Sheila asks, “So does the Age of Aquarius start Monday?”
The answer is, “Kinda sorta.” The Digital Age lasts about 2 Centuries, while the Age of Aquarius spans more than 21 Centuries. It’s a lot harder to pinpoint a Threshold for a 21-Century Cycle than a 2-Century one. We’re using the term “Digital Age” to apply to a time period very specifically bounded by astrology, and we’re labeling it based on Huper History and Herstory.
The Age of Aquarius is astronomically bounded. We know how long the Ages are (given certain assumptions), but if we have a firm date for when the current 25,920-year Great Year began, I don’t know what it is. I know there’s a lot of disagreement and many estimates, which vary by Millennia. It’s okay with me if you consider the Aquarian Age to begin on Monday. We could also choose the beginning of the 21st Century, or the first performance of Hair.
If I was going to research a firm date on an unlimited budget, I’d have AI review all of the World’s news media for the last many years, and score all news reports on whether they emphasized Intellectual Issues (Aquarius) more than they emphasized Emotional Issues (Pisces), examine the results by daily average to see if they described a smooth curve, and if so choose the year when Intellectual Issues first dominated. If they didn’t describe a smooth curve, I’d look for modes (clusters of similar data), and if none emerged, I’d say it was N/A.
Aquarius is Fixed Air, so it’s not just more Intellectual, it’s also more Opinionated. The 1/1/2000 chart foresaged Polarization, which has been the case in spades, as folks Confuse their Immutable Truth of the Heart (asteroid Aletheia) with their Debatable Truth of the Head (asteroid Veritas) and get sucked into Life-or-Death Ego-Association with Ideas, forgetting that everyone’s Truth of the Heart is Unique, and everyone is a Front for an Immortal Soul, so Killing them will only prolong the Agony of Ego-Association. Pity that the greatest Joy some Hupers seem to savor is Self-Righteousness.
However, these Polarized Opinions are all heavily Emotionalized, so I’d have to suppose that we’re still in a Transition period of indeterminate length. If the Digital Age produces a Lie Detector that gives binary answers that everyone Trusts, then, Perish the Thought, we might be able to definitively declare Aquarius to have arrived, though we’d have to rename it the Age of ‘Bots. We may have to anyway, if Ray Kurzweil has it right.
While we refer to it as Truth of the Head, our Intellectual Truths are really Truth of the Solar Plexus, because that’s where Thought is actually Centered. Small wonder that Thought is Confused with Anger, Judgment, and Hatred. Blame Descartes and Newton and everyone else who Believes that Thought can be dissected out of the Whole and become anything except a small bloody chunk of a Corpse, or a dead Butterfly impaled on a pin. You won’t be far off to envision an Argument as two people plucking out their giblets and throwing them at each other.
Sign Changes
Last time we mentioned that a number of planets Change Signs as the ~Aquarian Digital Age begins…
Asteroid Lachesis is named after the Greek Goddess of Fate whose job it was to Measure the Length of your Karmic TimeLines. Each Karmic Habit you brought into your current Lifetime came with an Expiry Date. Well, we know that Karma is Dead, so how does that work? If we’re Unconscious of a Karmic Pattern, it defaults to our Fate.
Once we become Conscious that we’re Repeating an Obsolete Habit that doesn’t really serve us in our current Lifetime, then we can Choose an Alternative rather than continuing to “beat that Dead Horse” all over again. Since we’re Addicted to our Karma because it’s What We Know and what we’re Comfortable with, we’d have some Inertia to overcome, but again, with Awareness and Motivation we can do that.
So we give ourselves the Benefit of Consciousness and interpret Lachesis as Consciously Choosing to Shift our TimeLines, where a TimeLine is anything that unfolds in Time – a Habit, a Job, a Relationship, a Trip, a Nap, a Residence, or a Jail Term. Lachesis is a kind of Get Out of Jail Free card, if you’ve ever played Monopoly.
Asteroid Atropos is the Goddess who actually Cuts the Lachesian Chords. So Atropos is about TimeLines that end on their own, without our Conscious intervention. Maybe. Karma is addictive, so we can sleep through an Atroposian alarm. We’d probably eventually wonder why in the devil we did that and Choose to shift the Momentum.
On 15 December 2020 (2:40 pm PST), Lachesis moved from Libra (Meeting Other) to Scorpio (Getting to the Bottom of Things). It was in Libra for only three months, but it’ll stay in Scorpio for almost a year, as it does Remediation (Retrogradation) next Spring. So you’ve been Inconvenienced in your Relationships with Others for the last several months.
You’ve probably been Blaming it on the Custardovirus, or on dastardly abrogations of your precious FREEDOM to not have to wear a Mask, but in Scorpio you’ll be searching everywhere for what it was that got you so upset, especially if you inadvertently kill somebody with your callousness. We hide our True Feelings every day, yet we object to wearing a physical Mask? Maybe it’s because a Mask inhibits our Ability to Manipulate others with disingenuous facial Expressions. No Accusation, just a Speculation or even a Projection – what’s True for you is for you to Discover through your Scorpionic Deep Dives next year.
Asteroid Juno (Growth in Consciousness) left Scorpio for Sagittarius on 18 December (9:20 am PST), which should make our Lessons Feel a lot Easier. Juno’s timetable is similar to that of Lachesis – it was in its prior Sign (Scorpio) for only about three months, but it stays in its new Sign (Sagittarius) for most of 2021, with Remedial work (Retrogradation) during the summer.
I’d guess we’ve been clawing at our scabs for the last several months while Juno was in Scorpio, to try to Expose as many Limiting Beliefs as we could find, so we could carry less Baggage into a Digital Age where who knows how much of Life might become Virtual. Much of our Life is already Lived through Fantasy anyway. Sagittarius is Mutable (Changeable, as in Mutation) Fire (Spirit), so it’s the Sign where we Let Go of what we no longer need for protecting our Material Ego from Scarcity.
And of course Saturn (The Most Important Thing) on 16 December at 9am PST, and Jupiter (Expansion) on 19 December at 5am PST, waved adieu to Pragmatic Just-Fix-It Capricorn and moved into Idealistic NoNotThatWay-ThisIsHowToFixIt Aquarius. It’s Catty of me I know, but I imagine Aquarians sitting in a bar arguing about how to Fix Society. We have the poster child for Fixed Air (Rigid Ideology) in the US Congress.
To be Honest, we have to wonder what planets have been in Aquarius for the last while already, as Congress has been unable to Negotiate with itself at least since the Tea Party came ashore, if not since Newt crawled out from under his rock. Asteroid Aletheia (The Heart’s Truth) has been in Aquarius since April 2020, which makes sense relative to the closure of the Federal purse since the March CARIES Act. Asteroid Pallas (Boundaries) has been in Aquarius since Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 7 December, and will be till April 2021.
But actually, if Hupers Learn to differentiate their Heart-Truth from their SolarPlexus-Truth and find the nanobit of Awareness and Empathy necessary to look in the Mirror and see how Upset they get when someone else Forces foreign Beliefs on them, and then Realize how Odious it must be for them to Force their Beliefs on Others (Duh!), they might Loosen Up a bit. Pour me another before closing time, ok? – an Aquarian anal-ysis if there ever was one. Aquarius is completely capable of figuring this out, it’s just my cynicism about Huperity that Limits my Optimism.
I get it, that’s my Karmic Pattern that, if I don’t look in the Mirror, will lock me into a Future of Competition to the Death. I’ll have to turn it around, so I can Manifest a Future of Peace and Collaboration and let the rest of the Hupers Manifest whatever they want in their own back yards. You know the First Law of Manifestation, Whosoever Farts in Church, sits in their own Pew. Or is that the Law of Karma. Can’t be, that one’s been Repealed.
Saturn averages two and a half years in each Sign, and Jupiter one year. Saturn in Aquarius should Teach us that The Most Important Thing is to AvoidTaking our Metaphors Literally. That’s the definition of Fundamentalism, and it applies to just about everybody, including us if we don’t constantly Let Go of our Natural tendency to want to have Burnt Umber clearly differentiated from Beige (Black and White are no longer PC).
What’s difficult to remember is that It’s All Metaphor. Even with our Best Multidimensional Intuition and our Most Outrageous Channelings, we Perceive such a tiny sliver of Reality, that while our Heart’s Truth defines OurOwnValues, it doesn’t have anything to say about the Nature of Reality. Our Solar Plexus-Truth is even less descriptive, even though it’s Useful for helping us find Food and Shelter.
Saturn’s last sojourn in Aquarius was 1990-1993. Remember Daddy-Bush’s First Gulf War? Collapse of the USSR? The End of Apartheid? The first breath of the World Wide Web?
Jupiter in Aquarius can lead us to Tolerate, and even Embrace, Cognitive Dissonance, the Practice of being able to hold Contradictory Beliefs in mind, as equally Valid, at the same time. Huper Mind Perceives Duality, Either/Or, while Reality is Unitary and Multifarious, or Both/And. If we Allow our Thinking to Define our Concepts about Reality, we’ll never escape Judgment, and Love Dissolves when Judgment Replaces Curiosity.
We don’t get to 5D without Unconditional Self-Love, so Embracing Cognitive Dissonance is a Critical Skill. Every Perspective contains valuable information (even Mask Denial), so we can’t afford to Reject any of them, even though we probably want to rank them in order of their Utility.
Jupiter last visited Aquarius in 2008-2009. Hard to believe that was a dozen years ago. We had the H1N1 Swine Flu. Obama took over to sweep up the shards of the US Economy after the Derivative Crisis, often misnamed the Housing Crisis. Sully landed in the Hudson. And Bitcoin took its first breath.
Easy to forget in Light of the Jupiter-Saturn “Christmas Star,” but of course the Sun moves out of Sagittarius and into Capricorn at 2:05 am PST on 21 December. Our Perception of our own Essence should become less Scattered and more Pragmatic. That’ll be welcome.
Dwarf planet Ixion (Forbidden or Hidden Unique Genius) sticks its toe back into Capricorn on 27 December (1:20 am PST), for the second of three times as it stutters it’s way out of Sagittarius. It enters Capricorn “for good” (till next time, 250 years hence) in November 2021. We’ve hopefully used its 15-year passage through Sagittarius to Let Go Of our Inhibitions on Allowing it toExist and Bloom, so we can use its 19-year trip through Capricorn Putting It To Work Healing the Planet, or at least building a very large Ark.
Cusps are tricky. Planets that are four Signs apart (Trine, Dumb-Luck Grace) get on well with one another because they share the same element – Water to Water and Fire to Fire. Planets that are three Signs apart (Square, Challenge) create Stress because they don’t share the same element – Air to Earth or Water to Fire. But look at these Cuspy Angles in the Saturn-Jupiter Initiation chart above…
Sedna to Karma is three Signs (with a little slop) so it should be Difficult, yet it’s Earth to Earth (Taurus to Virgo), which should make it Easier.
Moon to Juno is four Signs so it should be Easy, yet it’s Water to Fire (Pisces to Sagittarius), which should be more Difficult.
Some of each, perhaps? Both/And? An Opportunity to Practice our Cognitive Dissonance? Maybe a completely new kind of Relationship, neither Easy nor Difficult, but Orthogonal to that Dimension? A Paradox?
As we Descend in earnest into Saturn-Chaos Stations (The Most Important Thing is That We Recognize Our Unlimited Potential in Response to Any Victim Feelings We May Have – for Instance, When We Feel Sick or Get Injured, Do We Recall that It’s Possible to Heal in an Instant, We’ve Just Forgotten How? We Can PIAVA that We Remember, though!), there are a couple of Sign Changes that we’re experiencing.
On 26 September 2020 (11am PDT) asteroid Lachesis (Ending a Timeline, Unconsciously or Consciously) moves from Virgo (Ego Death) into Libra (Meeting Other). A “TimeLine” can be any relatively coherent activity occurring in a time period – a Habit, a Relationship, a Chunk of Karma, a Preference, a Judgment, you name it. The Mythical Lachesis was the Goddess who Measured the Length of your Fate, or a segment thereof. When our Karma becomes Conscious, it moves from Fate to Choice. Since we know that Karma is Dead, we can Choose to Excise a Chunk of it anytime we Recognize it and Choose to Respond Differently.
So for the last ten weeks, while Lachesis was in Virgo, we may have been Criticizing ourself, which is what we do when we’re in Judgment or Blame and Forget that we need to do an Ego Death to Escape it. Or we may have been Feeling like we’re Dying, which is what we do when we’re trying to procrastinate on an Ego Death. Or we may have been Feeling like “We’d Rather Die than go through That again,” which is what we Feel when one of our Karmic Held Emotions are up in our face so we can Remember that we can just Choose to Let Go Of them and be done with it.
And for the next eleven or so weeks, while Lachesis will be in Libra, the TimeLines that we Let Go Of, or Modify, or Renew, will be about Other – most likely Other People, but possibly Anything we don’t Ego-Identify with. For instance, we might find ourself feeling like it’s time to make Changes in our Profession or Job, or a Relationship. We may feel like getting or giving away a Pet. We may Feel a need to Explore different ways of Relating to the World – becoming less or more Emotional, for instance, or Paying more Attention to our Body, or Meditating instead of Thinking, or Praying more.
On 27 September (12:30 am PDT), Ceres (Sustainability, Sustenance, Resilience, or the Opposite of same) moves from Pisces (Letting Go of Obsolete Emotional Patterns, or Avoiding same) back into Aquarius (Fixed Ways of Thinking, or Letting Go of same). Ceres has been Adventuring into Pisces since late April, but has now decided it has remedial work to do with Aquarius till 10 November. Since Ideology is one of the ways that Aquarius likes to Manifest, folks may be more Resistant to Change the Trances they Ego-Identify with. Since Sympathy is one of the ways that Pisces likes to Manifest, folks may be more Hard-ass.
Should be interesting how the Glomonyavirus evolves, as the Covidiots may get more determined to celebrate their allegedly god-given constitutional right to go naked from the neck up in public just as the Autumn Surge in Viruses arrives. And even more interesting to see if that shifts anyone’s Political Perspective, or just deepens their Trance.
As it’s wont to do, planet Mercury turned around and started going Backwards 16 February 2020 (5pm PST). This will be very difficult for you to verify, since Mercury is too close to the Sun to be seen most of the time, and “Backwards” in this context is kind of metaphorical. Mercury symbolizes Communication, Awareness, Thought, and Analysis mostly. Backwards (“Retrograde”) Mercury has a bad rap around travel, but if like the Angels we take travel delays and disruptions Lightly, we can still Fly.
A planet goes Backwards when it wants us to really Pay Attention to some Lesson it has in mind. It crosses the same zone of the Zodiac thrice, to make sure we don’t Lose the Plot. The Plot this month is about the Thinking we’ve been doing, and the Conclusions we’ve been drawing, about the way our Culture should work (Mercury thrice crossing the last few Degrees of Aquarius), and how we Respond to this Emotionally (Mercury thrice crossing the first dozen Degrees of Pisces).
Overzealous Emotions cause our Mentality to Misfire. It’s one thing that some of us are Emotional Thinkers – when we’re Analyzing something, How We Feel about it is one of our most important criteria, and that’s just Who We Are. But it’s quite another thing when something Triggers our Karmic Judgments and we lose all hope of Neutrality. Neutrality after all is where we must be if we want to Change or Manifest anything. For instance, if we try to Create Peace from a position of Anger, all we’re going to get is more Anger. Trying to Create Peace from a posture of Bliss will probably only promote Denial.
And in the section of the Zodiac that Mercury crosses thrice, there sit a couple of dwarf planets that are likely to Trigger our Karma. One of these is the symbol for Intrusive Memories(the as-yet-unnamed dwarf planet that we affectionately call “OR10”) which are usually Karmic. The other stands for Abuse and Privilege(dwarf planet Nessus). That’s almost always Karmicas well. The timetable looks something like this…
2 February – Mercury begins its first crossing (at 29 Aquarius)
6 February – Mercury Triggers Intrusive Memories
11 February – Mercury Triggers Abuse and Privilege Issues or Memories
16 February – Mercury turns Backwards (at 13 Pisces)
21 February – Mercury Triggers Abuse and Privilege Issues or Memories
28 February – Mercury Triggers Intrusive Memories
9 March – Mercury goes Forward again (at 29 Aquarius)
22 March – Mercury Triggers Intrusive Memories
29 March – Mercury Triggers Abuse and Privilege Issues or Memories
30 March – Mercury finishes third crossing (at 13 Pisces)
When planets change their Direction, they Slooowww Dowwwn, Stop, and then slowly Accelerate again. While they are Slowing and Stopping (ie, 16 February and 9 March), their Influence upon us is at its Strongest.
Do you have any record or recollections of what was going on for you around 6 or 11 February, give or take a day or two? The usual astrological process is that this first crossing raises an Issue or Problem (we refer to this as a “Can-Opener”), which usually puts us into our Victim. Then the second crossing (the “Exposition”), if we’re Awake and Responsive to it, Teaches us a lot about what’s really going down, and we can begin to see our own Role in it. By the third crossing (the “Confidence-Builder”), if we were Awake at the second one, the original Issue or Problem recurs, but this time we Realize what’s happening, and we Handle it with Aplomb.
Mercury stutters like this three times a year, so we get a good deal of Practice with it. Our Journey from Victim to Adept increases our Neutrality a lot, helping us to be more Objective and Effective Problem-Solvers.
If you happen to have a birth (“natal”) planet in the thrice-crossed Zone of a Backwardation, the Cosmic Headmistress is giving you a Special Lesson. For instance, one reader has their birth planet that means Truth of the Heart(asteroid Aletheia) in the Zone of this Mercury trifecta, and that planet is in a Challenging Relationship (Square) to their birth planet that stands for theirSoul (Uranus). Birth-planet Relationships are with us for our entire Life, so the more Practice we get with them, the better.
So our reader may frequently run into Issues where they feel like the Desires of their Soul, and the Desires of their Heart, are in Conflict. How can Soul and Heart be in Conflict? Heart should Serve Soul, and do it Well. But Karma can intervene and mess things up. That makes it even more important to Practice with the Energy, and bring it into Consciousness, so they can Notice when the Karmic prompter is reminding them of their Lines, and Frankly, Not Give a Damn about what it is they’re Supposed To do or say.
Our reader’s Heart-Truth planet, with it’s Teasing Relationship with their Soul, is Triggered by Mercury on 4 February, 1 March, and 19 March. The most important thing to remember about our birth-planet Relationships, is that they’re like a Graduate Seminar. They aren’t Problems to be Solved, they’re Dramas to be Studied. We don’t Solve Dramas, we just Learn how to Handle them a little better each time we deal with them. They have no Clean Edges, they’re always Ragged.
Imagine you’re an fiction writer studying situations where a person’s Heart would lead them in a different direction than their Soul would, so you could write a realistic short story about their Adventures. With that mindset, after several repetitions of this Pattern in your Life, you could write the script of your next episode of it. That would probably help immensely to make it Easier for you to Step Out of that Role the next time those circumstances arose, and Enjoy playing the role of someone else in your script, or someone different entirely.
If we Endure our “favorite” Karmic – aka Educational – Drama once more and leave its Edges just a little less Ragged than the last time, then we’ve Succeeded Greatly, and we need to Acknowledge ourself with Celebration. While we’re “still kickin’,” we’ll probably never know Why our Immortal Soul Chose to Experience a Lifetime with such a Drama in it. We just have to Accept that it in fact Did, Trust its Wisdom, and try to be a good Student.
The more Conscious we can be about the Dramas hard-wired into our birth charts, the better, but we also have to remember that it’s not about Analysis (even when Mercury is being Compulsively Analytical), it’s about Experience. We get a little more hip to our Dramas each time we Repeat them, whether we beat ourself up for Stumbling over them again, or Congratulate ourself for being Open to Learning more about them. Analysis can give us “Book-Larnin’,” but it isn’t nearly multidimensional enough to give us Wisdom. For that we need Experience. That’s what Karma is all about – Inertia, Repetition, how to Use the Patterns we have to their Best Advantage, instead of being Victimized by them.
“Here’s what I want to know in these dark days when [the Influence of the Antichrist] seems to be spreading worldwide: when is the Age of Aquarius?”
These are 2,150-year “Ages,” so they don’t Shift on a dime. We’re more Comfortable with Discrete Changes than we are with Gradual Changes, however, so even if we Recognize that Change is usually Incremental, we’d like to have a hard date so we know when to Celebrate Birthdays, don’t we. Our post on Happy Lunar New Year, at https://astrobuss.wordpress.com/2020/01/24/happy-lunar-new-year/, proposed several possible dates – May 2023, 25 February 2020, 25 January 2020, 2 March 2020.
But Aquarius is Fixed Air, which we can translate as Rigid Ideology. From that perspective, it began on 1 January 2000, when the New Century chart indicated Polarity (the Grand Cross, with its Saturn-Uranus and Pallas-Neptune Oppositions) as one of the four defining characteristics of the Century. Fortunately, Enlightenment was another (the Sabian Symbol for the Initiation of the then-new Chiron-Pluto Cycle). It probably wouldn’t hurt to review that chart, so we can review the other two defining characteristics as well.
The Digital Age, which is replacing the Industrial Age, begins at the Capricorn (Northern Winter) Solstice, 2020 (Initiation of the second of twenty Jupiter-Saturn Cycles in Air Signs). The promise of the Digital Age is that “Work” will no longer be necessary for us, because the Machines will do it all. That’s a pipe dream, obviously, based on our Experience, but once the Digital Age goes Exponential – which it will, and surprisingly soon – that may Change.
For this to work, for The People as well as The Owners, the Machines must be Publicly Owned. The Founders and CEOs can be minority owners if they haven’t Learned to Share yet, as long as most of the profits are distributed to The People. The People also have to stop Worshiping Mammon, or They won’t be Willing to Share, either. There is Talk of Jubilee and Universal Income, which is positive, but The People haven’t demonstrated yet that They understand much of this.
That’s if The People Survive. Climate Change is the Grey Swan here. If we pull another Atlantis, what would the Age of Aquarius even mean? That we’re Underwater? Why does Aquarius pour Water over everything, anyway? Because Fixed Air is a Skeptic? Skepticism will only Freeze us into What Already Is. The People might start to get Serious about Climate Change in 2022 (when the new Pholus-Quaoar [Responsibility/Survival] Cycle is Initiated, at 8 Capricorn on 2 February 2022. That’s 2/2/2022, which resolves to 10, the Wheel of Fortune; another chart we need to Examine).
Our Survival Zeitgeist then shifts from “Children play on a swing hanging from the branches of a huge Oak tree: The power of tradition as it shelters the beginnings of individual self-expression”(the Sabian Symbol for the 11 Leo Initiation of the previous, 12 October 1901, Pholus-Quaoar Cycle) to “In a Sun-lit home domesticated Birds sing joyously: The wholesome happiness which subservience to the ideals and patterns of a well-established culture brings to those who accept them unreservedly(the Sabian Symbol for 8 Capricorn).”
Based on this, if we see “the Influence of the Antichrist” as anti-Democratic, maybe Robotic Obedience to Cultural Propaganda is our Best Option. To a Culture that requires everyone to spend an hour a day with their thumb in the dike, for instance. Someone might even invent a Culture that’s based on Universal Acceptance of Other People’s Ideas. Wouldn’t that be Radical. They’d have to outlaw the Idea that certain Other People, however defined, need to be Killed, probably enforced with Capital Punishment. See how quickly Mentality – and Fixed Air – shoots itself in the foot?
If we look at what Hupers actually Do, rather than what they Profess, we see how we’re Herd Animals, who often violently Resist an Idea until enough Other People come to Accept the Idea. Once we Realize that continuing our Resistance will lead to our Abandonment, we often relent. As a Social Species, except for Indigenous Cultures that Train for the eventuality, Hupers equate Abandonment with Death, because they’ve Forgotten how to Survive Alone, and have themselves Abandoned the Intuitive Energies (such as the “Gods” Quaoar or Makemake) who would Teach them how.
We also know that Hupers generally prefer to Conserve Energy, wanting to keep their Investments producing as long as possible. Consequently, few of them jump right onto the bandwagon when a New Cycle Begins. Instead, they argue that the New Cycle Ain’t Natural, and, once the Initial Excitement about it begins to subside, most folks start to Deny that the New Cycle will prevail, and Act as though the Old Cycle still reigns. Until the New Cycle reaches the point where Denial is no longer possible (the Waxing Square of the Cycle).
From that Perspective, the dates we gave in the first paragraph of this post, could be our best guesses (since they’re Waxing Squares).
Another feature of Huperity and its psychology, is that while Mentality is Dualistic, the Unconscious is not. Of course folks who Deny the Invisible are prone to Deny the Unconscious, but that’s their loss. While the public media and most of our other discourse is Dualistic, our Behavior isn’t. Most of us Say one thing and Do the opposite, because we’re trying to Convince ourself that we aren’t “one of those people who” Do that. Once we Recognize that, then our approach to astrology is drastically different.
Aquarius is no longer necessarily Rigid Ideologies, it could just as easily mean The Antithesis of Rigid Ideologies. That might mean The End of Judgment. That could produce Universal Acceptance of Other People. That would probably require the Opening of Hearts. It could even produce Respect for All Things, even for the Consciousness inherent in Nature and in supposedly Inanimate Things.
That would drastically Change our approach to Climate Change, since Lack of Respect for the Consciousness inherent in Nature and in supposedly Inanimate Things is what has Created not just Climate Change, but all of the other Abuses of the Planet and Her discounted non-Huper Citizens as well.
So maybe the Age of Aquarius isn’t so much a Mass phenomenon as an Individual one. Maybe it begins for each of us as soon as we Open our Hearts, Eschew Judgment, and start Respecting All Things, Animate or not. If so, it could begin today.
Indeed, Marilyn Raffaele’s Arcturian Channeling for today suggests,
“Allow your spiritual journey to unfold without limitations that consist of nothing more than concepts and beliefs based on the experiences of others for every person’s inner journey is individual and authentic.
“Allow, by truly accepting that you are not the person you believed yourself to be, but are a Divine Being, an expression of Source Consciousness who formed for yourself a physical body in order to work and live in the denser energies of earth – a three dimensional interpretation of the real body, one of energy and Light.
“You are more than ready to identify with the reality of who and what you are – Self-sustained, Self-maintained Divine Consciousness. Within ‘Self-sustained and Self-maintained’ exists every Divine Reality, everything ever believed to be lacking – abundance, harmony, wholeness, safety, security, peace, completeness, intelligence, companionship – ad infinitum – just awaiting conscious recognition. This is the secret of life, the holy grail, hidden in plain sight where most never think to look – within.
“Divine qualities have always been and can only be fully present within every individual simply because Divine Consciousness is all that exists, manifesting ITself in infinite forms. Beliefs of duality and separation have created a collective consciousness that believes itself separate from other people, animals, plants and all living things as well as from God. The ups and downs, good and bad experiences of daily living are simply duality in expression for there is no unexpressed consciousness.
“This is the work – ‘What am I holding as truth in my consciousness?’
“The three dimensional experience is like someone having a large bank account that they are unaware of and so live in poverty and need. However, each day more people are waking up to realize that much they have always accepted as true regarding every facet of daily life is simply not true. It is at this point that food, entertainment, activities, and desires, begin to lose their appeal and we begin our journey toward our as of yet unknown ‘bank account’.”
Then we’d have to Ask, Where’s asteroid Hopi in all this, since Hopi is all about Respect for All Things. Well, turns out that Hopi is part of the “Bowl of Grace” or Trine Bridges that underlie the Makemake T-Square in the 24 January New Moon chart and help make it Self-Resolving. Which is to say that, with Uranus/Soul, it’s one foot of the Finger of God to Makemake. Hopi Conjoins dwarf Planet OR10; in fact, that Conjunction, and Initiation of a New five-year Cycle, is Exact today, as we speak. A Hopi-OR10 Cycle is about the Voices in our heads that whisper about Respect for All Things.
This one begins at 4 Pisces, “Heavy car traffic on a narrow isthmus linking two seasonal resorts: The mobility and intensity of interchanges which make possible and characterize complex social processes.” Yes, Respect for All Things gets horrendously Complex. Do I apologize to the Bread, or to the Toaster, when I burn my Toast? For a start, we definitely need to Listen a lot more! Sounds like an improvement though, from the previous March 2014 3 Pisces Cycle, “Petrified tree trunks lie broken on desert sand: The power to preserve records of their achievements which is inherent in fully mature cultures.” Which records are of course tantamount to the Ghosts of the Past.
Marilyn continues…
“Never attempt to reclaim the past dear ones, for once the lesson of some experience is complete, it is no longer needed. As you shift into ever higher states of awareness, you are no longer in alignment with much of your past.
Some attempt to re-create the past, clinging to nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ in the belief that these times were better but which in reality held the same dense and negative issues the world is witnessing today. In general, the unawakened majority of earlier times surrendered their personal power to others, thus allowing the same dense and negative issues of today to be ignored, denied, or covered up.”
A major theme of this Full Moon is Choosing to Allow Chronic Physical issues to be Healed Instantaneously. We have two major categories of Resistance to this – first, we don’t Believe it’s Possible because we’ve been taught otherwise. And Second, when we do Allow this, it won’t be the only thing in our Life that Changes, so unless we’re Prepared for that, our Ego will Resist the ancillary Changes, and that will reinstate the Chronic issue that we’re “Comfortable” with. Don’t for a minute think that Comfort and Victimhood can’t co-exist; we’re all a bit Proud of our Victim Postures, or we wouldn’t keep giving them Support.
The Moon Conjoins Lachesis (Consciously Choosing the length of a Timeline), and while the rest of the chart forms a bowl, North Node-Varuna (Mission-Life Force) is an outlier Reflecting all of the other planets.
We could also easily find that our Abuse Memories continue to plague us until we Accept the fact that it is Resistance to our Held Emotions and Comfort with our Karma that lock us into Dyspleasure. This is a bit of a Gordian Knot, but for starters we can Strive to get Conscious of the ways we are Comfortable with our Karma, and we can Ask ourself “What Emotions do I Refuse to Feel?”
Mars-OR10 T-Squares the Full Moon, while Chiron (Despair and Miracles) Squares a Stellium of Karma (q.v.), Quaoar (Survival Instincts), and Pholus (Ability to Respond rather than React).
On the other hand, the Opportunity for Healing is Immense.
Klotho (Beginnings) Conjoins the South Node (Held Emotions), indicating that we may Begin to be Willing to Embrace what we’ve been Rejecting as “I’d rather Die than do that!” – or that our Held Emotions will Begin to bother us more, as Hidden Psychological Bugaboos will eventually go to great lengths to get themselves Revealed. Since this Opposes Varuna-North Node, our Preference for continuing to Live our Karma as Physical Discomfort may get tested.
And Soul (Uranus) makes Blessed Angles to our PTSD (Mars-OR10) and to our Need to Take Responsibility (Karma-Quaoar-Pholus). Remember that Responsibility means Able-to-Respond-to-Improve-Outcomes; Blame Lives in a totally different Universe.
The Biggest Configuration in the Full Moon chart is this Nose-Cone…
It’s a graphic illustration of the incredible Synergy between Beginning to Open Up to our Held Emotions (Klotho-South Node deep in the soup on the right) and Investing our Life Force in our Life Mission (Varuna-North Node on the left). You can almost Feel the Energy bouncing back and forth like a laser till it reaches Escape Velocity. Our Held Emotions obscure the very Skills we need in order to Energize our Mission, Skills we accrued in, or borrow from, Other Lifetimes. The Other Lifetimes need not even be “our own” – when we’re Clear enough, we have direct access, through our Mitochondria, to All the Information in the Universe. We Are after all All One.
♥By the way, asteroid Karma moved from Sagittarius (Let My People Go!) to Capricorn (Just Fix It!) on 16 September (8pm PST if your Journal is that accurate). Capricorn is more Difficult than Sagittarius in some ways. In Sagittarius all we have to do is Let Go; the hard part is Realizing it. Who would think, after a Lifetime of being ravaged by our Karma, that all we ever had to do was just Let Go of it! In Capricorn we have to Work at it. We might even have to Plan-Execute, but beginning with PIAVA will always give us a rocket start.
♥ 24 November – Neptune Station at 14 Pisces (5pm PST).
Neptune’s Bottom Line is that it is characterized by Material Confusion but Spiritual Clarity. Which is great as long as we Remember that Confusion is the first stage of Growth. Mostly because our Childhood World was not Safe, our Programmed Reaction to Confusion is to Try to Figure It Out so we can find Safety. Whether we succeed or not, this Act of Thinking kills our Growth and freezes us inside our old cage. When Neptune is Lit Up, there’s no point in Thinking; you’ll never Figure It Out. We’ll just get more Confused.
Till we switch to our Spiritual Eyes.
The Neptune-Station chart is very Singular. It offers tremendous Insight into what drives our Limitations, while making it Clear that to Grow into that Illumination, we’ll need to drop some Deep Judgments that Define us. You know, them Ego Deaths we’ve mentioned occasionally. Remember it’s not “I’d rather Die!” it’s “I’d rather Die.” It’s not You that’s threatened, it’s your “I,” your Identity, your Ego. The other 99.999% of You will continue just fine, and far better off than before your greatly-Exaggerated Demise.
Stationary Neptune Opposes Orcus (Oath-Making and -Breaking) and Squares Nemesis (Ego Death) and Hopi (Respect for All Things). It’s also the focus of a Mjölnir Kite (yellow diamond) from Venus Square North Node (Values that Conflict with our Mission)…
Limitation is Created by Oaths, Vows, Promises. Once we Forget that as Sovereign Entities we still have Choice regardless of our Oaths, or we Forget the Oaths themselves, our Limitations become our Karma. Of course we still have the Choice to Step Out the Back Jack (Sagittarius), or at least Work At It (Capricorn) to just Let our Karma Go, but who Remembers that? At least we aren’t Resolved to our Fate; that’s a Soul Death rather than an Ego Death. “Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen.”
Our Oaths morph into our Values, and then we really Invest Ego into them. When we Betray our Values, we don’t just Betray whomever we Pledged ourself to, we Betray Family. Betraying Family is like Banishment. Unless we’ve done our Walkabout or Vision Quest, one of our strongest Limitations is that we don’t Believe that we can Survive without Family. Our Values are up for review.
♥ 1 December – Vesta enters Aquarius (12:30 pm PST).
I think of asteroid Vesta as symbolizing our Bottom-Line Beliefs. Our Values might be what we Strive for, but our Beliefs Describe the Edges of the World we Live in.
One of our Strongest Tools for Growth is the Willingness to Suspend Disbelief.
Capricorn is so hard-headed that Suspending Disbelief since late September has probably been Difficult. Aquarius, which adores Wishful Thinking, should make it Easier to Try On New Beliefs like we would clothes, through late January. Aquarius can however tend toward Fundamentalism – Believing that our Metaphors are literally True, which makes Other People’s Metaphors fake news. We Grow by being able to Grok that Contradictions are a property of the Dualistic Mind, not a property of the World we Observe. The Real World is Multifarious and Unitary, which Dualism isn’t capable of Understanding.
♥ While the Greeks invented Patriarchy, they continued to have deep Respect for Goddesses and their Magnetic Rituals. The Romans on the other hand, pretty much institutionalized Patriarchy. The Greek Hestia (which Conjoins Uranus as we speak) was Goddess of the Hearth, while the Roman equivalent Vesta was made Virgin Goddess of the State. By the time the Popes got done reworking Roman culture, the Marys and their peers were very much also-rans.
The asteroids Aletheia (Greek for Truth) and Veritas (Latin for Truth) both orbit in a bit over 5½ years, Veritas taking a month longer for each full circuit. Consequently, their Cycle together is three Centuries long. The current Cycle was Initiated in December 2003 at 29 Capricorn, “A woman reading tea leaves.” Aletheia and Veritas dance together until 2035, when Aletheia begins skipping ahead for the next several Centuries. The previous Cycle spanned 1675 to 2003.
While the Impact will likely be subtle, we can presume that the New Cycle will be Stronger when Aletheia Leads Veritas, while the Old Cycle will try to reassert itself when Veritas Leads. Aletheia Led December 2003-May 2004, January 2009-May 2010, and March 2014-May 2016, and will Lead again October 2019-May 2022, November 2024-April 2028, June 2030-May 2034, and from August 2035 on.
Since May 2016, the Latin Veritas has been Leading. In October 2019, however, the Greek Aletheia takes the baton back, until 2022. Aletheia may be a bit more likely to Enquire how someone else’s Opinions have evolved, rather than to simply label them as Wrong. If that holds true, it would be a Blessing for the next US election.
♥While Mercury goes Direct again at the New Moon on 6 December, the next Biggie is the simultaneous Stations of Chiron (Despair and Miracles) and Orcus (Breaking Oaths) on 9-10 December. Those should help us ferret out the ancient Oaths which have stuck our Karma to us like flypaper and enforced our Limitations. It’s worth noting that Recanting our Obsolete Oaths, Allowing our Held Emotions, gaining Awareness of our Unconscious Fears, and Recovering our Hidden Genius are really all just different parts of the same Elephant.
Okay, more about the Full Moon chart and the Partial Eclipse that’s a Gateway to the impending Big Total Solar Eclipse that shines a spotlight on the USofA…
As with all Signs, we can run them Positively or we can run them Negatively. Remember though that the World (and hopefully your segment of it) needs ultimately to be in Balance, and is Multidimensional as well, so don’t get stuck in Archetypes that worship either side of that Duality.
(Actually, the World and yourself are always in Balance, it’s just that whatever is needed to Balance your Conscious side resides in the Unconscious. Since the Unconscious actually rules us, then from this Perspective, the nicer you are, the meaner you really are – and vice versa.)
You’ve been to performances where you’ve been Exhausted afterward, and other performances where you’ve felt Energized after. That’s the difference between someone who builds their own Confidence by sucking other people’s Energy (we can think of a prominent example who lives in a house that’s being remodeled at the moment), and someone who Shares their Abundant Leonine Self-Love broadly. Abundance is having enough to Share, After all.
This is the Duality often represented by Leo, where Sun and Mars and Atropos (Endings) are all parked at this Full Moon, along with the North Node (Lifetime Mission), Veritas (Truth), and Varuna (Life Force). Varuna will be in Leo for the next quarter-century, which should put a very Auspicious carpet under this Planet for a long while. As for Mars in Leo, if we wrote a song about our Anger, would it draw a cheering crowd? And when we mingle with the crowd afterward, are they the kind of people we’d Feel at Home with?
We all need a place to return to where we are Understood and Respected and Loved for exactly Who We Really Are, so for all but the most Saintly among us, that first sort of Community is what we need to Create, to make a Safe Space for us while we put the finishing touches on our Saintliness. While Anger tends to Divide, the presence of Atropos suggests that Expressing our Anger may help to Let It Go.
This is what the Leo-Aquarius Axis, which this Full Moon Illuminates, is all about, the Coin that unites the Duality. Leo is the epitome of the Individual Self, Aquarius the epitome of Community. Leo represents Fixed Fire, Stabilized Energy, or Spirit Manifested into Form. Aquarius represents Fixed Air, Ideology, or Intellect Manifested into Form. Michael Roads goes to great lengths to differentiate Intellect from Intelligence. To him Intelligence derives from the Heart and Gut, while Intellect derives from the Left Brain.
The Intellect is more than capable of supporting Intelligence, though in the Patriarchy, it’s more likely to support Morality, Politics, and the Preservation of Privilege. Intellect is finely tuned for Logical Analysis, but Logic is a house of cards built upon Assumptions. Propaganda manipulates your Logic without being Clear that its Assumptions may not be Universal. To Transform Aquarius into Intelligence Manifested into Form, we need to Let Go of our Karmic Archetypes. Our Archetypes and Limiting Beliefs are no more and no less than Unconscious Assumptions. As long as they’re Unconscious, we can only see half of the Universe.
While Astrology deals with Dualities, it also deals with the Multidimensional. Leo and Aquarius are not Complete without the other two Fixed Signs, Scorpio and Taurus (and of course the Fixed Signs are not Complete without the Creative and Mutational Signs). Scorpio as Fixed Water or Emotion, and Taurus as Fixed Earth or Matter, represent the Stabilized Emotional and Material aspects of Reality. Of course, depending on your Archetypes, Emotion and Matter can be Stabilized into either Constructive or Deconstructive Directions.
The Klotho-Sappho Conjunction (Creating a New Timeline Based on Self-Love), which is the Focus of the Full Moon T-Square, is in Scorpio, so we’re dealing with an Emotional version of Self-Love. That means the tears that come naturally to your eyes when someone validates the parts of you that are Unseen – your Genius Project, for instance – and when someone perpetrates an Act of Kindness that your own Personal Values wish everyone would do All the Time. And the Grace you Feel when someone Validates your Anger. The Leo-Aquarius Full Moon is about the Dynamic between the Individual and the Collective – between You and Other.
Which means that the Taurus or Matter side of the Four-Dimensional Balance is Vacant – we need to Consciously Ground the Energy. Dan and the Arcfolk concur –http://danielscranton.com/a-process-for-connecting-with-5d-energies-%e2%88%9ethe-9th-dimensional-arcturian-council/. The Vacancy is at 16 Taurus, “The inadequacy of past knowledge in times of crisis.” Hmmm. I’d rephrase that as “…in times of rapid Change” – in a Stable environment, traditional knowledge is actually very Powerful in a crisis. But the point is that we need to PIAVA how to Ground ourself and our Milieu.
There is, however, a Fixed Star in that location, Almach, which is the left foot of the Sacrificial Goddess Andromeda. Foot as in Power, left as in Feminine Power. Andromeda is a symbol of an Out-of-Power Tradition victimized by the Dominant Paradigm. In other words it’s important to bring Self-Trust into Expression of our Anger, and to remember that our Intention is Self-Expression, not to be Understood. If the Perpetrators Understand our Anger at their Oppression, their Dominance will be threatened, and they will be highly Motivated to torment us further.
Our Objective in Expressing our Anger is not Revenge or Restitution, but to Let Go of its Karmic Grasp of us. Actually, our Karma does not Grasp us, our Ego Grasps it. It’s a foundation for our Ego. So to the Ego, it Feels as if it’s the Karma doing the Grasping. We cannot Raise our Vibration until we Let Go of our Archetypes, including our Anger. While it feels like we’re Angry at the Perps in our Present Life, it has Karmic Roots that will not be pulled out by striking out in the Present Life.
To Let Go of Anger or any strong Emotion, we need to start by Poor-Sweethearting it. Strong Emotions are not Comfortable, and we need to Empathize with our own Discomfort. “You poor Sweetheart, you Feel Angry, don’t you.” It’s meant as a declaration of Self-Compassion, not an Accusation. If being Angry makes you a bad person, find a substitute that isn’t. “Your poor Sweetheart, you really Feel Irritated, don’t you.” Or “Agitated,” or “Worked Up.” Then Change the Subject, and see how long it takes for your Anger to return as a thought-stream.
The next time it arises, Tap it Out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzVd6Ww0as4). If it’s at all serious, it will take several Iterations. Measure the Intensity of your Anger on a scale of 1 to 10 before and after each Iteration, so you can Witness your Progress. Alternate Poor-Sweethearting, Tapping, and any other PIAVA you can Create, making sure to Change the Subject after each process.
We should note that the Full Moon and the T-Square occur on the Midpoints of the Fixed Signs, which are the Power Points of the Zodiac, symbolizing the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse – Apocalypse to the Ego, Liberation of the Soul.
We mentioned Obsession recently in this context, as Obsession can make it particularly difficult to Change the Subject, and a reader wrote to ask us how one might address Obsession. Well, the first question I’d ask, is how might Obsession be indicated in their chart?
If it’s really an Appropriate Expression of their natality, then they may only need to Learn to Love it to Death. That may not stop the Obsession, but it would make it more Pleasant, as once they Learned that, Obsession would trigger Love and Pleasure for them instead of Discomfort. Of course, Learning to Love Obsession will likely involve a good deal of Ego Death, as at least some part of them wants it to go away, and they probably have a big backlog of Other People telling them it’s wrong. But that’s all just a map of where they need to go to Learn to be Loving with it.
So, is Obsession an Appropriate Expression of their natal chart? What would we look for?
Well, the most obvious place to start looking is Scorpio, and to a lesser extent Taurus. These signs, especially Scorpio, don’t Let Go when they get hold of something they don’t fully grok yet, especially something Emotional, and especially something that seems Unfair. Does our friend have planets in Scorpio?
Well, yes. seven of them. We work with 45 planets and other points, so the average Sign should contain less than four planets. So seven is a whole bunch.
We can start by what we would tell any Scorpio that might help them Love themselves…
Scorpio is Compelled to Get to the Bottom of Things. We first Meet Other in Libra, and it raises all kinds of Questions for us, about whether We’re Okay and They Aren’t or They’re Okay and We Aren’t, whenever there seems to be a Conflict or even Contrast between us. This is how we first Discover that our own Childhood may not have been as Loving as it could have been, so it’s not at all trivial.
It’s not easy for Anyone to get to You’re Okay and I’m Okay, and for Scorpio it becomes a Compulsion. It takes a great deal of Maturity to understand that the end point is You’re Okay and I’m Okay rather than You’re Okay or I’m Okay, which complicates the whole process until we Realize that. We also have to Realize that just because You’re Okay and I’m Okay, that doesn’t mean I have to Tolerate you if you aren’t my cup of tea.
Also, Scorpio is Fearless in their Pursuit of Truth. Fearlessness is the most prominent element of Scorpio. Other people do not Trust Scorpio, partly because Scorpio asks penetrating questions that require them to examine themselves more deeply than they usually like to, partly because Scorpio has a tendency to make and hold eye contact longer than most people are comfortable with. Other people often feel like Scorpio is Looking into the Soul (which it is), and if they aren’t fully in Self-Love, it makes them want to run away.
Because of these kinds of Reactions from Other, Scorpio is one of the most difficult Signs to Embody in Left-Brain-worshiping Western Cultures. Remember we aren’t talking about folks with Sun in Scorpio, we’re talking about anyone with a strong emphasis in Scorpio – or Pluto, Scorpio’s “Ruler” – in their natal chart or even in their Transits and Progressions.
These kinds of influences often draw Scorpio toward Addiction, and Teaching them to Love Themselves Exactly As They Are is the first step to helping them get out of Addiction, as the most prominent trigger for their Desire to Medicate is the Anxiety produced by their Need to Get to the Bottom of Things that are Forbidden to them. Strong Scorpio is a good indicator that a person’s Forbidden Genius lies in sophisticated Research of Private Investigation.
That’s the gist of what we would tell any Scorpio, or anyone with a strong Pluto, in a reading.
So, which planets are we talking about? Ixion (Forbidden Genius), Quaoar (Survival Instincts), Ceres (Sustainability), Klotho (Plotting a New Timeline), and Vertex (Intuition) are all at the Midpoint of Scorpio, which just happens to be (there go those Coincidences again!) where Transiting Klotho and Sappho (Starting a New Timeline based on Self-Love) happen to be sitting as we speak, making their T-Square to the 7 August Full Moon.
Whoa, this is Big. The Midpoint of Scorpio is one of the Four Horsefolk of Ego Death, so we probably have a case of chronic Self-Attack (that is Ego-Attack, not Soul-Attack). Sir Self-Lance-a-Lot. All very strongly Lit Up this week. So we’d prescribe a strong ongoing dose of Poor-Sweethearts. Can we even interpret a Klotho-Sappho Transit, Square to a Full Moon, sitting on a natal Ixion-Quaoar-Ceres-Klotho-Vertex Stellium?
Oops, have to interrupt again. A Stellium (three or more planets in the same place) isn’t easy. What would we tell someone with a Stellium in their chart, to help them Learn to Appreciate their Uniqueness?
Well, the Culture we grow up in has certain Differentiations that are an integral part of the Culture. For instance, Boys are different from Girls, and never the twain shall meet. What fireworks have been going on the USofA when that Differentiation is Challenged! The youngsters understand that they’re both just People, but the Differentiation is so ingrained in the brains of the oldsters that they fight it all the way to the “Supreme” Court, and Obsess (!) on it.
So when we have two or more planets in the same place, we don’t know the Difference. Folks who start a Life when Mars and Venus are Conjoined (in or close to the same Degree) have no idea that there’s any Difference at all! So they have a difficult time Relating to, and Being Related to by, anyone who’s Obsessed with the Difference, because their brains are wired very differently.
And that’s just two planets. With a five-planet Stellium, the difficulty of Communicating with Others is multiplied many times. To start with, only 2.5% of us will have a 5-planet Stellium (using 45 planets), so we can expect to be able to Communicate at all with one person in 40. However, what’s the probability that the next person with a 5-planet Stellium is going to have a Stellium that includes the same five planets?
Without breaking any blood vessels in my brain, I’d guess that would be something like 1/9 to the fourth or fifth power, or about one person in 60,000, although that assumes that the 45 planets are distributed randomly around the Zodiac, which is far from true. You could start a worldwide club, advertising on the internet to connect with everyone who started Life with a Ixion-Quaoar-Ceres-Klotho-Vertex Stellium. You might end up with just the people who were born on the same day and year as you.
And now you’re going to run into another problem. Very few of these people will have ever learned to Love themselves, even if their Stellium isn’t in Scorpio. When you meet a Soulmate, if your Self-Love isn’t Total, you’re going to Project your Self-Rejection all over one another, and end up hating one another, very soon. I once introduced two people with very similar, very unusual birth charts, Scorpios even, and they became housemates. That lasted about a month before they ran screaming from one another.
So until you Learn to Love your own Uniqueness fairly thoroughly, you may need to settle for non-intimate Relationships for a while. Look for people who are already Ascended or Enlightened, who may be able to Accept you Exactly As You Are, even if they’re not like you at all – they may even find your Uniqueness fascinating. There should be a reasonable number of those folks around. You won’t be their Onliest…
Since you are a shining light
There’s many that you’ll see
But I have to deal with envy
When you choose the precious few
Who’ve left their pride on the other side of
Coming back to you
as Leonard Cohen put it, but at least you’ll be Accepted, and you’ll get a taste of what it will be like to Love your Uniqueness, till you Lesrn to Obsess on Loving your Uniqueness.
Well, we know that this person, on the Soul Level, Intends in this Lifetime to Get to the Bottom of Self-Abuse (and I don’t mean self-pleasuring) once and for all (Klotho-Sappho). So they probably “hired” parents and other significant adults that programmed a good deal of persistent Self-Rejection (Ixion-Quaoar-Ceres) into them as Children. That’s how we do it – whatever we Intend to Let Go Of permanently in a Lifetime, we on the Soul level make sure we get a big dose of it, so we’ll Recognize it and be Motivated to Change the Pattern.
So, with Mars and Atropos on the Full-Moon Sun, it would be a fabulous time to start writing a series of Angry letters, that they don’t intend to send, to their Childhood Programmers, so they can begin Getting to the Bottom of their Abandoned Genius’s Real Feelings. We can Learn about Blame and Responsibility later.
Oh, did I forget to mention that Jupiter (Amplification) and Sappho (Self-Love) are also in Scorpio? So our friend is even more Determined to break out of her prison of Self-Admonishment, as she has Chosen (on the Soul level) to Obsess about her Amplified Desire for Self-Love!
Did someone say Obsession? Damn Right! Obsessed with this prison-break, and for damn good reasons!!! It’s a central theme of their Soul-level Plan for the Lifetime! So come Hell or High Water, they need to start Obsessing (and PIAVAing) on Learning how to Celebrate Obsession like it is the Incredible Gift to themselves that it truly is! Set a timer, and Celebrate Obsession at least once an hour, every day.
Okay, with the preliminaries out of the way we can get down the the meat of the issue. Their Ixion-Quaoar-Ceres-Klotho-Vertex Stellium is Opposed by Chiron (Despair and Miracle). That’s like a dagger held by her Programmers, slicing little chunks out of her skin constantly. To move from Despair to Miracle we need to Empathize with our Despair. “You Poor Sweetheart, you really Feel Down on yourself, don’t you.” Now, we know that Changing the Subject (which gets the mind and old Karmic Patterns out of the way so they don’t re-up the Despair) won’t be easy – that’s the whole issue, isn’t it.
So we can try building a strong practice of Tapping (YouTube link above). “Even though I’m Obsessing about this Despair, I deeply and completely Love and Accept myself.” Measuring the Intensity of Feeling (0 to 10) before and after each of many Iterations will be important – as long as you’re getting any reduction, keep Tapping, till you get close to zero. If you aren’t getting reduction, try alternating with Poor-Sweethearts, or Dancing, or doing anything Different. This is Multi-Lifetime stuff, so you need to be Obsessive about working on it, but then, that’s your specialty, eh?
Phew, that’s a lot, isn’t it. Are we done? Not a chance. Mercury, of all people, makes a T-Square across the Opposition between the Ixion-Quaoar-Ceres-Klotho-Vertex Stellium and Chiron. Now we have to interrupt again, since T-Squares are quite difficult, so we have to give our standard speech about how to Love a T-Square…
A T-Square is like a graduate seminar. We Expect to be able to “get it right” once in a while, so we can feel halfway Competent. But with a T-Square, there is no “getting it right.” In a graduate seminar there are no right Answers, only clever and relevant Questions. No matter how long anyone Lives a T-Square, they’ll never Feel Satisfied about it, until they Learn to Appreciate that on a Soul level they’ve adopted this Issue as a Lifetime Learning Opportunity, and each time it arises – which is likely to be daily – they’ll be working on a new, more subtle and broader, version of the same Lesson.
It’s pass/fail, and you only pass when you Recognize that this is your Lifetime Study Project, and Honor yourself for the Fact that you actually know a Hell of a lot more about it than most anyone else on the Planet, because you wrestle with it daily. You begin to Change a “bad” Habit by Noticing that you’re Doing it again, and Congratulating yourself for Noticing rather than Cursing yourself for Doing it again – substituting positive reinforcement for negative reinforcement, because reinforcement is cumulative.
So when you Notice that you’re working on that Issue again, Congratulate yourself for looking at it from yet another Perspective, and Honor yourself for all of the Perspectives you’ve already Discovered, rather than Indulging your Frustration at not getting it Right yet again, you’ll shift your Perspective toward what is otherwise one of your greatest Frustrations.
That’s what T-Squares are all about. Now, what about this Mercury T-Square? Well a Mercury T-Square (until you make the shift we just talked about) means that your mind is always picking at you. Anxiety ‘R’ Us, and it’s not just Worry, it’s Negative Self-Talk. So we have to Learn to Notice that we’re Doing Negative Self-Talk again, Congratulate ourself for Noticing, and Honor ourself for how Skilled we’ve actually become at dealing with Negative Self-Talk.
If a friend complained to you about their Negative Self-Talk, I’ll bet you could give them a thousand suggestions for dealing with it. You’re a World Expert on Negative Self-Talk. You could write best-sellers about it. You need to Honor yourself for that, even if it doesn’t Feel True at first. I guarantee you, it is True.
Now, we’re dealing with Negative Self-Talk about Chiron Opposite a Ixion-Quaoar-Ceres-Klotho-Vertex Stellium, which isn’t chicken-feed. With Quaoar-Ceres-Klotho-Vertex as part of your Stellium, a deep part of you (with strong Scorpio, Diving Deep is one of your greatest Skills) knows Intuitively (Vertex) that your Survival (Quaoar) is Assured (Ceres) once you Begin (Klotho) to Love Yourself Exactly As You Are. You just don’t know where to start because no one has ever Mirrored your True Self to you.
Then we add Ixion. We have to interrupt again for our Learn-to-Love-Ixion speech…
Ixion was the Bad Boy of the Greek Pantheon, who was basically a sociopath who thought all rules applied to everyone else (like that fellow in the house that’s pained white and being remodeled). Well, talk to any Accomplished Genius, and they’ll tell you they didn’t get there by following other people’s rules. To live Genius you need to break as many rules as you can get away with.
But you’ll always be condemned for it. So, not actually being a sociopath, you’ll need to develop a thick skin about Criticism from Others. And with your parents and other Programmers probably very Critical people, you’re going to have a lot of Olde Reactions to Criticism, and probably “Leave your Body” (space out) when someone starts Criticizing you. Well, you probably want to enlist some friends and Act Out a thousand Criticism scenarios, till you can Stay Present with Yourself when being Criticized, and Learn when Defending yourself is a waste of time that’ll just get more Criticism, and How to Defend yourself when it’s worth it (ie, with a Relationship you Want to Keep).
In Cultures that Value Conformity, Ixion is Rejected out of hand. That’s why we refer to that part of ourself as our Forbidden or Abandoned or Pathological Genius, and refer to Recovery of that part of ourself as our Genius Project. It’s a Big Project for everyone, but especially important for you. Eventually, once you become the World’s foremost Psychoanalyst, or the World’s most Unique Artist who Communicates with parts of people that have never been Communicated to before ever, you’ll understand how Unique you are, and Honor it.
But meanwhile, there’s homework to be done, because you’re probably in the Habit of giving your Unique Genius more Negative Self-Talk than anyone. So you’ll have to Learn toNotice that you’re Doing Negative Self-Talk about your Unmirrored Uniqueness again, Congratulate yourself for Noticing, and Honor yourself for how Skilled you’ve actually become at dealing with Negative Self-Talk about your Uniqueness.
Lots of work ahead, but at least now you have a curriculum.
What’s that? Oh, we aren’t quite done? Oh yeah, remember that Jupiter-Sappho in Scorpio? Well, it happens to be in a “Grand Cross,” Opposite a Stellium of Chaos (Unlimited Potential), Sedna (Fear), Chariklo (Self-Confidence), and Moira (Choosing Consciousness), with Sedna Stationary (Strong), Square to a Stellium of Sun (your Essence), Atropos (Endings), and Mnemosyne (Memory), which is in turn Opposite to a Stellium of Orcus (Breaking Vows), Hylonome (Escaping from Archetypes), and Lachesis (Duration), with Lachesis Exactly Stationary (very Strong). All this is actually enormously Positive, but there’s a lot in it that needs to be Learned to Love.
We won’t take that up now, we’ll save it for after you’ve digested some of the earlier homework, which is more than ample. The earlier homework is Lit Up Bigtime by the Full Moon, so it’s a more current assignment anyway. This later Grand Cross is Lit Up only by the Transiting Conjunction of Varuna (the Life Force) and Veritas (Truth), which is actually quite a lot, but nothing compared to how much your Mercury T-Square and Ixion Stellium are Lit Up.
Oh, also, when you’re ready, remind me to talk about the “Vacancy” to your Mercury T-Square.
And, once you’ve started on the earlier homework in earnest, we can talk about that friend you mentioned, and see how they might, by virtue of their own birth chart, inadvertently trigger either your Mercury-Chiron-Ixion-et al T-Square or your Lachesis-et al Grand Cross, or both. We’ll also need to cover Blame and Responsibility then.
Oh, and since Pluto (Transformation) is similar to Scorpio, and likely to be involved in Obsession, we should eventually look at that too. It’s after all Conjunct Saturn (The Most Important Thing), so that’s a strong indication that Obsession is actually your Greatest Skill, you just need to Learn to Love it. Also, Pluto-Saturn makes a T-Square across your Nodes (Why You Took This Lifetime), so that’s another indicator that This is the Lifetime you Chose, on the Soul level, to become the World’s greatest Expert on Obsession, and once and for all Let Go of your Ego Attachment to it, and Let Go of your Rejection of Obsession and of yourself.
Plus, Nessus (Abuse and Privilege) is on your North Node (Your Mission in the Lifetime) and Moon-Venus (Your Instincts and Values) is on your South Node (The Karmic Impediments to your Mission that you Chose on the Soul level to help you Accomplish your Mission in the Lifetime, which Impediments happen to hide the Skills you need to Accomplish your Mission), further complicating this T-Square.
That’s a lot, but Remember that, as the Findhorn Transformation Game says, the Hardest Assignments are only given to the Best People.
I’ll use Huge Reboot 3 as a template, grey it out a bit and abbreviate some of the material in earlier Huge Reboots, and add new comments in black.
Before we go into more detail about all the weekend Fireworks, I’ll built a Timetable, so we can at least test our Sensitivities. Take notes, and tell me what you Learn. The interactions between events will of course be Confusing, but that’s the nature of Real Life.
15 September…
8am PDT – Ixion Initiates Mars 23 Sagittarius (Your Abandoned Orphan begins to Feel that they have Permission to Act Out)
There could be lots of Excitement here, or Guilt, or both…
noon PDT – Varuna enters Leo (Celebrating the Life Force)
Varuna has been in Cancer since 1993; it’s as if the Life Force is graduating from high school…
7pm PDT – Asbolus Stationary Retrograde 16 Gemini (Opening your Emotional Channel to Receiving Intuitions)
We all have a “preferred” or primary Channel for Receiving (or Ignoring) Intuitions; a Little Voice, a Picture, a Gut Feeling, etc…
16 September…
noon PDT – Full Moon and Penumbral Eclipse 25 Pisces (Busy, Busy, Busy)
The Moon Conjoins Chiron…
Moon-Chiron heads a Kite…
Wow, how many times are we going to revisit this shouting emphasis on 22-27 Degrees? We have five points toward a Grand Sextile, and if we include Vesta at 21 Cancer, ten points out of twelve for a Grand Unx Pattern-Breaker!
We’ve been working with this 22-27 Degree span, or close to it, repeatedly, and for a long time now. In any Cycle, this is the Capricorn-Aquarius phase. Capricorn symbolizes “Just Do It” and Aquarius “Oh, now we have to Live with it, don’t we.”
In the Cycle of Personal Development, 22-27 Degrees is the place where, (1) having met Other, having Processed and Let Go of all of the Disappointment that no one Met us where you Were, we come to the Conclusion that we can’t Live without Community, so we had better set our own Unmet Needs aside, and work for the Greater Good. And (2) we meet all of the shortcomings of Community, and have to deal with how we’re going to Respond to them.
In the Cycle of Community Development, it’s the phase where we Create Structure and then Live in it. That can mean Those who Fart in Church have to sit in their own Pew, or it can mean a Harvest of the Fruits of Labor. In Real Life everyone doesn’t actually Live Happily Ever After, so inevitably there will be a critical Letdown, once we discover that Community has not actually met our Emotional Needs – but that phase comes later. For now we’re still Building, and either Enjoying or Critiquing our Community, or more likely both.
In the Western European Patriarchal Egoic Cycle, it’s the phase of Burnout and Righteous Anger, simply because Western Culture honors only Building, it doesn’t honor Debriefing, Deconstruction, and Recycling. An Atlantean stage, it’s the phase where Babes get thrown out with the Bathwater. Unfortunately a good deal of that is happening in the Global Economy and in the Global Climate.
In a more Wholistic view of the Cycle of Life, it’s the beginning and middle of Version 3.0. We’ve built what we were Compelled to build, torn it down, Rebuilt it to be more Nurturing, torn that down, Rebuilt it again to make space for Other, been dissastisfied with that and torn it down, and now we’re building and evaluating what we Aspire to make more Sustainable.
At this point in the Evolution of our Species and our Egos, the Eagle’s Vision would be most Constructive. What have we Built? What has it Satisfied? What’s left Unsatisfied? Can we Rebuild the part that doesn’t Satisfy without Destroying the part that does? We’re probably trying to decide whether we Want Corn or Beans or Squash. We haven’t noticed yet that Squash’s big leaves will make an excellent shelter for Corn to sprout in, and that Cornstalks will make an excellent trellis for Beans to grow on.
We’re already thinking it over, when we aren’t leaning over the blueprints. The Universe is Asking us to hover at a higher level, where we can See more at once glance, and include elements that we haven’t noticed before, but that we’ll obviously need later, once we notice them.
17 September…
5am PDT – Haumea Initiates Venus 23 Libra (Beginning again on a new foundation of Values)
Dagne has asked for more information on the coming “Digital, Airy, mind-y Society, probably a lot heavier on the Idealistic or Normative than the Compassionate.”
Mostly we’re talking about the next two Centuries, when the Saturn-Jupiter Initiations all fall into Air Signs, unlike the last two Centuries (the Industrial Age), when they fell into Earth Signs. There’s much more exactitude on this in https://astrobuss.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/the-jupiter-saturn-cycle-2/ . The Changes in our Lives between 1980 and 2000 were large, but they are miniscule compared to what we’ll see after 2020.
The Air Signs are of course about Mentality – mindstuff, Duality. It is possible for the mind to grok many Dimensions at once (see, eg, Felix Wolf’s The Art of Navigation), and with any luck a stray cosmic ray will Mutate the species, but till then, Mentality/Duality will dominate the next two Centuries. With Either/Or Mentality comes Repression of Creativity and Uniqueness, except for the Fearlessly Yintegrous.
As technology replaces Work, the whole Inequality thing becomes huge, as quite simply, “the Rich will Live, and the Poor will die” – or wish they had. We would revert to Feudalism, except that the owners of the Machines won’t have much need for Serfs, so if we aren’t Entertaining them or being their Mercenaries, we’ll be pretty much doing the Han Solo thing, or Living the Dream in https://astrobuss.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/responsibility-iv/ . Except that even if we have the Survival Skills, there may not be enough Planet left to Support us. So the Population/Global Balming thing becomes huge as well.
Bleak picture, I know. A friend disagrees, arguing that it isn’t true that “the System” isn’t working – he says some parts are working, some parts aren’t, and we’re working to improve the parts that aren’t. I didn’t say it, but “Easy for you to say, workaholic white-boy capitalist” would be a valid Response. Bernie was a refreshing interlude, and with luck he will prove to be a Candle that ignites an Inferno.
If enough of us get Honest about our own Self-Sabotage, we can stop the trend. And it’s indisputable that there are tons of Fresh Violets growing underneath the Corporate-owned Media that only tells us what to Fear.
But who do you know that’s working to stop ALEC – the Corporate-funded organization that pre-writes and packages Corporation-friendly laws at the local, county, state, and federal level, that for instance make it illegal for you to buy Milk that hasn’t been through the Corporate Machine, or make it illegal for you to refuse Vaccination or Chemotherapy, or save your own Seed. Who do you know who even knows about ALEC?
How many folks do you know who are outraged that Obomba just signed a law making it illegal for us to know if the faux Food they sell at the store contains Glyphosate, a potent carcinogen and immune-system-destroyer that is used not just on GMO Food but almost all non-Organic Food? Outraged that Canada can sue US taxpayers for lost profits because Obomba stopped the big Tar-Sands pipeline through Nebraska to Texas, and that the “TPP” will allow Thailand to sue you because you won’t import Thai sex workers?
I’m exaggerating, but not by much.
Outraged that 25 Vulture Capitalists make more than twice as much money as all of the Kindergarten Teachers in the US but pay far less in taxes? I could go on – and on.
Unfortunately, it’s not just the next two Centuries of Air-Sign Saturn-Jupiter Initiations that invite the reign of Either/Or. Aquarius is an Air Sign – a Fixed Air Sign. If Air Signs are about Mentality, Fixed Air Signs are about Ideals, or Fossilized Mentality. The Technology can easily Cancel, Neutralize, Upgrade Us for thinking the wrong thoughts, like the ones I just suggested. Aquarius rules the next two Millennia!
Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine and John Perkins’s New Economic Hit Man both describe samples of what has happened around the World when Vulture Capitalists and Corporations run the show. The movie The Corporation is a quicker introduction. It’s a Blessing that The Donald trumped Ted Cruz; Ted is an avowed and rabid Supporter of the principles that Shock Doctrine exposes.
We don’t need the Futures I describe. I can and do and will Cancel Neutralize Upgrade their Energies. But it we don’t understand what’s going on, we’ll end up like the Germans – “How could they have let that happen?” and they will be us. We have to know what to Cancel Neutralize Upgrade and what to keep.
The 2000-2020 period is about deciding what to Keep and what to Discard from the Industrial Age, and Shock Doctrine describes the worst Depravities of the Industrial Age. There were plenty of Depravities in the Ages before the Industrial – Colonialism, Inquisitions, Genocides galore. Let’s Discard the Depravities of Exploitative Capitalism before they’re coded into the Machines, so we can get on with Harmony and Understanding, Sympathy and Trust Abounding. We’ll do that anyway, it’s mostly a matter of whether we’ll have to hide out in Sherwood Forest when we do.
Our Chief Asteroid Officer points out that Astraea (the fifth asteroid discovered after Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta) completes the Grand Cross with the Full Moon. Astraea is about Innocence, and she’s right at home in early Virgo.
We can think of Virgoan innocence as “Who, me?” in the sense that when your best friend Lovingly accuses you of hiding behind a Mask (when you actually are), and you naturally and innocently reply “Who, me?” Not that your friend would ever be dumb enough to try to label someone else’s Masks; it’s just a metaphor to explain Virgo’s function.
Leo is where the Ego’s Self-Confidence peaks, Libra is where it meets Other, which means that all bets on Self-Confidence are up for grabs. Virgo is in charge of the Transition. If Virgo is the palm, Pisces is the back of the hand. Aquarius is where the Ego’s Confidence in Community peaks, Aries is where it meets brand new territory so success will only follow from “Don’t-Know” mind. Pisces is in charge of that Transition.
At the Full Moon we have dwarf planets Opposite one another that are both Stationary (Strong) early in this Virgo-Pisces Ego-Transition, from having a fair degree of Certainty and Comfort, to becoming a complete newbie again. With Astraea asking, “Who, Me?” Or as a reader says…
“Kaboom, JUST connected. I’m wiggin’ out because I hold this perspective & perception that EVERYTHING IS A TRADE OFF. OMG – THAT belief? I was completely indoctrinated into THAT. Hugo mungo either/or thinking. I never saw the depth of this trade-off perspective and never connected it to The Grand Either/Or that permeates so much. That they are one and the same.”
I could tell similar stories about my own Epiphanies, but this stuff moves so fast, and the nature of this Edge between Consciousness and the Unconscious is so ephemeral, that I can’t keep track from day to day of what my Psyche is doing. I just know it’s moving through Heavy territory and making it’s own connections.
How old was I when they had to sew my tongue back on because I bit it almost off jumping off a couch while horseplaying with my sibs? Three? Of course that wouldn’t have triggered my Abandonment because my father had to spend money he didn’t have. And of course that wouldn’t have anything to do with my allergy to hospitals and my recent experience of them.
Without knowing what but knowing it was Heavy, I used to literally paint that picture when I was in high school, the scene from the neighbor’s car, looking out over the river in the darkness. I obviously wasn’t in my Body. Shortly after that we moved to the downriver side of the hospital, and it took me a long time to figure out why in this picture I was looking down river.
Another reader, born during the height of the original Ouija-Board Pluto-Uranus Initiation, recommended Bill Plotkin’s Wild Mind to me. Here are some excerpts about our Masks…
“The grave problem with having made such a pact in childhood is that, once adopted, it becomes a bedrock layer of our personalities. Achieving liberation from our Loyal Soldier survival strategies is one of the most challenging and long-lasting tasks of the individuation process, requiring a good deal of courage, discernment, and endurance even into genuine adulthood and elderhood.” (p.133)
His pact, or Oath, is our response to our need to protect our child self from likely-fatal Abandonment by our Family or Community. The dwarf planet Orcus, which symbolizes these Oaths, is Stationary only a few degrees from Astraea. It’s handy, having Astraea’s Innocence there, allowing us more Empathy for the pickle that our historical tykes found themselves in. That allows us to slap our forehead with an OMG, instead of the “How stupid can we be?” that we might otherwise greet ourself with while opening these doors.
The Pisces side of this equation features the dwarf planet OR10 – also Stationary – and the Centaur Nessus. OR10 is about irruption of material from the Unconscious – including sudden Epiphanies. Nessus is about Privilege and Abuse. And all this is in the context of having Mars (Action, Anger) Oppose Vesta (Limiting Unconscious Beliefs) less than a Degree from the Full Moon axis. All preparation for June’s Eris-Uranus (Embracing the Previously Denied) – the cosmic choreography is quite amazing.
Plotkin continues…
“Our juvenile survival strategies of self-diminishment form the core of our most self-defeating patterns: those that disparage our dreams, our potentials, and our healthy wildness, or that aggravate low self-esteem and troubles with intimacy. And, most irksome, these strategies are often on autopilot, launched outside our awareness and without our consent or control.”
Conspiring to hold our Unique Genius in its Orphanage – or as we bring them into Consciousness, to Set it Free, as Ixion (Genius) Trines (Grace) Eris-Uranus.
More Masks from Plotkin (p.157)…
Not all of our Wounded Children are trying to help us survive. Some are simply casualties of our other [Masks] or of the unkind actions of others. These are our Outcasts, elements of our psyches we rejected in order to survive, in order to be accepted by others.
“These are the versions of ourselves of which we are ashamed – perhaps our gentleness or our fierceness, our sexuality, our anger or sadness, our fear or embarrassment, our love of dance or poetry, our joy or vivaciousness, or our need for touch or compassion. Once we reject these Wounded Children and label them bad or worthless, they exist in a marginal, banished state within our psyches. Nonetheless, we live every day with some awareness of their pain and heartache.
“For children, conscious self-rejection is less harmful than being rejected by others, even if it’s no less painful. By restraining ourselves from acting in ways that lead to being shamed, we’re less likely to be abandoned. The price we pay is self-shaming, resulting in Outcasts within us we’re not willing to love, who we’ve neglected and exiled.
“Although our Outcasts persist as pockets of pain within us, they embody great gifts – strengths and sensibilities not deemed worthy by others in our early lives, but gifts we can reclaim when we’re psychologically ready to do so. The reclamation process usually begins with grief. We must mourn our psychological woundings by others, our consequent self-woundings, and the loss of joy, aliveness, and relationships that resulted from all our self-diminishments.”
And again (pp.186-7)…
“We’re all in recovery from Western civilization. Sooner or later, we each must address the paramount addiction in the Western and Westernized worlds: our psychological dependence on the worldview and lifestyle of Western civilization itself. The Western worldview says, in essence, that technological progress is the highest value, and that we were born to consume, to endlessly use and discard natural resources, other species, techno-gadgets, toys, and often, other people, especially if they’re poor or from the global South.
“It’s a world of commodities, not entities, of consumers, not human beings, and economic expansion is the primary measure of progress. Profits are valued over people, money over meaning, our national entitlement over global peace and justice, ‘us’ over ‘them.’ This addiction to Western civilization – especially now that the Chinese, too, are hooked – is by far the most dangerous one in the world because of how rapidly and extensively it’s undermining the natural systems of the Earth.
“Addiction to Western civilization keeps us from seeing and feeling the staggering price all Earthly life pays for our consumer habit. And it protects us from having to make any radical changes in lifestyle, or from having to grow up, leave the ‘home’ of our adolescent comforts, and embark on the hazardous journey of initiation that leads to an existence that’s life enhancing, meaningful. and fulfilling.”
Pp.208-210…
“The Shadow, one of the archetypes identified by psychologist Carl Jung, is composed of those elements of our own psyches that are unknown to us … the Shadow is not what we know about ourselves, don’t like, and keep hidden. Rather, the Shadow is what is true about us that we don’t know – don’t know at all – and, if accused of it, would adamantly and sincerely deny.”
“Who, Me?”
“The purpose of the Shadow is to protect us from enacting personal characteristics that, if expressed, might land us in big trouble with others or ourselves. We stuff these forbidden parts of ourselves in a corner of our psyches where we can’t find them, where we can ‘fail to notice’ them.”
“The Shadow is what our psyches repress (render unconscious), not what our Egos suppress (consciously hide from others). … This is difficult to accept and digest – that there are aspects or parts of ourselves we really don’t know and that are completely at odds with who we think we are.
“Even when our other [Masks] act unconsciously (independently of our Egos), we know them by how they affect our lives, thoughts, and deeds. Perhaps we don’t acknowledge them to others, but we do know them. Not so for the elements of the Shadow. The Shadow is always unconscious.”
Ah yes, dwarf planet Chaos (Unlimited Potential), Sextile (Grace after we initiate) to Eris-Uranus. Thank goodness there’s always More.
There are three big themes to the 21 April Full Moon (10:30pm PDT) – Transitions, Fate, and Truth.
Transitions because the Full Moon occurs on a Cusp between two Signs – a place of Change, Transformation, often Contradistinction.
Fate because the asteroid Moira – Fate – Motivates (T-Squares) it. Fate and Free Will are of course a Duality, an Either/Or, an Intellectualization. Real Life is Both/And. How can anything be Both/And when they’re Opposites? Well, if that’s upsetting to you, the answer is in your hand – you’ve shifted into Emotion – Cusps again, the Cusps between modalities of Perception. You could also have shifted into Body or Spirit. Either/Or is a characteristic of mind, and though we’re trained to Believe that mind is bigger than the Universe, in Real Life the Universe is much bigger than mind.
Truth because both of the Truth asteroids – Aletheia (Greek) and Veritas (Roman) adjoin the Sun. Which brings us back to the larger theme of Removing our Masks.
Let’s focus on the Cusps…
The Moon itself is on the Cusp of Scorpio. Here we Change from intellectually and Creatively contemplating the new-found concept of Other (Not-I, including Other People), to intense Emotional Curiosity about Other. Does Other really exist, or is that just a Mirror? Does the Other Side really exist, or is it just a Projection?
The Sun is on the Cusp of Taurus, along with the asteroids Aletheia, Veritas, and Atropos. Atropos is Responsible for enforcing the measure of length of Life – another form of Truth. At the Cusp of Taurus we shift from Making Things Up, to Casting them in Stone. The Edge between what may or may not be Fantasy, and what the Muggles would consider “Real.” Natural-born Chemists think it’s Matter that’s Real, while natural-born Physicists know that it’s Energy that’s Real. Yes, I do take sides, though of course it’s Both/And.
The asteroid Moira – Fate – sits on the Cusp of Aquarius, as do we. Sit on the Cusp of the Age of Aquarius I mean. Here we move from hard-nosed down-to-Earth Pragmatism, to Idealism, or Idolatry. Notice anybody worshipping Sacred Cows or Golden Calfs? Such as Power, or Profit?
All together eight of the twelve Cusps are involved in the Full Moon. If we’re worried that our Fate is to contemplate Truth and Compassion (if Other is a Mirror, we better find Compassion!), the other five Cusps each provide alternate paths that are easier than that one.
Our first Escape Route is the Cusp of Capricorn (where reside the dwarf planets Quaoar and Hylonome), where we Change from Letting Go of difficulties, to actually having to try to Resolve them. (Quaoar-Hylonome tells us that if we want to Survive, we need to Molt, shed our old Ego and Open Up to the new.)
The Cusp of Pisces is our second path to higher ground. Here we’re fairly rudely dumped from drinking beer and discussing grand schemes for solving the problems created by the existence of Other, to having to Feel the Realities that arise because of the existence of Other. (On this Cusp we find the asteroids Pallas and Lachesis, and the dwarf planets OR10 and Nessus, reminders that a Life in the realm of Matter is a Privilege and a Deep Mystery, and one which has well-defined Boundaries.)
The last three Cusps are about Curiosity (Quincunxes to the Sun or Moon).
The asteroids Ceres (Sustainability) and Mnemosyne (Memory) decorate the Cusp of Aries. Buddhists say that if you immerse yourself in the Water (Emotion), you’ll come out in the Fire (Spirit), and this is the place where you’ll come out. I Wonder where these Memories will lead me.
The asteroid Karma is parked on the Cusp of Gemini. On this Cusp we go from being Trapped in Stone, to being Liberated, free to walk around and Be whomever we want to Be. I Wonder how we could ever find a more perfect place for Karma.
Finally, the Cusp of Libra is where we find the dwarf planet Makemake (Manifestation). At the Cusp of Libra we’ve just finished an unpleasant-feeling period of Ego Transformations, and we’re ready to test our new Selves out on Other People. I Wonder how I’ll be received.
jbuss Astrology 