Monday, January 16, 2012

Let's Just Say The Cosmos Isn't Going to Be Blowing Confetti Out Our Butts This Week

We move this week to a somewhat sobering and quite enervating square between the Sun in Capricorn and Saturn in Libra (January 19). With both planets on the final degrees of those signs, there's no time to mess around. 

We consciously and conscientiously advance through the last few steps of Sun in the sea-goat as we're brought to a relative (yet tension-filled) resting point on the anaretic plateau that is Saturn's retrograde station February 7. 

Our forward motion on the relationship structuring front is officially slowing - yet highly potent over the next three weeks - with every step eked out from here an effort as we grind out the last bit of progress, firmly planting ourselves in the new and exalted social/relational positions we think, hope, and fear we've earned. 

New standards in relationship, new platforms, new boundaries, new frameworks: the last steps forward have to be ground out with certainty now as Saturn prepares to look over its ledgers one last time in the sign of the scales. Its retrograde - February 7 to June 25, 2012 - will inform us of the progress we've made in real terms, the position we've concretely earned, as well as the areas that will require more diligence during Saturn's final pass direct. 

The difficulty of planting each step grows over the next three weeks, and the weight drags at us, requiring that we fully prove our mettle, our maturity, and our readiness for new relationship frameworks and a new relationship rulebook. The stern and all-business Sun-Saturn square makes for a very odd atmosphere, indeed, as Saturn in Libra continues its just-a-hair-short-of-exact trine to Neptune in the last gasp of Aquarius. 

We meander in and out of this state of conscious responsibility. One moment we're hitched to the Saturnine plow, most assuredly aware of the limitations and tiresome requirements of physical life on this planet, and the next moment life is characterized by a fluid, dream-like surreality, and it seems we might just slip out of it altogether (Neptune). 

Saturn will be testing us on all points during its retrograde, carrying Neptunian siren song and nostalgic sentiment with us, tempting us to give up our hard-won new position by compromising ourselves and our relationship principles detrimentally. 

The anaretic degrees are vibrating with tension and import. A lot can be gained here with adherence to the principles, and even more can be lost if we break under the strain. Under this anaretic tension, one misstep, and we slide down a chute that squanders at least some of our hard work. 

We're taking a trip with the Ghost of Relationships Past during this Saturn retrograde in Libra, to be certain. We'll be looking back and even going back physically in some instances, meeting again with those who have had a place in our lives in the past. 

But this is a trip purely to show us how far we've come. There will be no staying, no matter how glorious it feels to be blanketed and comforted by this glowing, dreaming phantom love. 

Within the pages of an English novel, Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester find blissful union, at last, long last, as two halves of the same soul meet in holy matrimony. A fictional love to make your heart ache, feverish that you may never find its equivalent. 

And in real life, its author Charlotte Bronte marries a clergyman she is merely fond of - no great, melting love of her life - after watching her entire family perish one-by-one, only to die herself while pregnant soon after being wed. 

The high romanticism of the Neptunian love story is very dangerous at this tail-end Piscean era, threatening to submerge us, to shroud us in its gauzy myth for 30 years more. 

How many of the great historical love stories, so implanted in the collective psyche and so sought after, have been myth? And yet, the crushing emotional weight of Saturnine reality is just as dangerous now. We require our carefully meted out Neptunian dreams in order to withstand our circumstances, and you see just how carefully we have to tread with the current significators in the zodiac. 

Love, sweet love, is still the thing. But a love that is real and sustained is worth more than every fictional love story ever written. 

The Sun in Capricorn moves through its square to Saturn in Libra and into Aquarius January 20 (10:10 a.m. Central) where it will almost immediately form another square - this time to Jupiter in Taurus - to further pee on our parade. Tense and difficult aspects to both the restrictive and the expansive this week. We get it both coming and going. 

Mental exhaustion is still apparent from two months of Mercury in the sign of its detriment, followed by a conjunction to Pluto, which powerfully flooded our circuitry with the deep, the dark, the triggered, the paranoiac. 

Communications retain their Plutonic edge into this upcoming weekend. Hidden emotions can easily show themselves in moments of impatience or temper, and that could be catastrophic. 

Our social responsibilities are heavy and our relational challenges complicated with Saturn stationing retrograde on the last degree of Libra. Our challenge is to keep things as harmonious as possible while not compromising ourselves or our positions. 

Do everything in your power to remain socially pleasant and above reproach this week by neutralizing the Pluto-poisoned mind, tongue, and ear (Mercury).

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow thankyou so much for sharing this. What a gift you have :)

Edi said...

God, i don't know any astrologer who writes as blatantly, informatively and with as much punch and sass as you do. I LOVE your posts. Can't tell you how much you inspire me ;) Go Willow!

StormingTheHamptons said...

maybe neptune can be analogized to corydalis? It is a very effective pain reliever, great for sleep too. but too much and you're hung over.

but if you're doing a lot of physical labor and are achey at night you need a bit of corydalis to get your zees.

(Corydalis is better than valerian for the pain/achey stuff but kinda hard to find)

Willow said...

Thanks, Anon and Edi. Just doing my duty by putting Neptune in its place. ;-)

Most astrologers wax poetic about Neptune and would find a thorough and continued analysis of its detrimental points (as I do here) somewhat blasphemous, I'm thinking. (Piscean era brainwashing!)

Storming...it sounds as if carefully meted out Neptune could be analogous to Corydalis. The usual dose these days seems more like an addiction to dirty, pharmaceutical sleeping pills to that point that no moment is completely without its effects.

An hour before I saw your comment, I thought to myself, "You know, screw storming the Hamptons. When the time is come, I'm going straight for Marin County."

StormingTheHamptons said...

Marin is an 60-90 minutes down the highway. You could use this area as a staging area. (Metaphorically speaking of course)

I have a Neptune/Saturn litmus test for films/books, etc: "Do white people in Marin get viscerally nervous when they watch, read, or listen to this?"

The film Collapse with Mike Ruppert = yes, they get very nervous

The film Thrive: no, they do not get viscerally nervous

Hence, Collapse is likely to be true and Thrive not true.

Willow said...

Solid litmus.

Merryweather said...

Bravo! Awesome post. As an Aquarius who has endured Neptune's transit for far, FAR too long, I will say that I am beyond happy to see him go. I have my foot firmly planted on his backside, and I'm pushing him out the door!

Reality may not be all fairy-mist and sugar drops, but at least it's REAL.

And this (from your post) is awesome: "Love, sweet love, is still the thing. But a love that is real and sustained is worth more than every fictional love story ever written."

I couldn't agree more!!! I'm looking forward to the REAL.
And thank you, Willow, for being REAL and telling it like it is!

Deb said...

Willow, that entire last paragraph... Yeah, it works for me. I'm seeing more and more humor in crap lately... and that helps. So will writing more often (creating another blog).

Thank you as always,
Deb

Jason said...

Lol willow, were so in sync..

Im on my 8th day of being sleeping pill free, since im an air sign, with a really wierd childhood coupled with being a complicated see through the shit of my country -american.
Not to mention merc pluto t merc sun t jupiter merc opp aspects and the one you speak of in this post, saturn neptune sq. Insomnia was a givin, but now as im coming into astrologys lessons are quiteing my spiritually restless soul.

The first couple nights after my 5 year addiction to them were tough but, now i sleep so much better and wake up way more enthusiastically, i was taking ambien, then half because it a whole would cause depression. But i figured it out my doctor just kept prescribing. Never asking how i was doing with them..

Anyway im so happy neptune is almost out of aquarius- guess some have to get lost to be found.

shannon said...

Well I hope it'll be Mendocino County yr stormin!
This is a great post Willow, and a very good reminder of that Neptunian delusion and deluge, so prominent , especially these long winter days and nights.
You rock!

Dan said...

Willow,
You rockitty rock sistah! Okay, Siren Songs:

This is Neptune in Pisces Siren Song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b49YfsjXw5E

This is Neptune in Aquarius Siren Song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d-Cz--Q-t8

Just having some sonic fun!
Dan

Sunsprawl said...

Thank you so much for keeping Neptune in its place. I spent much of my early life at the mercy of and addicted to Neptune. One of my favorite papers in the uni was written about Jane Eyre and self-actualizing the feminine, but with the foggy, rose colored lens of Neptune all over it. Thank god for transits that pull you out of that shit! Saturn in my sun sign of Virgo and now conj asc/Venus in Libra and Neptune sq. Neptune in the anaretic degrees have been the great lessons of my relationship life. For the past two weeks relationship dreams of past lovers and friends have been constant and I've had a hard time dragging myself out of bed, very much as if I were taking too many sleeping pills. I'm grateful to be doing this work in the dreamtime, so far. I will be making a trip to my ancestral lands in June, can't wait to see what happens then!

shannon said...

Hi sunsprawl, I have been on the same path as yourself, with Saturn previously hammering my sun in Virgo and now pressurizing my ASC, moon, Neptune in 12th house Libra.
Suffice to say, working it in the dreamtime can be unsettling and exhausting, as I can relate to you there and yes, old loves like ghosts arrive and communicate, then one has to be in the real world all dreamy and doped up by all this Neptunian energy. Making my coffee extra strong these days! Good Luck to you and may we both survive this with our humor in tact!