April 30 - May 15
We're heading into that two-week glory span of time when the planets in Aries conjunct each other and trine the Sagittarius North Node before moving out of the massive Aries stellium and into Taurus.
We're going to get a generous boost from the universe here...as long as we don't get greedy. Jupiter/Sagittarius energy is beneficial, expansive and generous, but it also has the tendency to trigger overconfidence, over-expansion, and gambling with a resultant fall on our faces unless we keep a realistic, level head with both feet on the ground. Luckily, the Sun in Taurus assists us to do just that so this boost can really dig in and get us somewhere.
Both Mars and Venus in Aries have busted out of their squares to Pluto in Capricorn (which stationed retrograde April 9), and we're hitting a burst of lovely energy that gives us a big boost in whatever direction we're moving in. This burst forward is the reason heeding and acting on the Mars in Pluto square was so necessary. We have to be going in the exact right direction personally within the true broader context of the times in which we're living in order to get the full benefit of these trines to the North Node, which includes Jupiter in Aries, the North Node's dispositor.
Trying new things, moving in new directions and broadening our horizons in whatever ways inspire us are lucky now, as long as we have heeded Pluto and dropped absolutely every direction that is not necessary. The more detritus we've purged and the more effective and streamlined we are at this point, post-Pluto square, the more we progress.
If you've been toying with doing something new, now is the time to get it fully on the move. This is a timeframe when we need to be inspiring ourselves daily and acting on impulse in ways that excite and interest us. Think big, believe in yourself and take action.
April 30 - Mars conjunct Jupiter in Aries at 22 degrees
May 2 - Mars in Aries trine the North Node in Sagittarius 24 degrees
May 9 - Mercury conjunct Venus in Aries 22 degrees
May 7 - Jupiter in Aries (dispositor) trine the North Node in Sagittarius 23 degrees
May 10 - Mercury and Venus in Aries trine the North Node in Sagittarius at 23 degrees
May 11 - Venus conjunct Jupiter in Aries 24 degrees
May 11 - Mercury conjunct Jupiter in Aries 24 degrees
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Juno in Virgo Stationing Direct Opposite Ceres in Pisces: Getting the Word Out Bit by Virgoan Bit
Juno is currently stationing direct at 14 degrees Virgo (May 1) opposite Ceres in Pisces, and I'm posting the news article I did recently on Monsanto's genetically modified alfalfa and the threat it poses to the organic industry.
Included in the article is information from a scientist who studied the spread of genetically modified canola in Manitoba, Canada, and found that unintentional hybrids are being created due to the cross-pollination of Monsanto's RoundUp Ready canola variety and Bayer's LibertyLink canola variety.
Despite the fact that these issues are important to all who eat organic or care about their food supply staying GMO-free, it's very difficult to get agriculture and food issues into mainstream media sources. For the most part, stories like these are considered "special interest" and generally only of interest to farmers (?!?).
I approached about forty daily and weekly newspapers in Manitoba and got the story published only once - in a newspaper in a small Manitoba town of less than 3,000 people.
I found my Juno in Virgo Mercurial "soul mate" in the editor there (named Ed!) who just happened to be running a special agriculture (Ceres) issue at the time that my query e-mail crossed his inbox. There's some of that Piscean flow we all know and love.
From what I can see, Ed is a rare breed - a small-town newsman who still cares enough to write his own copy and to publish pertinent articles written by other local journalists and writers, rather than just pulling stuff off the wire to fill space. I thank him for getting this story out to his readership and wish more papers had. A longer article will be coming out in a different paper in June, and I will post that one, as well:
A stalled motion in Canadian Parliament regarding a moratorium on genetically modified (GM) alfalfa could have the non-GM and organic agriculture industries hanging in the balance.
On March 3, 2011, a motion was tabled by Liberal members of the House of Commons Agriculture Committee calling for a moratorium on the approval of genetically modified alfalfa in Canada. The vote on the moratorium was delayed March 11 by the Harper Conservatives, who support further expansion into genetically modified crops, leaving it up in the air as the country heads to an election.
U.S.-based multi-national agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto is currently attempting to make its Roundup Ready alfalfa the first genetically modified perennial planted in North America. Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically modified to withstand glyphosate, a herbicide sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup.
After a five-year court battle, Monsanto’s GM alfalfa was authorized for sale in the U.S. by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on January 27, 2011. Additional lawsuits were launched against the USDA March 18, 2011 by groups including the Center for Food Safety and the National Family Farm Coalition, challenging the authorization and stalling the sale and planting of the alfalfa.
Priscilla Reimer, organic inspector and President of the Manitoba Organic Alliance, says the production of GM alfalfa in Canada is a huge threat to organic agriculture and is opposed by Manitoba's organic industry.
In addition to being used as feed for livestock, Reimer says alfalfa is a crop often used by farmers during the three-year field transition from conventional to organic. It also becomes essential in the crop rotation once a farm is organic because, as a nitrogen-fixer, it naturally fertilizes the soil.
"If in fact [GM alfalfa is] approved, it would essentially put organic production out of business," Reimer says. "[Alfalfa] is embedded in organic production, and for that to go GMO would literally destroy the foundation of organic production."
Reimer says genetically modified crops are already contaminating non-GM crops due to the lack of sufficient regulation framework from upper governmental levels, including no separation within the system and no labelling.
Reimer says non-organic corn, canola and soybeans are so cross-contaminated by GMO versions at this point that it is virtually impossible, once they have been put into the supply chain, to guarantee they are GMO-free. Unless these crops are organic and, therefore, kept separate, they are mixed in with GMO varieties.
"There's no effort in the system to keep GMO and non-GMO products separate. So when the farmers take it to the elevator, it all goes into the same bin. Even if there is a GMO-free product grown, by the time it's gone through the system, you are guaranteed to be eating some GMOs in those key three crops - canola, corn and soybean," Reimer says. "We have a climate in which it is virtually impossible to ensure against contamination."
Anneliese Schoppe and her family farm outside Poplar Point, one hour west of Winnipeg, producing beef, eggs and heirloom vegetable seedlings up to organic standards.
Schoppe says her family works hard to keep its animal feed GMO-free, growing its own organic hay, and a test plot of Monsanto alfalfa has the ability to wipe out all that hard work.
"Just because you have a buffer field in between or an acre or two doesn't mean that's going to stop the wind or insects from pollinating this GMO alfalfa crop to the next alfalfa crop and then, what's pure anymore?"
According to Alexis Knispel Kanu, who did her PhD doctoral work on the spread of GM canola, buffer fields are not enough to stop the spread of genetically modified seeds. From 2004 until 2007, Knispel Kanu studied canola plants growing outside field habitat where they had not been planted, in ditches, for example, in order to determine genetic make-up and how genes might be spreading.
"What we found was that genetically modified traits were widely present in these escape populations of canola outside of cultivated fields where no one had planted them and there were no licenses to do the planting. They were just growing sort of like weeds in the way that seeds that get scattered grow," Knispel Kanu says.
Knispel Kanu looked at landscape elements that could have contributed to the spread of the seeds outside fields. What she found was that factors like the location of elevators and the traffic intensity on nearby roads contributed strongly.
"A truck going to an elevator will spill seeds inevitably, and a train being loaded will spill seeds inevitably, so those larger-scale transportation factors are contributing to the spread of these plants," Knispel Kanu says.
"That makes co-existence really challenging because it's a matter of segregating our transportation systems for these crops, not having a truck transporting GM canola through an area you're saying is GM-free. It's not just about where the crop is planted in relation to another crop. It's about how we're transporting these things through the whole landscape."
Knispel Kanu's found that the genetically modified canola plants she studied from the escape populations had also cross-pollinated with each other, creating a hybrid of Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety and Bayer's LibertyLink variety.
"Of the two GMO traits that are widely grown in Manitoba, we found both in the same plant, which is not something that is done by the companies. That's something that results from out-crossing in the field."
Knispel Kanu says GM alfalfa poses even more of a problem as far as cross-contamination due to it being a more feral, perennial crop that isn't dependent on cultivated environments tended by farmers to survive.
Astrological post:
April 13, 2011 - Ceres in Pisces, GM Alfalfa and the Neptunian Permeation of the Seed Supply
Included in the article is information from a scientist who studied the spread of genetically modified canola in Manitoba, Canada, and found that unintentional hybrids are being created due to the cross-pollination of Monsanto's RoundUp Ready canola variety and Bayer's LibertyLink canola variety.
Despite the fact that these issues are important to all who eat organic or care about their food supply staying GMO-free, it's very difficult to get agriculture and food issues into mainstream media sources. For the most part, stories like these are considered "special interest" and generally only of interest to farmers (?!?).
I approached about forty daily and weekly newspapers in Manitoba and got the story published only once - in a newspaper in a small Manitoba town of less than 3,000 people.
I found my Juno in Virgo Mercurial "soul mate" in the editor there (named Ed!) who just happened to be running a special agriculture (Ceres) issue at the time that my query e-mail crossed his inbox. There's some of that Piscean flow we all know and love.
From what I can see, Ed is a rare breed - a small-town newsman who still cares enough to write his own copy and to publish pertinent articles written by other local journalists and writers, rather than just pulling stuff off the wire to fill space. I thank him for getting this story out to his readership and wish more papers had. A longer article will be coming out in a different paper in June, and I will post that one, as well:
A stalled motion in Canadian Parliament regarding a moratorium on genetically modified (GM) alfalfa could have the non-GM and organic agriculture industries hanging in the balance.
On March 3, 2011, a motion was tabled by Liberal members of the House of Commons Agriculture Committee calling for a moratorium on the approval of genetically modified alfalfa in Canada. The vote on the moratorium was delayed March 11 by the Harper Conservatives, who support further expansion into genetically modified crops, leaving it up in the air as the country heads to an election.
U.S.-based multi-national agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto is currently attempting to make its Roundup Ready alfalfa the first genetically modified perennial planted in North America. Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically modified to withstand glyphosate, a herbicide sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup.
After a five-year court battle, Monsanto’s GM alfalfa was authorized for sale in the U.S. by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on January 27, 2011. Additional lawsuits were launched against the USDA March 18, 2011 by groups including the Center for Food Safety and the National Family Farm Coalition, challenging the authorization and stalling the sale and planting of the alfalfa.
Priscilla Reimer, organic inspector and President of the Manitoba Organic Alliance, says the production of GM alfalfa in Canada is a huge threat to organic agriculture and is opposed by Manitoba's organic industry.
In addition to being used as feed for livestock, Reimer says alfalfa is a crop often used by farmers during the three-year field transition from conventional to organic. It also becomes essential in the crop rotation once a farm is organic because, as a nitrogen-fixer, it naturally fertilizes the soil.
"If in fact [GM alfalfa is] approved, it would essentially put organic production out of business," Reimer says. "[Alfalfa] is embedded in organic production, and for that to go GMO would literally destroy the foundation of organic production."
Reimer says genetically modified crops are already contaminating non-GM crops due to the lack of sufficient regulation framework from upper governmental levels, including no separation within the system and no labelling.
Reimer says non-organic corn, canola and soybeans are so cross-contaminated by GMO versions at this point that it is virtually impossible, once they have been put into the supply chain, to guarantee they are GMO-free. Unless these crops are organic and, therefore, kept separate, they are mixed in with GMO varieties.
"There's no effort in the system to keep GMO and non-GMO products separate. So when the farmers take it to the elevator, it all goes into the same bin. Even if there is a GMO-free product grown, by the time it's gone through the system, you are guaranteed to be eating some GMOs in those key three crops - canola, corn and soybean," Reimer says. "We have a climate in which it is virtually impossible to ensure against contamination."
Anneliese Schoppe and her family farm outside Poplar Point, one hour west of Winnipeg, producing beef, eggs and heirloom vegetable seedlings up to organic standards.
Schoppe says her family works hard to keep its animal feed GMO-free, growing its own organic hay, and a test plot of Monsanto alfalfa has the ability to wipe out all that hard work.
"Just because you have a buffer field in between or an acre or two doesn't mean that's going to stop the wind or insects from pollinating this GMO alfalfa crop to the next alfalfa crop and then, what's pure anymore?"
According to Alexis Knispel Kanu, who did her PhD doctoral work on the spread of GM canola, buffer fields are not enough to stop the spread of genetically modified seeds. From 2004 until 2007, Knispel Kanu studied canola plants growing outside field habitat where they had not been planted, in ditches, for example, in order to determine genetic make-up and how genes might be spreading.
"What we found was that genetically modified traits were widely present in these escape populations of canola outside of cultivated fields where no one had planted them and there were no licenses to do the planting. They were just growing sort of like weeds in the way that seeds that get scattered grow," Knispel Kanu says.
Knispel Kanu looked at landscape elements that could have contributed to the spread of the seeds outside fields. What she found was that factors like the location of elevators and the traffic intensity on nearby roads contributed strongly.
"A truck going to an elevator will spill seeds inevitably, and a train being loaded will spill seeds inevitably, so those larger-scale transportation factors are contributing to the spread of these plants," Knispel Kanu says.
"That makes co-existence really challenging because it's a matter of segregating our transportation systems for these crops, not having a truck transporting GM canola through an area you're saying is GM-free. It's not just about where the crop is planted in relation to another crop. It's about how we're transporting these things through the whole landscape."
Knispel Kanu's found that the genetically modified canola plants she studied from the escape populations had also cross-pollinated with each other, creating a hybrid of Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety and Bayer's LibertyLink variety.
"Of the two GMO traits that are widely grown in Manitoba, we found both in the same plant, which is not something that is done by the companies. That's something that results from out-crossing in the field."
Knispel Kanu says GM alfalfa poses even more of a problem as far as cross-contamination due to it being a more feral, perennial crop that isn't dependent on cultivated environments tended by farmers to survive.
Astrological post:
April 13, 2011 - Ceres in Pisces, GM Alfalfa and the Neptunian Permeation of the Seed Supply
Friday, April 22, 2011
A Cardinal Grand Cross Summer Solstice and Triple Eclipse Season: Here We Go Again
Flooding in southeastern Saskatchewan.
- Gemini New Moon: June 1, 2011 at 4:03 p.m. Central, partial solar eclipse at 11 degrees
- Sagittarius Full Moon: June 15, 2011 at 3:14 p.m., total lunar eclipse at 24 degrees
- Cancer New Moon: July 1, 2011 at 3:54 a.m., partial solar eclipse at 9 degrees
Cardinal Grand Cross Summer 2011
We're heading into very similar astro conditions as last spring/summer with a Cardinal Grand Cross forming by the June 21 Summer Solstice and the entry of the Sun into Cancer.
It feels like deja vu. Or rather it feels as if we never left the conditions of the Summer of 2010. Ontario, Canada was turned into a "you aren't in Canada right now" official police state as it hosted the G8 and G20 meetings last summer for the initial ingress of Uranus into Aries. The tone and agenda were set at that time for the series of Uranus in Aries - Pluto in Capricorn squares running through 2015.
Currently, we have widespread flooding in the Canadian prairie provinces, just like last spring. Roads are closed and washed out. Homes are flooded. I don't remember my home area ever flooding, and now it has been under water two years in a row. Many farmers were unable to seed crops last year due to excessive moisture, and the same problem two years in a row is devastating. Many farmers who were able to plant last year saw their crops drowned out later. In addition to the obvious hit to food production and farmers' incomes, there were many offshoot problems, including honeybees starving to death because there were no flowers to sustain themselves with. Honeybees starving to death in addition to the mass deaths due to colony collapse disorder. Very, very unpleasant. A harbinger.
Last year on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon exploded, leading to the ongoing nightmare of oil, Corexit and synthetic oil-eating micro-organims that has laid waste to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico and caused tens of thousands (more?) of people to become sick. Some are dead. People are dying of bacterial infections down there or just dropping dead with no satisfactory cause. Many have flesh-dissolving rashes. Respiratory problems. Pain. Nausea. Diarrhea. Tremors. Exhaustion. Their organs are compromised. Cleanup workers are going blind from exposure to the toxins. Three-year-old children have chemical toxicity and kidney stones. People have been poisoned and infiltrated with organisms the human body has never experienced before.
Peoples lives, livelihoods, ways of life have been wiped out. Florida Oil Spill Law remains the best site for ongoing coverage of the Gulf.
But the world media has moved on.
Time has become compressed as we're psychologically and physically rocked by multi-layered global crisis events being set off like dominoes. Does it really feel as if an entire year has passed since the Gulf disaster? As the fabric of our energetic existence on this planet is screwed with by those who erroneously believe they hold dominion over God, things have gotten very, very bizarre.
This April, we have another (in my mind pre-planned) End Times scenario going on with the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crises were triggered just as Uranus slid out of Pisces and into Aries, moving into cardinal square formation with Pluto in Capricorn. Uranium square plutonium. The latest news I've seen on timeline indicates a best case scenario of nine months until they can contain the radioactive emissions. Food, milk and water are now contaminated with radioactivity. It's hard to say how far it will reach, but my guess is, after nine months or more of continued spewing radioactivity, there won't be many areas on this globe completely spared. The Northern hemisphere will be widely affected, at the very least.
We can expect the Summer of 2011 to be a continuation on the theme - another tension-filled and unpredictable summer with many things coming unglued both personally and on the world stage. The mind-boggling shitstorms we're dealing with on this planet continue to sink in at the same time as new ones are unleashed.
The ballgame continues to shift. The cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) relate to the points in the year when the seasons change. We're in the midst of a period of time (2010-2015 most intensively) when all four seasons change at once - and then again, and again, and again. This hasn't really let up from last summer's cardinal action, and it increases stress levels. The next steps on the global agenda are unfolding, and people are striving to find survival territory - both physical and soul-level - in their own lives.
As upheaval-weary as the human population is at this point, we've only just begun. New directions are being forced on multiple fronts with new community leaders coming to the forefront out of sheer necessity as the global agenda steamrolls ahead.
Mercury will enter Cancer June 16 and kick off a two-month Cardinal Grand Cross. This is two oppositions forming four squares among the initiatory, leadership-oriented cardinal signs. It is kept strong as Mercury, the Sun, Venus and then Mars in Cancer trigger the Cardinal Grand Cross configuration into late August opposite Pluto in Capricorn with Uranus in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra. Saturn in Libra stations direct June 12 at 10 degrees.
Squares (90 degrees) and oppositions (180 degrees) are considered challenging aspects requiring a great deal of energy, focus and dedication to successfully navigate. In the cardinal signs, these aspects are forcing us to make our moves under tense and pressure-filled conditions. Let's be clear: we're taking the directions that are being spurred and stepping into newly opened leadership positions with humanity under various levels of duress. Anyone who doesn't acknowledge this fact is not fully aware of the situation on this planet.
This summer, things are even tighter than last. There is even less room for error or for denial. Last summer, the configuration was actually a cardinal t-square with the fourth leg of Saturn in late Virgo making it an energetic Grand Cross. It was a Grand Cross by orb (degree), but it was not a Cardinal Grand Cross because Saturn was in a mutable sign.
This summer, Saturn's in Libra, and we've got the full-on real deal.
In addition, Uranus will be highly potent, pulling into a retrograde station July 9at 4 degrees Aries. As it stations, Uranus will be within a degree of its first exact square to Pluto in Capricorn at 5 degrees Capricorn within the Cardinal Grand Cross formation. This is some lightning-hot intensity ahead of the first exact Uranus-Pluto square June 23, 2012. Next spring/summer, Saturn will be in late Libra, out of orb of the Cardinal Grand Cross.
If people were able to resist or deny the grand-scale movements and global upheaval initiated (and forced) during the cardinal t-square summer of 2010, that will change this summer, the Cardinal Grand Cross summer of 2011.
Sagittarius North Node: Our Real History Isn't in the History Books
With the North Node transiting Sagittarius, there will be renewed optimism and expansion in our lives betwixt and between the horror. It's when we're pushed to our breaking points and beyond that the power of our inherent wisdom, passed along through generations enduring historical horror after historical horror, proves its real mettle. Here, we draw strength from the real history on this planet - our history, the people's history. The grace and wisdom we've gleaned through our cultural heritage moves through us, lives in us, guiding us and connecting us across cultural lines, hand-to-hand, heart-to-heart. This is the truth of the human condition on this planet - for those who know and live it.
The versions of truth being portrayed on this planet - even the supposed alternative versions - are not even close to the real story. The magic we hold has never been captured by their history books. What we know could never be contained there.
What the history-keepers (predominantly men) of the world think matters is not what I think matters. My version of an important historical event or trend, what's important to me personally, wouldn't be big or sexy or monied or deadly enough to enter their record books.
There are those who think they have the story all wrapped up. We know differently.
The women of the world have the missing half of the puzzle inside them.
As Jupiter enters Taurus June 4 and becomes the dispositor of the North Node, we draw on the wisdom of simplicity, goodness in basics, groundedness, reserve, and one of the most important aspects of humanity's continuation on Planet Earth - endurance. Like the bull, we persevere. We dig in. And we really don't get too excited about much of anything - even a two-month Cardinal Grand Cross within triple eclipse season.
Triple Eclipse Season
The Cardinal Grand Cross at the northern hemisphere's Summer Solstice this June is sandwiched in a triple eclipse season, which includes a total lunar eclipse at 24 degrees Sagittarius conjunct the North Node.
We're not going to be able to hold standard positions in the same old fort this summer. Everything is on the move. The cardinal points are triggered all at once, and there's no damming ourselves up against the force of what needs to move. Things are not as they were, and we come to understand more fully what that means.
Eclipses usually produce a between-spaces, unglued energy, resulting in big emotional back-drop changes and sometimes involving shattering events. The timing of global socio-political events is often tied to these points. Eclipses happen every six or so months and are basically New and Full Moons that involve a more exact alignment than usual of the Sun, Earth and Moon and are considered more potent than standard New and Full Moons because of it. There are usually two - a Full Moon eclipse and a New Moon eclipse - though three is not all that rare. The last triple eclipse season we had was July/August 2009.
From June 21, 2009: Two New Moons in Cancer and Eclipse Season, All Wrapped Up in a Plutonic Bow
This summer we have three eclipses (Gemini New Moon, Sagittarius Full Moon, Cancer New Moon) in combination with the two-month Cardinal Grand Cross, shaking our foundations and spurring movement that much more.
The Gemini New Moon partial solar eclipse June 1 happens trine stationing Saturn in Libra. With the South Node also in Gemini, the era of much too much information, constant contact, milli-second attention spans and instantaneous, multi-front communication is coming to a close. Though now a part of many lives to some degree, social networking has reached its peak. The fevered pitch has broken, and the din dulls now to a manageable hum. Society starts to wean itself from its constant connection addiction, moving into the Sagittarius North Node of direct experience in the world, real, meaningful conversation, and the type of guiding wisdom and intuition that doesn't really have to say a word.
We started into electromagnetic detox and a detox of the mental environment as the North Node entered Sagittarius March 3. This New Moon eclipse influenced by the South Node steps it up a few notches, moving us out of the social backdrop where people, en masse, are constantly, ridiculously glued to internet/cable/cell/Blackberry/Facebook/Twitter/iPod, etc. The high adrenalin communication junkie vibe becomes passe. The collection of as many friends and feeds and sites and followers and perspectives as is humanly possible goes on the wane.
With a trine to Saturn in Libra, the communication channels we do receive necessarily become streamlined - quality over quantity. We'll be looking for more substantial information and connection over entertaining fluff. More serious, adult fare than the perpetually high school-ish chitter chatter that has become omnipresent over the last decade. The stylish, stylish yet unsatisfyingly superficial perspectives being churned out and sold on internet, in magazines and on television will no longer be cutting the mustard. It will become harder to propagandize and put one over on an increasingly media and politics-savvy public with the North Node carving out a track in Sagittarius. The same old ploys and diversions no longer work - though there are some big blind spots and pitfalls associated. I've been writing about this theme for a while, but things should shift dramatically after this eclipse.
The Full Moon total lunar eclipse June 15 happens at 24 degrees Sagittarius conjunct the Sagittarius North Node. This is another strongly symbolic time for the unfolding of current overseas war agendas. Following the guidance of our inherent wisdom, especially the old school wisdom of female kin, keeps us on track during a time when, with the Sun conjunct Mercury in Gemini conjunct the South Node, the propaganda will be flying fast and furious, spurring the next chapter of "war on foreign terrorists." We have to listen beyond the words to hear the truth. Expect directional and philosophical shifts both personally and globally as the grand-scale global power shift and shuffling of the cast of characters continues.
The New Moon partial solar eclipse July 1 at 9 degrees Cancer happens just one degree off the "Haiti Earthquake" Full Moon partial lunar eclipse (10 degrees Cancer) on December 31, 2009. This is one of those prime symbolic times, so seismic activity would not be a surprise. Don't blame Mother Nature if it should occur.
The New Moon Cancer eclipse happens on Cancer Sun nation Canada's birthday - July 1, and we can expect this nation to rise to new prominence in the furthering of the current global agenda. Its merger with the Cancer Sun nation to the south is a done deal, and it is acting as an arm of the U.S. miltary in Afghanistan and Libya. This includes the escalation of Canada's role in the attacks against Libya with Canadian General Charles Bouchard being appointed head of the NATO campaign. Four hundred thirty five Canadian personnel are currently involved. Canada still has a sort of benign, "peacekeeper" image on the world stage, but my guess is that will hold out about as long as Obama's Hope Train did.
The Cancer New Moon eclipse happens three days prior to the birthday of the Cancer Sun nation to the south (Independence Day), and this is a nation whose fundamental understanding of itself is in the process of shattering. The United States' ego (Sun) has taken multiple hits - though it's still running on bravado in a lot of cases. Like those CEOs who saw that the jig was up but kept flying around making bad deals on the private jet. A new global role for the United States continues to emerge as the financial string-pullers shuffle the deck. The U.S. economy is still being artificially propped up. It's running on fumes, postponing the full brunt of the 2008 orchestrated economic collapse that began as Pluto entered Capricorn.
The Summer of 2010 also involved eclipses along the Cancer/Capricorn polarity - the third of three sets of eclipses on that polarity. From those eclipses:
Post-Eclipse Emotional Backdrop Transformations and What the Crab Can No Longer Deny
Monday, April 18, 2011
Pluto in Capricorn Retrospective: It's All Just a Norman Rockwell Painting, Isn't It?
With Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, I've been reading old issues of Vanity Fair from the library, which has covered quite a lot on the banking/insurance collapse in the United States. Vanity Fair has a sort of gossipy, status quo vibe - like the people dishing at a well-heeled Hamptons party who are very much part of the scene they're dishing on. They want to tongue wag but never get into the real roots of the situation because that would upset their own privileged foundations. There were a couple issues that I found interesting, though, as far as Pluto in Capricorn themes.
One thing that disgusted/infuriated/exasperated me about all their coverage, as usual, was the overwhelming male energy in the articles. The financial world is completely dominated by men. Not just men but primarily greedy, immature, short-sighted, materialist men who will gladly hand over their souls and play corrupted systems in exchange for the supposed indicators of success, power and recognition - money, homes, vacation homes, cars, art, women.
The women, their wives or mistresses, exist only in relation to these men. They're there to support, sustain and cover for these guys. Look pretty, ask no questions type stuff.
The whole thing is bizarre and insane. You have to ask yourself, how can this be the way the financial world is structured? With so many people just playing along, looking to cash in?
One of the articles from the November 2009 issue was about a man named Marc Dreier who is now in prison for 20 years after masterminding a huge Ponzi scheme that blew up a few days prior to (and was overshadowed in the press by) the Bernie Madoff scam. (Canadian connection: Dreier was caught in Toronto during an attempted swindle of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.)
Dreier was a lawyer who was sort of middle-of-the-pack and felt under-appreciated and under-rewarded. To gain the "success" he deserved, he concocted a four-year $380-million Ponzi scheme involving hedge funds (what else?) that funded a huge law firm under his name, multiple luxury homes, Picassos, beach houses, an Aston Martin, a yacht, a sushi restaurant. Super overdone instantaneous New Money. You know the drill.
The thing that struck me from the article was a paragraph at the end from a very philosophical Marc Dreier about to be shipped off to prison. He'd come to some realizations that a lot of people are born knowing and living by, but I guess are hard to come by in the financial sectors of the day. He talked about how success and happiness are being determined by professional and financial achievements and material acquisitions and how that is a fallacy. He said that young people getting into finance have to define what success and happiness are and that they don't have to make the same mistakes he made.
Another interesting issue was April 2010, which had an article on thirtysomething Michael Burry, an ex-neurosurgeon with a glass eye and Aspergers, who made a fortune buying credit-default swaps on subprime-mortgage bonds.
Michael Burry started out as a value investor looking for undervalued bargain stocks being downplayed. Burry soon picked up on the insanity of subprime mortgage lending and figured out a way to bet on the inevitable failure of those mortgages - credit-default swaps.
Predatory mortgages were being lent that were guaranteed to go bad. Middle and lower-middle class people were set up to fail with mortgages that involved no money down and a very low interest rate for the first two years. After two years, the interest rate jumped and then continued to climb incrementally. With the incomes stated, there was really no way people were going to be able to meet these mortgages. There was no way their mortgages should have been approved in the first place.
Burry saw this, bet on them going bad, and made big coin as millions of loans were defaulted on and people lost their homes. The real estate bubble burst and people woke up from the American Dream...hard.
The Vanity Fair article would like us to believe Michael Burry was one of the only people who figured this out. He bet on the system to fail while the entire financial sector was asleep at the wheel and got his payday.
In reality, though, isn't he just one of the non-insiders who figured it out and then took his cut? To me, it looks as if the entire thing was one big Ponzi scheme rigged to impode and create U.S. Treasury-looting pay-offs for those who had bet on it doing so. I could be wrong.
These stories are pure Pluto in Cap, and they made me dig up my first blog post on Pluto in Capricorn, the second post on this blog, the February 2008 Astro Perspective:
"PLUTO IN CAPRICORN: January 26, 2008 - November 20, 2024
Pluto fuels a process of intense examination and scrutiny of the aspects of life we would often rather not look at. All the dark creepy crawlies we’d prefer would just stay hidden under the rug - the dark undercurrents of life, ourselves and other people; denied emotional realities; abusive, unequal relationship dynamics; things we repress that then come out in our lives and selves in a multitude of unpleasant ways; power struggles; control issues; hidden motivations; betrayals; emotional suppression and poisoning; oppression; domination and subjugation; lack of personal integrity; behaviours and circumstances that result from disconnection to the core, soul-level reality; etc. All that fun stuff that we all love dealing with...
Pluto’s location indicates the area that needs most desperately to transition and be reborn into something new. So while Pluto is in Capricorn, we’re going to be forced to look at our concepts of material progress and success and all the structures that have grown out of those concepts and transform those things to better fit our continued life on the planet.
As far as the transpersonal view goes, Pluto in Capricorn will be a time when the Plutonic process is applied to things such as: business and corporations and the hierarchical structures within them; “bosses;” owners; management; time; money; economics; material goals and progress; patriarchy; use of power of those at the top; the aspects of control and power that money and position afford; public image; what our societies respect, recognize and deem worthy; leadership and the legitimacy of that leadership; concepts of success; climbing the corporate ladder and where that ladder is leading us; etc.
In my view, the masculine and feminine energies on the planet are currently unbalanced and unequal to the point of collapse. And nowhere is this more apparent than in our business structures, with the prevailing ideology of growth and achievement at all cost and a seeming lack of concern about negative effects on the environment, the populace and the basic overall soul of things. To me, we’ve gone as far as we can go with the current system of unfettered growth (to the point of almost destroying our planet), and now we desperately need some balance. We need to inject some soul into our structures. We need to balance outward achievement with inner reflection and guidance. We need to care about how our actions and “progress” affect other people and the planet. We need to make sure that the ways we’re striving to be recognized and respected in the public world feel right to us in our inner world. This relates to the balance of Cancer and Capricorn. During a Pluto transit through a sign, development of the sign opposite Pluto is crucial to sort of pull us out of the muck and mire that Pluto kicks up and create some balance. Capricorn rules the Father figure energy (masculine) and Cancer rules the Mother figure energy (feminine). Capricorn rules the outwardly visible public self and Cancer rules the inner, soul self. So to me, Pluto in Capricorn is very clearly a time when the disconnect between these things must be addressed. Masculine and feminine must come into balance. They must learn to work together as equally important forces, each playing a complementary role and becoming one force of creation, instead of two separate forces resisting each other and fighting for dominance.
One of the things a birth chart illustrates beautifully is the fact that we all have masculine energy and feminine energy within us. There are six yin signs and six yang signs that we all, men and women, contain. A mistake that we make in our society is to equate feminine with women and masculine with men. So adding women to a corporate boardroom is often considered enough to address the imbalance of masculine and feminine. This is, of course, not true because women can behave in a very masculine way, especially when they’re trying to fit in and succeed in an excessively masculine structure.
So we need to transform (Pluto) the way we understand the interplay of masculine and feminine, outer and inner (Capricorn - Cancer). And see how denying the existence or the importance of the feminine or yin energy in our work and business structures is creating a problematic imbalance in our society.
Addressing and rebalancing these issues through Pluto in Capricorn will, hopefully, change the lifestyle track that people are running on of go, go, go!, "I'm so busy," tossing down three Starbucks a day to keep going, cocaine sniffing (yes, business people have resorted to that, apparently), body in a constant state of alert/panic, constant growth, constant focus on outward results, goals!, achievements!, recognition!, outpacing the other guy/gal, etc.
Along with that, the way all this is artificially supported by a controlled and invisible form of feminine, which exists only to support this mad machine, will also transform. An example of this is the receptionist or admin assistants in the business structure, who support what other people are doing but usually have no real independent roles of their own.
This Plutonic transformation will also renew our respect for and understanding of growth cycles - the fact that creation involves outward growth, but also rest, dormancy and connection to the inner for guidance. The fact that the human body is not a machine, and it cannot just produce, produce, produce. Energy levels fluctuate. There is a timing of things.
These are some of the things which will come up during Pluto in Capricorn and not in a superficial way! Pluto asks for nothing less than complete transformation from the core. No stone is left unturned. So Pluto will be demanding complete institutional change.
Pluto will help us to see what power is legitimate in our business structures and what isn’t, who is rightfully a leader and who does not have the personal integrity or character to truly lead humanity into a new era, who is a dinosaur clinging to power using the old methods of coercion, manipulation and control and who has rightfully earned the position of leader.
I think during the next 16 years, (within the context of the Aquarian era shift), equality will be chosen more often than not over hierarchy. Even the concept of a “boss” will come under scrutiny within many organizations. As will the owner-worker paradigm and the right to dominate, manipulate and control “underlings” that sometimes goes along with being in charge of the purse strings. Any inequalities in the dynamics between people on different levels of the hierarchy will come up. The way people are bullied into putting up with abusive conditions out of fear of losing their employment. And the personality issues that people at the top of the hierarchy are allowed to have - things that would not be tolerated in workers lower on the totem pole. Top-down decision-making where people who are completely disconnected from the reality of the workers are creating policies that don’t make practical sense. The lack of access many workers have to the decision-making process, despite the fact that it affects their livelihoods. Corporate policy that is sometimes impractical and inhumane."
Another article that interested me in the November 2009 issue was one related more to the other end of the spectrum and Pluto's effect on Cancer. That article, running in the same issue as Ponzi schemer Dreier, was one on how Norman Rockwell's art is having a big resurgence, gaining newfound appreciation where previously it was considered corny Americana. Norman Rockwell's work was big after World War II when the world wanted to go back to "a simpler time" and this has a strong Pluto in Cancer feel to me.
We've now entered the series of Uranus in Aries squares to Pluto that we also saw at the beginning of the Great Depression and in the lead-up to World War II. At that time, Uranus in Aries was square Pluto in Cancer. Now, it's square Pluto in Capricorn.
This is a time ripe for people going into overload shutdown mode and wanting to go back to that "simpler time," which never really existed. Rockwell said he made art that depicted life as he wished it were, rather than the way it really was. How's that for denial of Plutonic reality?
As Pluto transits Capricorn, it does a complete gutting and re-working of Cancer, also. Home, family, Mama, apple pie, meals made from scratch, fresh sheets, comfort, emotional security. Both the United States and Canada are Cancer Sun nations, and both have a healthy dose of denial going on as far as living in protected little bubbles as the rest of the world goes to hell - often by their hands.
I wrote about some of that last summer during the Cancer/Capricorn eclipses:
Post-Eclipse Emotional Backdrop Transformations and What the Crab Can No Longer Deny
There's a strong ongoing tendency during Pluto in Capricorn that we need to be vigilant about: regression - another Plutonic theme - in the relations between men and women/the masculine and feminine. Hello, bell jar.
Society is going to backslide here unless we really consciously work to buck the trend.
One thing that disgusted/infuriated/exasperated me about all their coverage, as usual, was the overwhelming male energy in the articles. The financial world is completely dominated by men. Not just men but primarily greedy, immature, short-sighted, materialist men who will gladly hand over their souls and play corrupted systems in exchange for the supposed indicators of success, power and recognition - money, homes, vacation homes, cars, art, women.
The women, their wives or mistresses, exist only in relation to these men. They're there to support, sustain and cover for these guys. Look pretty, ask no questions type stuff.
The whole thing is bizarre and insane. You have to ask yourself, how can this be the way the financial world is structured? With so many people just playing along, looking to cash in?
One of the articles from the November 2009 issue was about a man named Marc Dreier who is now in prison for 20 years after masterminding a huge Ponzi scheme that blew up a few days prior to (and was overshadowed in the press by) the Bernie Madoff scam. (Canadian connection: Dreier was caught in Toronto during an attempted swindle of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.)
Dreier was a lawyer who was sort of middle-of-the-pack and felt under-appreciated and under-rewarded. To gain the "success" he deserved, he concocted a four-year $380-million Ponzi scheme involving hedge funds (what else?) that funded a huge law firm under his name, multiple luxury homes, Picassos, beach houses, an Aston Martin, a yacht, a sushi restaurant. Super overdone instantaneous New Money. You know the drill.
The thing that struck me from the article was a paragraph at the end from a very philosophical Marc Dreier about to be shipped off to prison. He'd come to some realizations that a lot of people are born knowing and living by, but I guess are hard to come by in the financial sectors of the day. He talked about how success and happiness are being determined by professional and financial achievements and material acquisitions and how that is a fallacy. He said that young people getting into finance have to define what success and happiness are and that they don't have to make the same mistakes he made.
Another interesting issue was April 2010, which had an article on thirtysomething Michael Burry, an ex-neurosurgeon with a glass eye and Aspergers, who made a fortune buying credit-default swaps on subprime-mortgage bonds.
Michael Burry started out as a value investor looking for undervalued bargain stocks being downplayed. Burry soon picked up on the insanity of subprime mortgage lending and figured out a way to bet on the inevitable failure of those mortgages - credit-default swaps.
Predatory mortgages were being lent that were guaranteed to go bad. Middle and lower-middle class people were set up to fail with mortgages that involved no money down and a very low interest rate for the first two years. After two years, the interest rate jumped and then continued to climb incrementally. With the incomes stated, there was really no way people were going to be able to meet these mortgages. There was no way their mortgages should have been approved in the first place.
Burry saw this, bet on them going bad, and made big coin as millions of loans were defaulted on and people lost their homes. The real estate bubble burst and people woke up from the American Dream...hard.
The Vanity Fair article would like us to believe Michael Burry was one of the only people who figured this out. He bet on the system to fail while the entire financial sector was asleep at the wheel and got his payday.
In reality, though, isn't he just one of the non-insiders who figured it out and then took his cut? To me, it looks as if the entire thing was one big Ponzi scheme rigged to impode and create U.S. Treasury-looting pay-offs for those who had bet on it doing so. I could be wrong.
These stories are pure Pluto in Cap, and they made me dig up my first blog post on Pluto in Capricorn, the second post on this blog, the February 2008 Astro Perspective:
"PLUTO IN CAPRICORN: January 26, 2008 - November 20, 2024
Pluto fuels a process of intense examination and scrutiny of the aspects of life we would often rather not look at. All the dark creepy crawlies we’d prefer would just stay hidden under the rug - the dark undercurrents of life, ourselves and other people; denied emotional realities; abusive, unequal relationship dynamics; things we repress that then come out in our lives and selves in a multitude of unpleasant ways; power struggles; control issues; hidden motivations; betrayals; emotional suppression and poisoning; oppression; domination and subjugation; lack of personal integrity; behaviours and circumstances that result from disconnection to the core, soul-level reality; etc. All that fun stuff that we all love dealing with...
Pluto’s location indicates the area that needs most desperately to transition and be reborn into something new. So while Pluto is in Capricorn, we’re going to be forced to look at our concepts of material progress and success and all the structures that have grown out of those concepts and transform those things to better fit our continued life on the planet.
As far as the transpersonal view goes, Pluto in Capricorn will be a time when the Plutonic process is applied to things such as: business and corporations and the hierarchical structures within them; “bosses;” owners; management; time; money; economics; material goals and progress; patriarchy; use of power of those at the top; the aspects of control and power that money and position afford; public image; what our societies respect, recognize and deem worthy; leadership and the legitimacy of that leadership; concepts of success; climbing the corporate ladder and where that ladder is leading us; etc.
In my view, the masculine and feminine energies on the planet are currently unbalanced and unequal to the point of collapse. And nowhere is this more apparent than in our business structures, with the prevailing ideology of growth and achievement at all cost and a seeming lack of concern about negative effects on the environment, the populace and the basic overall soul of things. To me, we’ve gone as far as we can go with the current system of unfettered growth (to the point of almost destroying our planet), and now we desperately need some balance. We need to inject some soul into our structures. We need to balance outward achievement with inner reflection and guidance. We need to care about how our actions and “progress” affect other people and the planet. We need to make sure that the ways we’re striving to be recognized and respected in the public world feel right to us in our inner world. This relates to the balance of Cancer and Capricorn. During a Pluto transit through a sign, development of the sign opposite Pluto is crucial to sort of pull us out of the muck and mire that Pluto kicks up and create some balance. Capricorn rules the Father figure energy (masculine) and Cancer rules the Mother figure energy (feminine). Capricorn rules the outwardly visible public self and Cancer rules the inner, soul self. So to me, Pluto in Capricorn is very clearly a time when the disconnect between these things must be addressed. Masculine and feminine must come into balance. They must learn to work together as equally important forces, each playing a complementary role and becoming one force of creation, instead of two separate forces resisting each other and fighting for dominance.
One of the things a birth chart illustrates beautifully is the fact that we all have masculine energy and feminine energy within us. There are six yin signs and six yang signs that we all, men and women, contain. A mistake that we make in our society is to equate feminine with women and masculine with men. So adding women to a corporate boardroom is often considered enough to address the imbalance of masculine and feminine. This is, of course, not true because women can behave in a very masculine way, especially when they’re trying to fit in and succeed in an excessively masculine structure.
So we need to transform (Pluto) the way we understand the interplay of masculine and feminine, outer and inner (Capricorn - Cancer). And see how denying the existence or the importance of the feminine or yin energy in our work and business structures is creating a problematic imbalance in our society.
Addressing and rebalancing these issues through Pluto in Capricorn will, hopefully, change the lifestyle track that people are running on of go, go, go!, "I'm so busy," tossing down three Starbucks a day to keep going, cocaine sniffing (yes, business people have resorted to that, apparently), body in a constant state of alert/panic, constant growth, constant focus on outward results, goals!, achievements!, recognition!, outpacing the other guy/gal, etc.
Along with that, the way all this is artificially supported by a controlled and invisible form of feminine, which exists only to support this mad machine, will also transform. An example of this is the receptionist or admin assistants in the business structure, who support what other people are doing but usually have no real independent roles of their own.
This Plutonic transformation will also renew our respect for and understanding of growth cycles - the fact that creation involves outward growth, but also rest, dormancy and connection to the inner for guidance. The fact that the human body is not a machine, and it cannot just produce, produce, produce. Energy levels fluctuate. There is a timing of things.
These are some of the things which will come up during Pluto in Capricorn and not in a superficial way! Pluto asks for nothing less than complete transformation from the core. No stone is left unturned. So Pluto will be demanding complete institutional change.
Pluto will help us to see what power is legitimate in our business structures and what isn’t, who is rightfully a leader and who does not have the personal integrity or character to truly lead humanity into a new era, who is a dinosaur clinging to power using the old methods of coercion, manipulation and control and who has rightfully earned the position of leader.
I think during the next 16 years, (within the context of the Aquarian era shift), equality will be chosen more often than not over hierarchy. Even the concept of a “boss” will come under scrutiny within many organizations. As will the owner-worker paradigm and the right to dominate, manipulate and control “underlings” that sometimes goes along with being in charge of the purse strings. Any inequalities in the dynamics between people on different levels of the hierarchy will come up. The way people are bullied into putting up with abusive conditions out of fear of losing their employment. And the personality issues that people at the top of the hierarchy are allowed to have - things that would not be tolerated in workers lower on the totem pole. Top-down decision-making where people who are completely disconnected from the reality of the workers are creating policies that don’t make practical sense. The lack of access many workers have to the decision-making process, despite the fact that it affects their livelihoods. Corporate policy that is sometimes impractical and inhumane."
Another article that interested me in the November 2009 issue was one related more to the other end of the spectrum and Pluto's effect on Cancer. That article, running in the same issue as Ponzi schemer Dreier, was one on how Norman Rockwell's art is having a big resurgence, gaining newfound appreciation where previously it was considered corny Americana. Norman Rockwell's work was big after World War II when the world wanted to go back to "a simpler time" and this has a strong Pluto in Cancer feel to me.
We've now entered the series of Uranus in Aries squares to Pluto that we also saw at the beginning of the Great Depression and in the lead-up to World War II. At that time, Uranus in Aries was square Pluto in Cancer. Now, it's square Pluto in Capricorn.
This is a time ripe for people going into overload shutdown mode and wanting to go back to that "simpler time," which never really existed. Rockwell said he made art that depicted life as he wished it were, rather than the way it really was. How's that for denial of Plutonic reality?
As Pluto transits Capricorn, it does a complete gutting and re-working of Cancer, also. Home, family, Mama, apple pie, meals made from scratch, fresh sheets, comfort, emotional security. Both the United States and Canada are Cancer Sun nations, and both have a healthy dose of denial going on as far as living in protected little bubbles as the rest of the world goes to hell - often by their hands.
I wrote about some of that last summer during the Cancer/Capricorn eclipses:
Post-Eclipse Emotional Backdrop Transformations and What the Crab Can No Longer Deny
There's a strong ongoing tendency during Pluto in Capricorn that we need to be vigilant about: regression - another Plutonic theme - in the relations between men and women/the masculine and feminine. Hello, bell jar.
Society is going to backslide here unless we really consciously work to buck the trend.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Mercury is in Aries, So Let's Be Direct About It
Full Moon in Libra tomorrow night (exact 9:44 p.m. Central).
Mars in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra Monday, April 18 (11:02 a.m.).
Stationing Mercury Rx in Aries conjunct Mars in Aries Tuesday, April 19 (9:58 a.m.).
I would say the Sun entering Taurus April 20 (5:17 a.m.) is the beginning of the easing of the uber Aries stellium if only Venus weren't entering Aries later that night to take its place. (Mercury Rx, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus in Aries)
Still, the Sun in Taurus plants our feet on soon-to-be green grass-covered ground, despite things being a little on the fried side from all that burning and pushing and striving and exerting we're doing with fiery Aries opposite Saturn in Libra.
Venus moves to a conjunction with Uranus in Aries April 22 and then to a square to Pluto in Capricorn April 27. We're changing - necessarily, irrevocably - within and through relationships, and the shattering, future-oriented infusion of Uranus energy combined with the sever-all-that-is-ready-to-die Pluto energy makes relationships volatile, unpredictable, a little on edge and pretty damned rock and roll for the next couple weeks. Raw, new facets of identity are emerging within relationship that are surprising, shocking, maybe a little disturbing...and exhilarating.
Just mind you don't ram right into people and hurt their feelings with all that self-exertion. These aspects could definitely produce some tears. It's going to take time to come to terms with the changes up ahead - including the changes in long-standing relationship - and we have to help each other through it. The people in our lives matter (Saturn in Libra), and we may just need to take all that rock and roll, free to be me energy down a notch or two.
However, the Venus retro in Aries themes that I talked about? They do come in handy now. Being true to yourself to the core and exerting yourself from that place despite social pressure to be and say and do what other people would like you to keeps us burning through the Plutonic detritus and making progress, as opposed to getting stuck in the same-old relationship tricks and muck and mire.
Mercury stations direct April 23 just a hair off an exact opposition to Saturn in Libra. This is more tension of the "say what you mean, but simultaneously watch your tongue" variety. Again, under the tension of this opposition, a little self-exertion goes a long way. There is a complex social balance required here involving some yielding and some exerting. We have to be responsible with the feelings and sensibilities of the people around us, so adjust the scales accordingly.
Mars busts fully out of the Plutonic forcefield and its square to Pluto in Capricorn around this time, also, and starts anticipating its conjunction to Jupiter in Aries April 30. This aspect is much more to Mars' liking, but make sure you have heeded the square to Pluto in Capricorn well, dropping all non-essentials and allowing yourself to be directed and positioned accordingly with personal direction attuned carefully within the context of the larger, collective goings-on. Pluto is honing our movements carefully now, purging anything that isn't in our best interests as far as reaching the furthest, broadest, deepest goals of the soul.
Once Mars hits the conjunction to Jupiter, we get a big boost forward, and to make the most of it, we want to make sure the direction we're propelled into is JUST right. Any ways we're not being true to ourselves right down to the bone, soul, core have the possibility of throwing us off course, so shed and morph your way to integrity and authenticity, especially in relation to other people, ahead of time.
The boost we receive from the Mars-Jupiter conjunction becomes massive as it trines the Sagittarius North Node almost immediately after. Mercury, direct as of April 23, and Venus follow right behind, conjuncting each other May 9 and then forming a trine to the North Node May 10.
The time frame of May 1 to 15 is a huge window of opportunity, but again, how much progress we make depends on how well we've heeded the less comfortable instructions of Pluto. The more Plutonic awareness of the situation on this planet we can stomach and integrate, the more expansion we enjoy in our personal directions.
Mars in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra Monday, April 18 (11:02 a.m.).
Stationing Mercury Rx in Aries conjunct Mars in Aries Tuesday, April 19 (9:58 a.m.).
I would say the Sun entering Taurus April 20 (5:17 a.m.) is the beginning of the easing of the uber Aries stellium if only Venus weren't entering Aries later that night to take its place. (Mercury Rx, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus in Aries)
Still, the Sun in Taurus plants our feet on soon-to-be green grass-covered ground, despite things being a little on the fried side from all that burning and pushing and striving and exerting we're doing with fiery Aries opposite Saturn in Libra.
Venus moves to a conjunction with Uranus in Aries April 22 and then to a square to Pluto in Capricorn April 27. We're changing - necessarily, irrevocably - within and through relationships, and the shattering, future-oriented infusion of Uranus energy combined with the sever-all-that-is-ready-to-die Pluto energy makes relationships volatile, unpredictable, a little on edge and pretty damned rock and roll for the next couple weeks. Raw, new facets of identity are emerging within relationship that are surprising, shocking, maybe a little disturbing...and exhilarating.
Just mind you don't ram right into people and hurt their feelings with all that self-exertion. These aspects could definitely produce some tears. It's going to take time to come to terms with the changes up ahead - including the changes in long-standing relationship - and we have to help each other through it. The people in our lives matter (Saturn in Libra), and we may just need to take all that rock and roll, free to be me energy down a notch or two.
However, the Venus retro in Aries themes that I talked about? They do come in handy now. Being true to yourself to the core and exerting yourself from that place despite social pressure to be and say and do what other people would like you to keeps us burning through the Plutonic detritus and making progress, as opposed to getting stuck in the same-old relationship tricks and muck and mire.
Mercury stations direct April 23 just a hair off an exact opposition to Saturn in Libra. This is more tension of the "say what you mean, but simultaneously watch your tongue" variety. Again, under the tension of this opposition, a little self-exertion goes a long way. There is a complex social balance required here involving some yielding and some exerting. We have to be responsible with the feelings and sensibilities of the people around us, so adjust the scales accordingly.
Mars busts fully out of the Plutonic forcefield and its square to Pluto in Capricorn around this time, also, and starts anticipating its conjunction to Jupiter in Aries April 30. This aspect is much more to Mars' liking, but make sure you have heeded the square to Pluto in Capricorn well, dropping all non-essentials and allowing yourself to be directed and positioned accordingly with personal direction attuned carefully within the context of the larger, collective goings-on. Pluto is honing our movements carefully now, purging anything that isn't in our best interests as far as reaching the furthest, broadest, deepest goals of the soul.
Once Mars hits the conjunction to Jupiter, we get a big boost forward, and to make the most of it, we want to make sure the direction we're propelled into is JUST right. Any ways we're not being true to ourselves right down to the bone, soul, core have the possibility of throwing us off course, so shed and morph your way to integrity and authenticity, especially in relation to other people, ahead of time.
The boost we receive from the Mars-Jupiter conjunction becomes massive as it trines the Sagittarius North Node almost immediately after. Mercury, direct as of April 23, and Venus follow right behind, conjuncting each other May 9 and then forming a trine to the North Node May 10.
The time frame of May 1 to 15 is a huge window of opportunity, but again, how much progress we make depends on how well we've heeded the less comfortable instructions of Pluto. The more Plutonic awareness of the situation on this planet we can stomach and integrate, the more expansion we enjoy in our personal directions.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Ceres in Pisces, GM Alfalfa and the Neptunian Permeation of the Seed Supply
We're heading to an election in Canada May 2 after the minority Conservative "Harper Government" delivered a budget bound to be rejected by the other parties. It was.
(For those who aren't hip to the now, the Government of Canada has officially been re-branded the "Harper Government" - complete with memos - since the appearance of being elected by and accountable to the people is so very last era. At this point, there really is no Government of Canada - we're officially in lock-step North American Union merger within a broader global agenda, so why not do away with the formalities altogether? Corpo-governmental identity re-branding. Aries square Pluto in Capricorn.)
As we head into the election run-up, the planet of spiritual/energetic connection and dissolution into "all that is" Neptune has just cracked into its domicile of Pisces (April 4), sitting on the zero degree until it retrogrades back into Aquarius June 3. This is the third sign shift of outer planets we've experienced in the past 3.5 years - Pluto into Capricorn, Uranus into Aries and now Neptune into Pisces (it's there for good February 2012).
At the time of Neptune's ingress, it was conjunct masculine 'wounded healer' Chiron (3 degrees Pisces) and feminine 'Goddess of grains, cereals, and fertility of the Earth' Ceres (5 degrees Pisces). It was also just past the orb of a conjunction to Venus in Pisces (10 degrees). These conjunctions colour Neptune's entire 15-year transit of Pisces.
Understatement of the astrological age: there's a whole lot of psychic healing and healing of the human spirit required on this planet at the end of the Piscean era.
The Neptune-Chiron-Ceres conjunction involves complex symbolism, but in basic terms, this combination of energies shows us where we're starving collectively - spiritually and physically - so we can work on bucking the trend and making our way back to right principles and the healing they bring.
Earth Mama Ceres being so strongly involved, along with Venus further into Pisces, indicates that the spiritual healing and healing of the whole is intricately, inextricably linked to bringing the feminine and women to their rightful places of prominence, power, influence and respect, especially within the chronically masculine-heavy spiritual paradigms.
The astrological zodiac itself is one of these masculine-heavy paradigms, reflecting, as it does, the broader societies. Only two of the ten major bodies used in astrological analysis are considered feminine - the Moon and Venus. While these two do play a very strong role in astrology, this paints a skewed, two-dimensional picture of the feminine influence and experience on this planet: women and the feminine force are either the beautiful lover (Venus) or the nurturing mother (Moon) - existing in relation to others - with little nuance or variation in between.
Ceres, along with other feminine bodies and points, plays a secondary and often invisible role in most of the astrology of the day, indicating the downplayed importance of food, agriculture and feminine grounding and nourishment. Combined with the double dose of Neptunian/Piscean influence, these issues remain obscured, glossed over, and do not have the hype factor required to keep an entertainment-addicted public interested. Everyone eats. Almost no one cares about or understands agricultural issues.
"Neptunian integrative spiritual healing" is a sexy little catch phrase that might hold some interest, though. And Ceres shows us some of what that's going to entail, involving a crucial link to our food sources.
Most visibly, the wounding (Chiron) related to food (Ceres) involves purposeful food shortages and criminal inflation of food prices bringing about increased levels of starvation worldwide. Less visibly, it involves the slow degradation of the quality of our food through contamination by genetically modified organisms, over-processing, soil pollution and the leeching of the soil of minerals.
A big part of our collective starvation involves no longer living by right spiritual principles - more to the point, living in societies dominated by corporate interests that force and sell undignified, dysfunctional lifestyles and values disconnected from right spiritual principles. The collective streams are shaped and directed into these channels, and it takes a lot to live beyond them.
Nowhere is the divergence from proper spiritual principles more apparent - yet less fully grasped by most people - than in our relationship to food.
The dissolution of our Parliament in Canada has left unaddressed a key motion tabled by the opposition March 3, 2011 - a moratorium on the planting and growing of genetically modified alfalfa in Canada. The "Harper Government," which supports expansion into GM crops, stalled the vote on the motion March 11, 2011, leaving it up in the air.
This should be an election issue in Canada, but it isn't. The proposed moratorium, like Ceres itself, flies under the radar for most people. Agriculture issues almost always do since, again, people have become so disconnected to food and food sources that they don't even understand why they should concern themselves with such things.
But this is big, people. This is Ceres big, and Ceres is the largest body in the asteroid belt. Reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 along with Eris and Pluto, Ceres is much larger than Chiron, though Chiron gets infinitely more play astrologically.
Ceres is in the league of Lord of the Underworld Pluto and we know that dude means business. So does Ceres. Fuck with Ceres too much, and she has the ability to snuff life out on this planet entirely. This is what they're playing with right now. Still think this is an inconsequential, secondary-at-best influence in the astrological zodiac?
Monsanto is currently attempting to make its Roundup Ready alfalfa the first genetically modified perennial planted in North America. Yes, perennial. Plant it once, and it's coming back again and again. Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically modified to withstand glyphosate, a herbicide sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup. Let's recall that Monsanto is the corporation that has brought us such improvements on the human condition as Agent Orange, DDT, saccharin, Aspartame, bovine growth hormones and PCBs.
On January 27, 2011, after a five-year court battle, Monsanto’s GM alfalfa was authorized for sale by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Just prior to this, Whole Foods Market sent out an e-mail to customers announcing it was no longer opposing the growing of GM crops. It was now supporting a policy of "conditional deregulation," despite the fact that it admitted such a policy could mean contamination of beef, dairy products and honey. (It turns out, about two-thirds of the foods Whole Foods sells as "natural" are already contaminated with GMOs.)
Whole Foods execs even adopted the "coexistence and cooperation" language of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Visack. Whole Foods' new stance:
"The policy set for [GM] alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other [GM] crops as well. True coexistence is a must."
Secondary lawsuits were launched against the USDA March 18, 2011 by groups including the Center for Food Safety and the National Family Farm Coalition, challenging the authorization and stalling the sale and planting of the alfalfa...for now.
The approval of GM alfalfa in the United States is, of course, pertinent to Canadian agriculture, as alfalfa grows and cross-pollinates like a weed, making cross-border contamination likely. Wind is a dual citizen. Hay goes back and forth.
I recently spoke with organic inspector Priscilla Reimer on this issue for an article I'm writing for a local paper, and she told me the introduction of GM alfalfa has the ability to wipe out the entire foundation of organic/non-GMO agriculture. Alfalfa is not only a staple livestock feed, it is a crop often used by farmers during the three-year field transition from conventional to organic. It also becomes essential in the crop rotation once a farm is organic because, as a nitrogen-fixer, it naturally fertilizes the soil. Basically, alfalfa is embedded within the entire organic system, so contamination by GM alfalfa would be devastating.
Already, Reimer (an organic inspector, let's recall) says there can be no guarantee that a food product labelled organic is completely free of genetically modified material. She says GMOs have spread faster than anyone could have imagined, and due to the lack of labelling and segregation within the agricultural system, GM crops being grown widely in Canada, especially soybeans, corn and canola, have contaminated the non-GMO versions. If you are eating a product that contains a derivative of those three crops, you are almost guaranteed to be eating some genetically modified material.
I also spoke to Alexis Knispel Kanu who did her PhD doctoral work on the spread of genetically modified canola. Knispel Kanu studied escape populations of canola - plants that were growing outside fields and had not been planted - and found GM contamination widespread among them. She found that it was the transportation and containment systems that were most often the cause of the spread of those seeds (spilling from trucks, trains, elevators), making the standard solution of "buffer fields" between GM and non-GM crops almost useless to stop contamination. (This is something farmers have always known, incidentally.)
Even more disturbing, Knispel Kanu found something the GMO companies had not intended: the GM canola plants she studied had cross-pollinated with each other in the wild, forming a hybrid of Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety and Bayer's LibertyLink variety.
Who's going to sue whom for patent infringement there?
Knispel Kanu says the spread of GM alfalfa poses an even stronger threat as far as cross-pollination since it is a more feral crop than canola, a perennial, and does not require cultivated fields in which to thrive.
Alfalfa is the most wild, natural, sweet-smelling crop I can think of. It's one of the first things I think of when I think 'prairie,' and to think of it being irrevocably contaminated by genetically modified organisms is really horrendous.
Neptune relates to the dissolution of boundaries - maybe more specifically to the understanding that many boundaries do not exist, especially when it comes to the natural mixing of things through air and water. Unless you have your hermetically sealed bubbles ready, what happens in one area of the planet has widespread ripple effects in other areas. We see this Piscean/Neptunian princlple with the nuclear disaster going on in Japan. And we see it in the permeation of the seed supply by genetically modified varieties. I wish it didn't take these types of attacks on our energetic inter-relatedness for people to start to grasp that they should care about what happens in the world around them - even beyond their immediate daily circle of family and friends.
Will the Earthlings realize the ongoing corporate pollution of their seed supply and start to give a flying crap before it's too late?
Stay tuned...
Until then, buying food that is local and certified organic or farmed up to organic standards is the best safe-guard - outside growing your own organic plants. Since the organic system works on a system of "institutionalized trust," forming relationships with farms and farmers that produce such products is a good idea, too. Knowing how they farm and what they feed their animals makes it easier to ensure your food supply is GMO-free - or as GMO-free as possible these days.
(For those who aren't hip to the now, the Government of Canada has officially been re-branded the "Harper Government" - complete with memos - since the appearance of being elected by and accountable to the people is so very last era. At this point, there really is no Government of Canada - we're officially in lock-step North American Union merger within a broader global agenda, so why not do away with the formalities altogether? Corpo-governmental identity re-branding. Aries square Pluto in Capricorn.)
As we head into the election run-up, the planet of spiritual/energetic connection and dissolution into "all that is" Neptune has just cracked into its domicile of Pisces (April 4), sitting on the zero degree until it retrogrades back into Aquarius June 3. This is the third sign shift of outer planets we've experienced in the past 3.5 years - Pluto into Capricorn, Uranus into Aries and now Neptune into Pisces (it's there for good February 2012).
At the time of Neptune's ingress, it was conjunct masculine 'wounded healer' Chiron (3 degrees Pisces) and feminine 'Goddess of grains, cereals, and fertility of the Earth' Ceres (5 degrees Pisces). It was also just past the orb of a conjunction to Venus in Pisces (10 degrees). These conjunctions colour Neptune's entire 15-year transit of Pisces.
Understatement of the astrological age: there's a whole lot of psychic healing and healing of the human spirit required on this planet at the end of the Piscean era.
The Neptune-Chiron-Ceres conjunction involves complex symbolism, but in basic terms, this combination of energies shows us where we're starving collectively - spiritually and physically - so we can work on bucking the trend and making our way back to right principles and the healing they bring.
Earth Mama Ceres being so strongly involved, along with Venus further into Pisces, indicates that the spiritual healing and healing of the whole is intricately, inextricably linked to bringing the feminine and women to their rightful places of prominence, power, influence and respect, especially within the chronically masculine-heavy spiritual paradigms.
The astrological zodiac itself is one of these masculine-heavy paradigms, reflecting, as it does, the broader societies. Only two of the ten major bodies used in astrological analysis are considered feminine - the Moon and Venus. While these two do play a very strong role in astrology, this paints a skewed, two-dimensional picture of the feminine influence and experience on this planet: women and the feminine force are either the beautiful lover (Venus) or the nurturing mother (Moon) - existing in relation to others - with little nuance or variation in between.
Ceres, along with other feminine bodies and points, plays a secondary and often invisible role in most of the astrology of the day, indicating the downplayed importance of food, agriculture and feminine grounding and nourishment. Combined with the double dose of Neptunian/Piscean influence, these issues remain obscured, glossed over, and do not have the hype factor required to keep an entertainment-addicted public interested. Everyone eats. Almost no one cares about or understands agricultural issues.
"Neptunian integrative spiritual healing" is a sexy little catch phrase that might hold some interest, though. And Ceres shows us some of what that's going to entail, involving a crucial link to our food sources.
Most visibly, the wounding (Chiron) related to food (Ceres) involves purposeful food shortages and criminal inflation of food prices bringing about increased levels of starvation worldwide. Less visibly, it involves the slow degradation of the quality of our food through contamination by genetically modified organisms, over-processing, soil pollution and the leeching of the soil of minerals.
A big part of our collective starvation involves no longer living by right spiritual principles - more to the point, living in societies dominated by corporate interests that force and sell undignified, dysfunctional lifestyles and values disconnected from right spiritual principles. The collective streams are shaped and directed into these channels, and it takes a lot to live beyond them.
Nowhere is the divergence from proper spiritual principles more apparent - yet less fully grasped by most people - than in our relationship to food.
The dissolution of our Parliament in Canada has left unaddressed a key motion tabled by the opposition March 3, 2011 - a moratorium on the planting and growing of genetically modified alfalfa in Canada. The "Harper Government," which supports expansion into GM crops, stalled the vote on the motion March 11, 2011, leaving it up in the air.
This should be an election issue in Canada, but it isn't. The proposed moratorium, like Ceres itself, flies under the radar for most people. Agriculture issues almost always do since, again, people have become so disconnected to food and food sources that they don't even understand why they should concern themselves with such things.
But this is big, people. This is Ceres big, and Ceres is the largest body in the asteroid belt. Reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 along with Eris and Pluto, Ceres is much larger than Chiron, though Chiron gets infinitely more play astrologically.
Ceres is in the league of Lord of the Underworld Pluto and we know that dude means business. So does Ceres. Fuck with Ceres too much, and she has the ability to snuff life out on this planet entirely. This is what they're playing with right now. Still think this is an inconsequential, secondary-at-best influence in the astrological zodiac?
Monsanto is currently attempting to make its Roundup Ready alfalfa the first genetically modified perennial planted in North America. Yes, perennial. Plant it once, and it's coming back again and again. Roundup Ready alfalfa is genetically modified to withstand glyphosate, a herbicide sold under the Monsanto brand name Roundup. Let's recall that Monsanto is the corporation that has brought us such improvements on the human condition as Agent Orange, DDT, saccharin, Aspartame, bovine growth hormones and PCBs.
On January 27, 2011, after a five-year court battle, Monsanto’s GM alfalfa was authorized for sale by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Just prior to this, Whole Foods Market sent out an e-mail to customers announcing it was no longer opposing the growing of GM crops. It was now supporting a policy of "conditional deregulation," despite the fact that it admitted such a policy could mean contamination of beef, dairy products and honey. (It turns out, about two-thirds of the foods Whole Foods sells as "natural" are already contaminated with GMOs.)
Whole Foods execs even adopted the "coexistence and cooperation" language of U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Visack. Whole Foods' new stance:
"The policy set for [GM] alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other [GM] crops as well. True coexistence is a must."
Secondary lawsuits were launched against the USDA March 18, 2011 by groups including the Center for Food Safety and the National Family Farm Coalition, challenging the authorization and stalling the sale and planting of the alfalfa...for now.
The approval of GM alfalfa in the United States is, of course, pertinent to Canadian agriculture, as alfalfa grows and cross-pollinates like a weed, making cross-border contamination likely. Wind is a dual citizen. Hay goes back and forth.
I recently spoke with organic inspector Priscilla Reimer on this issue for an article I'm writing for a local paper, and she told me the introduction of GM alfalfa has the ability to wipe out the entire foundation of organic/non-GMO agriculture. Alfalfa is not only a staple livestock feed, it is a crop often used by farmers during the three-year field transition from conventional to organic. It also becomes essential in the crop rotation once a farm is organic because, as a nitrogen-fixer, it naturally fertilizes the soil. Basically, alfalfa is embedded within the entire organic system, so contamination by GM alfalfa would be devastating.
Already, Reimer (an organic inspector, let's recall) says there can be no guarantee that a food product labelled organic is completely free of genetically modified material. She says GMOs have spread faster than anyone could have imagined, and due to the lack of labelling and segregation within the agricultural system, GM crops being grown widely in Canada, especially soybeans, corn and canola, have contaminated the non-GMO versions. If you are eating a product that contains a derivative of those three crops, you are almost guaranteed to be eating some genetically modified material.
I also spoke to Alexis Knispel Kanu who did her PhD doctoral work on the spread of genetically modified canola. Knispel Kanu studied escape populations of canola - plants that were growing outside fields and had not been planted - and found GM contamination widespread among them. She found that it was the transportation and containment systems that were most often the cause of the spread of those seeds (spilling from trucks, trains, elevators), making the standard solution of "buffer fields" between GM and non-GM crops almost useless to stop contamination. (This is something farmers have always known, incidentally.)
Even more disturbing, Knispel Kanu found something the GMO companies had not intended: the GM canola plants she studied had cross-pollinated with each other in the wild, forming a hybrid of Monsanto's Roundup Ready variety and Bayer's LibertyLink variety.
Who's going to sue whom for patent infringement there?
Knispel Kanu says the spread of GM alfalfa poses an even stronger threat as far as cross-pollination since it is a more feral crop than canola, a perennial, and does not require cultivated fields in which to thrive.
Alfalfa is the most wild, natural, sweet-smelling crop I can think of. It's one of the first things I think of when I think 'prairie,' and to think of it being irrevocably contaminated by genetically modified organisms is really horrendous.
Neptune relates to the dissolution of boundaries - maybe more specifically to the understanding that many boundaries do not exist, especially when it comes to the natural mixing of things through air and water. Unless you have your hermetically sealed bubbles ready, what happens in one area of the planet has widespread ripple effects in other areas. We see this Piscean/Neptunian princlple with the nuclear disaster going on in Japan. And we see it in the permeation of the seed supply by genetically modified varieties. I wish it didn't take these types of attacks on our energetic inter-relatedness for people to start to grasp that they should care about what happens in the world around them - even beyond their immediate daily circle of family and friends.
Will the Earthlings realize the ongoing corporate pollution of their seed supply and start to give a flying crap before it's too late?
Stay tuned...
Until then, buying food that is local and certified organic or farmed up to organic standards is the best safe-guard - outside growing your own organic plants. Since the organic system works on a system of "institutionalized trust," forming relationships with farms and farmers that produce such products is a good idea, too. Knowing how they farm and what they feed their animals makes it easier to ensure your food supply is GMO-free - or as GMO-free as possible these days.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Aries Planets Opposite Saturn in Libra: Good Fences Make Good Neighbours
As the personal planets in Aries oppose Saturn in Libra and conjunct Jupiter until the first week in May, they trigger the area of the Jupiter-Saturn opposition March 28. In turn, this triggers the themes of the 2009 Venus retrograde. Venus stationed retrograde in Aries at this point in March 2009.
At that time on the blog, one of the themes involved the concept of identifying and extricating ourselves from "false karasses." Venus in Aries was sextile the conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius at the time, and the theme of being true to ourselves, rough edges and all, so as to find our rightful place in our rightful Aquarian groups was prevalent.
The idea of a "karass" is involved in the fictional religion **Bokononism in author Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. The word was mentioned on one of my favourite TV shows as a teen, My So-Called Life, and the concept stuck with me.
A karass, according to the fictional religion in this fictional novel, is a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The group is held together by a sort of soul-level centrifugal force based in a point of commonality. The people in the karass might not even know each other but act like the fingers that support a Cat's Cradle.
A false karass, called a 'granfalloon' in Bokononism, is a group that mistakenly believes it is held together by this type of connection and common spiritual motivation. An example of this could be graduates of a certain university, fans of a certain football team, members of a certain profession...and, in this case, astrology.
Don't get me wrong. Astrology can definitely involve karasses, but as a subject in its totality, it has a tendency toward false karass in that people assume if you're "into" astrology, you have this type of common ground with all other people who are. Astrologers are seen to have this common ground simply because they practise astrology. But because there are so many different forms of astrology, so many perspectives, motivations and ways to use it, that's not always the case. A lot of times, its as if we're speaking completely different languages for completely different purposes, and it's beneficial for those interested in astrology to be aware of this when choosing their astrology sources.
This causes problems only if it's not recognized and respected.
The "identifications and differentiations" themes seeing a resurgence now seem to me to be an exercise in carving out our niches in order to make the most of our time and energy while we're on the planet. They're also helpful in heading off certain subjects or situations we know are hot button with the people in our lives. Determining where we differ fundamentally is as important as determining where we're in agreeance - maybe more so. Not all belief systems, motivations, directions or points-of-view are compatible. Not all people are meant to work together or to come into close contact with each other. And even the ones who are are going to have certain off-limits areas.
From a March 8, 2009 Venus retro in Aries post:
"Here is where living our diversity as individuals creates the collective we desire. It's not about moulding and shaping ourselves to fit within a group. It's about uncovering and living every nuanced aspect of ourselves, no apologies, so that the community forms around us and fits like a malleable, ever-adapting glove. No bending, no bowing, no squishing ourselves into shoes that don't fit just because everyone else we see is wearing them. Every edge, every corner, every variation is necessary for us to find our rightful place. They are not to be downplayed or explained away."
Determining what we believe, what guides us, what motivates us, and how that shapes our direction in relation to others is a theme that will intensify as the planets in Aries exactly trine the North Node in Sagittarius between May 1 and 15. (Election time in Canada May 2, and it's a feisty one.)
As part of that configuration, our personal histories as far as ancestry/heritage come into play, and we could be running into another theme - the ancient Sagittarian blood feud!
We obviously see this theme being played out unbelievably viciously on the global stage as the Aryan Arien energy blazes on. (I sure hope U.S.-led NATO doesn't "spread any democracy" my way.) The bloodlines, the supposedly superiour races, what people are connected to through ancestral lines.
What I'm referring to in this post comes into play more subtly socially but is connected to deeper themes. These astro energies are an indicator that old school grudges will be rising through ancestral lineages and catching in our present day multi-cultural social realms, infusing people with everything from straight-up hatred and rage to wariness to passed-along wisdom related to certain cultural clash points.
These are irritants and cyclical trigger points coming into play when interacting with certain people in certain ways because someone with their background has wronged or criminally irritated someone with your background (or vice versa) in the near or ancient past, and there is something unresolved.
With all the Aries emphasis currently, this will be rising so we can gain a deeper understanding of what causes the issues and work them out in socially responsible, boundary-conscious Saturn in Libra fashion. Following in the theme of anger impulses as impetus to action, this is about being honest when someone rubs you the wrong way, following it to its root and figuring it out so as to rework social dynamics and points of interaction. Understanding our own natures, motivations and where we're coming from quite thoroughly as well as understanding those of other people becomes a key to successful and respectful relations - along with knowing who and what to just steer clear of! There's a lot of that going around...
The current stellium of planets in Aries is telling us: your irritations do matter. Pay attention. Don't discount them. They're part of the blueprint for peace on this planet - and not a glossed-over, Band-Aid version. The real deal. The only way we can get to a real mutual respect and peace (and I'm not talking about with the sociopaths who erroneously believe they run this joint) is by getting into the nitty gritty of why we haven't been able to in the past.
This also relates to the Venus overlay we're working on currently and until June 2012 - Via Combusta Scorpio.
We're working pro-actively with Saturn in Libra at the moment while things are still relatively light on the social stage before they take a turn for the hardcore depths with Saturn in Scorpio (October 5, 2012 - September 17, 2015) coinciding with the North Node in Scorpio (August 29, 2012 - February 18, 2014). Saturn in Scorpio will be in mutual reception with Pluto in Capricorn during that period, and merger mistakes will be far less forgiving at that point. Anything you can examine and resolve as far as your social foundation now lightens the intensity of the load later when we start to merge energy and resources in less easily extricated ways.
These are dangerous times, friends, so let's not play. The only way we can get along on this planet is by admitting that some of us just don't mix so well - and drawing healthy social boundaries accordingly as we go about our daily lives. Good fences make good neighbours.
To me, this is one of the biggest disservices of the New Age version of humanity - the constant focus on oneness, unity, everyone living in blissful love and light, thinking the same way, feeling the same way, having the same "vibration" and level of "enlightenment."
The common threads running through classes, ethnicities, religions, sexes, sexualities, countries of origin, spiritual inclinations? Sure, they exist. There are universal themes galore in the human condition. But there are also rough edges and ridiculous power imbalances and areas where we absolutely do not hold common ground in any way, shape or form.
This is bloody raw Aries energy driving us into a new astrological era. This is Aquarius, and our differences matter. To gloss over them sets us up for more wounding, ass-burning events and dynamics to unfold.
Injustices and grievances have been passed through our bloodlines that we can't even find words for. We just know they're there. With a Gemini South Node, this is going to be prevalent. We can't put our finger on it, but there is something that just doesn't seem right about someone or some way they do business in their lives. This isn't a comfortable topic, especially for Libra, so luckily for us, most of this can be done intuitively through our Sagittarius North Node, disposited by Jupiter in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra.
This is some of the differentiation that is going on currently with all the focus on identity, motivation and fundamental goals (Aries). Appreciating and benefiting from our diversity and differences are only possible when we aren't being screwed over by them.
Under these aspects, people you thought were friends turn out not to be, and people you had sworn off for good turn out to be sterling-charactered brothers from another mother or sisters from another mister.
Juno is moving retrograde through Virgo until early May, and the people who are a burr in your saddle right now are making things really clear on this front so we can consciously and skillfully avoid the old, sticky, karmic traps as far as relating goes.
These transits relate to the ongoing process of finding where we fit. We're no longer in our clans of origin, for the most part. Most of us have had those destroyed and strewn about more times that we can count in an effort to snuff out who we are and what we know. It sounds counter-intuitive, but this is about getting clear on our rough-edged trigger points and deep soul motives in order to find the places and the people with whom our souls fit now, regardless of personal background. We're not going to find that old school original soul home vibe this time around. But what we are going to find is better for these times. It's rich, it's varied, it's diverse, it gives us the space and detachment to really be ourselves, and it's the best chance we have for survival.
** This reference is in no way an endorsement of the fictional religion Bokononism.
At that time on the blog, one of the themes involved the concept of identifying and extricating ourselves from "false karasses." Venus in Aries was sextile the conjunction of Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune in Aquarius at the time, and the theme of being true to ourselves, rough edges and all, so as to find our rightful place in our rightful Aquarian groups was prevalent.
The idea of a "karass" is involved in the fictional religion **Bokononism in author Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle. The word was mentioned on one of my favourite TV shows as a teen, My So-Called Life, and the concept stuck with me.
A karass, according to the fictional religion in this fictional novel, is a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God's will. The group is held together by a sort of soul-level centrifugal force based in a point of commonality. The people in the karass might not even know each other but act like the fingers that support a Cat's Cradle.
A false karass, called a 'granfalloon' in Bokononism, is a group that mistakenly believes it is held together by this type of connection and common spiritual motivation. An example of this could be graduates of a certain university, fans of a certain football team, members of a certain profession...and, in this case, astrology.
Don't get me wrong. Astrology can definitely involve karasses, but as a subject in its totality, it has a tendency toward false karass in that people assume if you're "into" astrology, you have this type of common ground with all other people who are. Astrologers are seen to have this common ground simply because they practise astrology. But because there are so many different forms of astrology, so many perspectives, motivations and ways to use it, that's not always the case. A lot of times, its as if we're speaking completely different languages for completely different purposes, and it's beneficial for those interested in astrology to be aware of this when choosing their astrology sources.
This causes problems only if it's not recognized and respected.
The "identifications and differentiations" themes seeing a resurgence now seem to me to be an exercise in carving out our niches in order to make the most of our time and energy while we're on the planet. They're also helpful in heading off certain subjects or situations we know are hot button with the people in our lives. Determining where we differ fundamentally is as important as determining where we're in agreeance - maybe more so. Not all belief systems, motivations, directions or points-of-view are compatible. Not all people are meant to work together or to come into close contact with each other. And even the ones who are are going to have certain off-limits areas.
From a March 8, 2009 Venus retro in Aries post:
"Here is where living our diversity as individuals creates the collective we desire. It's not about moulding and shaping ourselves to fit within a group. It's about uncovering and living every nuanced aspect of ourselves, no apologies, so that the community forms around us and fits like a malleable, ever-adapting glove. No bending, no bowing, no squishing ourselves into shoes that don't fit just because everyone else we see is wearing them. Every edge, every corner, every variation is necessary for us to find our rightful place. They are not to be downplayed or explained away."
Determining what we believe, what guides us, what motivates us, and how that shapes our direction in relation to others is a theme that will intensify as the planets in Aries exactly trine the North Node in Sagittarius between May 1 and 15. (Election time in Canada May 2, and it's a feisty one.)
As part of that configuration, our personal histories as far as ancestry/heritage come into play, and we could be running into another theme - the ancient Sagittarian blood feud!
We obviously see this theme being played out unbelievably viciously on the global stage as the Aryan Arien energy blazes on. (I sure hope U.S.-led NATO doesn't "spread any democracy" my way.) The bloodlines, the supposedly superiour races, what people are connected to through ancestral lines.
What I'm referring to in this post comes into play more subtly socially but is connected to deeper themes. These astro energies are an indicator that old school grudges will be rising through ancestral lineages and catching in our present day multi-cultural social realms, infusing people with everything from straight-up hatred and rage to wariness to passed-along wisdom related to certain cultural clash points.
These are irritants and cyclical trigger points coming into play when interacting with certain people in certain ways because someone with their background has wronged or criminally irritated someone with your background (or vice versa) in the near or ancient past, and there is something unresolved.
With all the Aries emphasis currently, this will be rising so we can gain a deeper understanding of what causes the issues and work them out in socially responsible, boundary-conscious Saturn in Libra fashion. Following in the theme of anger impulses as impetus to action, this is about being honest when someone rubs you the wrong way, following it to its root and figuring it out so as to rework social dynamics and points of interaction. Understanding our own natures, motivations and where we're coming from quite thoroughly as well as understanding those of other people becomes a key to successful and respectful relations - along with knowing who and what to just steer clear of! There's a lot of that going around...
The current stellium of planets in Aries is telling us: your irritations do matter. Pay attention. Don't discount them. They're part of the blueprint for peace on this planet - and not a glossed-over, Band-Aid version. The real deal. The only way we can get to a real mutual respect and peace (and I'm not talking about with the sociopaths who erroneously believe they run this joint) is by getting into the nitty gritty of why we haven't been able to in the past.
This also relates to the Venus overlay we're working on currently and until June 2012 - Via Combusta Scorpio.
We're working pro-actively with Saturn in Libra at the moment while things are still relatively light on the social stage before they take a turn for the hardcore depths with Saturn in Scorpio (October 5, 2012 - September 17, 2015) coinciding with the North Node in Scorpio (August 29, 2012 - February 18, 2014). Saturn in Scorpio will be in mutual reception with Pluto in Capricorn during that period, and merger mistakes will be far less forgiving at that point. Anything you can examine and resolve as far as your social foundation now lightens the intensity of the load later when we start to merge energy and resources in less easily extricated ways.
These are dangerous times, friends, so let's not play. The only way we can get along on this planet is by admitting that some of us just don't mix so well - and drawing healthy social boundaries accordingly as we go about our daily lives. Good fences make good neighbours.
To me, this is one of the biggest disservices of the New Age version of humanity - the constant focus on oneness, unity, everyone living in blissful love and light, thinking the same way, feeling the same way, having the same "vibration" and level of "enlightenment."
The common threads running through classes, ethnicities, religions, sexes, sexualities, countries of origin, spiritual inclinations? Sure, they exist. There are universal themes galore in the human condition. But there are also rough edges and ridiculous power imbalances and areas where we absolutely do not hold common ground in any way, shape or form.
This is bloody raw Aries energy driving us into a new astrological era. This is Aquarius, and our differences matter. To gloss over them sets us up for more wounding, ass-burning events and dynamics to unfold.
Injustices and grievances have been passed through our bloodlines that we can't even find words for. We just know they're there. With a Gemini South Node, this is going to be prevalent. We can't put our finger on it, but there is something that just doesn't seem right about someone or some way they do business in their lives. This isn't a comfortable topic, especially for Libra, so luckily for us, most of this can be done intuitively through our Sagittarius North Node, disposited by Jupiter in Aries opposite Saturn in Libra.
This is some of the differentiation that is going on currently with all the focus on identity, motivation and fundamental goals (Aries). Appreciating and benefiting from our diversity and differences are only possible when we aren't being screwed over by them.
Under these aspects, people you thought were friends turn out not to be, and people you had sworn off for good turn out to be sterling-charactered brothers from another mother or sisters from another mister.
Juno is moving retrograde through Virgo until early May, and the people who are a burr in your saddle right now are making things really clear on this front so we can consciously and skillfully avoid the old, sticky, karmic traps as far as relating goes.
These transits relate to the ongoing process of finding where we fit. We're no longer in our clans of origin, for the most part. Most of us have had those destroyed and strewn about more times that we can count in an effort to snuff out who we are and what we know. It sounds counter-intuitive, but this is about getting clear on our rough-edged trigger points and deep soul motives in order to find the places and the people with whom our souls fit now, regardless of personal background. We're not going to find that old school original soul home vibe this time around. But what we are going to find is better for these times. It's rich, it's varied, it's diverse, it gives us the space and detachment to really be ourselves, and it's the best chance we have for survival.
** This reference is in no way an endorsement of the fictional religion Bokononism.
Monday, April 4, 2011
A Potent Pluto Retrograde Station Square Mars in Aries - This One's Packing Some Heat
The Mars in Aries - Pluto in Capricorn square is the dominant aspect in the zodiac at the moment and will be until it moves fully out of orb April 23. Mars in it's own sign of Aries disposits the Sun, Mercury Rx, Jupiter and Uranus also in Aries, which means working the Mars in Aries energy successfully under its current scorching hot conditions is key.
What's going on with Mars is the most influential factor in the zodiac right now.
We're just coming out of a crazy potent Aries New Moon amidst Aries stellium along with the Mars-Uranus conjunction (still powerful) that infused the atmosphere with raw, new potential along with blazing realizations, both inspiring and traumatic/horrifying, about our future, together, on this planet.
We're all a little on edge as far as the radically new territory we sense on the horizon and what it will mean, and action planet Mars is not all that happy to find itself enmeshed in a dark and condensed Plutonic force field, moving against the tension and pressure of the Pluto in Capricorn square. This is like going full tilt for a matter of moments and then being sucked back to an almost stand-still by a giant Pluto in Capricorn magnet. It's for the best, though. Mars in Aries with all those other planets in the sign is a bit too much masculine-oriented forward propulsion and would have a tendency to go off half-cocked. There's a danger of being so eager to get into new territory - ANY new territory - that we neglect to connect our movements to the broader Plutonic context, making our motivating goals shallower and less relevant and our actions toward them far less effective that they could have been with a more complex understanding of the surrounding circumstances.
Making our new forays a success requires uncovering and understanding the underlying Plutonic context on this planet as well as in our personal lives and applying it well. Going deeper means making more progress in the long run rather than spinning wheels, ramming things forward and burning out in an overload of fire.
This isn't straight-up, unfettered Mars in Aries activity. This is Mars in conjunction to Uranus and in opening square to Pluto - our personal directions are completely tied to the broader forces and directions that are going on on this planet currently.
We want to get the show on the road, but we're held in check, purposefully, by the applying square to Pluto in Capricorn. Our personal directions are not as free-moving and Point A to B direct as Mars in Aries would like within a broader collective climate of orchestrated global economic collapse, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, institutionalized unemployment, spiralling poverty, deadly unnatural disasters, irradiation, record food inflation, starvation, riots, and new crimes against humanity being brought down by the military industrial complex every day.
You know, the usual. How could we forget?
If we take this broader context into full consideration, we understand how important it is to be true to ourselves right down to the bone, core, soul at this time. We're on the edge, facing down the annihilation of the whole kit and kaboodle - again. Our supposed leaders are intent on leading us right over a cliff, trashing the joint behind them. So what is there to lose in taking a shot in a direction that truly matters to you? What is there to lose in being exactly who you are, saying exactly what you feel - and relating to the people around you in that way?
Pluto stationing kicks up a lot of stomach-churning fear and paranoia, and its icy fingers are digging deeply now as it slows to station retrograde at 7 degrees Capricorn April 9. Pluto will be almost stopped in the zodiac at the time of the square from Mars (April 11), infusing the astro atmosphere with its energy and making its influence highly felt - especially for those who are sensitive to Pluto's movements. Accept the Plutonic icy grip when it comes upon you, ride it out, but don't succumb. Don't give your power away here.
The fears and paranoia triggered by this Pluto station are made bigger by the connection to collective unease and waves of panic due to the current global situation. These can magnify to overwhelming proportions if we're not careful, so keep in mind, under this station and square, that no matter what, it's not as bad as you feel it is. Use the instinctive Aries energy to keep yourself out of isolation and paranoia. Talk to the people you find grounding. Turn off the TV and Internet. Get some fresh air and exercise.
At the same time, in a way, the emotional edge we're living on can only be tolerated if we hold the awareness of the broader context of what is going on on this planet. It's only by doing that that we can understand the extent of what is being asked of us under these conditions.
The Mars-Pluto square is affecting our bodies and energy levels strongly, combining super-charged, almost manic boosts propelling us forward with pressurized Plutonic slow-downs designed to purge the sludge from our systems (guh) and crank out our most potent and effective directions in light of the collective circumstances in which we find ourselves.
As we're being held in check, revving our way out of the sticky Plutonic tar, we're moulting, burning off older versions of life and self, anything that might keep us from the lean, mean, forward-ho machines we need to be now as we set the cruise control on this planet to freedom.
There is also a sort of on-edge, shattering energetic effect still potent from the conjunction to Uranus. Teeth on tin foil. Fingernails on chalkboard.
Expect demanding extremes in energy levels over the next three weeks, and work with them. Get moving when you can, but take the time and rest you need, also, to work with the behemoth Plutonic force stripping and honing us from the cellular level out. Our poor bodies are rocketing through so many changes right now, so give them all the time they need to process and adjust.
Luckily, we also have a contingent of receptive, spiritually-oriented, feminine/yin energy emphasized in the zodiac now with Chiron, Ceres, Venus and (by tonight) Neptune in Pisces. This is a refreshing and cooling mist, spritzing all the masculine Aries energy raring to get out there and put its mark on things when it gets a bit too blazing hot and full of itself.
Neptune dips into Pisces tonight and stays on the zero degree of the sign of the fishies, turning retrograde June 3, moving back into Aquarius August 4, and re-entering Pisces for good in early February 2012.
This gives us a four-month window of spiritual fortification with Neptune in its own sign to reconnect with and bathe ourselves in our personal faith and guidance in light of the new territory into which we have just stepped.
Uranus entering Aries for the duration March 11 marked the end of the strongest Pisces-to-Aquarius overlay and the eight-year Uranus-Neptune mutual reception. The last of that Uranus-Neptune mutual reception pretty much tapped us out as far as inspirational spiritual mojo. Now comes a bit of a rejuvenation as Neptune takes a quick dip into new territory and its domicile Pisces.
This is Pisces for the astrological Aquarian era, which is vastly different from Pisces for the astrological Piscean era. The masculine-heavy, spiritually-hierarchical control mechanisms start to crumble in earnest now - but only for those not clamouring to maintain the pedestal-sitting positions of their favourite gurus, masters or saviours. That paradigm will be propped up as long as people are willing to pour their own spiritual energy and power into propping it up.
As much as 'Pisces for the Aquarian era' has the potential for spiritual egalitarianism and utter self-responsibility, Neptune's 15-year transit of Pisces also has the potential for the worst-of-the-worst abuses working the same old true believer blind spots with the masses falling for the same old smoke and mirrors into the same old regressive downward spirals that we've seen in the "spirituality" realms thus far. Under the Aquarian umbrella, it's a big mistake to place anyone above yourself on the superiourity ladder. There's a big impetus on people taking responsibility for their own inherent spirituality, but many people just won't want to make the shift...
Neptune's entry into Pisces is marked by a conjunction to Chiron, Ceres and Venus, which is a very interesting mix.
The spiritual healing and healing of the whole on this planet very much has to do with fully addressing and discontinuing the mistreatment, subjugation, disregard and forced invisibility of the feminine, especially within spiritual paradigms. We're bringing the feminine force (and women) into positions of new prominence as the hierarchies crumble.
The feminine influence was always there, was always equally important, of course.
But how many know it is feminine Ceres that is the largest body among the asteroids - not masculine Chiron, which is very well-integrated into current astrological analysis and is often erroneously bestowed with the title?
How many know that Ceres is no longer even considered an asteroid and is actually on par with masculine Pluto as a dwarf planet, though nowhere near its astrological prominence?
The invisibility of Ceres astrologically in relation to Chiron and Pluto indicates to me societies getting in touch with their wounds and needs for healing, empowerment and transformation - but dysfunctionally disconnected from the fundamentals of life on this planet including food sources and feminine grounding and nourishment. This leaves us starving on multiple levels but unable to put our fingers on exactly what is going on.
NASA is currently sending one of its nasty probes (appropriately called Dawn) to explore Ceres - without her permission, I'm sure! - so perhaps this probe will give the Goddess of grains and Earth's fertility a boost in position and prominence.
What's going on with Mars is the most influential factor in the zodiac right now.
We're just coming out of a crazy potent Aries New Moon amidst Aries stellium along with the Mars-Uranus conjunction (still powerful) that infused the atmosphere with raw, new potential along with blazing realizations, both inspiring and traumatic/horrifying, about our future, together, on this planet.
We're all a little on edge as far as the radically new territory we sense on the horizon and what it will mean, and action planet Mars is not all that happy to find itself enmeshed in a dark and condensed Plutonic force field, moving against the tension and pressure of the Pluto in Capricorn square. This is like going full tilt for a matter of moments and then being sucked back to an almost stand-still by a giant Pluto in Capricorn magnet. It's for the best, though. Mars in Aries with all those other planets in the sign is a bit too much masculine-oriented forward propulsion and would have a tendency to go off half-cocked. There's a danger of being so eager to get into new territory - ANY new territory - that we neglect to connect our movements to the broader Plutonic context, making our motivating goals shallower and less relevant and our actions toward them far less effective that they could have been with a more complex understanding of the surrounding circumstances.
Making our new forays a success requires uncovering and understanding the underlying Plutonic context on this planet as well as in our personal lives and applying it well. Going deeper means making more progress in the long run rather than spinning wheels, ramming things forward and burning out in an overload of fire.
This isn't straight-up, unfettered Mars in Aries activity. This is Mars in conjunction to Uranus and in opening square to Pluto - our personal directions are completely tied to the broader forces and directions that are going on on this planet currently.
We want to get the show on the road, but we're held in check, purposefully, by the applying square to Pluto in Capricorn. Our personal directions are not as free-moving and Point A to B direct as Mars in Aries would like within a broader collective climate of orchestrated global economic collapse, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, institutionalized unemployment, spiralling poverty, deadly unnatural disasters, irradiation, record food inflation, starvation, riots, and new crimes against humanity being brought down by the military industrial complex every day.
You know, the usual. How could we forget?
If we take this broader context into full consideration, we understand how important it is to be true to ourselves right down to the bone, core, soul at this time. We're on the edge, facing down the annihilation of the whole kit and kaboodle - again. Our supposed leaders are intent on leading us right over a cliff, trashing the joint behind them. So what is there to lose in taking a shot in a direction that truly matters to you? What is there to lose in being exactly who you are, saying exactly what you feel - and relating to the people around you in that way?
Pluto stationing kicks up a lot of stomach-churning fear and paranoia, and its icy fingers are digging deeply now as it slows to station retrograde at 7 degrees Capricorn April 9. Pluto will be almost stopped in the zodiac at the time of the square from Mars (April 11), infusing the astro atmosphere with its energy and making its influence highly felt - especially for those who are sensitive to Pluto's movements. Accept the Plutonic icy grip when it comes upon you, ride it out, but don't succumb. Don't give your power away here.
The fears and paranoia triggered by this Pluto station are made bigger by the connection to collective unease and waves of panic due to the current global situation. These can magnify to overwhelming proportions if we're not careful, so keep in mind, under this station and square, that no matter what, it's not as bad as you feel it is. Use the instinctive Aries energy to keep yourself out of isolation and paranoia. Talk to the people you find grounding. Turn off the TV and Internet. Get some fresh air and exercise.
At the same time, in a way, the emotional edge we're living on can only be tolerated if we hold the awareness of the broader context of what is going on on this planet. It's only by doing that that we can understand the extent of what is being asked of us under these conditions.
The Mars-Pluto square is affecting our bodies and energy levels strongly, combining super-charged, almost manic boosts propelling us forward with pressurized Plutonic slow-downs designed to purge the sludge from our systems (guh) and crank out our most potent and effective directions in light of the collective circumstances in which we find ourselves.
As we're being held in check, revving our way out of the sticky Plutonic tar, we're moulting, burning off older versions of life and self, anything that might keep us from the lean, mean, forward-ho machines we need to be now as we set the cruise control on this planet to freedom.
There is also a sort of on-edge, shattering energetic effect still potent from the conjunction to Uranus. Teeth on tin foil. Fingernails on chalkboard.
Expect demanding extremes in energy levels over the next three weeks, and work with them. Get moving when you can, but take the time and rest you need, also, to work with the behemoth Plutonic force stripping and honing us from the cellular level out. Our poor bodies are rocketing through so many changes right now, so give them all the time they need to process and adjust.
Luckily, we also have a contingent of receptive, spiritually-oriented, feminine/yin energy emphasized in the zodiac now with Chiron, Ceres, Venus and (by tonight) Neptune in Pisces. This is a refreshing and cooling mist, spritzing all the masculine Aries energy raring to get out there and put its mark on things when it gets a bit too blazing hot and full of itself.
Neptune dips into Pisces tonight and stays on the zero degree of the sign of the fishies, turning retrograde June 3, moving back into Aquarius August 4, and re-entering Pisces for good in early February 2012.
This gives us a four-month window of spiritual fortification with Neptune in its own sign to reconnect with and bathe ourselves in our personal faith and guidance in light of the new territory into which we have just stepped.
Uranus entering Aries for the duration March 11 marked the end of the strongest Pisces-to-Aquarius overlay and the eight-year Uranus-Neptune mutual reception. The last of that Uranus-Neptune mutual reception pretty much tapped us out as far as inspirational spiritual mojo. Now comes a bit of a rejuvenation as Neptune takes a quick dip into new territory and its domicile Pisces.
This is Pisces for the astrological Aquarian era, which is vastly different from Pisces for the astrological Piscean era. The masculine-heavy, spiritually-hierarchical control mechanisms start to crumble in earnest now - but only for those not clamouring to maintain the pedestal-sitting positions of their favourite gurus, masters or saviours. That paradigm will be propped up as long as people are willing to pour their own spiritual energy and power into propping it up.
As much as 'Pisces for the Aquarian era' has the potential for spiritual egalitarianism and utter self-responsibility, Neptune's 15-year transit of Pisces also has the potential for the worst-of-the-worst abuses working the same old true believer blind spots with the masses falling for the same old smoke and mirrors into the same old regressive downward spirals that we've seen in the "spirituality" realms thus far. Under the Aquarian umbrella, it's a big mistake to place anyone above yourself on the superiourity ladder. There's a big impetus on people taking responsibility for their own inherent spirituality, but many people just won't want to make the shift...
Neptune's entry into Pisces is marked by a conjunction to Chiron, Ceres and Venus, which is a very interesting mix.
The spiritual healing and healing of the whole on this planet very much has to do with fully addressing and discontinuing the mistreatment, subjugation, disregard and forced invisibility of the feminine, especially within spiritual paradigms. We're bringing the feminine force (and women) into positions of new prominence as the hierarchies crumble.
The feminine influence was always there, was always equally important, of course.
But how many know it is feminine Ceres that is the largest body among the asteroids - not masculine Chiron, which is very well-integrated into current astrological analysis and is often erroneously bestowed with the title?
How many know that Ceres is no longer even considered an asteroid and is actually on par with masculine Pluto as a dwarf planet, though nowhere near its astrological prominence?
The invisibility of Ceres astrologically in relation to Chiron and Pluto indicates to me societies getting in touch with their wounds and needs for healing, empowerment and transformation - but dysfunctionally disconnected from the fundamentals of life on this planet including food sources and feminine grounding and nourishment. This leaves us starving on multiple levels but unable to put our fingers on exactly what is going on.
NASA is currently sending one of its nasty probes (appropriately called Dawn) to explore Ceres - without her permission, I'm sure! - so perhaps this
Friday, April 1, 2011
A Message From Our Starry Brethren at the Galactic Centre
As the North Node in Sagittarius completes its pass over the Galactic Centre, we thank the lower vibrating human beings whose Higher Selves agreed for them to be sacrificed recently in the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, in the bombings in Libya and in the current waves of starvation on the planet.
We thank the world leaders for acting to bring about the glorious shift currently underway, though the ignorance of the masses protesting their actions makes their job a difficult one.
These sacrifices are necessary to reach the next level of reality on this planet, and all who vibrate at a higher level will be kept safe and separate from them. The planet is being remade harmonically for all those who exist at this higher vibrational level. It is simply the next step in the Evolution of Human Consciousness. Throughout these "housekeeping" changes, keep your attention attuned to the Light. Darkness is illusory and is falling away rapidly. In the end, all paths lead to the glory of Oneness, and in time, even lower vibrating human beings will awake to this Higher Reality and find acceptance of this.
The 3D sacrifice of lower vibrations is pure illusion. Those who have reached the highest spiritual points know this and hold the vibration for those who are yet to understand. We thank all those (lightworkers, darkworkers, rainbowworkers, bridgeworkers) who work so diligently to wake and enlighten human beings who have not yet reached this awareness. You are in service to Light and Oneness and will be rewarded for your efforts, as you sacrifice your own personal comfort by living among lower vibrating human beings for the benefit of their enlightenment process.
There are those who will awaken and make the shift and those who will remain in density. This is up to each individual. The most recent shedding and release of density allows for the Aries New Moon with Mars and Uranus conjunct to propel us into our birthright fifth dimensional reality. We leave the third dimension Earth and its inhabitants behind now along with the problems of the denser-minded human condition. Glorious Day!
Because of the spiritual purity we have now achieved, we are able to attract to us the lives and destinies of our dreams. We are able to manifest our every desire instantly. We will no longer come into contact with anything upsetting or distasteful. There will be no disharmony, no disagreement, no poverty or pollution. There is only Light, Oneness, Harmonic Unity and Fully Manifested Abundance to enjoy and share as we shift into our full destiny with our fellow Enlightened Beings.
Congratulations!
Love & Light
APRIL FOOL'S from Willow's Web!
We thank the world leaders for acting to bring about the glorious shift currently underway, though the ignorance of the masses protesting their actions makes their job a difficult one.
These sacrifices are necessary to reach the next level of reality on this planet, and all who vibrate at a higher level will be kept safe and separate from them. The planet is being remade harmonically for all those who exist at this higher vibrational level. It is simply the next step in the Evolution of Human Consciousness. Throughout these "housekeeping" changes, keep your attention attuned to the Light. Darkness is illusory and is falling away rapidly. In the end, all paths lead to the glory of Oneness, and in time, even lower vibrating human beings will awake to this Higher Reality and find acceptance of this.
The 3D sacrifice of lower vibrations is pure illusion. Those who have reached the highest spiritual points know this and hold the vibration for those who are yet to understand. We thank all those (lightworkers, darkworkers, rainbowworkers, bridgeworkers) who work so diligently to wake and enlighten human beings who have not yet reached this awareness. You are in service to Light and Oneness and will be rewarded for your efforts, as you sacrifice your own personal comfort by living among lower vibrating human beings for the benefit of their enlightenment process.
There are those who will awaken and make the shift and those who will remain in density. This is up to each individual. The most recent shedding and release of density allows for the Aries New Moon with Mars and Uranus conjunct to propel us into our birthright fifth dimensional reality. We leave the third dimension Earth and its inhabitants behind now along with the problems of the denser-minded human condition. Glorious Day!
Because of the spiritual purity we have now achieved, we are able to attract to us the lives and destinies of our dreams. We are able to manifest our every desire instantly. We will no longer come into contact with anything upsetting or distasteful. There will be no disharmony, no disagreement, no poverty or pollution. There is only Light, Oneness, Harmonic Unity and Fully Manifested Abundance to enjoy and share as we shift into our full destiny with our fellow Enlightened Beings.
Congratulations!
Love & Light
APRIL FOOL'S from Willow's Web!
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