimate end, railroad bonds collapsed, and the US and World economy rebooted.  

The next (after 1945) Neptune-Chiron Initiation occurred in 2010.  In the buildup to it, thanks to Greenspan’s asset inflation strategies, overleveraged US mortgage derivatives melted down, as excessive corruption met its ultimate end, mortgage bonds collapsed, and the Federal Reserve prevented the US and World economy from rebooting.

The Brexit panic following the Eris-Uranus Initiation is the collapse of the first card in the House of Cards built to deny the need for a reboot of the World economy after the Derivative Crisis of 2007-9 – which was billed as a “mortgage” crisis by the banks and their cronies in the media and government.  Many more cards will follow.

Look at this chart, for instance…

http://www.stockwatch.com/Quote/Detail.aspx?symbol=DB&region=U

This is Germany’s largest bank.  During the Derivative Crisis and its aftermath, this stock fell to around 15.  Today it’s around 14, and you can see from the chart that it’s troubles didn’t begin with Brexit.

The US federal government just did to Puerto Rico the same thing that Germany has been doing to Greece, forcing austerity and the sale of public assets to the 1% at bargain prices.  The same thing Dubya did to New Orleans after Katrina.  The same thing that the IMF has been doing to South America and elsewhere for decades.  John Perkins’s New Economic Hit Man and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine document the process well.

Globalization is a key propaganda term in Milty Friedman’s economic doctrine – the mental Birdcage that is failing for the 1%.  It means basically that Corporations gain the Power to overrule Governments.  The World Trade Organization, and Bill Clinton’s NAFTA and its counterparts, including especially Obama’s TPP, give Corporations the right to overrule local laws whenever they would result in diminished profits for the Corporations, Labor and Environment be damned, literally.

In my high school civics class, this was the definition of Fascism.  Now it’s called Globalization.  We expect Fascism to be accompanied by brutal governments, but if your propaganda machine is good enough you don’t need brutality.  You just tell the same lies often enough.

For whites blinded by the Light of God and Truth and Consumer Goods, the propaganda works great.  For other races and immigrants legal or illegal, brutal government has been around for a long time already, especially since the War on Poverty was replaced by the War on Drugs – which gives US police the right to confiscate private property without the need for trial.  Now whites displaced by NAFTA and its friends – including the EU – are also no longer so blinded.

The rules of Vulture Capitalism say that no one should be able to stop you from ripping anybody off to get rich.  In the US, people are hypnotized into believing that they can join the 1%, if only the government will stop preventing them.  So they flock to The Donald, master showman of the 1%, instead of Bernie, who illuminated what’s really going on.  Clever move on the part of the 1%, as Cruz was too obvious in his ardor for Uncle Milty, and fear of The Donald’s instability will drive saner folks into the hands of Hilary, who promises business as usual.

I’ve been asked to say more about 2020 and the inauguration of the Digital Age.  This post is part of the background for that.

Initiations Oops

Oops; meant to “Save Draft” – the full article will be along soon.

 

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a21382/how-kodak-accidentally-discovered-radioactive-fallout/

 

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!

Unlimited Potential

Vision of Freedom: “Girl with Elves” by Maxfield Parrish.  Notice how she’s not looking directly at the Elves.  We have a tendency to jerk our head toward anything that moves, but we’ll see better if we use our peripheral vision and sidelong glances.

Feeling a little nervous about how we’re going to Balance our newfound Yintegrity‘s need to Trust Ourself moment to moment, with our Belief that if we don’t do what we’re told we won’t survive?  Well, those Feelings are right on time.

The dwarf planet Chaos (Potential, not Disorder) is T-Squaring the developing Opposition between Lilith (Yindependence) and the impending Chiron-Vesta Initiation (Miraculous Transformation of Limiting Beliefs).  Which is to say…

Our Limiting Beliefs are up in our face because they’re bring threatened Bigtime by a Vision of Unlimited Self-Autonomy.  The contrast is painful.  All of our CAN’T messages are flashing red.  That’s Discouraging at best and at worst touches our Despair.  Well, that’s not quite worst – we could be failing to understand why we’re Feeling Discouraged because we’ve really never had any concept of Unlimited Potential.  So we’re just Scared and we don’t know why.

But what’s really Changing here, if we’re willing to accept the Gift, is our Limiting Beliefs.  There’s a Vision of Freedom just outside your window, but there are bars on the window!  Our habitual Reaction is to focus on the bars and rue the impossibility of Freedom.  Our non-habitual Response will be to melt the bars, because that’s exactly what the Universe is doing – melting the bars.  Our Habituation sees the bars as being still there, so we need to erase them manually.  It’ll be one of those over-and-over-again things, as the bars keep reforming.  That’s the nature of Habit – it takes “reps” to break down the old Pattern.

The concept of Freedom in a Patriarchal Culture is different from the concept of Freedom in a Matriarchal Culture.  In the latter it’s more about Freedom to Be who you really Are, rather than Freedom to Do whatever you Want.  Matriarchal Cultures have rules of Behavior, but except in extreme cases, not Judgment of the person who’s ignoring the rules.  The Vision is one of Community, Collaboration, and Unconditional Love, not Competition and Winning.

Nobody in this T-Square is moving very fast, so except for Vesta moving out of Orb in a few weeks, this T-Square stays with us for a couple of months.

The Lilith-Chiron Cycle that’s reaching Opposition began in July 2010 at 1 Pisces, “In a crowded marketplace farmers and middlemen display a great variety of products.”  A Lilith-Chiron Cycle would be about creating Miracles by Trusting one’s Instincts.   The Eat Local movement and the proliferation of farmer’s markets comes to mind.

The Chiron-Chaos Cycle that’s reaching its Waning Square was Initiated in April 1976 at 28 Aries, “A large audience confronts the performer who disappointed its expectations.”  Chiron-Chaos Cycles would be about reaching into the Zero Point Field to pull out Miracle Rabbits that make insoluble problems dissolve.  The desmise of the Middle Class fits this Cycle perfectly.  The confrontation has been lacking because the audience is so frightened of losing its privilege and because the fascist performers control the media propaganda flow, convincing the audience that it’s their own damn fault.

The Lilith-Chaos Cycle that’s reaching its Waxing Square had its beginning in January 2013 at 15 Gemini, “Two Dutch children talking to each other, exchanging their knowledge.”  This is an interesting Cycle – pulling Yindependence out of the tophat when it’s least expected.  Since long ago the Dutch have made markets, and they’re still making the Political market in Europe.  Children implies some sort of innocence, or relative freedom from the established paradigm.  It’s Danish rather than Dutch, but I can’t help think of Peter Høeg’s novel Borderliners.

If we indeed focus our Attention on Letting Go of our Limiting Beliefs, a good deal of Grace awaits us this coming week.

Pluto makes a Trine-Sextile Bridge across the Lillith-to-Vesta-Chiron Opposition, and for the next week or so the Sun mirrors it, forming a Kite focused on Vesta-Chiron.  The Chiron-Vesta Initiation recall is Biquintile to the Jupiter-Juno Initiation – that is, the Expansion of our Consciousness arises through examining our Limiting Beliefs.

The Chiron-Vesta Initiation occurs May 13, the Jupiter-Juno Initiation May 16, and Lilith Opposes Chiron June 8.

A note about Conjunctions and Initiations.  If we have two planets “Tortoise” and “Hare” that rotate at different speeds, Tortoise more or less sits around waiting for Hare to catch up, since their track is circular.  So when we speak of their Conjunction, it’s a Hare-Tortoise Conjunction, as Hare catches up and passes Tortoise.  However, in a relative sense, Slow planets connote Wisdom, and Fast planets suggest Messengers.  A Conjunction Initiates a Cycle. 

At an Initiation, Tortoise represents the Guru, Hare the Initiate, and the Conjunction Shaktipat.  During the Cycle, the Initiate carries the Guru’s Teaching to the People.  So an Initiation is called a Tortoise-Hare Initiation, as Tortoise Initiates Hare.  So we refer to Faster-Slower Conjunctions and Slower-Faster Initiations, but they’re the same event.  The Conjunction sees the event as a moment, while the Initiation sees the event as the essence of a Cycle.  Think of the Conjunction as a noun and the Initiation as a verb.

Of course, Letting Go of our Limiting Beliefs is not normally a cognitive exercise, as our Limiting Beliefs have roots deep in both the Personal and Cultural Realms of the Unconscious.  So the Grace would lie in opportunities to become Conscious of our Limiting Beliefs.  Once a Belief arises into Consciousness, we can work to establish new Habits that counter the Belief.

For example, while researching material for the Error as Intuition post, I came across the Star Zosma, which sits behind a major planet at the top of a client’s chart.  In Brady’s Book of Fixed Stars, Bernadette says…

“Zosma … belongs to those whom the establishment, either directly or indirectly, makes powerless…  It is present in the chart of victims, of people who are abused by the system.”

Zosma symbolizes the place in Linear Time where the Patriarchy usurped Power from the Matriarchy, and hence the condition of those who are out of Power and vulnerable to persecution by the Powerful.

When I shared this information with my client, they were surprised by how relevant this was to their Life, and how the conceptualization had not risen into their Consciousness before.  They were initially bummed, Feeling it as a sort of Fate or Destiny.  When I spoke with them later, they had thought to Empathize with their perennial Victim, and had come to realize that it was part of their Mission to evolve through this Portal.

Have you had any surprise flashes of Insight in the last several days, that might be revealing Portals of your own Limiting Beliefs?  Visions of Heaven beyond the Gate, and/or Awareness of the bars on the Gate?  Repeating Patterns of Frustration in your Life?  If your Reaction to these was Discouragement, Empathize with your own perceived Limits.  Empathy works as its own device.  Once you Empathize, you can forget the whole Drama.  Later you’ll be inspired to PIAVA a new Pattern or two, but there’s nothing else to Do once you Empathize.  The Unconscious does the Transformation work for you.  When it’s ready for you to take the next step, it’ll tap you on the shoulder.

Here’s a Vision of Heaven, from Bonnie, at  https://dancinginthetao.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/ …

“Connection

“I’m spending just about every available moment these days in my garden. Not working, just being … being with the bunnies and the birds and the breezes, the sunlight and the stars, and all the slow dancing Green Folk.  I’ve felt for many months now that I access much more intelligence in these Presences, and in recent weeks have felt and leaned into my emotional Connection to them, and through them to All That Is.

“Insights from the Green Folk are beyond words.  Every day there is deepening and strengthening of feeling and relaxing into Relationship, a security and support I’ve longed for all my life at levels I didn’t even know I had levels.

“When I wander in my mind away from Connection, I feel fear and confusion; when I turn back from those Dark Paths I feel steady and knowing once again: not certain about anything, not knowing how even the next moment is going to unfold, but a deepening felt experience of what I’ve known intellectually for years: I’m not abandoned, have never been alone: I’m held (as is everyone) in the Very Heart of Being.  And no One expects me to know anything in advance: all that’s required is that I Participate with my Whole Being, that I bring All of Me to the Moment, and Respond.

“I’m learning not to walk down the Dark Paths in my mind anymore.  I know where they all lead: always the same places full of Paper Tigers and Bad Guesses about The Future.  So partly I’m bored with them finally; and partly they don’t scare me as much as they used to … daily their power weakens; and partly I’m becoming less and less willing to Entertain the Darkness.

“The Choice is becoming clearer and clearer, emotionally.  And it’s getting easier and easier to choose Connection … almost, almost to the point of why on this marvelous, beautiful Earth would I ever choose anything else?“

Testing Our Vulnerability to Fear: Portal 5.4

Borrowed from https://beinglynnpaterson.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/tantric-sex-with-an-orchid/

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Once a long while ago someone said to me…

“My Faith tells me that ‘this too shall pass.’  But you’re an astrologer – you know when it will pass.” 

Sometimes a Full Moon will be such a Passage, but often as not a Full Moon will invoke an Energy more than dismiss it.  In the case of an Initiation, though (and to some extent any Angle), it usually really is such a Passage, as the Energy builds till the moment of the Initiation, then drops off sharply.  There are more Details and Exceptions, but we’ll talk about those in a little while.  The Sedna-Mars Warrior with human scalps hanging from his belt Initiation (see below, however) occurs at 4am PDT May 4 (http://www.jbuss.com/tt/pdt4.htm), so we can expect our adventures with Fear to escalate till then.

Here’s a relevant story…

“Thirty minutes later I notice I’m feeling slightly edgy and I wonder if I’ve picked up some sort of negative energy or spent too much time on the computer.  I do a bit of energetic clearing and deep breathing but it doesn’t help and the edginess continues; it’s like an irritation I can’t stop, like a knocking on the door that is unanswered and the visitor knows I’m home so won’t go away.  I’m almost convinced now I’m under some sort of minor psychic attack so more clearing and ground exercises ensue but again, it doesn’t help and by now I’m feeling intense edginess and even beginning to feel victimised!

“In that moment I suddenly get an insight – it is someone knocking at my door!  I remembered from previous times when I had similar experiences and that once I stopped resisting, relaxed and allowed, I had felt an angelic presence that was trying to get my attention.  So taking a cue from that, I immediately stopped resisting the energy and instantly my experienced changed from edginess to excitement… like a quickening feeling through my body…  Closing my eyes, softening my body, relaxing into myself and allowing my awareness to drop deeply inside of me and set my intention to only be open to Divine Light of the Most High.  Inwardly I said “Greetings, who are you?”

“ ‘I Am the Over-lighting Deva of Orchids’ was the response.

“WOW!  My heart opened even more in response to the charm and delicacy of the vibration, tinkling in me like iridescent vortexes of the finest Light…  Oh such sweet ecstasy!  I can feel its curiosity!  In this moment I recognised that it’s a Divine Child of such purity and innocence, and it is achingly beautiful!  Such deep wisdom yet a lightness of being, of ‘knowing’ itself and its place in Creation – to feel even that is indescribably beautiful!  I was becoming undone.  It is so gentle too, and I was utterly captivated by this experience – such sweetness!”

— https://beinglynnpaterson.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/tantric-sex-with-an-orchid/

Fear, recall, is the absence of Love.  On another long-while-ago occasion, I was writing about the Goddess late at night in my basement apartment, and felt – again – that I was being watched.  The curtains were closed, but I had the distinct feeling that someone was just outside the window, looking for a weakness.  I could feel the hair on my neck starting to stand up, and feel the tingling on my skin.  This time I took a deep breath, grounded myself, got up quietly, and moved to the door.  With one sudden movement I unlocked the door and flung it open, to surprise the intruder.  And She was right there, staring me in the face – the Full Moon.

As Marianne Williamson – and Dorothy Maclean – remind us, we do Fear Power, our own as well as that of our allies.  We never know what lies beneath our Fear, but the odds that it may be Blessings are high enough that it’s worth exploring.

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Mars-Sedna is a two-year Cycle.  Mars doesn’t loop at a constant speed, as it Retrogrades every 25 months or so, about the same length of time it takes to circle the Zodiac.  Sedna, however, is a loooong ways away.  At the moment it’s three times as far away as Pluto, and taking a little less than three years to travel one Degree!  The result is that the Sedna-Mars Initiations are walking us through the Zodiac, just about one Degree at a time.  That process began in 1864 with the first Initiation at 1 Aries, but since Sedna is approaching us, it’s speeding up.  In 1864 it was taking about four years to cover one Degree.  Since 2007 the Initiations have been one Degree apart.

But guess what!  There’s  been a reprieve!  We don’t remind folks enough that we always round Degrees up.  Twenty-four Degrees and 32 Minutes is the 25th Degree, not the 24th Degree!  I just noticed that I forgot to round up!  So we aren’t entering a Warrior-with-scalps Cycle at all – it’s the last two years that have been the Warrior-with-scalps Cycle, or we might say the Terrorist-with-severed-heads Cycle!  Taurus 25 is “A vast public park” instead of a Warrior-with-scalps!  That’s certainly Good News!  Sorry for the Scare, though I guess it was just part of the Mars-Sedna drama – the Devil made me do it (or was it Pholus?).  I do find that errors are usually actually Intuitions.

So what’s scary about a vast public park, anyway?  Well, okay, not so long ago a cop shot and killed a twelve-year-old in a public park because the kid was playing with a gun-like object, and rather than render assistance to the dying twelve-year-old (or even verify that he was “disarmed”), the cop was busy manhandling the lad’s fourteen-year-old sister so she wouldn’t try to help her brother.  We do live in a fascist state; the police don’t make it their business to protect us, their business is to protect corporate interests.  So these days the molesters and muggers may not be our greatest Fear in a vast public park, though they certainly still have rank.

Taurus 25 is however the location of the Star Capulus, the sword of Perseus, symbolizing Ruthlessness.  So it could still be a dangerous Park.

But let’s talk about those Details and Exceptions that we mentioned.

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First, the Details.  An Initiation is just that.  So it should be that the Energy of the Initiation – in this case now a Walk in the Park, is just getting started.  And that’s true.  But after an Initiation the Energy goes underground.  The perfect example is Uranus-Pluto.  At the 1965 Initiation, Yintegrity was rampant.  But then it went underground, to arise again in the 2012-2015 Uranus-Pluto Square.  Once we get past May 4, the Walk in the Park Energy will shrink for six months (one fourth of the two-year Cycle) while the Warriors muster their strength for one more beheading.  Humans will do anything to prevent Change.

So as the Walk in the Park Energy gradually builds over the next six months, the Warrior-with-Scalps Energy will become harder and harder to maintain, until finally it falls away.  The Prior Uranus-Pluto Cycle, which Initiated in 1850, was about “A duck pond and its brood” – making it safe for the kids.  In 1965 the underlying Uranus-Pluto Energy changed to “A Ouija Board” – Magic is Afoot.  The Lawn Order folks were able to keep the Magic under control for a while, till it broke free as we approached 2012.  So the Warrior-Terrorists’ days are numbered.  We just have to remember “Hands Up – Don’t Shoot” when we’re Walking in the Park.  Unless it’s a mugger, in which case we need to shoot first, and hope it’s not an undercover cop.

An Initiation is a quite literally a Portal – beyond the Portal, the rules Change.  As Ursula says, “The rules change in the Reaches,” and when we pass an Initiation we enter Reaches that haven’t been Co-Created yet.  Astrology can say when any sometimes sketch out an outline, but Fate is an intellectual observation, not a property of the World.  We are all Co-Creating the Future as we go.  Moving through an Initiation-Portal, the rules Change.  As if it’s a different World.  One minute we’re Frightened by Warriors with Scalps, the next it’s the mugger behind the Tree in the Park that Threatens us.

We bring two personal characters to the Portals with us.  First, our Sensitivity, and second, our Resistance.  We’ll talk about our Resistance in the next section,  If we’re Sensitive, we pick up the new Energy before we actually reach the Portal.  If we have one-Degree Sensitivity, we’ll pick up on the new Mars-Sedna Energy Energy on May 3.  If we have three-degree Sensitivity, we started feeling it April 30th.  Muggles won’t pick up on it even after we’re through the gate; the new Energy won’t hit them till Mars Squares Sedna in six months.  In the interim they’ll still be fighting the last war. 

If you were born with planets in 25 Taurus (or Scorpio or Leo or Aquarius), or if Sedna or Mars was very Strong when you were born, you could have a long antenna and ten-Degree Sensitivity!  So while some of us are more Sensitive to some Energies than we are to other Energies, and some of us are more Sensitive to all Energies than others of us are, we won’t necessarily keep the same Degree of Sensitivity to all Initiations.

If you look at the World as astrology impacting us, you’d refer to it as “Orb.”  Looking at the World as us reacting to astrology, it’s Sensitivity.

To summarize, prior to the Initiation, our Sensitivity rules how much of an impact the event will have on us, and for how long.  After the Initiation, the flavor of the Energy is embedded in the Water under the bridge, even though the Frequency and Color of the Energy is still under Co-Creation, and Resistance to Change is at a maximum.

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And second, the Exceptions.  We inadvertently collaborate with the forces of the status quo to Resist Change with the best of them.  I left a section out of Lynn’s story above…

“I knew from previous experiences that it was important for me to trust in the moment and to leave any analysing until later.”

You see, while we might know that the Warrior Cycle too will pass, and when, we don’t know much about the Walk in the Park Cycle, because it hasn’t been Co-Created yet.  As far as we know, we’re just leaving our Comfort Zone and entering the Unknown.  Had it been Buffy the Vampire Slayer rather than Lynn, it might not have been the Orchid Deva at the door.  We forget that Fear plus Breathing equals Excitement, and habitually Fear the Unknown, and set our Boundaries against it.

Not only that, but since it’s Unknown and our analytical mind is obsessed with “Knowing,” we have to make things up.  Even though I wasn’t watching much TV news in those days, of course I expected it to be a prowler outside my window.  If I hadn’t flung open the door, I might have added extra locks or lights around my apartment instead, strengthening the bars on my birdcage and locking myself into my Limiting Beliefs more strongly.  And I wouldn’t have noticed that the Universe was answering my earlier Request to be more in touch with the Goddess!  Look how Bush and the his neocon cronies scammed us into Fear about daily Life after 9/11.  Lynn’s wisdom again…

“It hit me this morning, there’s nothing to be gained from thinking about what just happened.  I didn’t just think it, I felt it in the body.  It doesn’t help with the present, and it cannot help the future either.  I asked myself: What if you didn’t think over what happened and just let it pass?  Would you be disadvantaged in the future?  How does going over what happened actually help?  Can it make the present or future better or safer or make you better somehow?  If you didn’t think it over, what would you lose?”

— https://beinglynnpaterson.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/post-mortemising/

We make Decisions, and those Decisions cement us into the status quo, long after the Present Moment has gone under the bridge.  We decide it’s not Safe, we harden our Boundaries, and we lock out the Goddess and the Orchid Deva.  In 1964 we Decide that the Powers That Be will never understand Yintegrity, so it has to be Us-Against-Them.  Because of that Decision we waste the next fifty years wallowing in Negative Politics rather than Learning Magic.  In 2013 we Decide that the Warriors must be eliminated, so we Drone them back to the Stone Age – creating whole generations of new Warriors in the process.  If we put half the Attention into not creating new Karma that we put into clearing old Karma, we’d be way ahead.

We do that by refusing to “post-mortemise,” by hardening our Boundary against the mind’s obsessive need for Answers, so we can maintain our state of Curiosity as long as possible.  Not Curiosity about “cause and effect,” Curiosity about what will happen next, about what hasn’t had its wave form collapsed yet, about how we can keep the Cat alive.  In this sense, the Alexanders have it right on – stay focused on What You Want, not on What You Fear or What You Don’t Want.  Denying Emotions doesn’t work – it just drives them into the Unconscious, where they find a friendly Archetype and take over your Life without asking permission.  So you can’t Deny Fear to focus on What you Want.  You have to Lovingly Empathise with Fear.  Then You the Witness, rather than You the Scared, can go back to focusing on What You Want.  That’s the Magic.

One other handy trick, taught to me by Jack Schwarz, rest his soul, that will be useful when we get scared while Walking in the Park.  Kegels.  You hit a 95-mile-an-hour fastball over the fence by being “in the zone” – by slowing down Time so relative to your eye and bat, the ball is actually moving at five miles per hour.  Literally.  Otherwise Babe Ruth would still be shaking the sting out of his hands.  And you slow down time by doing Kegels.  The scareder you are, the more Time slows.  Try it next time you’re watching an Adrenalin-burner movie, then see how long it takes to walk the two miles to the refrigerator.  It’ll make even the smallest park vast.

Portal 10.29 – Gestalt Astrology

The Earth isn’t really that close to the Sun, it’s just Photoshopped in to demonstrate how big those Sunspots (the darker areas) are.  Fortunately, they haven’t been aimed toward Earth when they’ve ejected Solar Flairs.  The Sun is 109 times larger in diameter than the Earth, meaning its circumference is 342 times that of Earth, and its volume over 9,000 times as great.  It’s a heavy dude – its mass is about 330,000 times the mass of the Earth.  And it’s not really grey.

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A primary principle of the Gestalt process consists of translating negative Energies into positive Energies.  Re-interpreting Control as Protection would be one example.  If we appreciate someone’s effort to Protect us, our Feelings and Behavior and Reactions and Responses are very different than when we rebel against someone’s effort to Control us.  Yet they’re often the same Energy.

We could call what we do Gestalt Astrology – translating Energies usually seen as negative into the positive is one of our primary techniques.  Saturn, for instance, is often seen as Limitation.  What’s the positive function of Limitation?  Focus.  So we see Saturn as telling us to Focus on The Most Important Thing.  We feel Limitation when we’re attached to lower priorities.

Eris is often seen as Dischord, as her contribution of a Golden Apple inscribed “The Fairest of Them All” to a banquet of the Gods and Goddesses produced a very dischordant banquet, and ultimately led to the Trojan War.  Yet the Competitiveness among the Goddesses was there before the Golden Apple.  The Apple merely brought it into Consciousness (or at least, provided the opportunity for same – it’s not clear from the Mythology that anyone’s vanity actually became Conscious).  So we see Eris as the Revelation of what’s Unconscious.

We usually refer to that as the Revelation of Denial, but Denial is not a dirty word to us.  The Ego’s function is to keep us Alive and Safe, and the Ego is fairly easily overwhelmed, leaving us vulnerable to danger.  Denial is the natural process that allows us to Focus on what we perceive to be The Most Important Thing (our Egoic Stability) rather than on the Elephant in the room.  Most people use the word Denial as an accusation, when they’re insisting that The Most Important Thing to them become The Most Important Thing to us.

Pandora is usually seen as the vehicle by which Evil was released into the World of Hufolk.  But like Nassim, we have to ask “What came before that?”  The answer is Unconsciousness.  By bringing Evil into Consciousness, or at least providing the opportunity for same, we gain the opportunity to Choose not to indulge it.  So we can see Pandora as symbolizing Self-Awareness.

On October 29, Pandora backs across Eris.  Eris Initiated Pandora in mid-July, so this represents an “Exposition” phase of their dance together…

When two planets cross, we refer to it as the slower (message-giver or guru) planet Initiating the faster (messenger or neophyte) planet, and alternately as the faster planet Conjuncting or Conjoining the slower planet.  So this is Pandora Conjunct Eris.  It’s not Eris Initiating Pandora because…

When planets Conjoin, they often do so multiple times, as one or both of them turn Retrograde.  We only consider the first Conjunction to be the Initiation of a new Cycle.  The Sabian Symbol of the Initiation degree is a clue to the nature of the Cycle that the Initiation begins, or the period till the next Initiation.  Pandora being an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, the Pandora-Eris Cycle lasts a little over four years. 

For convenience, we use the shortcut term “planet” to refer to planets, asteroids, dwarf planets, Centaurs, TNOs, Lights (Sun and Moon), symbolic points (the Nodes, Lilith), and anything else that orbits the Sun or the Earth.

The Initiation is considered a “Can-Opener,” as new material is released from the Unconscious, and we’re called to adjust to it quickly, without much warning.  If there are multiple Conjunctions, then the subsequent Conjunctions are considered “Expositions,” when the same issue recurs, but recurs more slowly, giving us time to witness, identify, and differentiate it into Consciousness.  The final Conjunction is a “Confidence-Builder,” because the Demons attack again, but this time we know from experience how to handle them, and it’s effortless or nearly so.

These three stages, Can-Opener, Exposition, Confidence-Builder, apply to any multiple Angle between two planets.  For instance, the Uranus-Pluto Square recurs seven times between 2012 and 2015, giving us five Expositions, including the one we’re embarking upon now.

The Eris-Pandora Initiation occurred at 24 Aries, “Blown inward by the Wind, the curtains of an open window take the shape of a Cornucopia” – signifying that the Denial that’s revealed will lead us to Abundance.  Releasing any Mask saves us a bundle of Energy that we can use for more productive purposes, and also clarifies our perspective so we’re more likely to pursue and achieve our own goals.

Whatever Demons were released suddenly into your World in mid-July 2014, you’re now getting the opportunity to re-experience them in slow motion.  Back then they caught you off guard and created uninvited difficulty in your Life.  But it was just material being released from the Unconscious, being brought into the light of day so you could Choose whether or not to indulge it.  As it turns out, this material will prove to be very valuable to us, and we’re in the process of discovering how this will be.

The current Pandora-Eris Conjunction occurs at 23 Aries, “A pregnant woman in light summer dress,” suggesting that this Exposition will be Powerful.

The current Conjunction, with both planets Retrograde, occurs October 29.  It’s within three degrees of Sensitivity from October 15 till November 20.  Pandora turns Direct November 30, and the Confidence-Builder phase occurs on December 30, as Eris is Stationary.  They’re within three degrees of each other from December 9 till January 12.  The Confidence-Builder is also at 23 Aries.

Despair into Miracle IV – Saturn-Vesta

Continuing our consideration of the September Full Moon and Portal 9.1-11, we need to look at the upcoming Saturn-Vesta Initiation.

Following Rudhyar, we pay a good deal of Attention to the astrological Cycles between planets.

The planets go round the Sun at different speeds, so the faster of them eventually (or often) pass or cross the slower of them.  The loop from one crossing to the next is called a Cycle.  For instance, Saturn takes about 28 years to navigate the astrological loop, while Vesta takes about four years.  So every four years (plus several months, as Saturn moves ahead by about fifty degrees in four years), Vesta crosses or Conjoins Saturn. 

We refer to this Conjunction as Saturn Initiating Vesta, because the faster planet Vesta acts as a messenger for the slower planet Saturn, so Saturn acts as the Guru and Vesta the receiver of the Shaktipat.

The four years-plus between Initiations is one Vesta-Saturn Cycle.  We can find clues about the nature of the Cycle by looking at the Sabian Symbol (an interpretation of the individual degree) of the degree where the two first Conjoined.  The change from one Cycle to another can create meaningful differences in the Gestalt or Mileau we live under.  English doesn’t have a word for this because English is reductive rather than integrative.

So in general, what would a Vesta-Saturn Cycle entail?

One of the functions of Saturn is to codify.  So every four years, as the Vesta-Saturn Cycle changes, we would begin Paying Attention to different phases of What We Consider to Be Sacred.  Over the four years, while that phase felt like The Most Important Thing, we would be learning, experiencing, and consequently upgrading our understanding of that part of What We Consider to Be Sacred.

Viewed from the other side (Vesta’s effect on Saturn), we’d also be Paying more Attention to our own behavior and how it relates to that part of our “moral” or ethical code.  Note that Morality is intellectual, it’s set of rules; it has little to do with Spirituality or Compassion or Presence or the other markers of how we relate to Spirit.  Ethics is like Patriotism, it’s the last refuge of a scoundrel.  There is no sense in which Ethics is superpersonal.  It’s a word that allows us to try to bully someone larger than ourself by attempting to shame them.

But we do try to translate our Spiritual/Sacred standards into behaviors.  Without a predefined moral or ethical code we may have to “try it on” for each behavior – imagine acting it out and looking to see how it’s likely to make us feel.  Parables like “Do unto others as you would have them do until you” or “Do unto others as they would like to be done unto” are simplified guidelines for “trying it on” like that.  So every four-plus years we would expect our understanding of how those parables operate, or arenas in which they operate, to shift.

What sort of shift should we be expecting now?

The previous Vesta-Saturn Cycle, the one we’re leaving, occurred at 3 Libra, “The dawn of a new day reveals everything changed,” in August 2010.  The Vesta-Saturn Cycle that we’re approaching occurs on September 13 (noon PDT) at 19 Scorpio, “A Parrot repeats the conversation he has heard: The capacity to transmit transcendental knowledge.”  The “capacity” part is Rudhyar’s interpretation.  He introduces the “transcendental” because it’s a Bird, and Birds are associated with Spirit because of their wings.  There is a clear implication that we’re repeating more than we understand, that we still see through a glass darkly.

Let’s step back to 2006 and see what preceded the dawn of a new day.  The 2006-2010 Vesta-Saturn Cycle was about “Glass blowers shape beautiful vases with their controlled breathing: The need to involve one’s most spiritual and vital energies in the creative act if it is to produce significant and beautiful new forms” (9 Leo in mid-June 2006).

So here’s one way to consider Saturn’s role here – from 2006 to 2010 during the Big Meltdown we were asked to be very careful to bring our full Spiritual and Energetic Skills into what we were creating.  We were laying the foundation of our Survival strategies for the New Paradigm that was being birthed at that time. 

By 2010 it was clear that our old strategies were obsolete, and once we got to 2012, the End of Time and the Rebirth of Yintegrity,

(not to mention the second Transit of Venus)

it was clear that, really, Everything had actually Changed.  It really was Different This Time.  Now, for the next four years, this information (our new Survival strategies) has to be repeated over and over again, to as many people as we can.  The academic study of Change says that it occurs when a few “early adopters” try a new strategy on to see if it works.  If it does work, their neighbors try it, and if it works for them, the word spreads and soon most people adopt it as a Best Practice.  We’re entering the “Spread” stage for our new strategies.

Here’s a great example…

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/09/06/food-waste-ampleharvest.aspx

http://www.ampleharvest.org/index.php

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKu7zXx3mMdmpwJWIgTfniQ

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

So the big changes we’re undergoing in September and October will put us on a plateau, from which we’ll spend the next four years telling anyone who’s interested what we’re up to and why.

Cycles and Initiations

In Rudhyar’s view of the Cosmos, a fundamental principle of astrology is the Cycle.  In “Tropical” astrology, the zero point is the first day of the Northern-Hemisphere Spring, when the northbound Sun crosses the Equator, and the Angles between the planets are as seen from Earth.  In “Sidereal” astrology, the zero point is a particular Star in the Sky.  These were the same several millenia ago, but no longer, as there is a slow drift in the way the Earth is oriented.  As always, it’s Both/And, but we use Tropical astrology, ‘cuz that’s what we’ve learned.  In Western Cultures, most astrology is Tropical, and it’s just called “Astrology.”

The basis of Tropical astrology is that the strongest effects relate to the Seasons – Aries being the first month of Spring, Cancer the first month of Summer, Libra the first month of Autumn, and Capricorn the first month of Winter.  Much of Tropical astrology follows pretty easily from that – we see spontaneous Creation happening everywhere in Aries, Moms nurturing their new offspring in Summer, folks beginning to think about Collaboration in Autumn, and getting serious about it in Winter.  Of course that’s all on its head in the Southern Hemisphere, but the Colonial European mind hardly noticed that.  An honest Tropical Astrology for the South would start Aries on September 21, though of course it would be Both/And.

We go through all that because once we realize we’re looking at the planets from this perspective, we see that we can watch the Planetary Cycles unfold in the Night Sky.  We need one more piece of information, though.  The planets (including the Sun and Moon as “planets”) move from West to East.  It’s the Earth that spins the other way.  So the Sun and Moon appear to move from East to West because what we’re seeing is the daily rotation of our own Planet.  If we want to watch the other planets move in the sky, we need to take a fish-eye snapshot of the Sky every night at midnight.  Arranging those snapshots as a time-lapse video, we’d see the motion of the planets as seen from Earth.  In that video we’d see the Stations and Retrogrades and Cycles.

So, getting down to Cycles on our imaginary midnight time-lapse video, we’d see the red planet Mars trotting across the Sky and returning to the same benchmark location every two years.  The fourth-brightest object in the Sky (after Sun, Moon, and Venus) is the white planet Jupiter.  It would take twelve years for Jupiter to make one complete journey across the Sky and return to the same benchmark.  Of course they’d be invisible half the time, because they’d be on the other side of the Earth.

So Mars will make six round trips for each of Jupiter’s round trips, and we can watch Mars pass Jupiter in the Sky every two years.  In real life it turns out to be two-and-a-half years for Mars to catch up again with Jupiter, because in the two years while Mars was looping, Jupiter was moving too.  So the next Mars-Jupiter Conjunction – or Jupiter-Mars Initiation – will occur further along in the Zodiac (later in the year) than the last one.

When Mars passes or Conjuncts Jupiter, we refer to it as Jupiter Initiating Mars.  The reason we do this is because we aren’t really looking at the planets, we’re looking at Energies they represent.  It’s an ancient and very useful tradition to personify Energies and Entities.  “Moderns” consider that a horribly primitive and “superstitious” thing to do, but they do it all the time, when they personify one another and their exploitative gods like Free Market and Cause & Effect.  Everyone has their Mythology, and when you hit a nerve in conversation with someone, you know you’ve stumbled onto Mythology that they’re Fundamentalist about (that is, they assume their metaphors are literally True).  As if Truth were knowable!

If they had any sensitivity, they could see that Trees and Rocks have just as much Life and Individuality as they do, and have a lot more to say than they do, if for no other reason than the Trees and Rocks have been around a lot longer.  If you personify your car, it’ll be more reliable, last longer, and tell you when it needs help.  It’s simply a matter of Respect to personify everything.  Do we really think the Wind will talk to us?  Don’t be silly, if we did we’d be a nutcase, right?  It’s symbolic.  The Wind represents an Energy, and pretending to personify it helps us to understand it.

It’s a classic error of thought to confuse a Symbol with its Referent – we all do it all the time.  We see a snapshot and we think of it as a Landscape.  We do Google Earth and we think we’ve been there.  We see a body and assume it’s a person.  We see an incident and believe it’s a trend.  We see a Star and think it’s an Omen.  But of course it’s Both/And.  And since it’s all a hologram anyway, the only difference between the Symbol and the Referent is the quality of the projector.  How incredibly arrogant to think that the Wind doesn’t talk – and listen!  You just stay out of the nuthouse (if you want) by telling people what they need to hear so they don’t freak out.  Either/Or people have very fragile Egos that are threatened by anything outside their narrow Birdcage.

So we personify Mars as a whippersnapper running around Doing a lot of stuff and kicking up a lot of dust in the process, and we personify Jupiter as a more stable source of Wisdom and a symbol for Expansion.  These personifications aren’t arbitrary; they’re based on millennia of observation.  When Mars is lit up, often so are tempers.  But of course that’s self-reinforcing; if we know Mars is lit up and we see someone coming with a fresh Sunburn, we might think they’re really angry and run away – or strike first, just in case.  And the traditional astrological interpretations are laced with millennia of negative Either/Or thinking, which we need to discount.

So we see Jupiter as the Wizard, and Mars as Micky Mouse running around trying to replicate the Wizard’s tricks while supposedly doing the Wizard’s bidding.  Or, since it’s always Both/And, you could see Micky as Jupiter and his broomsticks as Mars.  Either way, as we all know, delegation leads to trouble.

But the point is that in astrological Cycles there is a faster planet, the Delegatee, and a slower planet, the Delegator.  At the beginning of a Cycle, the Delegator Initiates the Delegatee, or assigns a task to the Delegatee, or confers Shaktipat to the Delegatee.  Over the course of the Cycle, the Delegatee attempts to carry out the task.  We usually say that the faster planet Conjuncts the slower planet, and that the slower planet Initiates the faster planet, but they’re the same thing.  While slower confers Wisdom, faster provides Experience – though with less opportunity for contemplation and integration.

The task, or Energy of the Cycle – we can and should personify Cycles as well – is strong at Initiation, but only for those who aren’t Denying it.  Those who are heavily invested in the old Cycle that just died, and still hoping to keep making profits from it, will be looking the other way and hoping the new Energy goes away.  In the 1960s, Pluto Initiated Uranus at 18 Virgo, “An Ouija board,” and there was Magic afoot.  And lots of Muggles working hard to Deny it.  The Guru Pluto (History personified) gave the Initiate Uranus (the Individual personified) the assignment of manifesting an Ouija Board on Earth – which we can interpret (among many other possibilities) as restoring the Realm of the Fairies, and restoring the Magic of the Human-Soul connection and respect for all Entities and Energies.

Then, as the Cycle develops, the Energy becomes less obvious.  Through the 1970s and Eighties and Nineties, as Uranus moved away from Pluto, Magic was a lot less apparent.  Till Uranus reached its Sextile (two Signs apart – Creative Grace) to Pluto, and Harry Potter launched, to become the most popular book series ever.  Harry’s mom JK Rowling was born in the mid-sixties with Uranus two degrees shy of Pluto and closing rapidly.  JK has a Grand Cross (Uranus/Pluto Opposite Saturn, Square the Nodes) and a Grand Trine (North Node-Mars-Pallas) – echoes of the current now.  The Uranus-Pluto Initiation itself Opposed both Saturn and Chiron (Magic and Miracles, with Focus); Harry Potter (the book launch) has Uranus Septile Chiron (double Magic) and Quintile Saturn-Vesta (Learning to Focus on the Sacred).

Fast forward our time-lapse video to 2012, and Uranus comes ’round to Square Pluto.  That’s when Magic becomes a part of everyday life.  With Retrogrades and Repeats, the Uranus-Pluto Square repeats seven times, till 2015, so we aren’t near done yet with our Ouija board.

So Mars (Action) has just been Initiated by both Jupiter (Expansion) and Lilith (Instinct), Lilith will be Initiated by Jupiter this December, and Jupiter and Lilith will both soon Initiate Pallas (Boundaries).  Pallas Initiated Mars in early June.  Mars is the fastest planet here (2 years per round trip), Pallas next (4 years), then Lilith (9 years), then Jupiter (12 years).   Lots of new Cycles beginning, with Jupiter the High Priestess…

• Mars-Pallas (“Workmen drilling for oil“) or Actively setting Boundaries
• Mars-Lilith (“A car wrecked by a train“) or Acting on our Instincts
• Mars-Jupiter (“Game Birds feathering their nests“) or Actively Expanding
• Pallas-Lilith (also “Game Birds feathering their nests“) or setting Boundaries that respect our Instincts
• Pallas-Jupiter (“A large Diamond in the first stages of the cutting process“) or Expanding our Boundaries
• Lilith-Jupiter (“Venetian gondoliers giving a serenade“) or Growing Instinctively

We pay particular attention to Lilith because her these-boots-were-made-for-walking act so mirrors the push for gender equality that characterized the 1960s.  In the chart of the 1965 Pluto-Uranus Initiation, Venus was overtaking Mars near the South Node, with all three Conjunct.  The implication is that during the current 140-year Uranus-Pluto Cycle, our Androgyny (in the best sense of the word) will be dredged out from beneath the Emotional Holding that has been keeping it hostage.

The exact Mars-Venus Initiation occurred ten days after the Pluto-Uranus Initiation, at 11 Sagittarius, “In the left section of an archaic temple, a lamp burns in a container shaped like a Human body.”  That’s a very unusual Symbol, laden with potential.  Left usually represents Source and consequently the Feminine.  Rudhyar’s take: “The value of the ‘return to the body’ advocated by modern thinkers in order to balance the stress on intellectuality and objective consciousness.”  You can see in the current trend toward oppression of Women by the Olde Male Power Structure, a desperate effort to extinguish this Sacred lamp.

The Olde Male Culture is deeply invested in the Intellectual and its “objectivity” because it can define the “objective” with Logic, without ever revealing the exploitative Assumptions that underlie its Logic.  Even the “religious” elements of the Olde Male are Intellectual.  They’re based not on Spirit, Energy, or Emotion, but on Ideology.  The Colonial perspective is all about objectifying Other.

Thanks to martin for several corrections; see Comments.