February Energies

Astrophyllite, specializing in creating Order from Diversity.

With a lot going on, this is a confusing month.  Let’s first try to take it apart (“anal-yze” it), and then see which parts the Moon lights up when.  Here are February’s four ongoing Big Dramas:

• The Uranus T-Square,
• The Chiron Mjolnir,
• The Quintile Box, and
• The Septile Chain…

The Uranus T-Square

With of course Pluto (Mandatory Transformation) and Jupiter (Expansion and Amplification).

To review, a T-Square comprises two planets in Opposition, with a third planet at their Midpoint.  Or, one planet with two Squares to opposite sides of the Zodiac.  It means Mastery through Challenge.  Your natal T-Squares are the places where you have the greatest Mastery and the greatest self-judgment – simply because you’re motivated to keep trying (even if only in your imagination) till you finally get it right, but it’s not a binary issue with right and wrong about it.

It’s a Fourth-Harmonic issue, with all of the complex nuances involved in the concepts of Justice and Dominion.  Not Justice when seen from one person’s point of view (which is actually revenge), but Justice that takes into account all relevant perspectives.  And not Dominion in the sense of Control, but Dominion in the sense of Competence.  Natal Squares provide us with Mastery simply because we have more practice with them, and more practice with approaching them from various angles, than anyone else.  Square Mastery is particularly valuable in times of rapid Change (as in Now), when the traditional experts, who know how to do it right – relative to the previous Paradigm – are stumped.

The ongoing Challenge to embody more and more of our Soul-Self, and realign our Ego-Self accordingly.  Most of us are pretty heavily invested in false Selves that serve specific goals, like the one that covers the mortgage or the one that takes care of the kids.  So there are likely to be a number of Ego Deaths of varying severity going on.  But as the old saying goes, rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated – it feels horrible, and it feels like we’re going to have to Abandon our “self” or others, but Ego-Death Emotions are always greatly exaggerated.  Not that it’s easy, but it’s not as bad as it seems.

Uranus of course is our Yintegrity – our willingness to do what we Want, moment to moment, without self-judgment.  Since mortgages and kids often play havoc with Yintegrity, in order to live in Yintegrity in a Yang World, we usually have to reduce our Commitments, be willing to renegotiate often, and extricate ourselves from circumstances where that sort of Freedom isn’t possible.  The Uranus-Pluto Square spans 2012 to 2015.  Hang in there.

We can see the Jupiter-Pluto chasm as Surrendering to the threat of constant Transformation – we have no idea who we’ll end up being.

The Chiron Mjolnir

Chiron, meanwhile, is Sextile to Pluto and Trine to Jupiter – it’s the key to unraveling the Challenge of the Uranus T-Square.  So there are two bridges across the Jupiter-Pluto chasm – the direct Challenge toward Yintegrity, and a more Grace-full path through Reframing.  They both lead to the same place.  We’ll be taking both routes.  At once.

The feet of the Mjolnir are Lilith (Yindependence) and the Vesta-Ceres-North Node triple Conjunction (allowing our understanding of the Sacred to come into alignment with our personal Mission and Desires, in order to be able to Sustain our Commitment to them)…

Miracles – and Despair.  When you encounter any discouragement or hopelessness, know you’re in the grips of Chiron.  Know you can’t anal-yse your way out of it, because you have to allow your assumptions about LifetheUniverseandEverything to shift, in order to perceive the places where your dreary outlook isn’t even relevant. 

You can PIAVA your way out of it, but you’ll need to be clever to not recreate the perceived “problem.”  For instance, if you PIAVA a solution to “Problem X,” you probably won’t be catapulted out of the box that has Problem X as a consequence of its construction.  You may have to find a way to PIAVA a World where “Problem X” doesn’t exist.  That’s more likely to take you where you want – or indeed, need – to go.

PIAVA a World where your commitment to your Deepest Desires is unquenchable, no matter what anyone says.  With a loving and gentle and fun and funny transition, of course.  

This Mjolnir is a much bigger deal that it appears to be – Mjolnirs aren’t usually considered a big deal by astrologers.  Remember that a Mjolnir is a Square with a third planet at the far Midpoint.  In this case, the Square is between Lilith and the triple Conjunction.  Another way to look at it, is a planet with two Trioctiles to different zones of the Zodiac – here, Chiron is that planet.  A Trioctile is three eighths of the way ’round the Loop.

Many important astrological Configurations add up to 360 degrees – a Mjolnir consists of a Square (90) and two Trioctiles (2 x 135) = 360.  A Mjolnir is often called a Hammer of Thor – Mjolnir is the Norwegian word for same.  In Hindu mythology, Vajra or Dorje is parallel.  The meaning is something very hard, like Diamond, that strikes like Lightning.  In other words, Epiphany.  Think of it as illumination rather than destruction.  Or if you want, destruction of impediments and Resistance.  While Diamond is the hardest substance around, it’s also very brittle.  When shattered it would shower Light in all directions.

Trioctile Angles are sometimes called Sesquisquares – a Square and a half.  The Trioctile is an Eighth-Harmonic Angle with undertones of the Third Harmonic.  The Eighth Harmonic represents Alignment and Balance.  To quote Angie Arrien (Tarot Handbook, p.55),

“The central portion of the symbol is a figure that stands in a Diamond, having pierced the webbed veils of illusion, delusion, and deception.”

The Third Harmonic represents Love with Wisdom.  So a Mjolnir has the potential to bring loving and gentle Realignment and Balance, even without our Great Reframer Chiron.  Vesta represents what we’re willing to Live or Die for, so this will deepen our experience of Ego Death.  But Ceres represents Sustainability, and the North Node carries our Deepest Desires, so abrogation of the North Node is a very serious Self-Abandonment, the kind of situation where it’s your own Soul that metes out the punishment.  And Lilith embodies the Freedom to Live in Yintegrity.  So these Dramas dance together pretty intimately.

The Quintile Box

The Quintile Box ties these Dramas together even more tightly, as its four corners are Pluto and Jupiter of the Uranus T-Square, and the triple Conjunction of the Chiron Mjolnir, plus the South Node.  The South Node of course represents our Karma and the Hidden Skills it masks, the very Skills we need to accomplish our Mission.  A Quintile Box is made up of two Oppositions forming an “X,” with the top and bottom each a Quintile apart, and the sides a Quintile and a half apart.  The two Oppositions here are Jupiter-Pluto and the Nodal Axis.  A Quintile Angle separates the triple Conjunction from Pluto.

A “Quintile and a half” is a Tridecile, or three tenths of the way ’round the Zodiac.  That puts us into the Tenth Harmonic (Fortune) with a Third Harmonic melody underneath.  So the Trideciles (Jupiter to the the triple Conjunction, and Pluto to the South Node) are by no means malevolent.  However, Quintiles – the Fifth Harmonic – can be hard, as they force us to Learn things that make Change inevitable.  In this case…

We’re being asked to Amplify our Worst Fears in order to allow us to Embrace them and Love them into Oblivion.  That will Liberate the Hidden Skills that will allow us to Sustain our Commitment to our own Mission.  Till recently we were dancing all around our Mission, but now we find that it’s no longer optional.

That is, Jupiter Quintile South Node Amplifies our Karma, while Pluto Quintile to the North Node and Friends means that the play gets very serious.  On the other hand, the Expansion of our Commitment to our Mission (Jupiter to triple Conjunction) and the Requirement that we face our Karma (Pluto to the South Node) are Tridecile relationships – Fortune with Love and Wisdom.  If it weren’t so hard, we’d be calling it Grace.

The Septile Chain

This is subtle but Big.  Saturn is Septile to Pluto which Septiles Neptune which is Septile to Eris – a cat’s cradle of heavy hitters.  The Septile or Seventh Harmonic is about Timing the use of Power.  You can strain all you want and nothing happens, till you get to the Tipping Point – and then you can knock it over with a feather, because you aren’t acting alone, you’re one of very many who pushed before you.  There are two types of Power – Conformity, and the Septile.  Pluto Power is about going with the flow and not paddling upstream.  Septile Power is about adding the last watt to a building stream of Potential, creating a new stream by being in the right place at the right time.

Healing, like our Healcebo Power or Shamanic Power, uses Septile Power.  Shamanic Rituals assemble the Energies in Potential-space, and when the Tipping Point is reached, the Energy is dispatched into third-dimensional form in a whoosh.  We’re referring to Shamanic Rituals, which are unique to the circumstances and participants, not Rituals of Repetition – which have their own Power.  Since All There Is Is Now, by invoking a Ritual of Repetition, you invoke the accumulation of every instance of its invocation.  There is a Seventh-Harmonic element to Rituals of Repetition if they’re relatively new, but by and large Rituals of Repetition inhabit the Second Harmonic.

The Neptune-Eris Septile stands at four degrees off, so it’s beyond our usual three-degree threshold, but considering the gravity of the players, it’s worth including.  But since everyone else is moving forward much more quickly than Eris, the overarching Saturn-Eris Angle is now closer to a Quincunx than a Triseptile.  Which is good, because it introduces Curiosity…

I Wonder what it is that I’m Resisting most of all.

That’s Wonder as in true Curiosity, the W in PIAVAW.  Resistance and Denial are killing cousins.  That’s exactly what we need to resolve the tension in the Uranus T-Square, the Chiron Mjolnir, and the Quintile Box.  But that’s only the personal element of the Septile Chain.  The other elements are far beyond personal – Neptune pertaining to the Cultural Unconscious and Pluto to the Planetary Unconscious.  These are looong Cycles.

The current Neptune-Pluto Cycle, even though it’s completed only one seventh of its journey, began in 1891 at 9 Gemini, “A quiver filled with arrows.”  While Rudhyar emphasizes Conquest, the only military operations of any significance in 1891 were Wounded Knee and a Chilean Civil War.  America’s Wounded Knee has never healed – Amerika is still inflexible about regarding Conquest as heroic – and a conflict between the forces of fascism and the forces of Yindependence may yet evolve before the Life of the Planet splits into two distinct vibrations.  And Wounded Knee was the Tipping Point in European Conquest over the “Natives of the ‘New World’ who were rational beings with Souls who must not be enslaved or robbed” that lived in North America.

The Chilean Civil War is interesting, as it was over the Legislature being unwilling to approve any of the President’s cabinet ministers – a bane in the US today, with the Republicrats vowing revenge over the Democans’ recent changing of the rules to permit cabinet approvals.  But the general flavor of 1891 was not about Conquest, or at least not wartime Conquest.  The automobile began commercial production.  The first glider flew.  The first successful powered flight also occurred, but since it used a steam engine it wasn’t considered sustainable.  Tesla demonstrated wireless transmission of electrical energy.

The overall tenor was the beginning of the “Gay Nineties” or “Naughty Nineties,” a period similar to the 1920s, where Avarice and Decadence were celebrated.  The American and European economies had recovered from the Depression of the 1870s and were celebrating relative prosperity, until the Panic of 1893 began another Depression, now sometimes added to the previous one to be called the Long Depression.  So the seeds of economic inequality were present at the Initiation of the current Pluto-Neptune .

The other Septiles are all Waning –

• Saturn Septile to Pluto (Focus on the Global)
• Saturn Biseptile to Neptune (Focus on Culture)
• Saturn Triseptile/Quincunx to Eris (Focus on Denial)
• Pluto Biseptile to Eris (Revealing Global Secrets)
• Neptune Septile to Eris (Revealing Cultural Secrets)

Which means we are ending very many looong Cycles here.  Lots of Void Energy, lots of Potential, but the timing is not right for Creating.  Rather, on the Cultural and Global levels, it’s time for housecleaning, for throwing out the scoundrels, but not replacing them with Visionaries, instead replacing them with Caretakers.

All Together Now

That’s a huge bundle of Energies to be working with.  The constructive parts are mostly personal.  Neptune-Pluto is the Grand exception, which says to me that the New Global Culture that we’re Co-Creating must be about tolerating a wide mix of Yintegrity and Yindependence, and structuring a Collaborative Caretaker Society that’s more about local Community survival for the short term than about globalization or building long-term infrastructure.

Dropping Our Masks II

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

Adjuncts to the Uranus T-Square

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Gar Alperovitz…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tricolor would be something like…

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

The Yod just adds emphasis to this Energy.

The Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Pluto Cycles

We’ve looked at Jupiter-Pluto before…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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