The Moon is in Aries as I am writing this, just having separated from the Sun after their marriage in a New Moon last Tuesday evening. It happens each and every month, and along with knowing what planets are retrograding, like Mars, that we have been speaking about, it is useful information to have on hand. Why? Because at the New Moon we have the opportunity for a new start.
The coming together of the two luminaries, the Sun representing our purpose and goals meets the Moon, representing our emotional body, which is responsible for the interactions that bring the new purpose into fruition. The new beginning this month was in the sign Pisces. I think one of the problems with people not understanding astrology is that the language we use is not correct. The Sun and Moon are not "in" anything actually.
From our perspective, that is the Earth's, the Moon's orbit around us comes to a position in front of the Sun, which, again from our perspective, is in front of the section of the band of the ecliptic where the constellation Pisces is. (And actually this is no longer astronomically correct-it is no wonder astrologers have such a difficult time convincing people of its validity!!)
Anyway, whatever department of life, or "house" as the Greeks called them, that is governed by the sign Pisces is where the new beginning will be for you. This new beginning reaches culmination at the Full Moon 2 weeks later and then gets integrated into your life and winds down, ready for the next new beginning in the next sign along the ecliptic 2 weeks after that (which will be Aries).
Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, the wisest and most spiritual of all signs, because it encompasses all the others. It is where we want either to escape to the paradise of our choice, or where we want to help all our suffering fellowmen. Its symbol is the two fishes, representing our dual natures human and divine, held together by a silver cord. Listening to music, composing poetry, doing yoga, swimming in the ocean, meditating, cultivating compassion, philanthropy, getting visions for the future are all appropriate activities now.
We spoke about Pisces a few weeks ago as Neptune has just entered it. So this New Moon has an extra dose of Neptune in it-letting go and letting God is one of the ways I like to think about this time period, especially as Mars is retrograding. And one more bit of advice..do not think that you have missed the boat if you did not start something on Tuesday. In fact it is always best to let the Moon move a little away from the Sun before acting. You have these 2 weeks as the Moon is increasing in light to begin-as the Moon is gaining light each night we humans too are gaining momentum, this month in our spiritual life.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
How is Mars Retrograding Working Out??
I just wanted to check in and see how this Mars cycle was manifesting in your life? Arguably this time period from Jan 24th to April 14th affects Virgos with Aries or Scorpio rising the most. They have double trouble with this back tracking, as they can feel that their whole life is coming apart and has to be restarted. Whatever piece of their life they put in motion last Fall has to be redone. I know two of them and it really is true. I also have a friend with her ruling planet Jupiter between those sensitive degrees 3-23 of Virgo, and she too cannot seem to get going. She has a confirmed mortgage commitment but each house she finds and bids on, falls through.
We all have Virgo someplace, in some department of life, and that is where Mars is staying an extra long time period, 8 months instead of 2. This started last November and Mars will not leave Virgo until the beginning of July. It is a good time to ask ourselves questions like: What is working in my life?, What am I striving for? What am I doing? How come my actions are not showing any results? What work do I really want to do? Why am I so angry? Where can I put my energy? Where can I take a risk? Where am I being asked to move ahead? You do not have to know astrologically which house in your natal chart is the Virgo one, I am sure you will know by taking a moment for reflection. If you are an Aries or Scorpio rising, or have a lot of planets in either those 2 signs it can be bigger, it an be your entire life's direction.
If you are lost and frustrated, watch the time around March 3rd as there is a lineup of Mars, Earth and Sun. You will get a good sense of where you will be heading. Mars connects with the Sun which is our deeper purpose. Your energy, drive and will forces (Mars) connecting with your purpose/goals (Sun) magically reconnects them inside you. Virgo is all about efficiency and integrity. The work you do must be authentic to who you are inside, if you are going to be happy, that is.
And speaking of happy, Mars' complement Venus will do her backsliding May 15th to June 27th in Gemini. Mars rules are efforts but Venus rules what we want. By the time we finish with both these retrograde periods (and throw in a couple of Mercury's) we have the chance to change what we want and how we are going to get it. There are some things in life that we have no control over, but these 2 planets orbiting on either side of the Earth we can work with. Those people with these planets important to them will find that from last November to this summer their whole social world has changed.
We all have Virgo someplace, in some department of life, and that is where Mars is staying an extra long time period, 8 months instead of 2. This started last November and Mars will not leave Virgo until the beginning of July. It is a good time to ask ourselves questions like: What is working in my life?, What am I striving for? What am I doing? How come my actions are not showing any results? What work do I really want to do? Why am I so angry? Where can I put my energy? Where can I take a risk? Where am I being asked to move ahead? You do not have to know astrologically which house in your natal chart is the Virgo one, I am sure you will know by taking a moment for reflection. If you are an Aries or Scorpio rising, or have a lot of planets in either those 2 signs it can be bigger, it an be your entire life's direction.
If you are lost and frustrated, watch the time around March 3rd as there is a lineup of Mars, Earth and Sun. You will get a good sense of where you will be heading. Mars connects with the Sun which is our deeper purpose. Your energy, drive and will forces (Mars) connecting with your purpose/goals (Sun) magically reconnects them inside you. Virgo is all about efficiency and integrity. The work you do must be authentic to who you are inside, if you are going to be happy, that is.
And speaking of happy, Mars' complement Venus will do her backsliding May 15th to June 27th in Gemini. Mars rules are efforts but Venus rules what we want. By the time we finish with both these retrograde periods (and throw in a couple of Mercury's) we have the chance to change what we want and how we are going to get it. There are some things in life that we have no control over, but these 2 planets orbiting on either side of the Earth we can work with. Those people with these planets important to them will find that from last November to this summer their whole social world has changed.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Is It Good or Bad and What Does it Mean?
After the last post on Neptune moving into Pisces, I received the above questions, which I'd like to address now. As Marcus Aurelius says from the First Century, the universe is made of one substance. It is only our dualistic mind that wants to see things in good or bad, black or white, mind or body, rich or poor. It is easier for the mind to divide things and make sense of the parts, rather than seeing the whole. Science and medicine do this all the time. We have an illness. Modern medicine tends to treat a body ailment either with specific drugs targeted to that symptom, or by replacing the diseased organ with a new one, as if the body were a machine, instead of seeing the body as a whole and treating body, mind and spirit as one.
When I was at Hunter in 1967, I had a philosophy professor who asked the class if the world was many things or one thing. Most of the class, including myself, answered many of course. Yet the early Greek and Roman philosophers knew differently, and the 60's were beginning to bring that fact back to cultural consciousness. Another sociology professor gave me Herman Hesse's book Siddartha, cautioning me that she was not sure she should, indeed I left Hunter and NYC soon after that in the middle of winter for an alternative lifestyle in a log cabin in Vermont.
It is not good or bad that Neptune is moving into Pisces for 14 years. It just is. The meaning of it is up to us to assign. Astrology marks passages and cycles of time and can be quite helpful in assigning meaning. When we talk astrology and what the planets are doing, all we can do is take note of what transpired when Neptune was in Pisces previously.
1520-34 saw the Protestant Reformation spread across Europe, Henry VIII established the Church of England and dissolved the monasteries, Magellan circumnavigated the globe, Spanish invaders collapsed the Aztec, Inca and Mayan civilizations. 1685-99 saw the Salem witchcraft trials and the apparition of Our Lady in Lourdes. 1848-63 saw the rise of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species, the Opium Wars with China, the stress that the continuation of slavery was bringing to the country, the start of the Civil War, the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur's discovery of the existence of bacteria and the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. (for further elucidation see The Mountain Astrologer magazine Dec/Jan 2012 edition).
All the above events( taken from all the events in the periods) conform to the symbolism of the combination of Neptune and Pisces which time period we have entered again. The common themes of all the previous periods are water, spreading, dissolving, idealizing, the banishment of one way of life, the blending of the imaginary and the real world and the appearance of the previously unseen. There is not just one influence occurring at a time of course, and nothing ever repeats exactly; no moment in time is like an other, but we can imagine what could happen knowing what happened before. Imagining what will happen does not give us any answers to whether this passage is good or bad or assign any meaning, for that is completely up to the individual and his perspective.
When I was at Hunter in 1967, I had a philosophy professor who asked the class if the world was many things or one thing. Most of the class, including myself, answered many of course. Yet the early Greek and Roman philosophers knew differently, and the 60's were beginning to bring that fact back to cultural consciousness. Another sociology professor gave me Herman Hesse's book Siddartha, cautioning me that she was not sure she should, indeed I left Hunter and NYC soon after that in the middle of winter for an alternative lifestyle in a log cabin in Vermont.
It is not good or bad that Neptune is moving into Pisces for 14 years. It just is. The meaning of it is up to us to assign. Astrology marks passages and cycles of time and can be quite helpful in assigning meaning. When we talk astrology and what the planets are doing, all we can do is take note of what transpired when Neptune was in Pisces previously.
1520-34 saw the Protestant Reformation spread across Europe, Henry VIII established the Church of England and dissolved the monasteries, Magellan circumnavigated the globe, Spanish invaders collapsed the Aztec, Inca and Mayan civilizations. 1685-99 saw the Salem witchcraft trials and the apparition of Our Lady in Lourdes. 1848-63 saw the rise of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species, the Opium Wars with China, the stress that the continuation of slavery was bringing to the country, the start of the Civil War, the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur's discovery of the existence of bacteria and the discovery of oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. (for further elucidation see The Mountain Astrologer magazine Dec/Jan 2012 edition).
All the above events( taken from all the events in the periods) conform to the symbolism of the combination of Neptune and Pisces which time period we have entered again. The common themes of all the previous periods are water, spreading, dissolving, idealizing, the banishment of one way of life, the blending of the imaginary and the real world and the appearance of the previously unseen. There is not just one influence occurring at a time of course, and nothing ever repeats exactly; no moment in time is like an other, but we can imagine what could happen knowing what happened before. Imagining what will happen does not give us any answers to whether this passage is good or bad or assign any meaning, for that is completely up to the individual and his perspective.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Neptune and Pisces
One of the biggest astrological events of the year is today at 1:52 pm as planet Neptune changes signs, leaving Aquarius, the water bearer who sprouts out ideas, and moves into Pisces the sign of the two fishes moving in opposite directions, held together by a silver cord.
This every 14 year shift is significant. Neptune is the planet that represents our dreams, visions, escaping tendencies, addictions, spiritual longings, denial capacity, longing for the unattainable, sacrificing capacity, martyr complexes, victim mentalities, compassion for the disenfranchised and those forgotten by society, selflessness, ego dissolving, gullibility, self martyrdom, mistaken illusions, sensitivity to everything around you, susceptibility, appreciation of idealized beauty, communion with the divine, imagination, creativity, and our believing in something that we want to come true, that we think is true, even though it may not be.
As Neptune entered Aquarius in 1998 we had the widespread use of the internet, introductions of Windows 98, Google and the IMac. We became infatuated with the the lure of technology and the proliferation of information. Just as Aquarius the water bearer pours out freely to all, without thought of merit or need, Neptune's orbit around the Sun, traveling in front of Aquarius brought us the perception of the benefits of the technological revolution with its revolutionary gadgets, cell phones, Iphones, Ipads and phones that talk back to us. We became enamored of all the quick and abundant information that this highway, open to all, and used by dissidents far away from each to start revolutions, in some cases, or bring injustices to light that would otherwise have been buried and forgotten.. Certainly there is some good here.
But as I heard a top surfer say on TV this morning, he liked the old way when the surfing world was really small groups of people at the various surf beaches all over the world trying new moves and visible only to those select few on the beach. Today, if a surfer does some fantastic new spin the video goes viral and it is all over the world in a matter of minutes. Not the same experience. Our allure with the vast use of viral videos will begin to fade. Look at the news this week with the blackout of certain Internet sites to protest attempted legislation to restrict the Internet. The rights of the individual versus the need to freedom of expression, where can we draw the line? Neptune hates boundaries and technology has had none so far.
Now with Neptune moving in front of Pisces (in the Tropical zodiac) we are going to be idealizing all Piscean matters, not unlike Neptune's rulerships cited above as Pisces is ruled by both Neptune and Jupiter. Pisces is a water sign so all things having to do with water, ocean storms, fish, the intangible, the unconscious, psychicism, sleep, poetry, liquids, boats, drugs, intuition, the sea, the mystical, water healing, energy healing. The two fishes represent humanity's dual nature, human and divine. They pull in different directions but are held together by a silver cord, joined but separate.
As Neptune travels these next 14 years we are going to see a renewal in all aspects of the unseen in our lives. Instead of having to call someone holding a device to our ears we are not going to need to do that. We are going to use more of our spiritual natures, more of the unused portion of our brains and innate intelligence in the human body to create what we need and to effect our physical universe, without the hand held device. More studies will come forth about the consequences on the sensitive human body of the overuse of these devices.
We will also see the sacrifices being made on the part of the disenfranchised exposed-(this has also to do with Pluto in Capricorn and the purging of institutions of all kinds). There was a piece by Adam Gopnik in last week's NewYorker (Jan 30th) about the teeming prison population in this country. Between 1980 and 2010 the number of people incarcerated has more than tripled. The US has more that 6 million people presently in prison -more than were in prison under Stalin at its height.
There are lots of changes in perceptions coming especially for you Pisces, Pisces rising people and everyone else as we all have Pisces someplace in our charts. As a planet changes sign it also changes the department of life that the sign rules so as the clouds clear over our Aquarian idealizations and we see more clearly they are moving into Pisces placements and sensitivities.
This every 14 year shift is significant. Neptune is the planet that represents our dreams, visions, escaping tendencies, addictions, spiritual longings, denial capacity, longing for the unattainable, sacrificing capacity, martyr complexes, victim mentalities, compassion for the disenfranchised and those forgotten by society, selflessness, ego dissolving, gullibility, self martyrdom, mistaken illusions, sensitivity to everything around you, susceptibility, appreciation of idealized beauty, communion with the divine, imagination, creativity, and our believing in something that we want to come true, that we think is true, even though it may not be.
As Neptune entered Aquarius in 1998 we had the widespread use of the internet, introductions of Windows 98, Google and the IMac. We became infatuated with the the lure of technology and the proliferation of information. Just as Aquarius the water bearer pours out freely to all, without thought of merit or need, Neptune's orbit around the Sun, traveling in front of Aquarius brought us the perception of the benefits of the technological revolution with its revolutionary gadgets, cell phones, Iphones, Ipads and phones that talk back to us. We became enamored of all the quick and abundant information that this highway, open to all, and used by dissidents far away from each to start revolutions, in some cases, or bring injustices to light that would otherwise have been buried and forgotten.. Certainly there is some good here.
But as I heard a top surfer say on TV this morning, he liked the old way when the surfing world was really small groups of people at the various surf beaches all over the world trying new moves and visible only to those select few on the beach. Today, if a surfer does some fantastic new spin the video goes viral and it is all over the world in a matter of minutes. Not the same experience. Our allure with the vast use of viral videos will begin to fade. Look at the news this week with the blackout of certain Internet sites to protest attempted legislation to restrict the Internet. The rights of the individual versus the need to freedom of expression, where can we draw the line? Neptune hates boundaries and technology has had none so far.
Now with Neptune moving in front of Pisces (in the Tropical zodiac) we are going to be idealizing all Piscean matters, not unlike Neptune's rulerships cited above as Pisces is ruled by both Neptune and Jupiter. Pisces is a water sign so all things having to do with water, ocean storms, fish, the intangible, the unconscious, psychicism, sleep, poetry, liquids, boats, drugs, intuition, the sea, the mystical, water healing, energy healing. The two fishes represent humanity's dual nature, human and divine. They pull in different directions but are held together by a silver cord, joined but separate.
As Neptune travels these next 14 years we are going to see a renewal in all aspects of the unseen in our lives. Instead of having to call someone holding a device to our ears we are not going to need to do that. We are going to use more of our spiritual natures, more of the unused portion of our brains and innate intelligence in the human body to create what we need and to effect our physical universe, without the hand held device. More studies will come forth about the consequences on the sensitive human body of the overuse of these devices.
We will also see the sacrifices being made on the part of the disenfranchised exposed-(this has also to do with Pluto in Capricorn and the purging of institutions of all kinds). There was a piece by Adam Gopnik in last week's NewYorker (Jan 30th) about the teeming prison population in this country. Between 1980 and 2010 the number of people incarcerated has more than tripled. The US has more that 6 million people presently in prison -more than were in prison under Stalin at its height.
There are lots of changes in perceptions coming especially for you Pisces, Pisces rising people and everyone else as we all have Pisces someplace in our charts. As a planet changes sign it also changes the department of life that the sign rules so as the clouds clear over our Aquarian idealizations and we see more clearly they are moving into Pisces placements and sensitivities.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)