Sunday, February 28, 2010

8.8

"One cannot properly appreciate the human realities so long as one labours under the adolescent delusion that people get the fates they deserve."

- Nicholas Rescher

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Willow's Web Astrology Blog Turns Two Just in Time for a New Piscean Infusion

February 25, 2008, at just before midnight, I posted my first two posts on this blog - the January and February monthly Astro Perspectives. So today, the blog is officially two years old!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear WWA blog,
Happy Birthday to you!

I rarely write about my personal transits, but I've got some life-altering aspects coming up (don't we all?), and I've been pretty much taken out of the proceedings altogether. Things are mostly out of my control at the moment, so I'm just going with it.

I definitely felt my previous world/self come to an end over the past three months. That has been quite difficult, as it has gone to the core. Pluto usually does, but I can feel the difference these days regarding the importance of the times in which we're living. It's not a gentle process at this point, even for Pluto. We're scraping right down to the absolute last of it. Nothing left unaffected, it seems.

The upcoming Pisces New Moon is a further discharge of previous cycles, including of the 2,000-odd-year Piscean Era, in general. The betrayal of Jesus and the horrific misapplication of his message/spread of corrupt forms of Christianity is a large part of that. The way similar themes have played out countless times since then. The set-up of false spiritual hierarchy in all forms, especially the New Age movement, and the damage that has done. The subjugation and oppression of women and the feminine force. The misapplications across the board of Piscean spiritual understanding.

The upcoming Pisces New Moon can be viewed as occurring in conjunction with the previous Aquarius New Moon on February 13 related to the Pisces-Aquarius shift. Both New Moons occur at 25 degrees of the signs, conjuncting the Uranus-Neptune mutual reception.

(As far as the astrology of this shift, it's sidereal. Basically, the Vernal Equinox will soon fall in the physical constellation of Aquarius, shifting out of Pisces. I'm a tropical astrologer, so you may wonder why I note this shift. I see tropical and sidereal astrology as two different lenses through which we are observing the same thing - life as human beings on planet Earth within the cosmos. Both systems provide important perspective, and I utilize sidereal information (or info from any other system) if it rings true to me...so there you have it.)

These Aquarius and Pisces New Moons also involve the discharging of remnant soul effects from the Atlantis/Lemuria myths. The most recent Dark of the Moon in Aquarius definitely related to the dark forces attached to Atlantis and the traumas inflicted on people by those forces.

The Pisces New Moon conjunct Uranus is another layer of the Pisces-to-Aquarius shift. But here, with help from Jupiter in Pisces, we tip the scales back to Pisces from the previous glut of Aquarius. The 12th and final energy of the zodiac rises from obscurity. The spiritual element of life on Earth shines forth. And isn't it an important element? To me, the most important and yet, often, the most downplayed and ignored.

Here, with the New Moon, is a much-needed infusion of Pisces-for-the-Aquarian-Age Pisces, shedding old expressions and forms. And wow, do we ever need this. Pisces is one sign that simply cannot take any more of the old garbage. The abuses of its energy. The vilification. The scapegoating. The invisibility. The wide-scale misunderstandings of what it is doing on this planet and the crucial role it plays. The energetic shit-kickings. This has to stop, and here we have a chance to re-orient things.

Pisces is the sign of the "old soul." I don't use the concept of past lives, but this idea relates to a soul that contains a great deal of experience and practical understanding of the energetic conditions on Earth.

This brings with it the traumas of this understanding and experience. The torture, manipulations and abuses that people of a certain spiritual understanding have endured over the generations. It runs deep and wide.

We're weary. So very weary. It's taken the very last of our strength to take it this far. Underneath the Neptunian bliss being experienced by the "younger" people and the bursts of intoxicating optimism and fuzzy-wuzziness is the weight of the effort of the others, still trudging through. Because we know it's not here yet. We know there are huge holes in the understanding of most people on this planet.

So what I hope for from this Pisces New Moon conjunct Mercury and Uranus is an all-encompassing renewal. A new respect for and understanding of those who tread this path through all kinds of storms of opposition, derision, ridicule, interference, misery, injustice, confinement, injury and death.

I hope for a refreshing and a renewal bringing newfound strength for those bearing Piscean messages - as well as, with the influence of Mercury and Uranus, messages themselves that have new strength and relevance for the times in which we're living.

The understanding (that is actually quite simple, ancient and has been here with the vigiliant all along) that will bring the changes so desperately needed on this planet. These need to be integrated into the Aquarian visions for the future in a big, big way, and with this New Moon, we have the support to begin that process in earnest. Just as the 'Year 2012 or Bust' New Age dystopia train gets up to full speed. Real Piscean spiritual truth does not end with the shift of the Vernal Equinox into the constellation of Aquarius, as many would have people believe. In fact, it becomes even more necessary to keep from being swept up and carried along by the momentum of the dogma machine.

I'm being treated at the moment by a lady who has a wonderful service of naturopathy and spiritual/energy healing. Her wellness offices are even housed in an old prison! How's that for Piscean? Despite how tired she is (at 68 years old), she's helping me through this process, stabilizing me with herbal supplements.

There is a definite redirection afoot - a fairly intense one, it seems, on my end, and all I can do in my own life is go with the Piscean flow.

Yes, I suppose these are very purposeful days we're living through, aren't they?

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Aquarius New Moon and Juno Day

New Moon in Aquarius tonight (7:51 p.m. MT) smack dab on the Chiron-Neptune conjunction at 25 degrees Aquarius.

This occurs just as Venus is making its way to conjoin Jupiter in early Pisces (exact Feb. 16).

This is a necessary infusion of real Piscean spiritual truth and understanding - the love and the indestructible connection to that love that underlies and sustains us through every dirty trick and every devastating loss the corrupt among us can dish out. The love and the indestructible connection to it that physical death cannot alter.

Let's focus today, during the Aquarius Dark of the Moon, on releasing all the emotional trauma that the horrifying Atlantean throwback visions of the future have inflicted over the past year/s. I've found all the Aquarian/New Age/triple Aquarius conjunction crap to be incredibly disturbing over the past couple years, and I'm having a hard time with this Dark of the Moon.

So let's warm ourselves with a Jupiterian furnace of Piscean spiritual love, understanding, acceptance and energetic connection to those we love. Our natural spirituality that fits like glove.

Though it is sometimes difficult to maintain awareness of through the most dark and difficult times (I have lost sight of it myself at times throughout this experience and needed to be reminded), the good people on this planet are always loved and sustained. We're never separated from love, spirit or each other, even when isolated and in pain. (As my Grandmother said, "What we have to put up with!") The force of love trumps evil, and we can draw on that whenever we need to to buffer ourselves from the corruption and tyranny Pluto is forcing to collective awareness.

Jupiter leads the movement into Pisces (Chiron and Neptune will soon follow), and that energy and understanding comes to the forefront now. The fixed Aquarian perspective shifts. Lemuria rises.

Jupiter shines its spotlight in Pisces so we can come to and sustain ourselves with real spiritual truth now, clearly distinguising it from the false. Distinguishing real spiritual depth from distracting, diversionary, escapist fantasies and those who promote them. The New Age dogma and its phony versions of Pisces and what it means.

We are beginning the very necessary rebalancing of feminine water with masculine air. The 12th and final energy of the zodiac with the 11th (that often seems to erroneously believe it is the final energy!). We bring the Pisces layer of understanding, often kept invisible, to the table. Without the spiritual understanding it brings, it is a very unbalanced and skewed version of reality. Without it, we're scattered, shattered and stuck in our minds.

We reconnect now to the deep wellspring of faith and love that runs through our blood, through our familial and spiritual lineages.

We replace technology as God with real God...Spirit, Creator...

We've seen an attack on faith and on those who trust in the loving guidance of God/Spirit/Creator as the Aquarian energy went to extremes over the past years. We've had propaganda shoved down our throats that the experience of spirit is a fallacy and that those who have spiritual faith are woefully outdated and pitifully naive.

This is Aquarius without Pisces. The arrogant rational mind without greater spiritual understanding.

There has been an attempt to artificially separate people from their faith and from their unalterable connection to this protective, loving force (whatever you name it). Let's shrug those attempts off as Venus comes together with Jupiter in Pisces and reconnect with what is true to us and only to that.

We come back together now, also, with the people who are true to us, drawing in from the extreme individualism we have been through with unintegrated Aquarius.

The effort for good to prevail over evil did not begin with us. It more than likely doesn't end with us. So again, we join hands with those who have come before, those here now and those yet to come. We're in this together; let's never forget that.

This, I think, is the real meaning of Juno Day. February 14. A day when we honour all our soul mates. Romantic love, of course, being just one part of that.

Let's honour love it its entirety this day.

A new, more loving and truthful version of the future is on its way now.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Pluto in Capricorn Lessons: Following the Twisted Roots of the Corporate Oligarchy

Mercury is moving through the final degree of Capricorn today after a brutal transit of that sign, and as the Moon in Capricorn squares retrograding Saturn in Libra and conjuncts Pluto, I'm being tapped, tapped, tapped on the shoulder...

The Sabian Symbol for the last degree of Capricorn is: "Directors of a Large Firm Meet in Secret Conference." Hmm...fitting on many levels.

As we well-schooled in the Plutonic lessons know, relying on superficial blanket statements like, "Yeah, yeah. All corporations are evil," is a no-no. It's dangerous, lazy and can be downright deadly. Pluto demands that no stone be left unturned in our examinations of the rotten and the corrupt, that no twisted root be left uninvestigated as we bring the muck and mire to the surface and to collective awareness.

Pluto in Capricorn demands that we respect with the utmost seriousness the complexity, the layers and the tenacity of the reach of these corrupt corporate tentacles and the people behind them. We need to extricate ourselves from this so we can live a true alternative, and looking at it straight on - shiny, advertising grins wiped clean - is the only way we can do that. This affects us all.

So even though we all have major Pluto in Capricorn fatigue at this point (believe me, I do, too), let's get out our books and our pencils and dig in...

Today's Pluto in Capricorn Case Study is about the pharmaceuticals corporation Bayer. We in North America almost all know this company, but the next time you're popping a Bayer aspirin or two, think a little more deeply about the people behind this household drug.

I've come to learn some interesting facts about this company, the maker of the fluroquinolone antibiotic Cipro that has me and thousands of others poisoned at the moment.

There's also an interesting symbolic aspect as Bayer became a household name after corrupting the pain-relieving folk remedy salacin derived from willow bark in the late 1800s. I got a lifelong case of tinnitus at age 13 from this product which has now been increased by the Cipro.

Bayer is a German company founded in 1863 that lost its assets to the West as reparations for World War I.

It was then enveloped in the Nazi's IG Farben - their chemical and pharmaceuticals conglomerate - along with five other German companies.

This conglomerate used concentration camp slave labour to produce its wares (IG Farben was the only German company in the Third Reich that actually ran its own concentration camp), bought and used human guinea pig slaves to test their drugs, and manufactured the pesticide Zyklon B, which was used to kill people in the gas chambers. Illustrious past this Bayer has.

"When the Allies split IG Farben into several pieces after World War II for involvement in organized Nazi war crimes, Bayer reappeared as an individual business. Bayer executive Fritz ter Meer, who was sentenced to seven years in prison by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, was made head of the supervisory board of Bayer in 1956, after his release."

As horrifying as this is, it makes so much more sense how their drugs could be being pushed by doctors around the world all while making people so sick. This is no mistake. There simply IS no care and concern for people with this company or with companies like them. There is a total whitewash of adverse reactions related to fluoroquinolone antibiotics as well as multitudes of other dangerous drugs being prescribed to people every day.

Adverse drug reactions are now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. So in light of that, here is some information to arm yourselves with:

- Fluoroquinolone antibiotics cause very painful and debilitating adverse reactions in people, taking months or years to recover from. They should be prescribed only as an absolute last resort but are often prescribed initially before safer antibiotics have been tried. (This was the case for me.) Neither doctors nor pharmacists are warning people about the possible side effects. Most are ignorant of them and deny these effects are even possible. Many people suffering adverse reactions have not been believed by the medical establishment. Brands of these antibiotics are: Cipro (produced by Bayer), Levaquin (produced by Johnson & Johnson), Avelox, Floxin, Noroxin, Tequin and Trovan, among others. Generic patents have also been approved, so please be aware and research antibiotics thoroughly before taking them.

- Yaz/Yasmin birth control pills are "third generation" birth control pills and are much less safe then their predecessors - six times more likely to produce adverse reactions, many life-threatening. These are also Bayer drugs. "In the United States at least 48 lawsuits have been filed against Bayer. The suits state that from 2004 through 2008 Yaz/Yasmin has caused more than 50 deaths, which occurred in some women as young as 17. Deaths associated with cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, intracardiac thrombus, pulmonary embolism, and stroke were reported."

- Gardisil, the fast-tracked HPV vaccine made by pharmaceuticals corporation Merck, was tested on only 1,200 girls before being approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2006. Just sickeningly irreponsible. Not only that, but the drug was never tested on the age group of girls intended to be vaccinated - nine-and-ten-year-olds. Since being approved, it has caused 48 deaths and 16,000 adverse reactions, many severe and debilitating. Merck and doctors are currently pushing this as a routine vaccination. It's estimated only about 10% of adverse reactions are actually reported, and there could be as many as 1 million. Three deaths have also been reported in New Zealand.

The Truth About Gardasil is an American website detailing the devastating effects this vaccine has had on young women and girls.

Off the Radar is a New Zealand site dedicated to the dangers of Gardasil.

This vaccine is destroying lives. It is an absolutely horrifying attack on young females and needs to stop. Be so very vigilant. A commenter on this blog mentioned that her doctor was about to inject her with the Gardisil vaccine without her consent or any previous discussion, and she had to jump off the examination table and put her coat on to stop it.

Gardasil has unfortunately also been approved in Canada (July 2006), and Merck has its billion-dollar PR machine working overtime lobbying Stephen Harper's government to make it a blanket vaccine. They've also got the mainstream Canadian media on board. An October 2009 "news" story from the CBC titled "The Debate Over HPV Inoculations" reads more like a press release straight from Merck itself. It downplays the severity of the adverse reactions and fatalities, using outdated statistics and burying them at the end of a lengthy pro-vaccine story.

Merck is already in the midst of lawsuits on behalf of 50,000 people whose loved ones suffered heart attacks or strokes after taking their arthritis drug Vioxx. There is evidence Merck knew as early as 2000 about these adverse reactions but kept the drug on the market (from the medical journal The Lancet). The lawsuits could cost Merck multi-billions.

Now, Merck is pushing more bad medicine with Gardasil in hopes of paying off their previous crimes. At $360 US per three-injection dose, Gardasil is the most expensive vaccine on the planet. And you can see why they're salivating at the idea of making it a blanket vaccine, adverse health risks be damned.

(PRWatch.org has a four-part article on Gardasil and the Big Business of cervical cancer.)

In a fit of Pluto in Capricorn black hilarity, Merck has racked up award after award for being a good, ethical, equal opportunity employer. That just goes to show you how blind most people are to the real workings of the companies they are employed with. And how little they actually care. If the company provides good daycare and hires black or gay people, it doesn't matter if they're crippling and killing teenagers or arthritis sufferers.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg. of course. But that's the way Pluto works. It gives us a thread, and we have to pick it up, follow it and uncover the extent of where it leads.

Back to our Pluto in Cap Case Study, Bayer: a German watchdog group has been following Bayer's crimes against humanity for the past decade. The list is long, so please look into it if you are about to take any type of prescription:

Coalition Against Bayer-Dangers

Bayer has followed in its tradition of producing deadly pesticides including Endosulfan, which is banned in the European Union.

It has also reached into our food supply with Bayer CropScience which deals in biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) foods. Large parts of the United States rice crop have been contaminated with Bayer's GM LibertyLink Rice, which is unapproved in Europe and cannot be exported there.

In a small victory, two United States farmers just won $2 million in compensation from Bayer CropScience due to contamination of their rice crops.

"The verdict of the federal court in St. Louis is seen as a test run for up to 3000 cases of rice farmers having suffered damages in the US states of Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi."

The damages from those cases could be up to $1.2 billion.

Step by step, layer by layer...

We have to protect ourselves and each other so closely now. It's our most precious and important effort at this time.

Saturn is square Pluto for a long haul, and we are moving all year to a North Node-Pluto conjunction at 3 degrees Capricorn in November, coinciding with Venus retrograde in Scorpio. These themes aren't going anywhere.

The Sabian Symbol for the degree of the North Node-Pluto conjunction is: "A Group of People Entering a Canoe for a Journey By Water."

So again, do not fall into despair with any of this tough Pluto-Mercury in Capricorn information. We're in this together always, and we're greatly loved and assisted by the spiritual force of our soul sisters and brothers past, present and future.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Dwarves Can Be Nasty Little Buggers...But They Always Have a Point

We may have made some progress, Plutonic Ones.

Pluto is changing colour and has a new bright spot.

"NASA said the changes in colour and brightness took place during the period from 2000 to 2002, and most likely show that sheets of nitrogen ice are shifting and sublimating, transitioning from a solid directly to a gas."

Shifting and transitioning we certainly are. Just wish it wasn't so painful right now for so many. Still, Pluto lightening up at all is welcome news.

I'm sure all Plutonic peeps would like to lessen its influence in our lives. We just know that denying its influence is not the way to do that.

Article here: New Hubble Maps of Pluto Show Surface Changes

Thursday, February 4, 2010

James Arthur Ray Has Been Arrested in the Sweat Lodge Deaths

My Mum just sent me this link (thanks, Mum):

Self-help Guru Charged in Deaths 

 I wrote about the retreat deaths around my birthday last year. The stories are here and here

This is why I've been speaking out about The Secret and its promoters from the get-go. It's dirty, people.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Mercury Conjuncts the North Node at 20 Capricorn and Leaves its Retrograde Shadow

Well, it's officially over as of tonight when Mercury clears its shadow, but that was certainly a hideous beast of a Mercury retrograde period in Capricorn. Pluto-infused throughout. Massive doses of collective terror running through our neurological systems as well as long-embedded traumas to the feminine held in the emotional body collective rising to the surface for release - the results of structural corruption, inequality, abuse and control. For me, it was overwhelming.

Mercury conjuncted Pluto at 2 degrees Capricorn on December 7, 2009 (the day I realized I had been poisoned by the antibiotic Cipro). By December 9, Mercury had entered its retrograde shadow, carrying Plutonic energy all the way. Mercury was on SOME mission. It stripped us bare.

For three solid weeks (and off and on for the next two), the toxic psychosis related to the drug reaction had convinced me I was going to die. Consumed by Plutonic confrontations with death.

Mercury travelled through Capricorn and conjuncted the North Node at 21 degrees where it turned around and went retrograde December 26.

The Sabian Symbol for this degree of Capricorn is: "A General Accepting Defeat Gracefully." Pretty fitting for the level of surrender this Merc retro required. Pluto often deals us situations where we just have to throw our hands up and go along for the ride, no matter how terrifying.

As the side effects left me almost completely physically debilitated, with the mental and emotional terror sitting on me, the image of my English Grandmother in her early 20s on a ship travelling across the ocean during World War II came to my mind's eye. She was at sea for twelve days and was bedridden with horrible seasickness almost the entire time. In her typical humour, she said she felt so wretched she was praying she would die and was terrified she wouldn't! The ship she was on was criss-crossing the ocean, trying to avoid being torpedoed by the Germans, on the way to the East coast of Canada where her soldier husband was waiting for her. She made it safely, but on the way back, the ship was hit and sunk. Her husband, a pilot, was shot down over the ocean and killed within a few years of her being in Canada, and my Pluto/South Node in Cancer/Capricorn North Node Grandmother was was left in a foreign country with a baby boy and no family or resources of her own. Her own home country, England, suffered horrendous destruction, and she was advised to stay in Canada and make a life here as opposed to going back (Pluto/South Node Cancer).

I also had images coming to me of the people from Africa who had been stolen from their lives and chained on slave ships, forced to lie in vomit, urine and excrement for weeks, packed in alongside others who had died on the journey. They didn't have a life fit for human beings waiting for them when (and if) they reached their destinations. A brutal life of constant and back-breaking labour that would generally kill them by the age of 40 was all they had to look to.

This misery is what created the wealth of the "owners" and the warmongers and their generations of offspring - those we are supposed to look at as the big success stories of human culture. Variations of this same corruption, enforced misery, inhumanity and injustice support all the pyramid-scheme hierarchies, all the top-down structural set-ups, in our societies to this day. It artificially props up most every wealthy, grinning "success story" we have. Follow the roots, and it's undeniable.

Haiti's poverty today is a direct result of European trade bans and then the forced payment of reparations to slave owners (to the tune of $35 billion) after the Haitian people overthrew their slavery between 1791 and 1804. From a London Progressive article by Ben Selwyn: Haiti's Tragedy and White Man's Burden Redux

"The victory of the former Haitian slaves against the French and then British came at a high cost. European countries refused to trade with Haiti, with France agreeing to resume trade on the condition that the Haitian state pay former slave owners compensation of 150 million francs (equivalent to around $35 billion today). When, in the early 20th century, the Haitian state found it impossible to continue repaying the loan, it turned to US banks for help. The United States occupied the country – from 1915 to 1934 – to ensure the repayment of these loans and to continue the expansion of US business interests in the Caribbean and wider Latin American region. The US then supported the murderous ‘Papa Doc’ and ‘Baby Doc’ dictatorships between 1957 and 1986. But ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier was overthrown by mass uprisings in 1986 and Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected in 1990 on a pro-poor platform. But no sooner had he entered office than a US-backed military coup overthrew him in 1991. The US then backtracked, supporting Aristide on the condition that he implement neo-liberal reforms, and restored him to office in 1994. In 2004 the US switched sides again, backing a coup against Aristide. Since then the country has been (in)effectively ruled by UN troops."

Just as my misery and the misery of hundreds of thousands of others who have had these hideous adverse drug reactions is considered nothing more than collateral damage in the quest for profit for corporations like Bayer and the makers of other dangerous drugs doled out these days with no care about the consequences.

Incidentally, Bayer is a German company that was part of the Nazi's IG Farben - their chemical and pharmaceuticals conglomerate. This conglomerate used concentration camp slave labour to produce its wares, bought and used human guinea pig slaves to test their drugs, and manufactured the pesticide Zyklon B, which was used to kill people in the gas chambers. Illustrious past this Bayer has. As horrifying as this is, it now makes so much more sense how their drugs could be being pushed by doctors around the world and making people so sick. There is a total whitewash of adverse reactions related to fluoroquinolone antibiotics as well as multitudes of other drugs being prescribed to people every day. Adverse drug reactions are now the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.

This was just some of the unresolved, often denied, collective terror and psychic/emotional trauma passing through our cells during the Mercury-Pluto conjunction, the following retrograde and the Cancer-Capricorn eclipses.

And for those of us who follow in these lineages, the emotional and psychic fallout of what has come before (and continues now) is almost crushing at times. With so many people living lives in almost complete denial of underlying realities, the battle on the psychic/emotional/energetic fronts falls to the few who cannot possibly deny it. The disturbances on these levels can be overwhelming, debilitating, paralyzing - wading through and trying to work with realities and dynamics most deny exist.

(Isn't it funny how much of the astrological establishment refuses to look at or acknowledge the influence of Pluto? Not funny ha-ha. More funny severely frustrating. Let's not forget that that establishment is a rigid, masculine-heavy hierarchical structure just like all others in dire need of the Pluto treatment...)

To cap off a very bumpy and difficult year, we experienced the Cancer Full Moon lunar eclipse on New Year's Eve. And just as Mercury was slowing again to station direct, the horrific earthquake in Haiti occurred (January 12), between the two eclipses.

Mercury's direct station at 5 degrees Capricorn coincided with the Capricorn New Moon solar eclipse January 15.

So it has been a wicked and terrifying Mercury retrograde period for many people.

Mercury has been passing back and forth between Pluto and the North Node in Capricorn, and we have been informed in no uncertain terms just how corrupt, dangerous and deadly the corpo-governmental structures remain at this point in human history. Collectively, we have become more deeply aware than ever of the influence of inhumane corporate agendas (Pluto in Capricorn) in our day-to-day lives (Mercury) and of how little value or meaning human life has to the people enforcing and reinforcing those agendas.

As Mercury re-wired us on these themes, we had our awareness heightened of the icy cold grip of corporate control and its attempts to reach ever-further into our daily lives, and we were challenged to take charge, to sever ties wherever we could to those corrupt infrastructures. This Plutonic severance is and will continue to be a very complex, multi-layered process of kicking top-down tyranny out of our lives by, together, reinforcing soul-sovereignty and the sovereignty of our communities...and committing to living that way.

We've been informed. We know how deep and how all-encompassing it is. We know now, moving forward, what we have to do, step-by-step, to take the control back in our own lives, communities, businesses, relationships, countries. How we have to alter our decision-making processes...

Mercury direct just conjuncted the North Node in Capricorn for the second time, post-retrograde, and we are more committed than ever moving forward. Mercury has gathered the information and passed on the messages we need at this point to help us understand the next layer of context of Pluto's transit through Capricorn (15 more years to go on that front) and what it means to us personally and collectively. Things have been laid bare for us, brutally in a lot of respects.

But we've gotten crystal clear on who can be trusted, on where our allegiances lie and on what we intend to further from this point on.

The progress has been difficult and frustrating, tied as it is to the massive Plutonic restructuring process. These are huge dynamics we're shifting, and progress is happening in fits and starts. Saturn and Mars are retrograde, and, of course, Mercury is just heading into new degrees of the zodiac. The frustration comes when we are held in place and seemingly can't move forward. If we struggle against it or attempt to go too fast, things can get frightening and overwhelming. Patience is required as we wait for the next small step to become apparent and for the ability to take it in a sure manner. But it gets very heavy, almost intolerable, as we wait for the next step. Very uncomfortable. There have been many times in the past two months (and even before) when I felt certain I would break under the pressure.

Collectively, we're breaking deeply ingrained old patterns now with every step we take, opening vast new possibilities. The importance of what we're doing - and the necessity to do it right every step of the way - is the weightiness we feel. As we take each step forward, the dust and detritus have to clear before we can take another.

Mercury coming together with the North Node today (our soul path and point of successful navigation through the current energies) brings the understanding that we are are being delivered into new vehicles and new relationship structures (Saturn in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn) to achieve the concrete progress to which we've committed.

We now take charge personally of the process of transforming collective concepts of success, worthwhile achievement, and prestige in career and public image. We commit to disengaging fully from the remnants of conditioned corporate, patriarchal versions of those things and sidestep those versions altogether. We recognize the energy of what is real and what is not, and it becomes simple to choose integrity every time. Here is the final "drawing in" to the core, disconnecting from any corrupt structures, people or concepts we were unknowingly furthering. Spinning off the influence of that which is inauthentic to us.

We are the balance (Saturn in Libra) to the boxed-in corporate lifestyles we're supposed to pick out of a catalog. "Order A, B or C." We choose D. None of the above. We choose our own lives, based on the guidance of our own hearts and souls. And we choose to do it together.

The Sabian Symbol for 20 Capricorn (where Mercury re-joins the North Node) is: "A Relay Race." So you see the crucial importance here (with Saturn in Libra as dispositor) of coming together, working together and sharing the responsibilities and effort as we go forward. No one can go it alone at this point. No single person can bear the weight of humanity's collective fears as we move forward, especially those that are hidden and denied in the collective subconscious. The powers that be are very aware of the manipulative, coercive power of playing on collective fears, especially when they can make people feel isolated and desperate, as if they are the only ones who have those fears.

Saturn in Libra represents the coming together of people, of equals, and the formation of relationships designed to be vehicles for achieving the collective goals we could not achieve alone. Achieving not only the balance, but tipping the scales - to justice, freedom, love and dignity for all good people.

This is why we have to act as a team now going forward. That's how we're strong. Understanding the energetic connection among all good people, past, present and future, and drawing on the spiritual wellspring of wisdom we always have access to in times of need and great struggle. (Jupiter in Pisces)

We've fused soul agendas. This process has helped us to strip off distortions, concepts of time and space, that kept us feeling separate from those in our soul groups who came before. We've now merged fully with those who have shared our soul imperatives throughout history and who have taken part in the same struggles all good people have shared.

The next steps are to come together with those of like-mind and like-soul in the present, for the future. I've been expecting this to happen for quite some time, so I'm having a hard time believing it's actually going to go down. Unity, unity, unity, we've heard it all before. At the same time, I know I've gone as far as I can go alone - I feel as if I've gone too far, actually - and I'm sure many are feeling the same way.

Mercury enters Aquarius February 10, and I don't think I have ever been more grateful for a Mercury transit to come to completion.

My recovery is going to take longer than expected, and I'm not sure what's going to happen with me or the blog. I found this post quite taxing, so I probably won't do another for a while. I wish you all strength and faith to get you through these dark times we're going through. All the best.

Willow