Both Eyes Open in the Dark of Night: New Moon Solar Eclipse in Cancer

New Moon Solar Eclipse in Cancer | July 12, 2018
20 degrees | 7:48pm PST

Thursday night’s New Moon Solar Eclipse begins the intense season of shadowy luminaries. The three eclipses to come over the course of the month plunge us into soul-and-spirit work. Eclipse Season is never a breeze. You’re likely to see parts of yourself that are harder to look at and work with, and you may see them come up for the people around you too. There’s a dark, subterranean work trying to take place whether you participate consciously or not. If you want to do it well, this strange work demands the ego surrender its power so you can train both eyes and ears on the healing project at hand, under an inky sky that speaks the language of personal mythology and inner monsters. It offers the opportunity to rewrite stories from far below the ground, up.

We’re looking for the faint motion of the pulse, listening for the archetypal river of blood that vivifies us. How alive is our creativity? Do we still still have access to waters of inspiration? Remember that acts of creativity extend far beyond the arts and include loving yourself fully, loving others fully, participating in communities, and beyond. It includes the acts that ground us into the present moment with healthy, organic aliveness, and ultimately propel us into a more integrated reality. Eclipse season is the reality check on these sensitive issues. 

Tomorrow’s New Moon Cancer is just barely an eclipse. The Sun will see only a sliver of Luna’s shadow, and yet Pluto, the gatekeeper of the underworld, gazes grimly across the zodiac in exact opposition to the luminaries as they conjoin in Cancer’s tender, safety-seeking waters.

Cancer’s fourth house orientation toward the inner life and the the security to process personal experience is disrupted by this gaze, if not directly violated. Shadows and darkness will creep into the places we may feel least comfortable encountering them. In a vessel out at sea, our only protection from what lurks below, we fall prey to the acrid sensation that whatever it is down there is coming for the boat, and could cuff us down into the deep until our lungs fill with water.

In the end, if we find ourselves in the water we swim or sink. Only fate decides how far we are from shore, or what friends may come across with the resources to help us out of the sea. Pluto shows the ego precisely where it’s not in control, where you can and can’t be protected, where you have and haven’t protected yourself already. Where you hurt and can be healed.

Downloading this kind of psychological information can feel harsh in conjunction with the modern pace of life, but the sky offers some balm during this dark lunation. It's held in the arms of two gentle Grand Trines: an earth trine with Saturn in Capricorn, Venus in Virgo, and Uranus in Taurus, and a water trine with Sun/Moon in Cancer, Jupiter in Scorpio, and Neptune in Pisces. An additional light in the midst of a stygian sky is Jupiter’s recent direct station in Scorpio. Receptive to Mars, who is still off on the South Node loudly purging all toxins from our warrior bodies, Jupiter Direct aids us in cultivating flexibility, and faith that this journey through the caverns will reveal the jewels we probably have yet to see.

Ultimately we’re being called to cooperate with our tenderest desires, and those can be the most terrifying. But they’re the ones that help direct the soul back home, and if Pluto has anywhere it wants the soul to go, it’s home. If we can look these often deeply buried emotional realities in the face, invaluable experience is been gained, as is the capacity to create or feed that hybrid part of the self that knows both the underworld and how to engage with the surface world, remaining true to both. 

This multivalent aspect of the self that wants to be conceived or nourished is the aspect that unlocks the authentic, cyclical ebb and flow nature of human creativity. Undamming this current at the level of the individual inner life is the only path toward collective human liberation/harmony. The inner work is not indulgent, it’s necessary. Whatever steps the path toward a fully emancipated creative self requires, take them. This could mean boldly beginning something new, it could mean boldly releasing something that’s hindered the flow. Wherever this takes you, it may look very different than where you had planned to go. Lay low enough to go for the ride.

…

Dragon | Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon | Public Domain | sourced via Pinterest

This summer’s Eclipse season is heavily oriented around themes of personal authenticity and collective enfranchisement. Thursday’s Cancerian waters culminate in a wildly intense Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius in late July, followed by a New Moon Solar Eclipse in Leo in August. Pluto, Mars, Uranus, and Mercury Retrograde will all have lead roles throughout the season: very few of us will escape unscathed by the demons that have been previously shrouded in the mysterious night of the underworld. But understanding what has lurked there will give us stronger voices. Outer life will have to adapt to the realities we uncover, but remember that much is inflamed in the season of eclipses, and that changes don’t have to be made rapidly. As the dragons wake, get to know them. Take space for the vision quests of whatever scope you deem necessary. 

We're working on our night vision, learning to walk through the cryptic hours of darkness and remain lucid, at ease with the deepest of mysteries, healing ourselves as the path shows fit.

The Wiser Warrior: Mars Retrograde and Full Moon in Capricorn

The summer season of 2018 bears strange and unique trials. One of the year’s centerpiece transits, Mars’ retrograde, begins the day before the Full Moon in Capricorn. These two events make an unusual pair, drawing attention to the balance between chaos and duty.

Mars Retrograde | 6.26.18 | 2:05pm PST

Mars will station retrograde today at 8 degrees of Aquarius, making real and visible the shades of Hades we’ve been feeling on our skin since Mars entered its shadow phase on May 12, at 29 degrees Capricorn. From now until Mars stations direct on August 27, the medicine of the red warrior’s underworld journey will sink into our blood, translating its meaning with a potency beyond language, teaching us the nature of our primal power and its constituents, desire, conflict, courage, defeat, success, rage, and perseverance.

We won’t begin to fully understand the works of this retrograde until it exits its shadow phase on October 8. As I alluded to in the previous blog post, Mars retrograde will do work first in obscuring the objective truth of our desires, for the nocturnal landscape is real, but it will never show itself as clearly as in the daylight. 

There is a reason for this obfuscation: it holds us from rushing ahead, but instead directs us to explore the caverns of our un-lived potential, so that we can encounter first-hand what has been neglected and repressed, and what jewels of our own making we have failed to uncover.

Mars started his 2+ year cycle in July of last year when when he conjuncted the Sun and was hidden by Sol’s rays for some weeks. This was another type of underworld journey, one in which his purity was renewed and after which he stepped forward into the light, ready to show himself as something he’d never been, something new and youthful. So think back to last summer. What creative or passion projects did you begin or renew? What was your attitude, what successes and failures have you seen since then? How have you respected your projects or sold them short? How have you pushed too far, how must you rest?

For Mars stationing retrograde showcases a different breed of underworld journey, one in which we have much more perspective, discernment and agency. Not at all blocked out by the Sun’s rays, we can see Mars, and all that his eyes see, as he traverses the underworld reality of his own compulsions. The wise and mysterious ravens accompany this Mars, guiding him toward inner vision, playing with him, and he with them, cultivating a trusting companionship. When this emanation of the warrior howls to the Moon, he will know much more about why, and he will have probably chosen to do so.

Tibetan Buddhist Thangka of Dorje Drolo | Public Domain | sourced via Pinterest

However your own power has driven you in the past year, the rules of the game change here, the ghosts of the past emerge, and your work is to observe intelligently, understanding how your actions have contributed to this reality. What has been forgotten in the battles fought since last July will be revealed, and what has been accomplished will be evident and unembellished, as it will be all that is left standing.

Wherever you’ve fed on illusions, you will starve. Where you’ve been bound to dangerous dynamics, the time is ripe for unbinding spells. However the world’s consensus reality has deadened or inflamed your own, look to Mars retrograding over the South Node throughout all of Eclipse Season, purging what has been polluted in the soul. Mars is a wrathful deity, and will command release into the winds of chaos, where no unclean motivations can carry you to safety. The chthonic pandemonium of this season may feel like a strategist’s hell, but this is food for the growth of consciousness and human compassion.
 

Full Moon in Capricorn | June 27, 2018  
6 degrees | 9:53pm

While Retrograde Mars is traversing the underworld unshackling the latent energies of the inner landscape, this Full Moon in Capricorn, tightly conjunct its ruler Saturn, goads us into the mundane. It drives us to remain in control of ourselves in the literal realm, bastions amidst existential storms.

This Full Moon arrives during the Sun’s annual opposition to Saturn, who rules 3D reality, reminding us of our duties, obligations, and responsibilities as human citizens. Since Saturn is so strong, it’s possible that this Full Moon will shrink the question of inner dragons and the chthonic ambience permeating the air. If we're not careful, consumerism’s nihilistic dictum that there is no inherent value to internal reality could win out, and all our energy may be wasted on attempts to organize an external reality that isn’t ready to be organized.

Full Moons are, structurally, expressions of polarity. They points to tension, and requires us to allow opposites to rise together. With this Moon, the polarity is between Cancer, the sign of the private inner world, and Capricorn, the sign of manifesting in the external world. Capricorn has the upper hand because its ruler, Saturn, is so close to the Moon. The act of dropping roots, building foundations, and fortifying walls is not to be neglected, but neither is the emphasis on attending to the anima, the personal experience that Mars is so assiduously disentangling from whatever chains that have been holding it back from full expression in the world.

The task is a difficult one and requires the maturity of a discerning eye. For we cannot go on working by rote with forms that no longer serve the driving creative principle, no matter how attached to them we are. This Full Moon in Capricorn is a time to make unorthodox actions that push you further toward manifesting the world you want to live in, the world you will feel safe to live in. Look at the ways in which you work creatively that don’t work, and revise your strategies. Where your strategies have been working, observe the roots that are trying to break the foundation, and see what new life they breathe into your projects and your surroundings.

John Martin | Moonlight - Chepstow Castle | 1815 | Art Gallery of South Australia | sourced from Wikimedia Commons

Venus in Leo is still effectively squaring Jupiter in Scorpio, so there could be some fear of rejection for trying new things as a result of your psycho-spiritual spelunking. Go with the depth, trusting that your clan will show itself as your authenticity rises to the surface.

A certain amount of stoicism and austerity are required to make it through this Moon well. While unorthodox actions are welcome, no reckless ones will carry you anywhere. Plenty of data will be surfacing from below, but step lightly in the real world, for the ground you're standing on may be less stable than it appears. Tricksters are our friends now, we want to hear their riddles and train ourselves to expect any outcome, for we are rich in wild cards this season.

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Timely Decisions: Aligning Ourselves for Eclipse Season

New Moon in Gemini | June 13, 2018
22 degrees | 12:43pm PST

In the realm of Gemini, we stand in the face of polarity. We encounter information that stretches us and requires meaningful adaptation, or otherwise, regression. While late Gemini has information swarming around us, this particular lunation has no major aspects from other planets and therefore allows more flexibility in interpreting the information. Many masks will be available for the choosing, but our task is to hone in on the central axis of personal truth, and to make aligned decisions that resonate with that center, for the dragons of Eclipse Season are warming themselves up, preparing to take us into a protracted period of three eclipses...

So, alignment. We can easily understand the value of centering ourselves, but there are a number of celestial events that make the meaning of “alignment” and "center" less than transparent at this time. By the time the Moon renews itself on Wednesday we are well into the preamble of Mars’ 48-day Retrograde that begins on June 26. The red warrior entered his shadow phase on May 12, and since then, momentum has slowed down and somewhat dazed our desire nature. What we want deep down is not entirely clear.

This Retrograde will have ramifications for all projects borne of creative self-assertion, and wants us to remain committed, but to modify the time frame of our expectations. More than anything, it wants us to create the time and space required to get centered. 

Don’t be afraid if you find yourself backing off from more evident types of expansion in favor of internal mediation. The encroaching lunar cycle is one in which we’ll be asked to begin going back and reworking existing passion projects. Luck will favor the act of revising the frameworks of these projects much more palpably than it would favor the act of pushing manifest expansion.

Mars conjunct South Node

While the exact conjunction was June 7 - 9, Mars is still very close to the South Node at the time of the New Moon. As Luna renews, there is also a strong call to cleanse the inner warrior before Mars' coming Retrograde cycle. While Mars’ Retrograde occurs during Mar’s opposition to the Sun, this is when Mars is closes to the Earth. Such a perspective offers us new insights on the nature of our baser motivations, our anger and our primal desires. It’s as though the warrior comes home, and requires ritual cleansing from the psychological detritus picked up on the battle field.

For when we fight for a cause, no matter how gentle the cause, we come away with traumas. Mars’ encounter with the South Node wants attention given to those traumas so that the binding energy can be cleared in preparation for his Retrograde and for the Eclipse Season beginning in July. Alternatively, if we go into the Retrograde without seeing, surrendering to, and co-creating with the reality of our internal experience, we may find ourselves responding compulsively to traumas in the heat of Eclipse Season, rather than with all due mindfulness.

Prometheus Painter | Warriors. Side B from an Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 570–565 BC. | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

It is crucial to take care of the internal landscape now, because the cleansing/purging quality to Mars on the South Node will only intensify as Eclipse Season wakes up, and there will be plenty of battles to fight where your personal sense of alignment is concerned. Mercury sextile Uranus during this New Moon makes it particularly possible to drop old masks, but remember that when we clear space, we need to fill it with something intentional. As you discard behaviors that create profitless noise, incorporate new behaviors that refresh your capacity to make mindful decisions.

Venus ingress into Leo | 2:54pm

Just a couple of hours after the New Moon, Venus will enter Leo. Here the planet of beauty and connection becomes youthful, creative. After her slow, steady wading through Cancer's waters, she prefers warmth, dynamism, and amusement in these fields. From the protective mother archetype of Venus in Cancer, we find ourselves with Venus in Leo’s seductress of all things, opening up the potential for new creative works and a desire to be seen for them. 

This further complicates the cooling-off and cleansing effect of Mars on the South Node in Aquarius. While still only a Whole Sign opposition, this marks the beginning of the Venus-Mars opposition that will culminate on the Summer Solstice. The Mars-Venus opposition presents a very palpable conflict in our desire nature, so back to the Gemini New Moon’s call to make aligned decisions –this aspect brings in a substantial amount of discord...

How then to find the right move? When in doubt, lean toward structural, behind-the-scenes work. Make space for yourself to clear the weeds from your garden and see what seeds from the year’s beginning have put down the strongest roots. Get clear on long-term goals and commit to a sustainable method of working toward them. In the next three months, short-term goals may fail to yield the sweeter fruits they often do. Cultivate your garden with the hardier plants that will keep through the winter.

New Moon blessings.

Through the Fire | New Moon in Aries | April 15, 2018

New Moon in Aries | April 15, 2017
6:57pm PST | 26 degrees 

Sunday’s New Moon in Aries ushers in the fires of vitality, producing the ash necessary for innovative fertility. This is the zodiacal New Year: the Sun and Moon will courageously renew one another, conjunct electrical Uranus, striking up a radiant fire of purification to push us into our upcoming journeys. Our work is to walk through this fire to find the alchemical formula for transmuting our personal shadows as we ascend into ever-greater awareness of the unified field of consciousness.

Uranus emphasizes the communal sweep of transformation that takes place on the atomized level. This is the synchronized transformation of individuals. While we are are collectively channeling a distinctly new energy, the way we will experience this transformation is more vertical than horizontal. The time now is to open upward and channel downward in a process of transformation that is experienced very personally.

Part of the opening-upward process will require education about the world around yourself. Growing awareness is critical, both internally and externally. Now is an important time to ask what actions open the heart and all vessels in the body for greater flow, and to what broader social context you can contribute this flow. If you don’t know the answers to those questions, try new things.

Mercury will station direct in the wee hours of the morning before the New Moon, which makes this lunation an incredibly potent time to seed alchemical transformation of the spirit. Magical operations are highly recommended.

Joannis Conradi Barchusen | Mercury and Sulphur | sourced via Pinterest

Ancient alchemists tell us that the Philosopher’s Stone, the spiritual Magnum Opus, is created through the purification of Mercury by fire. The Moon is, alchemically, associated with silvery Mercury. Manfred M. Junius wrote in Spagyrics, “Mercury is occasionally called the Moon, the Lunar, or Diana,” which is transformed by the active Solar principle of “invisible fire, and also of love.” Because the Mercury will station direct station just before this New Moon, we get precisely that: a purification of Mercury and mercurial energy (the spirit that can be willfully shaped) by fire.

While we’ve been heavily defined by the reality checks of Mercury Rx and the Mars-Saturn conjunction of early April, Mercury’s stationing direct in Aries will bring the warmth needed to revitalize spent muscles. It is without question the harbinger of this lunar rebirth. We will learn new ways of moving that had previously been unavailable. 

Remember that rebirth is a space of inexperience. While Aries is the sign of “I am,” don’t try to finish the sentence just yet. Allow yourself to remain porous and see how your new awareness can function more broadly in the world.

Change and surprises should be welcomed with open arms, through whatever doors they rush in. Discernment will follow shortly after, particularly when Saturn stations Retrograde on Tuesday, April 17, the same day that Saturn’s offspring, Chiron, ingresses into Aries after his 7-year transit through Pisces.

Monday and Tuesday morning will be particularly auspicious days for channeling celestial magic for manifestation. As the Moon moves into Taurus, the sky will be full of exalted planets, trines, textiles, and aspects among benefics. Opportunities for augmentation should abound, so select the seeds you wish to plant, call down these energies, and press your intentions into the warming earth, with all available optimism.

Chiron ingress into Aries | April 17 | 1:10am PST

Almost exactly fifty years ago, on April 1, 1968, Chiron left gentle Pisces for Aries, the sign that gives rise to the fiery warrior. 

Three days later on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. This event triggered the violent riots of April 1968, which took place in 125 cities worldwide. 

Student Protesters | 1968 | Tufts Journal

The riots become a centerpiece in Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign for presidency, who promised law and order as a reactionary measure in the face of the images of violence that conservative America now directly associated with the Civil Rights Movement. The legacy of these riots turned much of mainstream America vehemently against the inner city “urban crisis,” and this legacy remains alive in the taste of many Americans’ mouths today. 

Much of the narrative behind the continued inner city urban crisis and the general socioeconomic reality in America remains well beyond mainstream America’s scope of vision, thanks to politicking and pernicious stories told by people in positions of power.

Chiron, the Wounded Healer, is a fascinating character. As someone who suffers the wound he knows how to heal, one of his roles is expanding beyond stories he’s heard or told himself about his capability to heal himself. When Chiron entered Aries in 1968, many eyes opened to the reality of the tensions in America, but many eyes turned toward toxic stories about how that tension had arisen, and the mainstream cultural shift was toward shunning the tension entirely, assuming it could not be healed.

At this moment in time, the 1968 Riots are experiencing a Chiron Return, which at best will invite the opportunity to revisit this legacy and begin a deeper healing of its wounds, worldwide. It is the opportunity to individually open our eyes, interact with one another with humility, as human to human. While Chiron’s time in Pisces signaled the need to establish contact with the Soul underlying all things, Chiron’s impending 7 years in Aries will push us into relationship with learning from the Soul of individuals. It signals the importance of refining our capacity to listen to and respect one another’s personal experiences, responding to one another in with greater respect for autonomy in the midst of interdependence.

Saturn station Retrograde | April 17 | 6:47pm PST

Giuseppe Maria Crespi | The Seven Sacraments Confession | 1712 | sourced via WikiArt

As mentioned above, Saturn, head faculty of Reality School, has been bringing a bounty of hard lessons through his conjunction with Mars. As he stations Retrograde in the evening of Tuesday, April 17, we may expect his lessons to lighten up as he asks us to review the meaning of what has already come to pass.

Patience and self-forgiveness are the most important virtues under this motion. Saturn Retrograde can feel like visiting the Confessional, assessing the honor and decency of your responses to life’s hardship. We are not saints, and we will always come across our slip-ups in integrity. Be gentle with yourself, and use the lessons to ground more fully into shaping reality as you want to see it.

The bright side of this Retrogradation is that we have so many planets agreeably positioned as Saturn begins to retrace his steps. Our freedom of movement to discover meaning is greater than it might otherwise be. Seize the clarity for developing wisdom, and allow the seeds you planted at the New Moon to continue germinating quietly in the dark earth.

I Am + I am With | Full Moon in Libra | March 31, 2018

Full Moon in Libra | March 31, 2018
5:36am PST | 10 degrees

Aries is the season of “I am.” As animals bear their young and plants unfurl new foliage, we witness entities differentiating themselves from the primordial sleep of the unmanifest. So too with the human spirit. 

Michelangelo Caravaggio | Martha and Mary Magdalene | 1598 | via Wikimedia.org

Such a process can be a strange and precarious experience, for as we we seek the definition of a self to contain the spirit, we are setting out through the viscous waters of what connects all beings. In the process of understanding the boundaries between ourselves and the world around us, we find relationship with others. Particularly through the mirror of relationship, we find unnervingly important reflections of the self we are creating.

The tension of the yearly Full Moon in Libra is, and always will be, between Self and Other. We are called to harmoniously equilibrate our need for separateness, with our need for others, and we are called to do this without creating a pendulum-of-extremes vibration. There is paradox built into the equation. 

The beauty of the Libra Moon is its capacity to hold the taut string of this paradox with grace, however the aspects to this Full Moon do not make an easy time of it. The heavy metal Saturn and Mars conjunction in Capricorn squares this Moon, and Mercury is Retrograde in Aries, quickly approaching Cazimi (conjunction with the Sun). As we stride toward grace, things could get awkward.

Mercury’s Retrograde (Rx) through Aries has been squaring the Mars-Saturn conjunction as well, and in the process it has been gleefully depositing compulsive thought patterns into the collective psyche, as well as wreaking the usual havoc associated with Mercury Rx on communications, travels, and financial/legal agreements.

There could be substantial demands to revise boundaries within relationships during this lunation, and don’t be surprised if they comes through harsh circumstances. It will be important to define ourselves as autonomous entities with individual needs within relationship, and conversely we will need to cultivate strong awareness of how much we actually need each other. A Libra Full Moon likes compromise, and Aries Sun hates it. Therein lies the paradox: the self is always mediated by others, but too much of this, and the self fails to hold its own in relationship. We have to maintain the "I am" but we have to be able to mutate it grammatically when it is fitting to do so. If Aries is the symbol of “I am,” then the Libra Full Moon signals the motion toward “I am with,” “I am among,” and “I am connected with.”

In order to coexist constructively and creatively, we must curb the will o’ the wisp disposition of Mercury Rx in Aries and get real about how and why we love each other. As Fred Rogers said, “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like ‘struggle.’ To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” And in order to love others in this ethical fashion, we have to be clear on loving ourselves exactly as we are as well.

Getting clear on this will be particularly available the day after the Full Moon, when Mercury is exactly Cazimi at about 11:30am on April 1. If stress gathers around your mental space on Saturday’s Full Moon (for Full Moons heighten emotional status and this one is particularly stressed), give it until Sunday to shine the god light on the core of the personal issue. Then is the time to dive into a conscious revision of your response patterning.

Edvard Munch | Separation | 1896 | Munch Museum, Oslo | via Google Art Project)

While Aries is eager to cleave boundaries and declare the self individuated, gentle Libra really just wants us all to get along. The greatest mistake we can make as we define our own form is to think that we are truly separate, for the individual’s need of others is simply an expression of our matter-of-fact interconnectedness. The price of this mistake is existential and eventually literal alienation.

A final word on this Full Moon: Venus, ruler of Libra, enters her other honeyed domicile, Taurus, about 10 hours before this Full Moon. This is highly fortunate, for it softens the harshness of the Mars-Saturn square to the Moon. Venus in Taurus will relax us into the fact that we all need some modicum of pleasure and prosperity in this life. Be wary of the conditions for extravagant or unrealistic yearning that leads to compromising personal needs for attractive lifestyle. At the same time, don’t forget that all agreements ultimately want to push us toward a more holistically pleasant experience of the earth journey. Libra’s love for the balanced scales of Justice requires constant effort, unflinching realism, and an unwavering gaze trained on the good life befitting all.

Full Moon Blessings

Smooth Seas Make Bad Sailors | New Moon in Pisces | March 17, 2018

New Moon in Pisces | March 17, 2018
6:11am PST | 26 degrees 

Around dawn on Saturday morning, a New Moon in Pisces will occur. Pisces is the transcendent zone of the zodiac. It harbors the connective tissue between the Body and the Spirit, that subtle thing we call the Soul. It is the place where from the body, we humans converse with the cosmos, and with consciousness itself.

The Sun and the Moon, Sol and Luna: our identity and our souls’ yearning. The two meet in Pisces at 6:11am on March 17, and their job at this time is to bring up the most potent themes of our desire to identify ourselves through connection to Beings other than the self. There is a distinctly primordial quality to this Moon: it dives into the essential, erotic connection between all people and all things. This is such a large theme, it brings something of the sea monster out in us, with its awesome and horrific beauty, consuming creatures simply to remind them how little it matters.

Thalassa, Greek primordial sea-goddess | sourced via Pinterest

Remember that connection is a de facto reality. We don't choose to be connected, we just are. Our lives are defined by what we choose to do with this connection, and through what actions we access it. We can fall in love with other humans, fall in love with our work, ethereal entities, with existence itself, or all of the above and much more. The point of this lunation is to remember that the connective tissue exists, and to empty ourselves enough to work with it.

This New Moon occurs tightly conjunct the asteroid Chiron, the archetypal Wounded Healer. He brings up our tenderness, our personal shortcomings, and, in perfect lockstep, prods us beyond them. All of the baggage that weighs us down to earth is present with this New Moon, and our job is to transcend it, to do the work of becoming light enough to connect in the face of heaviness.

Mars, brutal warrior, is in for this ride, throwing wrenches via a square into these earthly cisterns that contain our consciousness. And just a few hours after the New Moon, Mars enters Capricorn, where he takes on the dark, chthonic tone of Saturn and Pluto’s transits through the sign of the horny goat. Moreover, the mutineer Uranus trines Mars; Venus and Mercury recently met in rough-and-tumble Aries; and Mercury will plunge into his underworld retrograde journey on March 22, the day after the Vernal Equinox. 

This creates the circumstance of temptation. To resist our vulnerability and play tough. To identify with our hard lines and aggression, to hunt for connection for our own gratuitous pleasure. And with good reason: traversing the underworld is a precarious act. Communications and circumstantial arrangements go awry during Mercury Retrograde to remind us that the ego must be dismantled. Things don’t always go our way because we have to remember that the ego is a slipshod armor. It is a flimsy film of protection. Best not hedge our bets on it.

Interacting Galaxies | Hubble Telescope | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

Opening the ego to this process of disassembly is, generally, the work of love. It isn’t an easy ride. But as the old saying goes, “Smooth seas make bad sailors.” By choosing the mysterious sea of love despite its threats to the ego, we outstrip the binary code of self and other. We become more complex, gentle Beings, aware of the many interconnections that inform every isolated connection. Every act is informed by countless acts before it. We must approach one another with sensitivity to such histories.

As we open up to this New Moon, we’re being asked to empty ourselves for the more profound subtleties of love. To become as remarkably constellated and simultaneously empty as the impersonal sky. The revelation of love as a principle motivator in our lives promises creativity and soulful expression. The requirements are that we release the grip of attachment to outcome, and act, void of aspiration, from the humblest of places. The place of love. This is the mythic life-giving water. The soul, opened and connective.

Eclipse Season Part 2: Emptying with the New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius | Pisces Spree

Thursday, February 15  | Ghosts of Potential
New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius
1:03pm PST  |  27 degrees

Emptiness.

We take endless journeys to the bottoms of our souls. We duly follow the winding pathways and learn many tricks along the way. And yet when we come to the bottom, we find only the emptiness that shows itself there time and time again. Despite all the infrastructure we build along the way and with which we create security in this life, there is no safety from that particular emptiness. All of our efforts, when taken in earnest, lead us directly back to the necessity of surrender to the open expanses of the subtle vacuums within us.

This New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aquarius is particularly mental. It calls for healing the mind’s response to emptiness. This Moon is ripe for this, for airy Mercury, ruler of the mind’s mechanics, is closely conjunct the Sun and Moon as they meet. Two days later, Mercury will go Cazimi, conjunct the Sun while still in late Aquarius. The mind is how we perceive. With it, we shape our reality.

Emptiness becomes uncluttered space. Lack becomes potential. Apprehension becomes the taut string of a violin.

Figure Under a Blossoming Tree | Odilon Redon | 1904/1905 | sourced via Google Arts & Culture

Take time to meditate on what you are not. The aspirations you have not conquered. Train the mind to learn from the ghosts of your potential. Give thanks for what you have not yet manifested. That is where you have the greatest vantage, and where strategies will operate more potently over time.

Right now, the sky has really your back on this. Allow yourself to empty out and acknowledge your roots in the primordial maw of the sky. Acknowledge your relationship with the Moon and the power of the stars. Acknowledge that not everything is in your hands. If you do this now, the cosmos will be exponentially more navigable in your future endeavors.

The coolness of this Moon’s emptying-out will be refreshing, but it won’t necessarily your body’s obvious answer to the recent fire of the Full Moon Solar Eclipse in hot-blooded Leo of two weeks ago. It will require the effort and discipline of Mercury in Aquarius. Only the mind can direct this one properly. 

Remember that Mercury (the mind) is the link between the soul and the personality. The soul expands beyond personality, but the personality is the soul’s vehicle here on Earth. It’s a wise move to tailor the personality to the needs of the soul. 

So, the needs of the soul. This is the main course you’ll want to feed the purified mind this week. In a culture where we are constantly digesting new information, it is less than easy to serve the mind such a hearty meal. If need be, take the second half of this week to detox from social media or the mindless consumption of information. Assess your needs, and take a step back from excess.

The New Moon, especially a Solar Eclipse, is a time for new beginnings. Beginning fresh requires purging the past. Release fruitless habits, release resentments. Keep only the knowledge that serves you in the present. Let this one be a proper beginning.

Fresco from Pompei | Casa di Venus | 1st century AD. | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

On a Pisces Spree: Enter the Enigma

After the intense hot-and-cold polarity of the Leo/Aquarius axis, late February and early March will see a cluster of energy in enigmatic Pisces. This Eclipse Season has been a full-blown rollercoaster cycle of extremes, from Leo’s emotional highs to Aquarius’s cerebral, hyper-analytical lows. As we shift energy into the oceanic sign of the fish, consciousness opens up. Dichotomies and contradictions begin to matter less, to the degree of feeling trivial. The page turns to a distinctly mystical chapter, and as the ink dries we can exhale the drama loops of January and early February.

We began to feel this out-breath when Venus entered Pisces on Saturday, February 10. Venus is considered exalted in Pisces. Pisces’ non-dualistic love of diversity makes it much easier to get over problems we have with friends and lovers for needing to do their own thing. Venus’s agenda here is to be a legitimately benevolent lover. And love comes in many forms.

Tales tell us that Aphrodite, goddess of connection, was born from the foam of the sea, and indeed, she rules seafaring. Seafaring was, previous to the 20th century, the primary connective tissue between diverse cultures. The act of crossing the ocean to explore uncharted territories signals, for better or for worse, the kinds of profound cultural transformation that shape the course of global civilization. 

Taken to the personal level (and Venus is deeply personal), we want to remember that every time we form a relationship with another individual, we are crossing an ocean in an act of connection. We have learned well from the history of colonialism how crucial it is to go humbly into another’s territory. We must go ready to be transformed by what we encounter.

The dreamy Piscean Venus can take us in several directions. At best, she offers us lucid insight into our own and others’ emotional patterning, and tips us off in the process of creating harmony. At worst, this Venus will have us grossly projecting our utopian fantasies onto our friends and lovers, as though they were our canvas, and fickly leaving them when they fail to meet unreal expectations. To make this mistake would be grave. For real connection is dynamic. It requires consent and participation between both parties.

On February 17, Mercury will enter Pisces. While extremely psychic here, Mercury can have a hard time in with this transit because the sign of the fish is no archetypal Clear Thinker. It will be extra important to stay clear on clear intuitive downloads vs. emotional thinking, and we will want to be careful of how we language ourselves as we attempt to communicate our experiences.

The Sun will follow on Mercury’s heels on February 18, officially transitioning us into Pisces season. The sensitivity and feels-heavy energy of this mutable sign will become the predominant ambience. Remember that Pisces Season is itself a transitional one, situated between Winter and Spring. This is a time when we are undergoing personal transformation, sometimes graceful, sometimes awkward, always oriented toward psychic expansion.

Finally, while the personal planets will be transiting Pisces, Chiron and Neptune have had residence here since 2011. These two have been doing the slow work of shifting the current zeitgeist towards consciousness, mindfulness, and healing.

Vincent Van Gogh | Almond Blossom | 1890 | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

So as February unfolds and all of this planetary energy congregates in early Pisces, we will see each planet apply to a trine with their traditional ruler, Jupiter, who is still transiting Scorpio. This is an auspicious aspect, suggesting that if we are willing to expand into the darker (and perhaps more usually taboo) dimensions of ourselves, we will shed our skins and go about our psychic blossoming with some degree of ease and success.

The only antagonist the sky shows this Pisces stellium is a rather useful one. Mars in Sagittarius will be in square with these planets, creating friction around the choice to throw our full weight behind the beliefs we’ve formulated through personal experience. If Eclipse Season has been handled well and you’ve done the work training the mind on the basic necessities you feel on the level of the soul, this square will provide the circumstantial challenges you need to cultivate a lifestyle that supports those necessities.

Pisces is anything but simple. The last sign in the zodiac, it contains multitudes. Its art is the art of personality integration and emotional maturation. We are heavy in Pisces energy until March 20, when the Sun leaves the sign of the Mystic. Until then, we will be navigating the elusive waters of emotion and consciousness itself. Be careful of getting lost in the fog, but while you are there, allow yourself to further develop your subtler senses. You will come out on the other side with a refined sense of who, but also what exactly, you are.

Eclipse Season Part 1: Jan. 31 Full Moon Eclipse in Leo | Feb. 1 Imbolc

Wednesday, Jan. 31 | As Old As Dragons
Full Supermoon Lunar Eclipse in Leo
5:27am PST| 11 degrees

Welcome Eclipse Season, a two-week stretch of sped-up evolution. We can always expect things to move a bit like someone has their finger on the time-lapse dial during eclipses. Time feels a little less linear. We get the chance to watch ourselves in amplified slow motion detail before we speed up and blow through our baggage at a breakneck pace. There’s a weird sci-fi feeling that permeates the air: the feeling that the past isn’t dead yet, that the future was born long ago, and that we are here to heal trajectories set in motion by processes beyond our comprehension. Karma with origins as old as dragons shows itself (think Reptile Brain), and our work is to assess and respond.

Eclipse Season begins on January 31 with a Full Supermoon Total Eclipse in Leo. This is the third of what astronomers are calling the Supermoon Trilogy (a Supermoon is when a Full Moon coincides closely when the Moon is the closest to Earth in its orbit, giving us an up to 30% brighter and much bigger Moon in the sky). 

So what is that about? A Big Moon means Big Emotions. Luna rules the personal emotional experience, so this is about your own emotions. With a Leo Eclipse, we are graced with an eye toward our more hyperbolic and attention-seeking inner dramas, so your personal shit is is extra visible at this time (to yourself and, it's safer to assume, to others as well). 

Your best option, of course, is the path of least resistance: cultivate a relationship with the personal experience whether you like what you find there or not. Word to the wise: cultivating a relationship with your inner experience is never indulgence, it’s mandatory for your sanity. So face what comes up around this time. If you absolutely have to, play it out to some degree, just keep consequences in mind.

Greetings from Krampus! | Greeting Card ca. 1900s | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

So as you work with these inner dramas, keep the ledger at hand and take notes for future navigation through your own waters. Ask the stories your emotions are trying to tell you and don’t skirt around what you hear. Play the neutral observer (Sun and South Node in Aquarius). Read and decode yourself, but remember that if your emotions don’t get heard and integrated, they will come back bigger and badder next time, Krampus style.

This Full Supermoon Eclipse in Leo also occurs the day before Imbolc, the cross quarter Pagan festival that since ancient times has been a day set aside to ritually purify the household, nurture the coming warmth, and light candles in honor of growing creative fires. So again, we get an amplification of Eclipse-style energy: purifying renewal, release, and propulsion forward.

Let’s keep in mind that the chart of this Full Moon has Venus conjunct the South Node in Aquarius, so if we’re going to get held up, it’s likely to be in vain attempts to remain aloof or to evade the grittier aspects of personal renewal and emotional integration. This is not easy work. The ego does not like to change shape. But the promise of this Leo Eclipse is that if we can humble ourselves and drop expectations about who we’re “supposed to be,” our souls will begin to shape our presence here with unprecedented levels of authenticity and truthfulness.

There is a Neptune quincunx to this Full Moon, which is again about emotional integration, but on a more colossal scale. This aspect can bring up pretty daunting psychological states like the existential loneliness that stretches all the way back to the pain of separation from our mothers at birth. Do your best not to numb yourself through hollow connections. Don’t feed things that don’t feed you. And remember that the kind of real connection that sincerely heals such existential Neptunian wounds requires the workout of going miles beyond the ego. Connection requires humility, so make sure you’re talking back to any dramatic Leonine thought patterns. Listen to the heart, not what the mind does to band-aid the heart.
 

Thursday, Feb. 1 | Imbolc

Image by author | 2017 | Avebury

This is the festival of the pan-Celtic Goddess Brigid, a solar deity who represents the transition of the Goddess from Crone to Maiden. Imbolc is therefore, traditionally, a celebration of the quickening of the earth after winter’s sleep. The festival takes place during early winter lambing, when ewes are birthing and milking their first young. It’s a potent time to look within and discover what young and vulnerable parts of yourself need tending.

Imbolc centers around rituals of purification and initiation. It is traditionally a time to begin planning and setting in motion new ventures creative, spiritual, and worldly. The energy we cultivate here is “out with the old, in with the new,” and a common ritual for Imbolc is cleaning the home and then hanging a broom, or besom, above the entrance to the home to protect its purified condition.

Brigid's Cross | sourced via Pinterest

Birch, which is associated with purification and protection, is often used to make the besoms, as well as the protective St. Brigid’s Cross traditionally made during Imbolc. As Maurice Bruce writes in “The Krampus from Styria,” The birch … may have a connection with the initiation rites of certain witch-covens; rites which entailed binding and scourging as a form of mock-death.” And indeed, Birch forests have since ancient times been associated with spirits of the dead and with the process of mourning.

Initiation is a tender process that requires awareness of what we have released, or are in the process of releasing. The bond between death and birth is unequivocal. So while we want to treat Imbolc as an occasion to open up to the warmth of new trajectories, we must develop an astute relationship with what is passing, and of the cold that remains around what is no longer living.

In keeping with the nuanced duality of this festival of purification and initiation, Brigid rules both fire and water. She rules Poetry and Bardic Lore, for she offers the gift of the creative “fire in the mind” to the poets. Yet she also rules water, Sacred Wells, and therefore the art of Augury as well. For this question of the watery source from the “Otherworld” is deeply linked with creativity. We must look beyond the immediately accessible dimensions of our existence in order to feed the creative fires that propel us forward.

So Brigid, also Goddess of Milk, reminds us that with all of the poise required to navigate the balanced tapestry of life and death, the key is the simple stuff of nurturance. This is a time to care for yourself, as both mother and father. Cultivate composure and purified structures for yourself while simultaneously tending the hearth fire for the vulnerable sides of yourself just beginning to emerge. As winter’s freeze melts away and the earth begins to warm enough for the first shoots of spring to appear, reflect on how your internal world mirrors this process, and remember that summer’s ease is some months out. Circumspect care is required here. Go attentively!

Suggested Ritual:

Clear a surface in your house for an altar (if you already have an altar, clear that space). Place a bowl on the altar and fill it with purified water to represent Brigid’s Sacred Wells. Secure a red or white candle, and place this on the altar as well to represent the Creative Fire that will help you to envision and propel yourself into the future. Take some time to write down what the Creative Fire feels like in your personal world, and how you would like to draw from the Sacred Well to purify yourself and deepen your creative process. 

As mentioned above, it is also an ideal time to clean the home and hang a broom above the entrance for protection. If you don’t have a broom that feels suitable to hang above the door, then go outside and collect some twigs. Wrap some twine around the twigs so you have a small bundle that acts as your symbolic broom, and hang that above the door.

Most importantly, reflect on the intentions you have already set for this calendar year, and check in to see what kind of progress you have made with them. Do you need to revise your intentions? If so, this is the time. Rewrite your plans. Really strategize on how you can bring things into fruition. Because Imbolc syncs up with this Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Leo, listen to the actual state of your emotions as they are, and integrate that as you revise your intentions and your plans to manifest them. Don’t sell yourself short, but keep it real, pups.

Imbolc blessings.

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Loving Large: Radical Civitas in the Dec. 17 – Jan. 16 Lunar Cycle

“We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.” – Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

There is a hush on the fields. The birds have stirred and gone back to their nests, or migrated elsewhere. Snow falls softly from an opaque expanse of sky. The quiet is without a doubt eerie. What's out there isn't visible. And so we go in, light a fire and regard the faces of our tribe, remembering human warmth in the midst of a winter that won't reveal its end.

It is easy to agree that human fears congregate around the cold of alienation and the void of death. It is equally easy to see that gathering in ritual and community are the age-old balms we apply to these wounds.

To watch the culture of these balms shift is a fascinating process, and this Lunation is a pivotal page in this evolving story, opening with a New Moon just after the FCC has voted to repeal net neutrality regulations.

This is quite an outrageous act for a culture that has grown and fortified itself around the Internet in the past three decades. This platform has unquestionably redefined the way humans connect, for it has opened us to, as Steven Forrest put it, “communities of affinity” above communities of place. Communitarian experiences of ritual are no longer confined by space, time, or a lack of sympathetic community in an individual’s immediate surroundings. The Internet has allowed connection to take root and transform lives where this would otherwise have been impossible.

So we begin with the Dark Moon of a Dark Season, accompanied by the awareness that one of our most historically significant venues for connecting freely with our fellow humans has suffered an attempted blow from big business.

Sagittarian insight grants us some idealism in this Moonless time: if freedom of connection is threatened, then our responsibility is to foster light anyway, to reach our hands out to one another in the darkness and thrive in love, reinforcing basic human fellowship. 

So as this Lunation opens, we must ask what authentic connection requires, and remember that it always requires at least the light of Self-knowledge. As such we want to go in to this cycle committed to collecting our solitary dreams and formulating a spacious understanding of the collective tapestry into which we’ll weave them. What do you have to share here? What have you already accomplished? How is your personal myth shaping up? And what steps are required so you can contribute your gifts? We need to stay centered and commit to knowing and sharing the rich landscapes extant within the Self.

For this Lunation doesn’t go lightly on personal growth, interrelation, or civic responsibility. It bears witness to Saturn’s ingress into Capricorn as well as Venus Cazimi and Mars conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio. Cold reality and our basest desires will be showing themselves, but so will our warmest compulsions to connect with others.

A Comet in the Night Sky Above London, ca. 1869 | sourced via wellcomecollection.org

Saturn's transition to Capricorn is really the event of the Lunation though. Father Time's three year transit through Capricorn will not be known for its easy-going atmosphere. The Real will be revealing itself at all times, and we will be asked to stay grounded and present no matter how strange, dark, or magical this Real shows itself to be. Saturn reminds us that, after all, we were born into this three-dimensional realm, and we had best make the most of it.

Luckily, it is a compelling place we have come to, full of subtle lessons that intrigue us to listen evermore keenly. As Martin Luther King pointed out, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

Sunday, Dec. 17 | A Sophisticated Void: Portal to Discipline and Commitment
New Moon in Sagittarius | 26 degrees | 10:30pm PST
Moon square Chiron in Pisces
Moon trine Uranus in Aries

This New Moon arrives in the late degrees of wise Sagittarius. Determination and philosophical skill reign here. When we apply such forces to New Moon energy, we get an idealistic and highly sophisticated approach to the void. We are ready to see that great power is available even in the midst of deafening darkness. If we get this right, we can materialize on the scene of Self-development ruddy with the archer's optimism in the face of any number of dark emotions, from rage to defeatism to apathy.

As the Sun and the Moon reach conjunction in late Sagittarius this year, we open a portal to renewed discipline and commitment. This is a time to set lofty goals, in particular because we have strong access to foresight and the drive to employ continued reason, hard work, and sheer willpower as time passes.

Remember also that the New Moon is always a time of Mystery and Magic, and that as dreams billow and surge within us at this time, they begin to manifest all around as well, shaping our own external realities and touching the lives of those around us.

With this Moon, we want to remember that personal dreams are a necessary constituent of collective growth, and that collective growth feeds personal dreams just as much as they feed it. This is an attractive thought, but we want to hold it with sobriety. Chiron squares this Moon, requiring that we face whatever hard truths it takes to heal our wounds of disbelief in Self and in Society. At the same time, Moon trines Uranus in Aries, who breathes energy and powerful revelations into our psyches.

By this time, we are beginning to feel the coming sextile between Jupiter and Pluto as well, so there is friendliness to expanding from the depths of our souls outward into collective manifestation. Luck is with us as we take our shadows in stride and simultaneously advance toward the enormous cultural renovation in which we are collectively engaged.

From this date until the Solstice, take the time to congratulate yourself on how far you’ve come and to workshop your personal intentions for the New Year. When we line up the phases of the Moon with the Pagan Wheel of the Year, the New Moon lines up with Yule. A New Moon just two days before Saturn's ingress into Capricorn and four days before Yuletide makes this day a critical juncture for cultivating warmth and inner light. We will want to remember all that we’ve accomplished in the year that is now passing, and to begin planning for what we will cultivate as light returns to this hemisphere.

Tuesday, Dec. 19 : Baby-Eating Hermits and the Alacrity of the Sea-Goat
Saturn ingress into Capricorn | 8:49pm PST
Moon conjunct Pluto in Capricorn

Tonight Saturn will ingress into Capricorn. In the past weeks this has become a bit of an uneasily awaited event among astrologers. Saturn is at his absolute strongest in Capricorn, and this guy is not Mythology Lite. He carries in themes of baby-eating, and particularly in Capricorn, of hermitage. 

Saturn is Cronus, Father Time, famous for devouring his children when he heard a prophecy that they would destroy him. In Capricorn, he feels the pressures of cold, factual reality, whereas his three years in Sagittarius had him feeling the heat of philosophy and high ideals. So as Grandfather Time steps into his own domicile (he is the planetary ruler of Capricorn) we are going to be asked to get very realistic about the mundane day-to-day, about how we respond to imbalances or fears that occur within the broader human community.

The reality of intergenerational dynamics are also intensely present, for Saturn carries themes of Time as the Devourer of all things. No doubt we must look to the future, but Saturn is also particularly good at looking unflinchingly at the past and taking ownership of the cold facts found there. Millenials have a talent for historical revisionism, and this only reinforces the importance of that work.  The Present, however, is also of intense interest as we watch older generations attempt to revoke rights to the Internet. This is a huge No for the Pluto-in-Scorpio-Millenials' fierce passion for totally self-goverened expression, and no doubt, it does feel like Big Business Saturn in a Suit, trying to eat the children he knows will destroy him. In the end of that myth, of course, Jupiter escapes and Saturn is given an emetic that forces him to disgorge the babies. So all turns out well for the babes, and I have no doubt in my mind that in the end, we will retain our freedom to connect and express ourselves authentically...but to achieve this requires a fight, and real alacrity on the part of the children.

So on a personal level, Saturn's realism wants you to ask: what dead have you laid to rest in the past, how well did you do with the living, but of more interest to Saturn is: what could you have done better? How can you learn from your mistakes? With Solstice on the way, we are preparing to incline very seriously toward the future, but Saturn in Capricorn will insist that we analyze and make amends with our past failures if we hope to move forward wholly.

The brighter side of Saturn's 3-year season in Capricorn is that we will get extremely good at attuning ourselves to the nuances of the Real. Capricorn is the Sea-Goat, giving us the best of both land and waters. With the persistent head of the mountain goat and the tail of the fish, Capricorn allows for a balance between the rarefied atmosphere of high mountains and the murky depths of the sea. At its best, it provides a deeply spiritual and intuitive compass to guide us in our worldly ambitions.

Also important here is that both Saturn and Capricorn are associated with the Archetype of the Hermit. Self-containment and solitude will demand our attention, as will commitment to personal endeavors. Introspective time to oneself will become more of a priority. So remember that the Hermit has no personal integrity, he easily becomes the fiend who isolates in order to perpetuate self-destruction. But when the Hermit is healthy, he isolates in order to master the Self-containment that allows him to experience the blissful limitlessness of consciousness, and the spiritual connection that, quite matter-of-factly, exists among all things.

As Brene Brown has written of spirituality and connection: “spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings ... perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.”

The skillful Hermit becomes a teacher to others simply by holding up his lantern of Spiritual Connectedness in a darkened landscape. Saturn’s time in Capricorn affords us all this opportunity to do enormous amounts of personal work, to gain eons' worth of perspective on our own inner lives, so that we can collectively become teachers and guides to one another. By mastering the inner realm, we become capable of true connection with our fellow beings, showing each other the way.

Just to reinforce this: Saturn's season in Capricorn will absolutely not want us forgetting the brass tacks of what it means to be in healthy connection: it means taking responsibility. Radical civitas will be required: we will be asked to act on principles of love and compassion in the hardest of times, and to extend our hands when we think we have no energy left. My best advice is to make a practice of regularly extending oneself in acts compassionate generosity and service where aid is needed. We will want to build our muscles for this one.

Hermit Fathers and Immaculate Women | Mikhail Nestertov | 1932

Thursday, Dec. 21 | Return of the Sun King
Solstice: Sun ingress into Capricorn | 8:28am
Sun conjunct Saturn

Yuletide. Solstice. The rebirth of the Sun. In the morning, the Sun will rise in Capricorn on the other side of his journey through darkness. Kindling the will to thrive, he will bring more light with him in every coming day. We may now welcome the yearly celebration of the season of light, and this year it comes after quite a dark season. We’ve seen demons unleashed and personal, inner magic arise in the face of them. Focusing on that inner magic is the key today, for this is when we direct where the light shines within us.

Pagan traditions celebrate this night as the birth of the Oak and Sun King: it is the time that the Giver of Life begins his gradual ascent. We have full permission to train the gaze on the future, on all the potential that rises from the frozen earth as it thaws with the warmth of the Sun. It is, of course, just potential, so we can liberally envision its manifestation in whatever ways most suit the needs of our Spirits.

Solar energy expends liberally, so don't hold yourself back from harboring wishes that have seemed beyond your reach throughout the cold season. Write down ambitions. Let yourself receive the game plan: the mind is your tool to meet Reality. As Sun conjuncts Saturn, the Sun burns bright alongside the icy planet. A gleam is in the eyes of these counterparts. They have no choice now but to accept one another: the lofty, seemingly limitless source of willpower, and the wise old grandfather whose cold hands shake with age. And as their hands meet, we may embrace them the worldly lessons that teach us efficiency in the task of cultivating Spirit on this Earth.

Friday, Dec. 22 | Quiet Preparation
Mercury stations direct in Sagittarius | 13 degrees | 5:51pm

After an intense Mercury Retrograde, our minds emerge from the Stygian depths to rejoin the ranks of practicality and optimism. Things may move more slowly or quiet down for a moment, so we can take some rest as we prepare to implement plans we cultivated during the time from New Moon to Solstice.

As the God of Reason comes back into optimistically straightforward trains of thought, the Moon in Aquarius is speaking with both Uranus and Chiron. We can recall that healing comes through embracing opportunities that arise when we accept unexpected events and the breaking-apart of unhelpful institutions.

Mercury goes direct in Sagittarius in the 6th House as Cancer rises, and it also trines the North Node. There is an emphasis on seeking out an understanding we can truly serve ourselves and our tribes in order to be of more collectively evolutionary service.           
 

Sunday, Dec. 24 | Measured Pleasures of the Flesh
Venus ingress into Capricorn | 9:26pm PST
Jupiter in Scorpio square Lunar Nodes | 15 detrees

Venus in Capricorn is practical, and as such she is quite sensual. The fact that we must fulfill some basic instinctual drives makes itself plain to her. After the high-minded wisdom-love that followed her through Sagittarius, she is ready to enjoy herself as a creature of the earth. Basic sensual pleasures (food, sex, harmony) are ancillary to the production of human culture, which Venus loves, but in these winter months, Venus is not blind to the fact that the generation of pleasure and warmth is a virtue in itself.

Of course, pleasure-seeking must be navigated with care, and a Capricorn Venus is no fiend for excess. Moreover, Venus meets Saturn as soon as she sets foot into this mountainous Capricornian territory. The ambition to master this earth-journey with measured enjoyment is present.

Jupiter in Scorpio squares the Nodes by today, so we are no doubt hoping to press beyond the “normal” or the obvious aspects of material culture. A subtle understanding of the senses helps here. Nuanced relationship with the earth and with our bodies is crucial as humans seek the full expression of their experience here. As we search for meaning, much of it comes directly from the material realm.

Venus entering Capricorn a very beneficial event as we navigate questions about our relationship with the immaterial web of the Internet. There is no question that we must resist the repeal of net neutrality as a sleight of hand against the Venusian act of connection. At the same time, Venus in Capricorn reminds us to balance ethereal connection with literal, earth-bound acts of contact and passion.
 

Tuesday, Dec. 26 | The Struggle for Identity
First Quarter Moon in Aries | 4 degrees | 1:20am PST

            This First Quarter Moon is a solidly warrior-like one. The whole sense of identity –what one wants and what one wants to fight for– is  struggling to emerge. With Sun, Venus, Saturn, and Pluto all in Capricorn, it will specifically be the self contending for form in the midst of enormous responsibility and obligation to others.

The Moon is thoroughly awkward in the youthful heat of early Aries, so be cautious on this day about how you speak with your loved ones. Do not forego the boundaries you require to understand who you are and the unique mission you came here to pursue. Simultaneously, remember that other Selves are trying to define their own boundaries at this time just as you are.
 

Monday, Jan. 1 | The Privilege to Dream
Full Moon in Cancer | 11 degrees | 6:23pm
Moon trine Neptune in Pisces

Oil painting | used as an illustration for The Living Forest | 1925 | sourced via publicdomainreview.org

Every year the Full Moon in Cancer brings question of family and community with it. On the first day of the 2018 calendar year, we get Full Moon in Cancer trining Neptune. This is a very fertile, dreamy time of harboring space for psychological safety. However with Sun, Venus, Pluto, and Saturn in Cancer’s opposite, Capricorn, this is specifically about keeping the dreamy compulsion to nurture and seek refuge with our clan in balance with duty to those beyond our inner realm.

It was not always a given that we could nurture the softer side of human nature, for much of human nature is cruel, shaped by brutal environmental demands. However this Full Moon forces us to look at the stories we tell ourselves about the human experience at large. Just as the last Full Moon in Gemini asked us to separate ourselves from such stories as “I am not enough,” we must collectively separate ourselves from the story “Human nature is ugly, individualistic, animal, harsh.” Indeed we do best to look at the whole picture. The truth is that this dark story of human nature is not the full story. The full story includes the incredibly elevated human potential to integrate our instinctual animal nature with the broader passion we have for living in harmony with one another, with the Earth, and with ourselves.

So with this Moon the biggest theme is the willingness to be trustworthy for our fellow humans. Beware of getting lost to personal dreams and the desire for safety, for the real message these dreams usher in is that we must take the risk to stand up and guard the privilege to nurture one another’s safety to hope as much as we nurture our own.

Venus in Capricorn just two degrees from the Sun keeps a taste in our palates for the pleasure of getting grounded and staying realistic. It has us yearning for the pleasure of a job well done and remembering that more than tolerating responsibility, we can enjoy it. For this is how we actually move mountains, shifting the factual conditions of our lives.

As the Moon trines Neptune, Sun is sextile the Redeemer, so we have luck, opportunities, and excitement about bringing the spiritual into the material realm.
 

Wednesday, January 3 | Mastermind of Love
Venus in Capricorn sextile Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees | 9:21am

Today we see an intoxicating exchange between the planet of dissolving fragmentation and the planet of beauty and connection. We’re particularly inclined now to seeing the beauty in human diversity, and to loving others as in this larger context.

Capricorn Venus is a bit of a mastermind, capable of envisioning schematic connection. Apply your creativity to strategizing about communitarian union. Think society, think groups. Love is an agent of connection between individuals, has it larger work to do than simply creating harmony between two individuals, or nuclear families. Love is a community-building agent.

The human family is on the heart today and in the surrounding days. Connect with this in mind.
 

Friday, January 5 – Monday, January 8 | Bold Treasures of the Griffin
Mars conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio | 17-18 degrees
Jupiter and Mars in Scorpio sextile Pluto in Capricorn

This weekend’s are exhilarating signatures, full of adventure and exuberance around the inner journey of facing our shadows. We are on the side of the waxing light, and from here the shadows look less daunting and more like the birthplace of fantastical creatures that grow our knowledge of desire, hybridity, and integration.

Antique Folio Copper Plate | Published 1718 in Amsterdam | Illustrated by Caspar and Matthias Merian | sourced via Pinterest

The image that arises from this combination of energies is the Griffin. When Mars becomes Jupiterian in Scorpio, the energy of the Lion and the Eagle meet. Royal mightiness is the product. The strength and intelligence to stand guardian to the precious jewels of the Spirit is at our fingertips. The Griffin, famed for its ability to retrieve chthonic treasure, builds homey nests of gold. Sextile Pluto, the treasures we can find here are without a doubt related to collectively inherited wounds.

Expansion therefore comes through boldly contacting our basest drives. What has previously made us quiver with fear is transmuted: no shadow can hold us back. This is a rich time to continue developing faith in the human's capacity to healthfully integrate her own existential predicament. Death is in nothing more than the opportunity to overcome the fear of death. Horrible things come from human fear, but we also know well that if we can integrate our darkness with the sophisticated Self-knowledge so readily available to us, then truly majestic acceptance and creativity arise. The brave decision to focus our attention on the light of this human potential is the only way to actualize it, allowing it to rise to the surface.
 

Sunday, January 7 – Thursday, January 11 | In the Heart of Multidimensional Love
Venus Cazimi i.e. Venus conjunct the Sun | 17 degrees

Venus Cazimi is a time of exalted connective prowess, and we are in an out of this one for about five days as the Sun and Venus proceed forward in lockstep. We’ll want to use this energy wisely. Remember that sovereignty is crucial for healthy connection. We cannot solve our problems through others and if you catch yourself trying, take a step back. I only warn of the co-dependent tendency because many social constructs we carry around the idea of connection feed into it, but the positive light of this Cazimi is enormous. It anoints us with a real passion for connecting with integrity, and with clarity about why we seek connection.

Love is the ultimate healing agent, and Venus Cazimi in Capricorn reminds us that love is much more practical than it is fantastical. Without it, this life would be a bleak string of incoherent events.

There is this exciting sextile sent from the Sun/Venus duo to Mars and Jupiter in Scorpio as well, and the Cazimi takes place essentially under the wing of Pluto. There’s a bit of the sense around these days that the Dark Lord is watching, for Pluto in Capricorn has a fully developed resonance with the archetype of the Devil. This is one a moment when we must carry the faith that the love humans express is not bound by this carnal form. Images of lust and lechery will trail behind this Venus Cazimi, and we must take them in stride, understanding love’s multidimensionality.
 

Monday, January 8 | The Unfettered Heart
Last Quarter Moon in Libra | 18 degrees | 2:25pm

Johannes Tauler | 1705 | sourced via Pinterest

“I am fine tuning my soul / To the universal wavelength / No one is a lover alone / I propose an atom dance.” – Bjork, Atom Dance

Without batting a lid, the sky gives us a love-oriented Moon in the midst of Venus Cazimi. Rather than a cosmic joke, this is a message driven home very well about releasing old paradigms of how we express and contain love.

This is a time to deconstruct how institutions have shaped the way we conceive of love. The idea that we must be bound to one other person first, foremost, and inextricably is a fallacy. Living connections breathe more than this. Libra is always going to involve themes of balanced relationship. Add to this kettle the Lunation’s themes of radical civitas and the letting-go dynamic of Last Quarter Moon, and we find that today we must work on dissolving conventions that limit the way we can love.

With the Moon in the middle degrees of Libra, we want to be careful of where we invest our love. Love is something to direct toward all of creation, unconditionally. Without this broad view of love’s function, love up close suffers. Hatred and bitterness have no place here. As the Moon’s light wanes, we will feel that we simply don’t have the time to waste on love not given with the whole heart. So as we generally want to live as though each day were our last, today we want to begin loving poignantly as though each day were our last. The unfettered heart is our ambition. Whatever chains are there, release them tenderly, without fear.
 

Wednesday, January 10 | Listening for Magick
Mercury ingress into Capricorn | 9:09pm
Mars in Scorpio sextile Sun in Capricorn
Moon conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio

Mercury enters Capricorn, where he has a particular penchant for probing into the subtle realms revealed by the physical plane. We are more capable of picking out the precise clues needed to proceed forward in reformulating our material lives. Magick has its place here, as does very down-to-earth scheming.

As the Moon wanes, Mercury’s first week in Capricorn lends our minds to listening for cues. Stay alert, but don’t seek too persistently, for mental energy will only be wasted in the endeavor. The material realm will want to speak in subtle cues and omens. Let the mind fall open like a Venus fly trap, active only when the proper nourishment has landed on the tongue.

Friday, January 12 | Only Necessary Knowledge
Mercury conjunct Saturn in Capricorn | 2 degrees
Moon in Sagittarius square Neptune in Pisces | 12 degrees
Venus conjunct Sun | 23 degrees

The mind cannot wrap around the structure of the spirit. It never will. This is precisely why faith, much more than belief or religion, has followed humans throughout history as a component of their peace.

Mercury conjunct Saturn is where we ask only for necessary knowledge. Of course, Saturn characteristically shuns excess, so we are not asking for any kind of embellishment. Trust that the amount of information you have at this time is exactly the amount you need now.

The Moon in Sagittarius squares Neptune in Pisces as Mercury encounters Saturn, so the mood behind this conjunction is one of efforting to complete the journey toward peace of mind. No doubt the mind will resist settling down and getting only what it needs. This is a moment when, having already taken the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we can choose not to hunt for more. Indulging that temptation will be for another day.

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Beyond Monsters and Mages: Lunar Cycle Nov. 18 - Dec. 16

"And still, no one can tell you what a girl is
"Maybe body? Maybe body with breath? And the body might, and the body might rise, in a plush green letter, and the breath before and the deaths before and after, in a lung in a leaf, and the leaf might rise, before the heart and kidney after, in an eye in a burl, and the eye, and the tongue, and the grizzle might rise on the forest floor and make, as only real blood and grizzle can, a mockery of empire" - Yedda Morrison, Girl Scout Nation

This lunation opens with a Stygian New Moon in Scorpio, yawning our Plutonian darkness before our very eyes. In these depths we encounter Desire and Fear, and let us understand the two as distinct. Desire is a primal, warm force that moves toward. Fear is a coldness; it moves away from. We have the choice of which to follow.

Scorpio Season has shown us the magnitude of inner shadows and indeed the cycle that begins tonight orients us from there. We start off in the "fixed" realm of deep Scorpionic entropy. With this New Moon we learn acceptance of things just the way they are.

However this lunation takes us into Sagittarius Season, where we will raise our eyes to horizons beyond the inner realm, and embrace philosophies that facilitate expression in the outer world. The lunar phases following the New, namely the First Quarter, Full, and Waning Quarter, all take place in "mutable" signs: Pisces, Gemini, and Virgo respectively. The lessons they teach us are how to steer ourselves from the stillness of acceptance, into the more adaptable modes required when we encounter successively exteriorized, literal realms. We go from parsing through the requirements of our inner landscapes, to the stories we tell ourselves as we extend into our social frameworks, to the care we can take of our own bodies and of others'.

Chaos and order coexist. If we hope to go forth with integrity, we have no choice but to contain the multitudes. The attempt to create meticulous empire from within the bountiful chaos of our inner realms is laughable. And yet to approach the outer world in a healthy and grounded manner, we must develop some tactics and approach the complex matrix of ourselves –and others– with circumspect attention.

 

Saturday, Nov. 18 | Desire, Crown of Thorns
New Moon in Scorpio | 26 degrees | 3.41am
Mars in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn | 17 degrees

Odilon Redon | 1894 | Van Gogh Museum | Sourced via Pinterest

Scorpio season has revealed much yet, and finally offers us its Dark Moon tonight. This late Scorpio Moon takes us beyond personal successes and turmoil, and into the impersonal, factual territory of desire itself.

The void of this New Moon refuses to reflect to you what you think you want. What it will do is turn your eye inward so you can see some truth from within yourself. The truth that arises, of course, is about precisely what you have defended yourself from desiring, knowingly or not. We have to renounce the fights we have put up to shield our eyes from our own souls.

This Scorpio Moon wants to strip us bear, to reveal all. It wants to access the truth of what we actually desire deeply, whether we “believe” we can have it or not. This is the strange sensation of being one with our desire, both the object and the actor of it.

Defenses die here in the face of desire. It is a primal reality, something that we break down in the face of, or that we make our way through, battered but born anew. It is our crown of thorns, betraying the cataclysmic humility of our souls. A simultaneously motivating and destructive force, like Kali herself, desire is redemptive. Do we accept its reality? For if it wants to take us anywhere, it is toward redemption.

Scorpio’s two rulers, Mars and Pluto, will be meeting in exact square later in the day, so sensations of helplessness in the face of desire may come across strong. We’ll want to be careful of impurities, and how we base decisions upon them. With two malefics in such a hard aspect, insecurities and fears are bound to rear their reptilian heads, so be aware of both the energy you project outward and the compulsive defenses you raise. You may catch yourself drawing daggers only to find that it is helpless children who have cast meaningless insults.

At the same time, this New Moon semi-sextiles Saturn. This aspect helps us taste the discipline it takes to hold tender space for ourselves in the midst of such humblingly strong forces that arise from within.

Tuesday, Nov. 21 | Beyond Monsters and Mages
Sun ingress into Sagittarius | 7:05pm

"Postmen of the Wilderness" | Arthur Heming | 1921 | Sourced via publicdomainreview.org

Any time a planet crosses from Scorpio into Sagittarius, there is a breath of cool fresh air and an “aha, light!” sensation courses through our consciousness. It is as though we rediscover fire after the floodgates of the dark season have let fly the storms. Sun in Sagittarius marks the atmospheric shift from Samhain, festival of darkness, to Yule, when the imagination begins to turn to the next cycle of fertility. We gain optimism here, and the Sun’s stay in the sign of the archer welcomes solar magic. Allow enthusiasm to lead the way into unexplored territory.

Train your vision on personal life philosophies as well. With all the excavation and the first-hand experience we’ve gained from encountering our inner monsters and mages during Scorpio season, we are ready to begin formulating some theories and laying ground rules for how we want to lean into the coming year.

Wednesday, Nov. 22 | Numbing or Knowing
Neptune in Pisces stations direct | 6:20am | 11 degrees 

Neptune in Pisces has opened up a collective fascination with spiritual growth. Thanks much to the Aquarian Age phenomena of the Internet and social media, mindfulness practices are receiving unprecedented popular attention.

For this we can thank Neptune, planet of redemptive spiritual awareness, in Pisces, the sign of consciousness itself. But with Neptune Retrograde since June, we've also seen its Piscean shadows of numbing out or losing oneself to the fog that rolls in over the tides of emotion.

Since June, North America has experienced many strange events, the significance of which can be overwhelming to consider. Astronomical phenomena like the Solar Eclipse crossed the continent, but so did radical social crises, senseless massacres, and the revelation of pervasive sexual abuse. Ecological disasters like statewide fires, earthquakes, and super storms have also ravaged the collective sense of stability, not to mention the impact of political catastrophes such as the reawakening fear of nuclear war. This Neptune Retrograde has been disconcertingly taxing on the spirit, and many individuals have found themselves ungrounded and awash in empathic overload, not to mention mind-numbing fear. Dissociation is a natural response.

So as Neptune the redeemer stations direct, there is a real opportunity for some of this fog to clear from the collective awareness and embrace our deeper knowing. If we harness it, we will have a much more directed capacity to craft powerful and constructive responses to these crises.

Jupiter in Scorpio is also making its way into a harmonious with Neptune at this time, and this could go a few ways. We may be more clearly able to see our shadows and have compassionate, redemptive relationship with them, or we could become ever-more delusional about our shadows and wield them the easy way, like weapons. Of course, only individuals can make this decision. Here there is no hoping, only the shouldering of personal responsibility on the part of every unit of the collective.

Sunday, Nov. 26 | Pacifist Battles
First Quarter Moon in Pisces | 4 degrees | 9:01am
Venus in Scorpio trine Chiron in Pisces | 24 degrees
Mars in Libra opposite Eris in Aries | 22 degrees

Now for a space to plant the seeds of dreams. Luna takes her exalted course through Pisces, asking us to render our relationship with consciousness as purely as we can. Humans have a particularly special role here: we epitomize the process of integrating emotion with the universal neutrality of consciousness. Being itself cares not for the swing of the pendulum. Chaos reigns and takes us in its fearsome grip, but we must reconcile this with the cool reality of awareness. First Quarter Moon in Pisces reminds us not to be distracted by the squabble of “meaning.” She presents us instead with the predicament of reaching the peace of Being. Do you take her dare or no?

We find a watery trine between Venus in Scorpio and Chiron in Pisces today as well, which creates an atmosphere of acceptance for the strange and the morbid. This day is also witness to the opposition of Mars in Libra to his warrior sister, the asteroid Eris. We are going to have to look at our conniving resistance to open battle with our own demons.

Just as the Bhagavad Gita begins with the god Krishna persuading the warrior Arjuna to go into an apocalyptic battle against his friends and family but can be read as a spiritual primer to pacifism, we must understand that if we don’t do battle with our own fearful demons, we will never achieve true compassion. What are you willing to battle in order to reach higher spiritual grounds? Take this day to open up spiritual and emotional projects that attune the nervous system to greater peace. Plant those seeds, and defend them from the shadows with all your might. Whatever lifeblood of yours it takes, make sure they get their rays of light.

Ink and opaque watercolor on paper | India | circa 1520–40 | sourced via Wikimedia Commons

Friday, Dec. 1 | Love of Wisdom, Love of the Unknown
Venus ingress into Sagittarius | 1:14am
Uranus in Aries semi-sextile Chiron in Pisces | 24 degrees

Venus makes her entry into the sign of the archer in the wee hours of this first day of December. Venus is smart here, wiser for her Scorpionic experiences, and ready to generate spaciousness in how she relates to desire. The final degrees of Scorpio prepped her to release expectation and frame her desire as something greater than a means to an end. It is an end in itself, a sacred motivator to be wielded as she pleases.

So now, having fearlessly faced the reality of her own interior, this queen of connection is ready to utilize her connective prowess for the classic Sagittarian “higher good.” This is philosophical love, the philo (“love”) of sophia (“wisdom”). When Venus embarks into these wisdom-loving plains, we begin to open up to truly embracing the less expected forms of healing through relationship. It is easier here to shed old patterns and truly re-pattern through the new. Wherever you once thought love should show itself, look elsewhere, into the unknown.

Sunday, Dec. 3 | Structural Review: Making Way for Tales of Compassion
Full Moon in Gemini | 11 degrees | 8:47am
Mercury stations retrograde in Sagittarius | 29 degrees | 12:34am

Stories. Gemini loves them. No zone of the zodiac is so hungry for information. This Full Moon will have our minds humming with impressive and fantastical facts, striving to string them together into some coherent form.

Form will play a large part, as it usually does in the crafting of stories. About 8 hours before the Full Moon, Mercury stations direct just one degree away from Saturn. This retrograde is therefore a time for structural review. How do we tell ourselves stories? Are our stories told as mechanisms for defending ourselves from looking into our own truths, or are they told in such a way that opens our hearts to healing and seeking inner harmony and vulnerability with others?

When Mercury stations retrograde, the mind must become friendly to unusual modes of operation. These conditions are suitable for revising mental patterns to make way for greater freedom of expression. We are lucky that this Mercury’s retrograde takes place around the Full Moon: the themes of this retrograde (which lasts until December 22) therefore include telling healthy stories that allow us to embody the full range of emotional expression.

Moreover, this Full Moon squares Neptune in Pisces, so spiritual evolution is knocking at the door. No stories but those that render us more open to transformation will be allowed past these gates, and the hard aspect between Moon and Neptune suggests that differentiating between regressive and progressive stories will demand losses. Some old stories must dissolve in order for new ones to rise to the surface.

Quincunx Jupiter also sends the message to the Moon that though we may not see the path forward to new more wholesome stories, we must have faith and fascination with the process of spiritual growth.

Tuesday, Dec. 5 | The Body Electric
Chiron station direct | 24 degrees | 1:47am
Mercury Rx conjunct Saturn in Sagittarius | 28 degrees

Medical imagery from 15th century | Sourced via publicdomainreview.org

Chiron stations direct at 24 degrees of Pisces today while in exact semi-sextile with Uranus. Healing fully is a matter of allowing. As living organisms, we interact with a greater system of Being over which we have no control. Our best bet for moving beyond the sensation of fragmentation is allowing this greater system of existence to flow through us. The relationship Chiron is working out with Uranus through this semi-sextile is about tapping into the electric flow of energy through our bodies.

Mercury is conjunct Saturn today. Saturn is the planet that rules our bodies as they relate to time and all that it imposes upon us, including the poignant process of demise and decay. We can choose to fear the effects of this process or we can welcome its epiphanies to transform us. Specifically, we can access this process mentally today. Allow your mind to wrap around biological realities and to love them as lessons.

The hereditary conditions of life and death are a source of great fear for many. And yet, if we allow our minds to expand beyond the compulsive fear of death, there is much beauty in this operation. Death is transmutation. It is our connection to the transpersonal. This is the poetic irony of a life where consciousness exits its vessel to enter the unknown. It takes enormous mastery to face the entire process unflinchingly. Today, we have access to the taste of this poise.

Saturday, Dec. 9 | The Warrior Feral Again
Mars ingress into Scorpio | 12:59am
Sun in Sagittarius semi-sextile Pluto | 18 degrees

Mars enter Scorpio. He comes home. Libra had him aggressively petitioning for justice, but in Scorpio, he sheds the suit and goes feral into the woods. With so many planetary bodies now in elegant Sagittarius, Mars becomes our comely warrior, doing the thing he does best: hunting for resources and refining his tactics of war.

Sun in Sagittarius semi-sextiles Pluto today as well, so the role of the hero who boldly plunges into the shadows is back up. We have already seen our tender underbelly Venus through this dark terrain, and as she travelled Scorpio grounds, our tender yin energies were exposed to our myriad atrocious demons. We learned the lessons of vulnerability and caring for ourselves in our lowest states.

With this practice under our belts, Mars and Sun can go forth in activating these underworld energies with heat and compassion. This begins a period of proactive engagement, boldly pursuing whatever endeavors our tenderness has called for.

Sunday, Dec. 10 | Ritual Liberation
Last Quarter Moon in Virgo | 18 degrees | 12:51am
Mercury Rx in Sagittarius square Chiron in Pisces | 24 degrees
Venus in Sagittarius square Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees

The Last Quarter Moon is a square aspect between Sun and Moon, so it is a matter of efforting toward release. Moon in Virgo reminds us that organization can benefit the process of letting-go. Ritual liberation is the secret. No need to throw oneself carelessly into the chaos. Rather, let us welcome chaos in a methodical manner, in reasonable doses.

Waning squares populate this Moon’s sky: Venus and Retrograde Mercury in Sagittarius square Neptune and Chiron in Pisces, respectively. Effort indeed. If we truly want to complete growth cycles that have been taking place throughout 2017, we need to begin planning the final stages now. What practical steps can you take to efficiently release outdated modes of thinking and of inter-relating? Does this mean distancing yourself from relationships that hold you back from fully trusting yourself? Does this mean cutting habits that compromise your health?

For Virgo rules health. Self-care is always an important aspect of healing, but so is diminishing self-sabotage. Where do you jeopardize the harmonious functioning of body and mind? Take some time to really look at your behavior and take responsibility for it. What have you been bandaging so as to avoid your own truth? Analyze what you find, and orient yourself toward making amends, with tender gratitude even for the crutches that have brought you this far.

Let's also remember that Virgo likes to be as down to earth and useful as possible. Keep yourself oriented in the wisdom that maintaining your own health allows you to get clear on what you offer to the collective.

           
Tuesday, Dec. 12 | The Mind in the Heart of the Sun
Mercury Cazimi in Sagittarius | 21 degrees | 5:49pm

Mercury Cazimi is a moment of clarity in the midst of retrograde murk. The message of Mercury Retrograde usually feels conspicuous at this time, so refer back to themes that were up as Mercury stationed retrograde. Remember he did so during the Full Moon in Gemini that squared Neptune. Check in with how fully you embody emotional expression, and how willing you are to release stories that inhibit spiritual expansion.

Around this day, Venus will be making aspects to Jupiter and to the lunar Nodes, so relationship themes are up. Look honestly into what motivates you in relationship. Check in with your intentions in love, and workshop ideas for getting into better alignment. This is, after all, Mercury in Sagittarius, where he is the avid savant. Wisdom is the endpoint here, so even if you don’t find yourself in perfect alignment with your intentions, gather your awareness and allow it to bear its fruits over time.

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Though My Soul May Set in Darkness: Lunar Cycle October 19 – November 18

“Though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect light / I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” – Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer”

“The paradox therefore reflects a higher level of intellect and, by not forcibly representing the unknowable as known, gives a more faithful picture of the real state of affairs.” – Carl Jung

Overveiw

Stars. They are born as dense clouds of gas in the quiet arms of spiral galaxies. As the cloud thickens, hydrogen atoms begin to fall toward its center. These atoms eventually create and sustain a chain reaction of nuclear explosions that cultivate an environment that can remain stable in its intensity for billions and billions of years. Eventually, the hydrogen within the star burns out, and the star collapses, or explodes, sending its hot particles out into the odd corners of the universe.

Such is the nature of the transition from Libra to Scorpio season, from the Scales of Justice to the Scorpion. We relinquish the exquisite balance Libra has taught us to execute so that we can revel in the entropic treasure-hunt of Scorpio’s waters. We begin to literally run out of light: long days make their exit and we welcome the arcane cloak of night as the grounds for self-exploration. Poise is foregone. The baser aspects of the human psyche will become our guides.

And yet, the New Moon in Libra that begins this lunation is the perfect preparation for the Sun’s ingress into Scorpio. The New Moon takes place in direct opposition to Uranus in Aries, so it supports us in establishing inner calm in the face chaos. If we make proper use of this New Moon, we will gain access to an unshakeable center of inner sanctity to prepare us for the Sun’s entry into Scorpio three days later, where we will walk among our shadows with no degree of separation. Our best option is to boldly press further into the intensity of the present moment while harboring peaceful acceptance of ambiguity.

Uranian themes figure largely into the lunar cycle, hurling bolts of lightning into the imaginal realm. Nothing is regular in the landscape. Exaggerated figures step silhouetted into a panoramic view. We sense much of what is present, but exactly the nature of the figures cannot be seen clearly. Are they phantoms, fiends, or friends here to show the way? We have to swallow our fear for much of the lunation and look these creatures in the face as the light crackles ephemerally through the dark sky.

"Ribbon Lighting" | William Jennings | Public Domain

Thursday, Oct. 19 | Trust In The Unexpected
New Moon in Libra | 26 degrees | 12.11pm
Moon opposite Uranus in Aries
Moon quincunx Chiron in Pisces

Stop. Breathe. As Emily Dickinson wrote, "Trust in the unexpected," the darkness of this vacated Moon. New Moon in Libra today comes in direct opposition to Uranus, the great Disruptor in the sky. While Libra likes to ground out and establish balance, Uranus is the harbinger of radical change and upheaval. This renegade planet rules electricity, and it promises metamorphosis in this lunation that may feel revelatory or disruptive, or both.

As the lunation opens, it delivers lightning bolts of clarification around themes of sovereignty and relationship. How do we relate authentically and compassionately? In this mix, it means breaking taboos both personal and collective, and going beyond our comfort zones. Be of service to your Self, and to the Selves of others.

So allow yourself to watch structures perish, and understand that underneath the surface, you carry something irrevocably peaceful. Meister Eckhart called this the “place in the soul that neither time nor space nor no created thing can touch.” By late Libra where the Sun and Moon embrace this month, we have learned to find this calm center in the eye of the storm. By now we know better than to make paltry requests of the world to pause itself or be polite for our sake. We are already masters of finding serenity as castles and mountains crumble and erect around us.

Luna also sends a quincunx to Chiron today, giving us just enough interest in the process of healing to look for those opportunities among the chaotic and the mundane. Drop in with whatever heals the soul in micro-doses. Listen to the music or watch the films that open your heart. Allow yourself to unfold naturally, without masks, as whoever needs to come forth.

“As this lunation opens, it delivers lightning bolts of clarification around themes of sovereignty and relationship. ”

Sunday, Oct. 22 | Strange Fruits of Esoteric Diplomacy
Mars ingress into Libra | 11:29am
Sun ingress into Scorpio | 10:27pm
Venus in Libra quincunx Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees

The Sun enters Scorpio just after Mars, traditional ruler of Scorpio, ingresses into Libra, granting the intensity of Scorpio season at least one justice-oriented mouthpiece. Mars is, however, awkward in Libra, not necessarily ready to use the brute force he's known for in the midst of his attractive Libran company. From this airy, civilized arena, he would rather cast allegations and wheedle his enemies out in court than take them out with his natural talent, the swift kick in the pants.

This can be powerful medicine for a collective exhausted by the violence of its so-called leaders who “reject diplomacy” and by the onslaught of environmental ferocity as the earth shakes and rages. But we must be careful when reverting to systems of justice not to rely on outdated or corrupted regimens. We must take full responsibility for our methods of seeking peace. We cannot afford to sweep the reality of our motivations under the rug. So stay awake, and do not avert your eyes from the shadows. Therein lie the skeleton keys.

By the days’ end, Venus in Libra will be sending the ever-fascinating quincunx angle to Neptune in Pisces. Those who enjoy leaning into mystery are in luck, for this aspect brings a peculiar quest to understand the nature of the intoxication brought on by healing. We hunger for healing’s strange fruits, and crave some understanding. Venus’s cunning signals to Neptune will breathe strange riddles of esoteric Truths into Mars’ justice-seeking ears, and will remind us to think of this mysterious quest as we traverse the shadows cast by Scorpio Sun in the coming month.

Monday, Oct. 23: Quantum Woo
Mercury in Scorpio trine Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees 

Mercury has been in Scorpio since Tuesday morning. Mercury covers the functions of the mind, thus his jobs are many. As a Roman god, one of his tasks was to mark the boundaries between the upper and the under worlds. This is true of the evolutionary function of the mind: it helps us out with the odd chore of creating boundaries between what is “real” and what is “unreal.”

Why an odd chore? Because those lines we create are easily disproven: when it comes down to it, what humans perceive as “reality” is pretty much what is most palpably useful or threatening to us in this 3rd dimension. The trickiest thing about our minds is that they can get behind the irrational concept of mystery just as much as they can get behind the rational concept of reality. These two concepts are more like flipsides of the same coin than anything else, and this truth is extremely upsetting to the idea of a totally comprehensible, enlightenment-style order of the universe. Hence, paradox.

Mercury in Scorpio is not unlike Mercury retrograde, wherein the underworld or mystery dimension is the main context for mental function. However there is more navigational poise when Mercury travels direct in Scorpio. Here the fleet-footed god plunges our minds into the underbelly of reality, often called the “unreal,” and he comes back to shore offering information that will be rationally applicable to existence on the ground and in the day-to-day.

When Mercury trines Neptune from Scorpio, batten down the hatches. This is the stuff of quantum physics. Our minds are in full form to receive information that blows up the boundaries of what we consider real. As such, we want to be careful on this day of following shreds of information too far out in the deep end when we don’t have the full context or understand the details behind those the information. Recall the useful if snide words of RationalWiki: “Quantum woo is the justification of irrational beliefs by an obfuscatory reference to quantum physics.”

Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl | The Souls of Acheron | Public Domain | sourced from Wikimedia Commons, 1898

Tuesday, Oct. 24 | The Protracted Path of Healing
Saturn in Sagittarius square Rx Chiron in Pisces | 24 degrees

It takes discipline to heal. Nothing like Saturn square Chiron reminds us of this. This is a tough aspect that, due to retrogrades, colors the whole of 2017. We have been getting to know its message since the end of 2016, and it becomes exact again today, broadcasting sternly across the cosmos: if you think you can heal your karmic wounds simply by floating melancholy and wistful through the cosmic ocean, think again.

Healing takes not only pragmatism and endurance, but also the transcendental capacity to move beyond the worldly fluctuations to which our psyches fall prey. We must remember that while we may work steadfastly at our healing, the relief we feel when we have made a breakthrough in healing both appears and disappears.

As Ivy Compton-Burnett wrote, “Time is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one.” Time often feels circular, taking us back to places that feel all too familiar. We cannot let the transient nature of immediate relief crush our confidence in the process of healing. We must have faith in the slow, palliative accumulation of our efforts’ results. The square between Saturn and Chiron is the ultimate test of that. This is the calling to make directed use of the knowledge and experience you’ve gained from your pain and discomfort.

We must move forward steadfastly as with Father Time, maundering down the protracted path of healing at the rate of our own human experience. We encounter many baffling circumstances, and must integrate them, acknowledging our smallness with humility.

Thursday, Oct. 26 | Know Your Desire
Sun conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio | 3 degrees

This day marks the beginning of a Sun-Jupiter cycle that will last until they meet again in Sagittarius in about 13 months. From these early degrees of Scorpio, the Sun and Jupiter work their magic on opening up the secret strata of our desire natures. This is the crux of esoteric wisdom. Jupiter and the Sun meeting in Scorpio facilitates the space to dive courageously into one’s own particular patterning and one’s own desires, and from that first-hand experience, to unlock knowledge and powers that could never be unlocked through instruction alone.

While the Sun is the source of direct and obvious illumination, Jupiter is the planet that opens our consciousness up to extra-dimensional reality. When the two planets meet in Scorpio, the nature of our desires becomes extra visible, but it also shores up bits of wisdom that unlock sensations of greater, schematic connectivity. Throughout Jupiter’s 13-month term in the sign of the scorpion, the energy of this Sun-Jupiter conjunction will continue to radiate warmth, clarity, and devotional integrity to our year of expeditions through these Scorpionic enigmas.

“Do not forget to take your emotional well-being along for the ride as you plunge into novel philosophies. We must be tender with our hearts at this time.”

Friday, Oct. 27 | Radical Frontiers
First Quarter Moon in Aquarius | 4 degrees | 3:22pm
Mercury in Scorpio sextile Pluto in Capricorn | 17 degrees
Venus in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn | 17 degrees

First Quarter Moon is a time to make commitments. In Aquarius, we’re talking lofty commitments. Commitments to the frontier. This is good stuff for the Uranian energies at play during this lunation, for as outdated structures are demolished, the Aquarian Moon feels into the new.

Do not forget to take your emotional well-being along for the ride as you plunge into novel philosophies. We must be tender with our hearts at this time. Venus in Libra squares Pluto, which makes us aware of the darker, karmic patterns that play out through relationships, especially ones that have been collectively inherited. We may see some seriously gnarly aspects of the self rear their heads as we relate to our kith and kin.

The Moon is also a little ungrounded in Aquarius, so be wary of insensitivity and condescension (from yourself and others). Luckily Mercury will be sending a gentle and exciting sextile to Pluto: this helps us get behind the galvanizing aspects of our shadows, and do the detective work it takes to shift and heal personal patterning.

Tuesday, Oct. 31 | Samhain
Venus in Libra sextile North Node in Leo and trine South Node in Aquarius | 21 degrees
Moon conjunct Chiron in Pisces | 24 degrees

"Deity and Skeleton Masks" | Alice Kandell | Public Domain | sourced via Wordpress

The veils are at their thinnest. Not necessarily an astrological event, this day marks the “summer’s end.” This is the height of Scorpio season, the height of our access to the otherworlds and to messages from the dead. Ancestry, astral travel, past life investigations, you name it. This is the time.

The Moon is conjunct Chiron on this day, so it’s best to ask of these other realms for messages around healing. Remember that our ancestors’ wounds carry on in our body. When we do healing work for our ancestors, we do healing work for ourselves.

Venus is also in a gentle conversation with the lunar nodes, whispering poetry about the pleasures of karmic growth. Allow yourself some distanced but poignant awareness of the strange stories you’ve come to work out in this life.

Thursday, Nov. 2 | Improvisational Modes of Being
Sun in Scorpio trine Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees | 11:30pm
Venus in Libra sextile Saturn in Sagittarius | 24 degrees

We’ve seen this fluid conversation between Neptune and a Scorpionic spelunker once before this month when Mercury spoke with Jupiter. Mercury, brilliant thinker, had a deep engaging chat with the expansive redeemer, hungrily seeking out the facts that would expose the limitlessness of the mind and soothe the pain of falsely fragmented conceptualizations of reality.

But now, as the Sun engages Neptune from Scorpio, we are not really searching for our minds to be blown. Rather we are opening up to modes of being that effectively integrate deepened and expanded knowing. Artists may be pirouetting with creative inspiration in the days surrounding these aspects. Allow yourself to find expression that illuminates greater, more holistic realities. Scorpio Sun pushes us to embrace the horizontal and the vertical, the chthonic and the ethereal.

As Venus in Libra sextiles Saturn in Sagittarius, we are also creatively friendly to experimenting with pre-existing forms. Take the metaphorical (or literal) sheet music off the shelf, and dip into it with improvisational momentum.
 

Friday, Nov. 3 | Celebration in the Caverns
Full Moon in Taurus | 11 degrees | 10:21pm
Moon sextiles Neptune in Pisces
Venus in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries | 25 degrees

Our yearly Taurus Full Moon always brings up the tension between the practice of living out a simple, righteous life here on Earth, and the Scorpio Sun’s demand that we dive into the abyssal caverns of human psychology. The paradox is that these two practices feed each other, but we must engage them both in a circumspect manner, not letting one take precedence over the other.

Odilon Redon | Public Domain | sourced via publicdomainreview.org

At the same time, this Full Moon is a time of celebrating what we have harvested from the seeds we planted in Taurus season and understanding that the growth cycle is now officially at rest until the next spring season. Along with Samhain, this Full Moon reminds us of the beauty of letting-go. The simplicity of the warm summer weather and its green pastures has left the northern side of the globe and we prepare for the work of maintaining our warmth and lifeblood throughout the dark season. This is a time to celebrate all that has been accomplished, and lay to rest further development. The waning half of the cycle has arrived, and this Full Moon allows us to feel it.

Venus in Libra opposes Uranus on this same day. Electricity straight to the heart. Surprises both amiable and abhorrent may knock on the door of your patterns in interrelating. Stay resilient, and be ready for revelations that mean serious restructuring.

Saturday, Nov. 4 | Stoking the Fires of Human Evolution
Saturn in Sagittarius trine Uranus in Aries | 25 degrees

Like the square between Saturn and Chiron, this aspect is a drawn-out conversation between two slow-moving bodies, and it has influenced all of 2017.

Saturn, Father Kronos, is a keeper of boundaries. Lover of institutions, intellectual structuring, and inherited forms, he marks out what is knowable in this 3D realm. He is separated from our revolutionary friend Uranus who takes us beyond what is known, by the asteroid belt that contains Chiron. Much has been written about the relationship among Saturn and Uranus, and the asteroid Chiron who bridges the gap between those two planets (see the work of Barbara Hand-Clow).

When Saturn and Uranus engage in this seamless trine from their respective fire signs, the conversation between them flows like hot magma, slowly, gradually opening us up to new, creative systems that stoke the fires of evolution. Because of the simultaneous square Saturn sends to Chiron, there is an emphasis on scheming for corrective, therapeutic institutions.

While many individuals may have been doing good personal work on growth and implementing structures that cultivate individuation and authenticity, this year has looked like anything but an positive restructuring for the collective. It has looked more like the exposure of outrageously inept structures. Such is the medicine. We must become aware of and dismantle what no longer works before we can rebuild. This aspect will continue to reveal its character as time moves on.

“As we absorb fascinating new information, it is crucial that we ask ourselves “what does this illuminate?” Knowledge here is to be applied more than it is to be gratuitously consumed. Remember that in Sagittarius, Mercury seeks out the philosopher’s stone.”

Sunday, Nov. 5 | The Philosopher's Stone
Mercury ingress into Sagittarius | 12:19pm

"Birth of the Philosopher's Stone" | illustration from the book "The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II, 1576-1612" | published by Henry Carrington Bolton in 1904 | Public Domain | sourced via Pinterest

Fresh air. Mercury clambers out from the thorn-thick footpaths of Scorpio, and raises his eyes to the suddenly broad, clear horizon before him. Mercury enjoys exuberant Sagittarius. He is curious to learn new ways of thinking, and he is welcomed to speed through information and formulate lofty philosophies.

Sagittarius and Mercury share a love of information, but Sagittarius pushes Mercury past fact-finding and into the realm of ideology and schools of thought. We will want to take bigger-picture perspectives during Mercury’s peregrinations through Sagittarius. As we absorb fascinating new information, it is crucial that we ask ourselves “what does this illuminate?” Knowledge here is to be applied more than it is to be gratuitously consumed. Remember that in Sagittarius, Mercury seeks nothing less than the Philosopher's Stone.

As you seek out your philosophical elixirs, be sure to process your accomplishments wisely, for the Sagittarian field demands nuanced ethics. This landscape can tempt us to dive into blind optimism or inflated doctrines. Beware of lustrous objects whose sheen is but the result of shallow gilding. 

Mercury will be in Sagittarius until January 10 due to a retrograde that begins December 3 This Retrograde phase will carry us through Winter Solstice.

Tuesday, Nov. 7 | Subterranean Lady of Love
Venus ingress into Scorpio | 4:39am

Soon after Mercury has left Scorpio, our Lady of Love steps into the grounds the god of reason has just vacated. Her transition from the decorated halls of Libra to the strange subterranean tunnels of Scorpio can be a hard one. In early Scorpio she suddenly realizes she is left with little but her desire, and if she is not careful, her desire can become a gnawing, fixating fuel to escape the dark.

As such we must be extremely mindful with our hearts as Aphrodite departs from her mythical keel and plunges beneath the surface of turbulent waters, still vulnerable to currents she knows not yet how to navigate.

And yet, curiosity is her strong point here. She wants to know, no matter how menacing the figures she will find. She can learn much about the depth and gnarled contours of her own inner reality, whether she already knows how to process that information or not. Go boldly. Seek truth, and embrace the intensity of the present moment, for the present is, in the end, all that we truly possess.

Cylinder Seal depicting the descent of Inanna | Public Domain | Sourced via ancient-origins.net | University of Chicago 

“If redemptive Neptune refuses to see the integrity of Mars despite his cumbersome Libran suit, Mars may lose his temper and engage in some malignant subterfuge behind the curtains of polite society.”

Thursday, Nov. 9 : Crucial Messages from the Indignant Suitor
Mars in Libra quincunx Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees
Sun in Scorpio sextile Pluto in Capricorn | 17 degrees

Mars in Libra: awkward soldier in a suit. Today he, indignant warrior of self-differentiation, strikes up a self-conscious but flirtatious chinwag with Neptune in Pisces, the god of the sea who laughs at the idea of solids or the definition of a “self.” This chat is awkward for obvious reasons. To name a couple: the two planets can’t really see each other clearly from their quincunx, and the game is completely skewed. Neptune is majestic in its rulership in Pisces, and Mars is at his detriment in Libra. Neptune stands in glamorous robes, hardly ready to give this unwieldy suitor the time of day. Yet Neptune cannot deny value of the brusque comments this suitor utters.

Moreover, if redemptive Neptune refuses to see the integrity of Mars despite his cumbersome Libran suit, Mars may lose his temper and engage in some malignant subterfuge behind the curtains of polite society. Not a good situation.

So around this day, as this aspect builds, listen to your anger, to your indignation. What message does the fiery Martial planet have for the ridiculously graceful god of salvation, that side of yourself that scoffs at petty battles, yet knows that some battles must be undertaken to preserve peace?

On the same day, the Sun sextiles Pluto. The karmic enemies are visible, and we are ready to look at them with curiosity, morbid or righteous. The idea here is to gather information despite readiness to strike. Keep yourself at the pitch of preparation. These are not culmination aspects. If we are lucky they may gift us fervor for the spirit of inquiry.

“If something has to die in this battle, we have to let it be the ego.”

Friday, Nov. 10 | Selfless Self-Expression
Last Quarter Moon in Leo | 18 degrees | 1:36pm
Moon conjunct North Node in Leo
Sun in Scorpio square the Lunar Nodes

"Hannah Hoch and Dada Doll" | Sourced via Pinterest | 1925

This Last Quarter Moon takes place on Luna’s own North Node. The Dragon’s Head is a bit obsessive about evolution, and at the same time, the Sun squares the Lunar Nodes, creating an atmosphere of karmic inertia.

As Mars and Neptune’s quincunx has been teaching us, not all battles are worth our time. Here we need to look at the battles we pursue to preserve the ego. Moon in Leo will be reminding us how fun and flattering the construct of ‘identity’ is, but we cannot let ourselves be the puppets our own egos. For this is the Last Quarter Moon. Something must die in this battle, and if this is the case, we have to let it be the ego.

It won’t be easy. The center of our solar system, source of heat and growth, will be caught square between two sides of a high-tension paradox. How does one cultivate one’s own identity and simultaneously expand beyond it? How do we arrive at self-expression, but in such a way that we act in selflessness?

Moon on the North Node answers us: it is absolutely possible to celebrate your own authentic identity egolessly, and that is by honoring every other unique identity just as ardently. We may be called into spaces where we must celebrate Otherness that triggers us or boggles our minds. We must remember that when it feels impossible to tolerate or identify with an Otherness whose nature is unfathomable to one’s own, that is precisely when one must open the heart and love that Other. Allow yourself to adore something you’ve never understood. Allow yourself to have compassion for broken identities, and to celebrate the spirit beneath.

Monday, Nov. 13 | Emancipatory Desire
Venus conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio | 7 degrees
Mercury in Sagittarius square Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees

Desire is big. Incomprehensibly big. If we let our feet leave the ground and our minds hungrily burrow into its temptingly warm tunnels, desire will render the mundane world around us truly desolate. But if we stay alert and grounded into the present moment in a concrete way, we can find measureless gratification in what offers itself before our very eyes and all around us. When we do this, we find that suddenly, the ongoing desire narratives which had driven entire, redemptive life philosophies, simply lose their power over us.

Venus meeting Jupiter in Scorpio and Mercury squaring Neptune presents us with this altercation between the mind and desire, but it also grants us the potency to come out of the altercation with emancipatory release. At best, we will begin to desire nothing but true emancipation.

With these aspects coloring this week and the weekend preceding it, we must keep proportion in check. Jupiter can blow Venus’s Scorpionic desires way out of proportion, or it can free her from her hunger to fulfill them. Jupiter may also hand this queen of love everything she’s ever wanted, but she must be wary, for the mind (Mercury) is at odds with spiritual integrity (Neptune) and may encourage her to numb herself with pleasures of the flesh. Stay on your toes this week, and be careful of the intoxication of fortunate windfalls.

“Because Venus is in Scorpio, she is willing to see the more dubious aspects of the Other, and Neptune in Pisces takes her beyond perverse fascination. She is compassionate in her acceptance, agile in her sympathy. She is inclined to bear witness and soothe with her presence, and to bear her own truth in response.”

Thursday, Nov. 16 | Gentle Dreams of Union
Venus in Scorpio trine Neptune in Pisces | 11 degrees
Mercury in Sagittarius sextile Mars in Libra | 15 degrees

In the words of Liz Greene, “The contacts of Neptune and Venus are the most romantic of aspects.” These two planets retrieve their bliss from union. There is untold potential for beauty in the fluid connection they establish today, and it goes beyond the verbal. This is the willingness to step into and altogether experience the Other.

There exists a strong mythology of alienation. We know the story: we seek union with the Other, but we are irrevocably trapped in our own experience. Not so when Venus and Neptune approach one another with the grace of extended empathy. We can understand that the same stuff that flows through “me” flows through “you.” Because Venus is in Scorpio, she is willing to see the more dubious aspects of the Other, and Neptune in Pisces takes her beyond perverse fascination. She is compassionate in her acceptance, agile in her sympathy. She is inclined to bear witness and soothe with her presence, and to bear her own truth in response.

Of course every act is a balancing one. If taken to its detriment, this aspect may beget serpentine wreathes of obliging gratification. Neptune and Venus in a watery, Scorpionic trine can create the atmosphere of floating away with your fantasies, lovers, or inner demons. The beast Projection roams the grounds. This is an inscrutably dreamy signature that requires some sober cognition.

Mercury in Sagittarius sextiling Mars in Libra is unlikely to grant us this sobriety. Such an aspect may add to the mix overblown suppositions dictating that we must fight for the sanctity of interrelation. Be careful of making commitments with less trustworthy associates on this day, for we are liable to dive too deep without having established a foundation with whatever object we have fixated our soul-yearning upon.

In the end, this energy can absolutely be managed well. If you have established trust with someone or something, allow yourself to explore freely. Just remember that while we desire soul-union, such a union is already in place merely through the phenomenon of our existence. Redundant efforts must be discarded as we walk our paths toward fulfillment.

Matriarchal Integration: Lunation Cycle of August 21 - September 19

Some grudges never die. But with time and conscientious resolution, all are transmuted, as outdated patterns are laid to rest and new methods crop up from the dense Earth to nourish new versions of ourselves. The Sun entered bountiful, matriarchal Virgo yesterday, but the fields we tend and harvest here are still strewn with the debris of Monday’s Solar Eclipse, and the entire season of radical transition that has been upon us, particularly upon those of us in the continental United States. This current lunation cycle will be largely oriented around integration of Monday’s New Moon Solar Eclipse, and expansion on those themes.

So let’s revisit what all of this has meant. Indian mythology has it that Eclipses are borne of an ancient grudge between a primordial dragon, and the Sun and Moon.

As the tale goes, when Vishnu was creating the universe, he decided to make the planetary deities immortal. He began to churn the milky sea to extract a nectar of immortality to feed to the deities. Upon the nectar’s manifestation, a furtive demigod dragon, RahuKetu, snuck into the scene and began drinking this nectar when Vishnu’s attention was elsewhere. The luminaries Sun and Moon, however, spotted the dragon drinking the elixir, and they alerted Vishnu. Vishnu promptly put an end to this behavior by cutting the dragon in half, producing the lunar nodes of the moon, also known as the North Node (Rahu, head of the dragon) and the South Node (Ketu, tail of the dragon), where the Moon’s path around the Earth intersects the Sun’s ecliptic. Rahu and Ketu did penance to Vishnu to earn their place in the zodiac, but because the Sun and Moon tattled on the dragon at the beginning of time, to this day Rahu and Ketu eat up the Sun and Moon whenever they pass over the nodes in the sky, creating dramatic performances of the luminaries’ rhythmical death and rebirth.

The work we dive into during Eclipse Season, then, is healing this eerie ritual between the Sun, Moon, and Dragon, since it will play out until these planetary bodies cease to be.

So as we all know of grudges, they get old. It becomes constructive to understand that although the Dragon still goes through this same ritual with Sun and Moon all these billions of years later, it is possible that the Dragon no longer does this out of spite. The death and rebirth we are afforded during Eclipse season is, in fact, gracious.

"The work we dive into during Eclipse Season, then, is healing this eerie ritual between the Sun, Moon, and Dragon"
“Yellow Dragon” | Katsushika Hokusai | Sourced via Wikimedia Commons

We have yet to see how the “Great American” Solar Eclipse will impact the collective and particularly the United States during its extant crisis of leadership. One thing I do see in the astrology of this lunation cycle is that the energy is promising for radical shifts and unforeseen growth. This is no cause for unchecked optimism as historically troubling conservative extremism crops up across the Western World. This occasions us now to rigorously meet our inner work, to evolve where it is challenging to evolve, and to answer accountably to ourselves and to the collective.

And let’s remain aware that several astrological events will continue to occur around the North Node and the Eclipse degrees during this Lunar cycle, so the work of this Eclipse is anything but finished. We must remain committed to the gradual comprehension of the fragmentary psychic breakthroughs this Eclipse Season has yet afforded.

As Harvest Season comes upon us, then, with Sun, Mars, and Mercury all entering Virgo, we begin to feel prudent, ready to serve responsibly, for ourselves and others. We are always more in the place to get industrious when Virgo Season takes hold, to organize ourselves and, after excitable Leo, to remember what it’s like to want to regulate our energy. We begin to retreat into our native terrain and sort through our harvest, scheming from behind the veils how we can most efficiently apply our reserves.

Virgo is a feminine sign: it is the only female figure in the zodiac. She has been assigned the archetype of Virgin but this is a censored understanding of her work. Goddesses associated with Virgo like Ishtar, Isis, and Demeter are fertility goddesses, and others associated with that sign (Dike, Erigone, and Astraea) represent Justice. Virgo is more archetypally a mother with serious integrity than she is a virgin. So let’s understand her that way. Rather than purity of the flesh, Virgo has purity of intention. She is the highly experienced matriarchal master of integration, prepared to gather our collective chthonic fears, ritually metamorphose them, and yield from them impressive harvest.

Mercury is still in Retrograde in Virgo as this lunation cycle begins, and this has not been a retrograde to titter at. Mercury rules Virgo so the effect of its Retrograde is heightened here. Because Virgo rules health, diet, exercise, colonics, etc., this Mercury Retrograde has wrought strangely bountiful havoc on people’s health. Latent systemic disturbances have erupted and demanded care, so the reality of physical well-being has made itself exigent. With the preponderance of Leo energy in recent days, we have also been turning our attention to how we build strength in the aftermath of carnal collapse, as well.

Note also the very real danger/violence to bodies we have seen recently in the Charlottesville riots. This began on August 12, the day that Mercury stationed retrograde in Virgo. Beyond the personal experience of the body, we were collectively jarred into the urgency of demanding respect for all bodies.

So we are making sense now, of how to handle this newly invigorated awareness of the material realm’s pertinence. We may catch some glimmer of these solutions during Mercury Cazimi on August 26th, but answers may wait to make themselves readily apparent until Mercury stations direct on September 5, and it does so right on the degrees at which Monday’s Eclipse occurred, rehashing what opened up for us during or around the Solar Eclipse. Information about what took place on or around that day will flood in, and pieces of the puzzle may begin to fall into place.

However this is a lunar cycle that brings that sometimes troubling sense of multiple inner projects needing to splinter off from the more basic core growth cycle. Between the movements of Mars, Venus, and Mercury, intimacy and creative work projects are not in sync this month, but will give us the opportunity to develop some ambidexterity.

Finally, we will have several events occurring on the Virgo/Pisces axis this month, including the Full Moon on September 6. This is a sacred axis: no other pair of signs represents the microcosm and macrocosm so succinctly. After redeeming the dramatic death and rebirth tokens the Leo Eclipse cycle promised, we have earned some time to drop into the quiet required of a truly devotional life, which Virgo adores. “As above so below” begins to show us a path beyond the dualistic model of human experience, and into the rich, mysterious soil of a truly authentic life that integrates logic with mysticism, the literal with the otherworldly.

Blessings in the integration and expansion of this lunation cycle.

La Moisson | Camille Pissarro | 1882 | Public Domain

Sun enters Virgo: Flaxen Fields
Monday August 21
5:20pm PST
Beautiful Virgo embraces the Sun, and our will becomes quite naturally captivated by the concept of the fruits of labor. We want to work, to produce, to do right by our physical vitality. We are in an agricultural age after Leo’s fiery hunting and gathering, so allow yourself to settle, develop your ingenuity and problem-solving logic. Craftsmanship is ripe to explore, and we may go in to diligently pursue our creative projects as the light wanes, and the Equinox approaches.

Mars in Leo Trine Saturn in Sagittarius: Rewriting the Classics
Tuesday August 22
21 degrees
Mars in Leo in trine with Saturn is a facile aspect. From here the young warrior has the opportunity to make friendly with his elders. He is prepared to fight for the weak here, but not recklessly. Aware of the wisdom he must acquire, he also remembers he must retain individuality as he parses through Saturn’s relationship with convention. Tradition has substance, but we must use it as the unique warriors we were born to be. The mature dynamism of Mars in late Leo conversing with Saturn in late Sagittarius echoes Heracles’s final of his twelve labors: his confrontation with Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades. Before he sets off to capture Cerberus at the mouth of Hell, Heracles must be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. Esoteric initiation is no easy task: it takes incredible care and discipline, and profound surrender. This is precisely how the vivacious Leo Mars approaches Grandfather Saturn from the trine: ready to champion all auxiliary tasks or projects that will carry him toward the completion of the hero’s journey his lifeblood is so heavily invested in. But remember, Mars is still young in this cycle (less than a month into his 26-month cycle after renewing on July 26) so be careful that he does not become subservient to an out-of-balance Saturn. Saturn is currently retrograde, so we are more aware of his perversions that uphold patriarchal disease. We are not here to live in the classics, we are here to rewrite them in our own lifetimes. So do that methodically. The Sun in Virgo gives you the extra compulsion.

Venus in Cancer trine Chiron in Pisces: Finding the Mutual Coordinates with Past Life Love
Wednesday August 23
27 degrees
This Venusian chat we have with Chiron today begins the conversation we’re having with intimacy over the course of this entire lunation cycle. Basically, this aspect lets us know that we’ll be healing karmic relational patterns this month, downloading information from past lives or from the store of collectively held archetypes that need healing. Receive the messages, and embrace the responsibilities they entail.

Venus in Cancer square Uranus in Aries: Tectonic Plates of the Heart
Thursday August 24
28 degrees
As we download Venus’s Chirotic duties of the month, we are promptly directed to break the rules of relationship. When Uranus and Venus square, it is actually quite an important time to do so. Tectonic plates of the heart are shifting and we are less concerned with finding mutual ground to stand on with friends, family, and lovers, than with asserting our individuality within relations. It’s crucial that we do not bend to others’ will around this time. Individuality is the adamantine treasure to recover. Resist coagulation of empathy as you orient yourself around your own authenticity. Others need this space as much as you do.

Venus ingress into Leo: Punk Lover
Friday August 25
11:30pm
While our solar energy has just moved into the pure and noble fields of Virgo, Venus now sidles into the theatrical arena of Leo, and just after her rebellious square with Uranus. She’s likely to play the teenage punk here after such an aspect, irreverent and sometimes reckless. She is, in both her shadow and brilliance, a performative lover and artist when she transits Leo. Her gestures are grand, and she is happy in the spotlight. Let her be there, but remind her to check herself, for she is in unfamiliar terrain when in Leo. What are her motivations for seeking visibility? What does the flare of her actions accomplish? If she is lucky she will remember that compassionate self-love is the greatest and most radical foundation of all relationship and creative self-expression.

Mercury Cazimi at 3’ Virgo: Harmonizing the Mind at 7.83 Hz
Saturday August 26
3:28pm
Welcome the clarity of Mercury Cazimi in the midst of paramount disorder. The reigning chaos of Mercury’s retrograde stands still for some hours. In the provident fields of Virgo’s first decan, Mercury and the Sun strike a harmonious chord, one bringing peculiar information from an underworld sojourn through Mystery, the other simply bearing witness, in possession of the foresight and faith these strange tales require if they’re to be applied in evolving the agricultural wealth of the inner landscape. We must be wary of naivete about the weight of these tales. Mercury Cazimi at this degree of Virgo suddenly sees the sky light up and the spirit of the journey reveal itself, but if unchecked, Mercury ends up with logorrhea, desperate to tell any listening ear about the revelations and endless implications of his insights. Choose your confidants wisely, calm the prattle, and meditate on the deep frequency the Earth emits.

Jupiter in Libra sextile Saturn in Sagittarius: Second Wind
Saturday August 26
21 degrees
This is an extremely favorable aspect for achieving sophisticated balance and applying it to longstanding projects. This is a waning sextile, so the energetic quality is catching the second (or third or fourth) wind during a marathon. You’ve trained, you’ve been through your ups and downs, and by now you know how to pace yourself to deliver a smooth-sailing finish, though that may be some time in the future. Use this aspect to ground yourself into patience for the bigger projects.

Mars in Leo conjunct North Node: Stronger and Wiser
Saturday August 26
24 degrees
The North Node, or Rahu, head of the primordial dragon, swallowed the Sun just several days ago. He is still hot, and very excited to remind us what we need more of in order to evolve. When Mars is with the head of the dragon, we need more fire, movement, and more strength. We should be cautious of compulsive violence or lording-over, and very much on the look-out for those who are domineering towards ourselves. Exercise is a highly recommended activity for the day. Less easy aerobics and more choreographed movement or strength-building. Cultivate a mindful relationship with the physical realm.

Retrograde Mercury enters Leo: Hot Words
Thursday August 31
10:28am
While Mercury’s Virgo retrograde has wrought havoc on ‘order,’ the fleet-footed comes back to the still-charged late degrees of Leo, where he is slowing down to station direct at the exact degree that Sol and Luna converged on Aug 21, and disappeared into that evolutionary Eclipse. Mercury is piping here and feels compelled to speak up. Careful how you language yourself as Mercury is still in retrograde and not entirely clear on what he means to say.

Retrograde Mercury conjunct Mars in Leo, both trine Uranus in Aries: Evolving the Rebellion
Saturday September 2
28 degrees
Mercury has arrived at the ‘hot’ degree of the Eclipse, where he will stay for several days, and here he encounters Mars. When Mercury and Mars meet, you get the strategic warrior, and there is without question a shocking and potentially rebellious vibe in the meeting of these two today as they talk congenially to the thunder-and-lightning planet, Uranus. Allow yourself to be surprised on and around this day: where incongruous opportunities to break out of the norm arise, take them, especially if you can quickly conjure up a mental scan of the provisional course of action. Because this happens at the degree of the Eclipse, expect it to be thematically related to what you personally have been opening up to throughout Eclipse season, and expect it to be a highly evolutionary event as well. Open up to the unusual and magical underpinnings of reality. This Saturday’s aspect is an opportunity to sortie smartly into the field of manifestation.

Midmorning, the Moon in Capricorn also squares Uranus, and quincunxes Mercury and Mars. This creates some pressure to evolve emotionally to meet this aspect, and to seek out the less obvious tasks we need to accomplish.

Lions from Chauvet Cave | Replica of painting from Brno Museum Antrhropos | Public Domain

Sun in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces: The Super-Organism
Monday September 4
12 degrees
A beehive is a super-organism. All the basic physiological functions that support life are shared. Individual units of the beehive lack all the resources or information needed to survive, and yet within the group, all information to sustain life is accessible. To what degree then does each individual bee have significance? The nuances of the answer to this question are the crux of Sun in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces. How does the individual best organize itself to serve the teeming whole? How does one dissolve egoic boundaries enough to draw on the treasures of the collective consciousness, without dissipating one’s sense of self beyond where one remains productive?

Be very aware on this day of where you resist release, and where you hold yourself unnecessarily. Where is fastidiousness keeping you from finding a greater purpose? At the same time, be aware of how you crave dissolution or resist building form within the world. These two inclinations –toward form and formlessness- are at odds today. Of course hard aspects are always opportunities to meet challenges, but oppositions are the challenge to strike a balance rather than to revolutionize one’s patterns. So plant seeds today to more fully access the bliss of universal consciousness while moving about the world with actions self-contained enough to contribute on a literal level.

Mars enters Virgo (4:35am)
Venus in Leo quincunx Neptune in Pisces (12 degrees)
Mercury stations direct at 28’ Leo (6:29am): Roadmaps to Ambition’s Grail
Tuesday September 5
Mars enters Virgo and Mercury stations direct today. We can climb aboard the HMS Get-It-Done today. Work ethic escalates exponentially, and the roadmap to success in one’s projects suddenly reveals itself, as if a wand had revealed hidden ink. There is a distinct atmospheric shift from fighting the good fight to learning new skills and committing to new levels of excellence. Careful that these ambitions do not eclipse current projects in intimacy, which we may be tempted to scratch for the sake of industry if things aren’t flowing easily there. If we can continue to give matters of love some attention even when the energy flows less easily in that direction, we will find ourselves fascinated, discovering generously proportioned pieces of the puzzle that might never have made themselves obvious unless we had gone looking down obscure passageways.

Full Moon in Pisces at 13’53 Pisces: Pearl Diving
Wednesday September 6
2:03pm
After such fiery summer, what a Moon. The intuitive Moon, psychically rich and united with every body of water on Earth. In the boundless seas of Pisces, defended in these primordial waters by Neptune, the Moon is free to slip into the dreamspace that yields untold wisdom. The esoteric speaks. Nereids, Tritons, mermaids, monsters of the deep, selkies, whalesongs. All of these begin to reveal their meaning. Whether we can verbalize or not is of no concern to this Moon, with Mercury still in childlike Leo. With the proper temperament however, the Sun in Virgo and Jupiter sextiling Saturn will fully support instinctual assimilation of this Delphic wisdom. We have access to structural intelligence that creates some order by which to understand the spiritual downloads.

Essentially, obstacles in the soul’s path to wholeness seem to fall away today. The work of Harvest Season looks promising, drawing us toward the radiant pearls of redemption that lie within.

Detail from "Nine Dragons" | Chen Rong 1244 | Museum of Fine Arts Boston | Public Domain

Sun in Virgo trine, and Venus in Leo quincunx, Pluto in Capricorn:
Friday September 8
28 degrees
Pluto in Capricorn receives aspects today, reminding us that all rewarding evolutionary work is not deep-sea diving for psychic dragon pearls. It is also facing the demon. In fact it is going looking for the demon because we know he’s out there and needs redeeming. Do not go to slay him. Go to know him.

Mercury ingress into Virgo: Out of the Brambles
Saturday September 9
9:52pm
Keep sowing the fields of personal projects. Mercury’s travels through Virgo will see him meet Mars again in a new iteration, so this does have to do with getting smart about how we cultivate the type of energy that moves us, be that light/fluffy or serious/dour. It is remarkably refreshing, however, to have our heads on straight and in the light of the season’s attractively angled sunlight, rather than traversing the underworld and shoring up the carcasses that have crucial information on them. Mercury is ready to straighten up, and, simple as that, get to his damn work!

Venus in Leo trine Saturn in Sagittarius: Charismatic Real-Talk
Tuesday September 12
21 degrees
Excellent day to take care of challenging conversations with intimates and family members. Venus in Leo is loyal and pure-hearted, yet charismatic and, when in a trine with responsible Saturn, sensible enough not to hurt feelings.

Sun in Virgo square Saturn in Sagittarius: To Love and Let Go
Wednesday September 13
21 degrees
Virgo is the last Earth sign in the cycle of the Zodiac: it’s wise. From these grounds we gain Virgo’s matured and mutable disposition regarding material reality. We have grown enough in spirit to lovingly cultivate what we are growing in the material realm, but we have also learned enough to know that we must also be willing to surrender whatever we are cultivating, for all we have control over is our response to what circumstances the world deals us. When the Sun in late Virgo squares the Saturn, ruler of Time, we are heavily reminded that we must be as prepared to lose all as we are to give our all. No light aspect, yet this is certainly an opportunity to evolve into higher acceptance.

Venus conjunct North Node in Leo and sextile Jupiter in Libra: Coming Out
Thursday September 14
23 degrees
We are more prepared, today, to be bold about expressing our needs in intimacy, and to give ourselves the space to explore our needs if we do not already know them. There is no recipe for happiness in intimacy: every individual’s needs are unique. Because there is no “real” norm and yet we live in a society that prescribes and proscribes roles and rules in relationships, many people have forgotten how to listen to the voice within that reveals where we’re out of balance in relations. On the level of mundane astrology, Venus transiting the North Node in Leo and sextiling Jupiter in Libra means we have the right amount of luck on our side to express our needs to one another. Use this day to have productive conversation or to say to the world what you’ve wanted to say. Perhaps this means coming out publicly as the new and lesser-known Self that’s been in development for some time. Perhaps it means expressing your needs in relationship. Perhaps it means intentionally making space for your loved ones to express their needs. Whatever locating and expressing what works for you in relationship (with intimates, the public, and beyond) looks like to you, use this day to get on it.

Mercury conjunct Mars in Virgo
7 degrees
Venus in Leo quincunx Chiron in Pisces: Dexterity
26 degrees
Saturday September 16
Again, work and intimacy don’t necessarily see eye to eye. We are strong in our stride putting the pieces together in our creative work, and relationship is just on a different page. Neither page is necessarily more nor less evolutionary, but we are juggling different projects that have not synced up. We are beginning to let the light in around karmically healing ourselves in relationship, and that project is revealing to us the many intriguing pathways it offers, glimmering with small bits of visual stimulation that hint at the depths you may discover within yourself if you will only continue giving effort here. However on the other path, Mercury meets Mars in Virgo and shows a straight and narrow path, which still feels like respite after the rabbit holes of Mercury’s recent retrograde over these very degrees of Virgo. Remember that life does not always seem totally congruent, and that this is one of its magics. Maintaining multiple important projects and retaining full focus and determination where each one is concerned is one of those dexterity tests that satisfies like no solo project could alone.

Sun in Virgo opposite Chiron in Pisces: The Wounded Healer
Monday September 18
26 degrees
We now begin to see how our recent Venus quincunx Chiron fits into the big Life Picture. Healing the capacity to love and surrender to it hits us right in the solar plexus today. Can you be within your self-contained sense of power and still nurture a limitless commitment to healing? Healing within is healing the collective: nothing like Chiron in Pisces reminds us of that, and Chiron in Pisces is having a very direct, potentially stern conversation with our life force. You can’t hide from your woundedness, nor can you hide from the woundedness of your fellow creatures. Be sensitive today rather than rigid. Agony and ecstasy hold hands here. We do not have the rewarding work of healing to do when we have not obtained wounds, and we cannot ignore the wounds and still expect to heal.

Mercury in Virgo opposite Neptune in Pisces: You Are the Super-Organism
Tuesday September 19
12 degrees
Healing requires a checked mind. Chatter and undirected mental exercises divert us from access to the deeper intelligence that effectively grows us. The mind is a tool ­–an evolutionary one­– to help us survive. When we glorify the mind and identify the Mind as I, we lose sight of the fact that “I” must necessarily be identified with something much greater than this little body. The mind can’t understand that on its own, but when he talks to Neptune from across the zodiac, he has the opportunity to hear that lesson and begin to integrate it.

This isn’t a new lesson, however. Mercury was opposing Neptune on the day he stationed retrograde a little over one month ago. We learned much about this lesson during retrograde, but perhaps it wasn’t so clear what we were learning. Here we have a chance to see it straight once again, and walk forward with a mind and memory clear enough to retain this experience. We are so much more than what passes through the machinations of our minds. If we quiet the mind, we can taste what lies beyond. Humbling ourselves to the enormity of our own power is the trick. We must go beyond the limited, dual understanding of ourselves. Hard, patriarchal lines cannot be drawn. There is no lasting delineation between Self and Other. Like the bee, it isn’t clear where “I” ends and the super-organism begins: we are deeply involved in the vast and complex web of biological, physical life. Neptune is granting us this one of many gracious opportunities to find the faith that, if we operate as though our actions impact every other Being, our own experience of life may be more gratifying and readily nurtured, than we might have yet imagined.

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The Lion Free of Ego: Lunation Cycle July 23 - August 21

New Moon in Leo to New Moon in Leo: The Lion Free of Ego

New Moon Greetings:

While the beginning of a lunation cycle is the Dark Moon and often signifies a time of releasing and unraveling into the unknown, this cycle will flounce in through Leo, asking for attention and activity. This trip of the Moon around the Earth heralds Eclipse Season, our biannual occasion to rebirth and renew ourselves at a rapid rate. Rebirth is in fact fourfold this season, with two New Moons (and one Solar Eclipse) in Leo, a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius, and Mars beginning a new 2-year trip around the zodiac when it enters cazimi and shows itself on the other side of the Sun on July 26, at 4 degrees of Leo.

Besides the ever-expressive Sun and Moon, Mars is in fact our main player during this cycle of the Moon. His roughly 2-year (26-month) journey around the Sun carries us through the ever-evolving rhythms of the noble Warrior within. He is the god of the inner, archetypal fires. God of The Fight, for whatever cause that would compel us into combat. He entered Leo this Thursday on July 20, where he is more the gladiator than the analytical orator he was when in, for example, Gemini, where his last 2-year cycle began in 2015. However in Leo we see him donning the skins of lions he has battled in the past, absolutely visible, and of course illustrious. He might cut a comical figure if it weren’t for his capacity to tap into into the raw power of his vitality, well beyond preoccupation with his stout musculature.

When Mars passes through the redemptive fires of the Sun on July 26, he is scoured clean of any extraneous ego-detritus he picked up in his last 2-year cycle. This is an excavation, and we have been feeling it for some time already, as Mars has been combust since mid-July, meaning he has been overpowered by the rays of the sun, not visible to us on Earth. We’ve likely detected his thrashing within ourselves, in the throes of ego-death, either unaccustomed to selfless battle or veritably averse to it.

But a major theme of this lunation cycle is absolutely dropping the ego, and fighting for that which is beyond the thin skin that contains our organs. The pressure will be on to ask ourselves how our personal battles relate to something larger. With the New Moon in Leo today on July 23, we can relax a bit into personal projects, intuiting our ways through the esoteric process of breathing new life into that which makes us feel individuated, uniquely animated. However by the Full Moon partial Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius on August 7, we’ll be looking at our relationship with the collective: collective fears and compulsions, and how we contribute to or heal them from within ourselves.

Shortly after the Lunar Eclipse, Mercury will station Retrograde at 11 degrees of Virgo on August 12, and remain in its retrogradation phase until September 5, so, for the rest of this lunar cycle and then some. When Mercury goes retrograde, he punctures the realms and enters the Underworld. He now becomes Hermes, the psychopomp who ferries lost souls across the river Styx. This is a time of review, of recovering subterranean information that was not readily available in Mercury’s first transit over these degrees. Mercury will enter its pre-retrograde shadow (the degrees it will cross back over during its retrograde) tomorrow on Monday, July 24, so whatever energies you are engaging by then will be turned inside out and exposed for what the really are.

The exposure of Mercury Retrograde is more of a mental process than a heart-centered one, but the heart will have a heavy dose of lessons to extract during this retrograde as well, when Venus takes a series of hard hits from Pluto and Jupiter. We’ll be called again to come outside of ourselves in order to look long and hard at our intimate spheres, and how we work for or against balanced relationships and the embodiment of grace in the world.

When the “Great American” Total Solar Eclipse rolls in on August 21, visible across the United States, we will truly be tested. There are abundant doomsday prophecies floating around about the collapse of the West and America’s crumbling political system. While astrology is more useful as a tool for energetic preparation than auguring the future, it is hard to overlook the fact that this first Solar Eclipse visible in the United States in over a century does hit Trump’s chart where it hurts: it is literally exact on his Ascendant.

But let’s stick with metaphysics for now: this Eclipse is the Sun (solid sense of self or ego) in Leo (the loyal, royal lion) eclipsed by the Moon (intuition, or emotionality). Mars is involved, just 8 degrees away from the Eclipse, so what we have is an opportune moment to collectively attune our yang warriors to the yin. To allow ourselves to stalk the halls of our inner palaces and turn our ears to the uncanny messages the ghosts have to share with us, unafraid of the what hides in the shadows as the light flickers in and out. We cannot know every step of the way, but we can trust that wherever our steps lead us, the lessons provided will be providential and rich in lightening the ego. Perhaps we will shed our lion skins and open our hearts a bit, ready to devote our energies to some subtler realm of service.

New Moon in Leo: Empowerment Against the Odds
July 23
0’44 degrees Leo
2:45 am PST
This New Moon in Leo goes unaspected by any other planets, meaning it is has a heavy emphasis on Leonine energy. There are two mythological lions associated with Leo: one is the lion that Hercules killed as the first of his 12 labors, skinned, and whose pelt he wore as a protective cloak. The second is the lion from Ovid’s tale of Pyramus and Thisbe. This young couple is an older iteration of Romeo & Juliet, star-crossed lovers who met in secret against their parents’ will. One night they agreed to meet beneath a mulberry tree, and when Thisbe arrived, a lion sprang out of the thicket. She ran away in fright, but her veil fluttered to the ground behind her. When Pyramus arrived, he saw only the lion and Thisbe’s veil, and thinking his love had been killed, he threw himself onto his sword. When Thisbe returned, she saw her love dying, took his sword, and killed herself.

For this New Moon, let’s focus on the second lion. While rather sinister, we can draw out some useful lessons here, emphasized by other aspects in the sky, on the stark potentialities of the desire to expand into greater connectivity. It is risky business.

Venus at 20 degrees Gemini loosely opposes Saturn at 22 degrees Sagittarius, and Jupiter in Libra is very close to its final square with Pluto. During this Dark Moon, we are getting a taste of why it might be frightening to expand beyond the borders of our little bodies to connect with others. Death, shame, the fear of falling. There is no security in loving, only leaps into the unknown.

But with Mars conjunct this Sun and Moon at 1 degree of Leo, we have some verve today. Mars in Leo is the Hercules archetype, and so we have some courage to step into the unknown and risk our precious necks. This is not a bad day to launch into visibility the creative project you’ve been harboring behind the veil, to establish contact with some shadowy figure you've been infatuated with, or to travel to new places. Essentially, chances are good that you’ll have the energy to learn the art of flying (or swimming) when you step off that craggy precipice.

Mars Cazimi and Reborn: The Noble Warrior In The Hedge
Wednesday July 26
4 degrees Leo
10:12am PST
Mars has been traveling through its own underworld for some weeks now, engaging a liminal space where the unconscious has overwhelmed his ego and he’s been subject to the eddying flow of dreamspace. When Mars in combust, or blocked out by the rays of the Sun, he loses much of his sense of glory but also, importantly, vainglory. On July 26 when he goes cazimi, traveling literally “in the heart of” the Sun, he passes through the harshest of the fires and he is reborn. And yet he is not yet out of the hedge. He is absolutely still engaging the necessary tests of endurance this psychologically murky space thrusts upon him.

Luckily, however, he has made it through the biggest trial in this underworld journey: he has shed his ego, and is born into his authenticity, bleary-eyed and so radically transformed he cannot help but feel the freshness. Do not reject this sensation. Because this rebirth occurs in Leo, we will certainly be faced with the fear of losing popularity, friendships, and self-flattering impressions as punishment for brashly charging into our authenticity. But this is precisely the fear we must face. Allow yourself to engage Beginner’s Mind, free of perceptions or pre-conceived notions that crowd out reality. If you have planets in the first 10 degrees of Leo, make an event of this day. Say something you’re scared to say or make an action you’ve denied yourself, even it seems like complete foolishness. Mars is now open-minded and optimistic regarding the second half of his underworld combustion, and the inner warrior is ready to face the 26 months of a new evolutionary cycle around the zodiac.

Jupiter in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn: Expanding into Karmic Arrival
Monday July 31
Both at 17 degrees
Due to retrogrades, Jupiter and Pluto have been in this grueling dance for over a year and a half now, and today is the final exact expression of this aspect. When Jupiter and Pluto square, we get tension between the personal agenda of elegant expansion, and the trans-personal, trans-historical reality of karmic limitations, of our inherent woundedness.

We’re liable to have trouble keeping the faith that we are moving in the right direction or capable of fully expanding into our perceived destinies. The most useful thing to remember is that we are always at every moment fully within our karmic arrival. Every step in your journey is where you’re meant to be. Every moment, travail, and triumph offers unique lessons that are tailored to the growth of your authentic self.
 

Venus enters Cancer: Holding the Heart In A Flat Open Palm
Monday July 31
7:54am PST
Venus, our Aphrodite born from the sea, has been transiting Gemini since July 4, where she’s been exploratory, experimental, perhaps a bit incautious, but analytical. Cancer is a place where Venus returns to the sea, but if we’re not careful this may come as more a swing of the pendulum than the gentle transition we can have if we're astute. Suddenly this goddess of love and beauty may clam up, scramble behind the hardy shell of Cancer’s crab, and ponder how she could have ever been so brash as to associate with the diverse bunch of folks and facts that populated her Gemini season.

The trick is to remain vulnerable and expressive until someone bears a weapon. Only then does the shell go up. Until then, if Venus remains serene within her mindfulness, she will recognize that while she is no longer interested in roving curiosity where friends, lovers, or art are concerned, she ought not indiscriminately close the heart to new territory. She may stay at home more, but her task is to remain open to what energies visit her home, and to be forthright enough to continue forming genuine bonds with people or materials she feels genuinely drawn towards.

Uranus stations Retrograde: The Subtle Art of Getting Free
28 degrees Aries
Wednesday August 2
10:31pm PST
Uranus is an ostentatiously rebellious planet, obsessed with freedom and the future. Usually it’s transits signal breaking free at all costs, tearing down walls and busting up stodgy monuments. However when Uranus stations retrograde, it tends to see these things as slightly more menacing, and is more likely to find blinders on its eyes. Instead of responding to fearfulness or intimidation, we can use this retrograde as an opportunity to check ourselves. Are we strategizing properly about subverting the powers-that-be? Are we calling on our worldly wisdom rather than brash idealism? Remember that retrogradation is about review, so be willing to learn from past mistakes.

Full Moon Partial Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius: End of the Drought
15’25 Aries
Monday August 7
11:10am PST
This Full Moon is, again an opportunity to accelerate rapidly in growth. In this case, Full Moon in Aquarius, it is trans-personal growth. We are aware of the unconventionality of justice for all. How true justice means the space for enormous variety. Aquarius is the water-bearer. The Babylonians associated Aquarius with the rainy month: it represented a flowing urn. This is when the rains fall to nourish the diversity of life on earth. This is not the act of swimming around in water we see with Pisces, it is the act of bestowing and receiving the powerful gift of water, which engenders life. Though Aquarius can feel cool and distant, it is radical in its ethics, prepared to contend for life in all its forms.

As far as aspects go, this Moon receives a waning semi-sextile from Pluto in Capricorn, a waxing semi-sextile from Neptune in Pisces, as well as a trine from Jupiter in Libra. This is quite a benevolent set of interactions, blessing us with a strong work ethic we can use to develop a constructive relationship with death by applying spiritual optimism, and the sense that it is well within our means to be gracefully in harmony with all beings, alive or passed.

Stay sober on this day (though this can be challenging on a Full Moon), as you will want to retain the cool-headed clarity of Aquarius. The polarity we are working with is the impulse to be rowdy, hot-headed, and visible (Sun and Mars are in Leo just 4 degrees apart), and the inner emotional pull towards quietly doing our work, visible to the public or not. Dedicate your energy to exploring where there is drought in your inner landscape. Open the once-dammed channels so that water flows and the perennials waiting to spring back into life can blossom again.

Venus in Cancer sextile Mercury in Virgo: The Mind Learns How To Love Too
Wednesday August 9
11 degrees
7:17pm PST
Mercury and Venus have been nearing this flirtatious aspect for some time. Because Mercury’s retrograde will involve quite a few deep lessons for the heart, take this day to find some congruity between your heart and mind. Mercury is exalted in Virgo and finds himself highly capable of service-oriented practicality. In this aspect he is learning how to serve the tenderness of Venus’s soft underbelly in Cancer. Be wary of Mercury’s tendency to over-analyze the occult workings of this Goddess of Love. She is not to be objectified, and so we must look within and see what a mysterious process of release and acceptance it is to simply love ourselves.

Venus in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces: Easy Love
Friday August 11
13 degrees
This is a sweet moment of feeling like one can breathe underwater before getting hit by the more arid aspects Venus will see in the following week, but it is not without its tricks. While we enjoy Neptune's nutritive perfume of deep spirituality, we should be careful of falling in love with our gurus, and gullibility in the realm of love in general.

Mercury Retrograde at 11’38 degrees Virgo: Mothers of the Underworld
August 12
6:01pm PST
The Sabian symbol for 11 degrees of Virgo, where Mercury stations retrograde, reads: “a boy molded in his mother’s aspiration for him.”

Mercury opposes Neptune, the great dissolver of boundaries, as he stations retrograde. The tone for this Mercury retrograde then begins with the questions of what in the microcosm we want to dissolve into the macrocosm, and under the watchful gaze of what “mother” we want to mold ourselves. This is going to be a tough Mercury Retrograde for individuals with any mother complex. If we have reason to be averse to manipulative mothering, then we may resist losing our boundaries to a wider sphere of nurturing. To be nurtured can be eerie. We must be open to receiving care from the underworld. The key here is not to overthink it: Mercury is not clear-headed as he traverses the underworld. He is going by the perplexing lantern of memory, and the divining rod of intuition.

While the Neptune-Mercury Rx opposition makes us perhaps susceptible to delusion, we should be careful not to reject Mystery or darkness out-of-hand. This retrograde phase offers much alchemy to learn from the peculiar realms of those motivating mysteries: passion and compassion. Luckily, Mercury and Venus are still within the field of their friendly sextile, and the God of Reason and Goddess of Love are still exchanging convivial whispers.
 

Sun in Leo trine Saturn in Sagittarius: Optimism for the Wisdom of Limitation
Sunday August 13
21 degrees
This is a useful day for cheerfully understanding why we can’t do certain things at this time. Sun in Leo trine Saturn in Sagittarius is a bit like the moment Daniel of Karate Kid begins to see the reason behind Miyagi’s discipline. Life is full of trials, and though we want to get out there beyond practice and show our stuff, without a measured pace and balanced practice, the youthful vitality of the trainee is useless. Use this day to make friendly with a regular, disciplined practice. If you already have one, breathe some new life into it if you’re ready by sharing the skills you’ve developed with the world, be that your personal community or the world wide web. Gravity and grace will keep you on the ground today if you have a tendency to float away into insecurity. 

Venus in Cancer opposes Pluto in Capricorn: The Gaping Maw of Love
Monday August 14
17 degrees
All sorts of psychoses, compulsive behaviors, and fears may fester throughout this day, and our task is to face them stoically. When Venus opposes Pluto, karmic wounds and the desire for love tend to work against one another. If you are an avoidant personality, take a look at why you flee intimacy. If you sidle easily into unhealthy relationships, look at what you’re turning away from by doing so. Whatever the case, stay open to learning what the underbelly of intimate relationships (both platonic and romantic) has to show you.

Remember that Pluto is the chthonic god who rules the dark underground, so the seeds of new life and new harvest are created within his realm. Glean these seeds as you face the darkness. If Persephone spent one sacrificial half of the year in Hades’ realm for the bounty of the earth, you can spend some days staring down his gaping maw for the bounty of unconditional love.

Venus in Cancer squares Jupiter in Libra: The Cautious Lover
Wednesday August 16
19 degrees
Venus catches another hard aspect when she finds herself at odds with the Jovial King in Libra. In this hard aspect, we may find ourselves asked to perform the most attractive sides of ourselves and resist, feeling as though the exposure cheapens our internal beauty. This self-protective side of Venus in Cancer is all well and good, but don’t sell yourself short. You can show yourself and still cultivate inner grace.

There may also be some romantic shut-downs around this day. If a partner, friend, or subject of infatuation refuses to give you what you desire or even ask for, don’t take it personally. The best thing to remember at this time is that nothing is personal and that being motivated in relationship by the idea of a specific outcome is a detrimental disposition. Authentic connection only comes when you can allow yourself and the other individual to grow into whatever alien thing each of you may become. As individuals grow, relationships have to change shape. This may be such a time. Don’t rush into condemnations or brash commitments around now. Allow the tension in the air to clear. This is not a day to propose to your loved one.

Mars in Leo sextile Jupiter in Libra: Airing it Out
Friday August 18
19 degrees
Following Venus’s harsh wake-up calls, there is a bit of excitation this Friday, creative and seductive energies wheeling through the air as we open to the possibilities held by the weekend and prepare ourselves for the upcoming Solar Eclipse. Mars is rather frolicking at this 19th degree of Leo: its Sabian symbol is “A houseboat party” and in this waxing sextile with Libra, Mars feels as though it could become anything and everything it desires at this party. If we are reckless, this energy could throw off the balance we need to cultivate for the ego-ravaging Eclipse of Monday. Careful of inflating the ego or being seduced by hollow glamour. However, allow the energy to wisp around you, kindling optimism around your own hero’s journey.

New Moon Total Solar Eclipse in Leo 28’52: The Lion Free of Ego
Monday August 21
11:28am PST
With this New Moon Solar Eclipse, we get personal and collective transformation of epic proportions. It occurs at 28 degrees of Leo. The last few degrees of any sign are pivotal and feel tense as the Sun prepares to switch codes and enter a new frame of reference. Power lies in the capacity to be transmute tension into release and renewal. As though we haven’t received enough lessons in this throughout this lunar cycle, this is just one more beginning to deepening our integrity.

Fixed Star Regulus is the brightest star in the lion’s constellation and lies, appropriately, at the lion’s heart, at 29 degrees of Leo on the cusp of Virgo. This Eclipse takes place on Regulus, which happens to be the closest star to the ecliptic, the royal road of the Sun’s apparent path around the earth. It is certainly the most noble and regal of Leo’s stars, and because it lies on the cusp of Virgo in the last degrees of Leo, this is where we take the developed sense of our unique inner fires and how to perform them, and open them up to selfless service. This is where the lion sheds its ego and dons the cloak of the noble king, highly responsive to the needs of his people.

Let’s get something straight about the ego: while the ego is useless, sense of Self is not. Without the sense of who one is as a unique expression of the mysterious whole, people tend towards narcissm and excessive hunting for affirmation. This Total Solar Eclipse affords us the opportunity to tap into the reality that simply by being ourselves and fulfilling our distinct life paths while supporting others in fulfilling theirs, we are being of service.

Mars is involved here, very close to the North Node or Rahu, head of the dragon, snarling away from the past and bent toward the future. There is no looking back here. Our Warrior (Mars), our sense of Self (Sun), and our Soul (Moon) are all here at the present as it becomes the future. The future, of course, is unknown.

Retrograde Uranus is the other planet heavily involved, trining the Eclipse from 28 degrees of Aries. Though fluid, this is not a cute aspect. We can use it to our advantage: Uranian energy knows how to get free, but retrograde, it has undercurrents of obsession and psychosis. These shadow expressions of Uranus’s energy will certainly be seen in many across the States, but as long as you remain aware of these pitfalls and guard against them, you should make it through this Eclipse with battle scars you’ll be proud to bear in a decade’s time.

Finally, with Mercury retrograde as well, we are called to continue trusting our intuition. This is literally a dark day, full of chthonic energies that surpass the rational mind’s capacities. But the dark is your friend. Trust that what it has to show you is of value, and this Eclipse will purge you of the ego’s limiting dross, and provide you with a sense of exhilarating wonder that will reverberate through your consciousness for many months to come.

Many blessings in this Eclipse Seasons,
Amalia

If you'd like more insight from Amalia on how these transits affect your personal blueprint, book a Birth Chart reading with her by clicking the link below.