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NOW (JBull)
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NOW (JBull)
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What we're doing here and why. And what's with the Rocks? For questions, comments, or a personal reading, contact us. This website is supported by donations. If you find it useful, please make a donation. Your donation will be anonymous unless you specify otherwise.
May 19-26 , 2008: Preview of 2009-10
2009 and 2010 are openings similar to 1945 - imagine what it felt like, having endured 8 years of economic Depression and 7 years of World War, suddenly the Sky opened and the Sun returned. This week is a preview. If you don't feel the excitement, not to worry, you're just releasing your old habits of focusing on the gloom. The flip side of Miracle is Despair. Hopelessness is your cue to move your attention to
What If I Could Have Everything I Want and Need And What If Everyone Else Could Too!!
And What If That's Exactly What God/Goddess Wants!
Go for it!
Both Chiron (the Healing of Despair) and Neptune (our God-Connection) are stationary (very strong), while Mercury (bringing it all to Consciousness) is also stationary (very strong), and trines (makes it effortless) both! Chiron's still 3 degrees short of Neptune - when this happens again next May it will be only a few minutes off. Chiron's station is 5am PST on May 25 and Mercury and Neptune's stations 9am PST on May 26, but the Moon crosses Chiron and Neptune from 2pm PST to 8pm PST on May 26. The Moon crossing is likely to be the peak.March 19, 2008: Open to Miracles You've Never Imagined Possible
It may take a few years yet before the World wakes up to peace and collaboration, but there's no reason you can't do it now. In fact, the World will never wake up unless you help lead the way.
Moon conjunct Saturn, 6:33am PDT, 4 Virgo, "Black and white children play together happily."March 9, 2008: Focus Your Intentions
For the next couple of days the Force is with us, to spiff up our skills at focusing our intentions. Really, that's all there is, focusing your intention. That's the fulcrum. Everthing else flows from that.
Mercury conjunct Neptune at 12:52 am March 9 in 23 Aquarius, "A big Bear sitting down and waving all of its paws." Rootile March 23.March 7, 2008: Talking Truth
If you've been saving up a Truth or two that you'd like to share, and you'd like a large audience, and you'd like to be well received, today and tomorrow are the perfect days to spend some time visualizing exactly how that would look and feel, while lovingly and gently releasing any doubts that may arise.
New Moon in 18 Pisces (Large crowd enjoying spectacular performance in big tent) at 9:14 am PST and Moon conjunct Uranus in 19 Pisces (Master and student) at 11:04 am PST on March 7, and Sun conjunct Uranus in 19 Pisces at 12:19 pm PST on March 8. Sun-Uranus rootile around March 29.January 16, 2008: The Change
After nine months of wrestling with the edge of hopelessness, we finally turn a corner. Time has provinces just like space, and we're entering a new one. Hassles that seemed insurmountable last week will be readily resolvable two weeks from now. The resolution may not be easy, but it's suddenly headslappingly obvious. The lessons we've been learning, for the last nine months and the last dozen years, have been about realizing that despair is a state of mind rather than a statement about the World, and realizing that no hassle can be resolved when we cling to an agenda. Reality is Paradox. Rational is part of Mind, not part of Reality. Now that we've had no choice but to detach from both our hopelessness and our dreams, we can allow them to manifest.
One catch - we still have to let go of our pictures about our dreams. What we're manifesting is based on our deepest desires. We all have shallow pictures of the reflections of those deep dreams, pictures based on our current understanding of the Cosmos. News flash - our current understanding of the Cosmos is incomplete! I don't care who you are, and I don't care whether your primary channel for receiving input is visual, intellectual, kinesthetic, emotional, auditory, psychic, or comedic. Your current understanding of the Cosmos is incomplete. So when our deepest dreams come forth, to the extent that we're attached to their reflections in our understanding, we won't recognize them. To get past these shallow pictures, we need to stay with acceptance and gratitude, no matter what manifests. You may create your dreams incarnate, you may create the mirage that you thought was your dreams, or you may create the screen that stands between you and your dreams. If you get the latter, be very loving with all of the emotions that arise as a result.
If the Earth continues to split into Heavenly and Hellish segments, which will you choose? This is a crossroads. The choices you make in the last half of January are more important than usual. Choose Love. Don't be deterred by "negative" emotions - respond to them lovingly.
The action is on the Aries Points and the Power Points of the zodiac - new beginnings and powerful transformations, specifically the cusps of Capricorn and Cancer (compassion and pragmatism), and the midpoint of Aquarius (idealism and integrity).
The action that's ending is the Chiron-Pluto octile and the Mars retreat that opposed the Jupiter-Pluto-Mercury-FullMoon-GalacticCenter Solstice. The third and last Chiron-Pluto octile is January 24, just one minute of arc and half a day of time before Pluto enters Capricorn. Mars finishes its retreat on January 30, though after that it'll cross the Cancer cusp (March 3) and Pluto (March 6) for the third time. And Mars stays out of bounds (strong) until April 25. What we haven't been able to accomplish since mid-November, while Mars has been retrograde, we'll finish in spades between January 30 and April 25.
The action that's beginning includes of course the biggie, Pluto entering Capricorn, and a Venus-Pluto cycle on January 23 that coincides with the last Chiron octile. Pluto will not enter Capricorn "for good" until November 26, 2008, since it backs into Sagittarius one more time on June 13, so 2008 in many ways may at times feel like sort of a "false start" into the new province. In other words, things will change rapidly during the first half of the year, and a backlash will follow during the second half. Of course the media will miss or misreport most of the changes, and overreport the backlash, so if you take most of your information from the mainstream media it could be several years before you realize how much has changed. Pluto is about transformation. Sagittarius is about burning away whatever is spiritually unnecessary. Since most of us have involuntary reactions to fire, and since most of are attached to the spiritually unnecessary, the last twelve years have seemed kind of hard. Even if we were good at releasing the unnecessary, we still had to grieve its loss. Capricorn on the other hand, is just about seeing the obvious and attending to it directly. The engineering solution. For the next sixteen years we're likely to want to overengineer everything. So for instance, instead of denying global warming, now we'll just want to fix it. That's a great improvement, but the engineering solution doesn't address root cause, so come 2025 or so we'll have to fight this battle all over again, as Pluto in Aquarius again brings more tension between idealism and integrity, between belief and the obvious. You can save yourself the trouble by just bypassing cause and effect and going straight to Source. The contrarian side of Capricorn advises us to trust our serendipitous intuitions and unexpected impulses.
The Pluto-Venus cycle last about a year. It'a about transforming our pictures of our values. This one begins at 30 Sagittarius, "The Pope, blessing the faithful." Sounds like kind of a do-or-die sorta thing, where our values demand our intuitive allegiance, over and above our intellectual conceptions of them. For instance, what you now see as a "pet peeve" may transform into a more serious commitment to action, or, gods forbid, into an effort to get other people to conform to your notion of the way things ought to be. We'll paint it positively, and call it a movement into more constructive and realistic pursuit of what's important to us.
Speaking of tension between idealism and integrity (Aquarius), as we were a minute ago, the other new energy dominating the next two months is about honoring our deeper values. Both Mercury and Vesta cross Chiron on January 17, at the midpoint of Aquarius. The midpoints of the fixed signs are considered the zodiac's Power Points. Mercury represents awareness and communication. While Venus represents what we value, Vesta stands for what we hold sacred - our deepest values. Chiron is about healing, and particularly about coming to believe that what we previously thought was impossible, is now feasible. Aquarius 15 is "Two Lovebirds sitting on a fence singing happily." I read that as a very friendly influence over the next five years (the length of the Vesta-Neptune cycle), particularly with Pluto moving into Capricorn. Of course the dangers of idealism (considering the intellectualization of some value to be more important than the value itself) and control (opposing the contrary values of others rather than supporting our own values) may abet the polarization that characterises the decade (the Saturn-Uranus-Moon-Pallas grand cross in the 1/1/2000 chart), but the two Lovebirds bodes a happy ending, even if the Chiron-Pluto cycle that began 12/30/1999 is too scary for you to interpret that way. Since Mercury goes on retreat from January 28 to February 18, we revisit Mercury-Vesta on February 2, and Mercury-Chiron again on February 7 and March 4.
Chiron is moving toward conjunction, and the beginning of a new cycle, with Neptune. Both planets stand still in the 27th degree of Aquarius ("An ancient pottery bowl filled with fresh violets") in late May 2009, but Chiron stops fifteen minutes of arc short of Neptune. Some would consider this the beginning of the new cycle, and it will be momentous enough (particularly since it's conjunct Jupiter) that we may as well do that. The full conjunction occurs in mid-February 2010, and it's also at 27 Aquarius, so we don't have to assign a double meaning to the cycle. This is a loooong cycle - this one lasts 85 years. The previous cycle began in September 1945, at 9 Libra, "Three 'old masters' hanging on the wall of a special room in an art gallery." So while the last 65 years (as of 2009) have been about respect for tradition, the next 85 will be about finding new life in old forms. The Chiron-Neptune cycle is about healing into Wholeness.
We bring this up now because when Mercury and Vesta cross Chiron, they cross Neptune soon after - and even provide hints about the impending change in this Big (ie, long) cycle. The longer a cycle, the less experience we have with it, and the more likely it is to shift our reality beyond recognition. Mercury crosses Neptune on January 22, then both Mercury and Vesta cross on February 1-2 at 22 Aquarius, and Mercury crosses again (in tandem with Venus this time) on March 8. The Vesta-Neptune cycle is about channeling Deep Truth - recalling of course that Truth is in the Heart, not the mind, and that everyone's Truth is different. Of course those who don't recall that could well experience this cycle as a need to straighten everyone else out. 22 Aquarius is "A rug is placed on the floor of a nursury to allow children to play in comfort and warmth." With Mercury there, this five-year cycle may trigger the compassionate mind. We'll hold that intention.December 17, 2007: The Return of Light
Don't think I've ever seen a chart so conducive to waking up as the chart of this Solstice, which is a major governing horoscope for us until August. It's blessed with four sources of creative stress. The first source is huge, and its stress is a tension between The Future and the old notion that to succeed we must struggle to compete. The Future outweighs the incumbent by about 800%. The second source is merely big, and its stress is about balancing emotion, inertia, identity, and wisdom. The third and fourth stressors are smaller, but still significant. The third stress is about sustainability in the face of despair. And the fourth stress has to do with contrasts between our values, our ideals, and our Truth. All of it is about waking up. Fortunately, each of these sources of stress has an accompanying easy route to resolution. The first and third stresses are resolved by spurning business as usual while respecting and wisely applying our existing skills to sustainable, flexible, Future-seeking goals. The second stress is resolved by being The Future rather than trying to work to create it. It's not about effort. The fourth stress is resolved by carefully choosing the path in between obedience and rebellion.
Simple, eh? Of course we still have two other prominent energy fields with us untile end of January - our opportunity to review and revise our doingness and our seminar in working with despair. Some of that will come through as anger or self-doubt. Self-doubt is anger turned inward toward the self. Our anger is like our despair and anxiety. Always always lovingly embrace the emotions (and their bodily source if there is one), but never ever believe what your mind says under their influence. They're intoxicants, they're addictive, and they never speak Truth. Truth is calm, peaceful, and self-evident, never strident or scared or hopeless. Yet your anger, despair, and anxiety hide great Truths. To find these jewels, it is necessary first to be in the present moment - when you're in anger or despair or anxiety, in the present moment you're under the spell of Harpies who aim to lead you away from the treasures. First you must reverse the spell, by loving the Harpies for who they are. They are Goddesses, employed by your Soul Self to make sure that the route to your Truth is not easily forgotten.
The purpose of anger is to distinguish our Earthbound self from Other. Our Heavenbound Self is One with Other. But our Earthbound self is Separate, and balancing that ultimate duality, with compassion, is what allows us to "walk the spiritual path wih practical feet," as Angie Arrien puts it. But when anger is operating properly, we don't feel it as anger. We feel it as simply "in our interest," simply self-evident. When it roils our emotions, it's speaking for a former self of ours that was violated, and our task is to lovingly embrace the emotion, and to embrace the present moment experience of it in our Earthbound body. Separation from Other will take care of itself, once we've learned to be loving with our anger as anger. In December and January, we're likely to experience it as frustration, but the assignment is the same - embrace it for itself, and recognize that only the emotion and the physical sensations are real. The thoughts that come along for the ride are metaphors, echoing truth or fact but far from Truth itself. Don't believe a word of their stories.
When anger is turned inward against the self - and there are energies about that are likely to bring this to the fore - our anger gets used up setting boundaries against part of the self. If we were fully conscious, we'd experience this as remorse, make amends, and bring this rejected self back into the fold. When amends are impossible, or when trauma or chronic rejection by significant others converts our remorse to shame or self-doubt, then these parts of our self are banned from our sense of self. The resulting "shadows" are split from our consciousness of ourself, abandoned to live parallel lives as fragmentary beings like the entities in a Hieronymous Bosch painting. When despair, self-hate, or rage possesses us, we're viewing the world through the eyes of these dysfunctional entities, we're viewing their parallel world, and in that world they/we are not complete beings, they/we have limited coping skills. To assemble a whole-enough self to cope, we must first search for the part of ourself that is capable of love and gratitude - that is the core of us - then persistently direct our love toward these fragments. We cannot love without first loving ourself.
If we reject a part of ourself long enough, or allow someone else to power over us and program us to reject part of ourself, we lose all connection to that part, and it becomes not-us. The foundation of war is the projection of these fragmentary hungry ghosts onto Other. If someone roils your emotions, you know you're looking at your shadow. That does not mean you must be like them, that you must become what you reject. On the contrary, you must be loving with what you reject, not in Other but in yourself. Romanticism aside, to love something we must be separate from it. If you cannot recognize in yourself what you reject in them, all the better. Simply declare the intention to be loving with the part of yourself that you're seeing and judging in them, and prepare to be surprised.
The first source of stress is an opposition (contradistinction) between on the one hand a retrograde (under reconsideration), out-of-bounds (strong) Mars (competition, energy, doingness) and on the other hand the Solstice Sun (return of the Light) and Jupiter (an amplifier) and the Galactic Center (something a lot bigger than we can imagine) and Pluto (the force of history, transformation, the appearance of fate) and an out-of-bounds (strong) Mercury (mind, communication). Mars is even stronger because of it's closeness to the Earth and resulting prominence in the heavens. The resolution to this stress lies in a golden rectangle (very tightly organized blessing) with another opposition between on the one hand Saturn (structure, history, business as usual) and the Dragon's Tail (our existing skillset, inertia) and on the other hand Pallas (wisdom, appropriate assertion) and the Dragon's Head (our destination, our curriculum). This second opposition forms a Grand Cross, which is the second source of stress, with the opposition between Juno (identity, merging, joining, belonging) and an out-of-bounds (strong) Moon (emotions). The tension in the Grand Cross is resolved through a meditative approach (Mars retrograde) to the Future (Solstice Sun-Jupiter-Pluto-Mercury-Galactic Center), and through attention to the sacred (Vesta). A major symmetry is completed by a vacancy in early Leo (around 2-5 degrees), so your own natal planet in that zone would make yourself an additional Tool of the Universe in resolving these tensions. A potentially fateful time for you in other words, in a very positive sense.
The third source of creative stress is a square from Ceres (sustainability, nurture) to Chiron (healing, despair, empathy), resolved by a trine from Ceres to Saturn (tradition). That doesn't endorse business as usual, because of the way Saturn's involved in the previous paragraph. On the West Coast of the US, Chiron conjoins (opens) the Vertex (a portal to other dimensions), making our despair homework so very important. The fourth source is another square from Venus (what we value) to Neptune (our relationship to God, our cultural heritage, material confusion), resolved by a trine from Venus to Uranus (integrity, the chord connecting us to our individual soul).
Timetable:
At 11 minutes after noon PST on December 18, Jupiter enters Capricorn.
At 9 minutes after 6am PST on December 19, Saturn begins a retreat across 2-9 Virgo.
At 10 minutes to 11am PST on December 19, Mercury crosses Pluto in 29 Sadge ("A fat boy mowing the lawn of his house on an elegant suburban street").
At 17 minutes before 7am PST on December 20, Mercury enters Capricorn.
At 7 minutes before 2pm PST on December 20, Mercury crosses Jupiter in 1 Cap.
At 17 minutes after 4pm PST on December 20, the Sun crosses Pluto in 29 Sadge.
At 8 minutes after 10pm PST on December 21, the solstice occurs. The first degree of Capricorn is "An Indian chief claims power from the assembled tribe."
At 29 minutes after 10 am PST on December 22, Mercury opposes Mars.
At 4 minutes before 10 pm PST on December 22, the Sun conjoins Jupiter in 2 Cap ("Three Rose windows in a Gothic church, one damaged by war").
At 15 minutes after 5pm PST on December 23, the Full Moon occurs. The corresponding initiatory New Moon was on December 9, in 18 Sadge, "Children playing on the beach, their heads protected by Sunbonnets: The need for people confronted with the future to discover a new way of living and more wholesome surroundings" (Rudhyar 1973 p.221). Rather prophetic, eh? At the New Moon Vesta (the sacred), Mars retrograde (assertiveness reconsidered), and the Moon (emotion) were all out of bounds (strong). Mars and Venus (grace) and Pallas-Dragon's Head (wisdom arriving) form a Grand Trine (great blessing), while Juno (identity) squares the Nodal Axis, implying an easy adjustment to the big transformation indicated by the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction that also bridges the Nodal Axis. The key is to choose what we most value and what we consider sacred, and let the rest evolve on its own.
At 14 minutes before noon PST on December 24, the Sun opposes Mars.
At 8 minutes before noon PST on December 26, Mars opposes Jupiter. The Mars-Jupiter cycle began September 26, 2004 at another Aries Point, 1 Libra - "In a collection of perfect specimens of many biological forms, a Butterfly displays the beauty of its wings, its body impaled by a fine dart." What a comment on the effectiveness of our doingness for the last three years. The phitile or culmination of this cycle occurs July 2, 2008, thankfully before the next election. The next cycle doesn't begin till February 17, 2009, however, so the election occurs in a Mars-Jupiter void - which is good, since the Mars-Jupiter cycle symbolizes one of the more yang energies. This next cycle births at 11 Aqua ("During a silent hour, we receive a new inspiration which may change our life").
At 2pm PST on January 2, Mars opposes Pluto. We've talked about this cycle already - see Oh, The Addictive Drama of War. With Mars retrograde, this is the second opposition; the first was September 20 and the third will be March 6, 2008. The phitile or culmination of this cycle occurs June 1, 2008. The next cycle begins a year from now, on December 28, 2008, at 2 Capricorn, again, "Three Rose windows in a Gothic church, one damaged by war." Another energy that's in remission at the election.
These processes will strongly effect our relationships. It will be good to recall where we are in the Venus-Mars cycle, since Venus-Mars symbolizes our basic emotional and relational nature. Venus is now five signs ahead of Mars, still building toward the cycle's culmination at opposition (January 19, 2008) and phitile (February 25, 2008). The next cycle begins September 12, 2008 at 16 Libra, "After a storm a boat landing stands in need of reconstruction: The need to keep in operation steady links between the vast Unconscious and the ego-consciousness" (Rudhyar 1973 p.182).
In January and February there's a complex dance between Mercury (intellectual awareness), Vesta (the sacred), Chiron (healing), and Neptune (God) that will awaken us even more, but we'll write about that later.11 October 2007: A Long Moment of Truth
There are two significant energies born here. One is short but strong, the other longer and even stronger.
The first is about paying very close attention to your thoughts and paying very close attention to how your programmed belief systems edit your experience. In other words, there are unimaginable treats here - "magic is afoot" as they say in the grove - treats which, if you accept them, will help carry you safely, peacefully, and joyfully across the 2012 threshhold, whatever that turns out to be for you. This energy is finished by April 2008, so I highly recommend that you don't waste it. It'll go underground soon, to resurface loudly towards the end of the year. How to recognize it? It's fairly simple - your skepticism will give it away. Any time you see yourself rejecting anything as too unreasonable, see if you can take a moment to suspend your disbelief. Let yourself indulge in imagining for a few moments. What if that was what I saw? What if that was true? Then, once you set yourself free for a moment, let your mind consider the implications - if that was true, then what else in my "normal" mindset and "normal" reality is false? You'll never regret taking this luxury.
The second energy is about discriminating and choosing the right path for yourself from the bewildering array of choices that confront us. Do you see how these two energies are related? Your path isn't anybody else's path, and your truth isn't anybody else's truth. If you see these two energies as conspiring to crush conformity, you won't be far off. The key to this energy lies in paying attention to what is sacred to you - not what somebody else told you is sacred, but what is sacred in your own personal unique heart of hearts. It's no longer business as usual, the World has changed, and we need to change with it. We need to live and choose consciously now. As the Planet speeds up, we need to slow down in proportion, so we don't make sloppy choices from habit. The first energy is manifesting now to help you make this distinction. This second energy lasts for two years; after going underground it reappears at the next equinox, about the time when the first energy is fading. Remember, these energies aren't just windows, they're learning opportunities. Sure, the energy fades as the cycle moves on and other energies become louder, but meanwhile we've tasted the fruit, and we have the power to recall these tastes anytime later, as talents, whenever we need them.
Two other energies are born in the last half of November, and those energies conspire to keep us chained to the past that has already died. Learn these first two energies well now, so you'll be wise enough to resist the temptation to race after the fife in November.
The first energy arises from a quadruple conjunction of Venus (what we value), Saturn (what we focus upon), the Dragon's Tail or Moon's South Node (what we already know if we can access it), and the fixed star Regulus (the Eye of Leo, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse), in 5 Virgo, signifying "becoming aware of nature spirits and normally unseen spiritual agencies: opening of new levels of consciousness" (Rudhyar 1973 p.153). The Venus-Saturn square (when the energy goes mainstream) occurs in early January 2008, and the phitile (when the energy fades) occurs in mid-April 2008. Since many people experience Saturn as negative and limiting, it's very important to be watchful for that and reframe it positively. For instance, a virus might have you feeling tired, irritated, and unexcited, while you stress yourself about how much work you're not getting done. You might reframe that as an opportunity to slow down and rest, to give yourself a quiet space where inspiration can find you again.
The second energy is spawned from a triple conjunction between Vesta (that which we hold sacred), which is out of bounds (very strong), Pluto (that which we cannot avoid, and which changes us), and the Galactic Center (overarchingly inevitable) at 27 Sagittarius, which signifies "a sculptor at work: the ability to project one's vision upon and give form to matter" (Rudhyar 1973 p.226). This energy enters the common thoughtstream (ie, the Vesta-Pluto square) in mid-April of 2008, and surrenders (ie, the phitile) at the end of September 2009. Vesta is out of bounds from 26 September till 11 December 2007, during which span it is much more important than usual that we respect what we feel to be sacred. Venus is about what has heart and meaning to us, while Vesta is about what is sacred to us - the difference is subtle but meaningful. If you believe that your Planet's future depends on collaboration, I recommend plugging into Lynne McTaggart's Intention Experiment.
There are three other prominent astroprocesses occurring here that will have profound effects on all this.
First, Mercury turns retrograde today (11 October) until 1 November, it's retreat spanning 24 Libra through 10 Scorpio, and the entire process spanning 21 September through 17 November. The Gemini decanate of Libra and the Scorpio decanate of Scorpio are profoundly different; in the former we question what treasures we may have given away in the name of harmony, and in the latter we examine how we feel about that, often exploring feelings that any "spiritual person" would find odious. This of course is the paradox of Scorpio - finding a way to love the least lovable parts of ourself, because any part of ourself that is not fully loved is mirrored to us as evil in the outer World. Look to see if any resentments arose for you between 21 September and 11 October - those are the meat for your meditations between 11 October and 1 November. Of course, of particular interest will be any concerns about values which have heart and meaning for you, or which you hold sacred. While Mercury is on retreat, you are released from the burden of communication. Give yourself the space to sit quietly. It's the ideal time to meditate on releasing yourself from any compulsion you might have to believe your thoughts.
Second, Mars (physical energy, action, assertion) moved out of bounds (became stronger) on 4 October, until 25 April 2008 (notice the parallel timing with the Venus-Saturn and Vesta-Pluto cycles), in preparation for its own retreat. The retreat itself spans 15 November 2007 to 30 January 2008 and 25 Gemini to 13 Cancer, the whole retreat process covering 28 July 2007 to 4 April 2008. The Aquarius decanate of Gemini and the Cancer decanate of Cancer is the time when we review and regret the ways we've been flaky to others, and strive to make amends. We're not saying Gemini is flaky - what we're saying is that Gemini is about trying new things, usually a whole bunch of new things at once, and in Gemini mode we easily violate the expectations of others. Toward the end of Gemini and the beginning of Cancer it is easy to rue what can now appear to us as selfishness, and want to re-establish connection with those we love and those we fear. Bearing in mind that the main effect is about holding true to our own values and to our own notion of the sacred, you may want to consider redesigning those connections rather than just re-establishing them as they were.
Third, Chiron finishes its annual retreat on 20 October. This retreat spanned 11 to 16 of Aquarius, and began on 4 May 2007. The entire process covers 3 February 2007 to 3 February 2008, and includes the three octiles to Pluto. 11-16 of Aquarius is the first half of the Gemini decanate, and the Gemini and Cancer duads, of Aquarius. This is the time when we review our connection to our individual soul chord, our mission, and, in the case of Chiron, heal it. Chiron is always about healing despair, because it is shortcomings in our beliefs that prevent us from healing. As we approach the 2012 transition, we're healing negative beliefs that we didn't even know were beliefs - such as cause and effect, linear time, death, materiality as reality, "human nature" as a limiting force. We thought they were aspects of reality, not fully realizing that reality is what we make of it. Believing that events are beyond our control is the ultimate in despair, despair so deep we don't even experience it as emotional. Recalling that Pluto represents Scorpio, and that Scorpio represents the depths of emotion, it would be a great time to deeply experience how loss of control really feels. Healthy control, the kind of control that allows us to set our own boundaries, to discern what brings us joy, and act to manifest just that. What misery, to lose that kind of control. That loss is exactly what our programming has sold us. Time to transform it.
The two cycles nascent at the end of November are Pallas (wisdom and defense) conjunct the Dragon's Head or Moon's North Node (what we're learning) and the fixed star Formalhaut (another of the Four Horsedudes of the Apocalyse) at 3 Pisces ("petrified tree trunks lie broken on desert sand; the power to preserve records of achievements inherent in mature cultures" - Rudhyar 1973 p.270), and Mercury (thought and communication) conjunct Juno (joining and belonging) at 27 Scorpio ("a military band marches noisily through city streets: aggressive glorification of cultural values" Rudhyar 1973 p.207). Not that we wish to disparage culture, but it's cultures of cooperation and respect that will prevail, while cultures of competition and control rot away. Don't fall for conforming to expectations of cooperation - that's just more control. The surviving cultures will respect you enough to allow you to travel your own path.11 September 2007: The Eclipses
In the short term, this season's eclipses take a back seat to the major energy happening (see below). What they ask us to do is to process our emotions more quickly, and to be more respectful of our Sources. They'll have more meaning for us over the next nine months.
The September 11 partial solar eclipse occurs just as Pluto is stationary octile Chiron and a few days after the Venus station. It's 19 Virgo, "A swimming race." It makes a weak grand cross, opposing Uranus and squaring the Mars-Pluto opposition, so it could easily carry the Chiron-Pluto energy (below) into the next nine months, as eclipses are wont to do. So we may need to process our emotions quickly, in order to return quickly to holding the space for Peace, Clarity, Abundance, Liberté, and Égalité. This is actually a major lesson that Dubya is teaching us - Karl called it "message discipline" - it means holding your beliefs steadfast regardless of the reality you see in front of you. Sure, it's psychopathic, but it's also how we manifest. The keys to the castle in the September 11 eclipse chart are a trine-sextile truss between Mercury, Chiron, and Vesta-Jupiter (at the trine midpoint), implying that we heal ourselves and the planet by amplifying our connection to the sacred, mindful that each conscious being on the Planet holds a different notion of what is sacred (how else could we keep the Planet in balance?). The Vesta-Jupiter conjunction also trines the stationary Venus, so any dissonance we have between what has meaning in our Heart (Venus), what is sacred to us (Vesta), and what we think about it all (Mercury), will be in our face for healing (Chiron). Bear in mind as well, that some of us are here to explore the limits of this sort of dissonance, so be merciful with yourself and others. In the Pacific time zone, Chiron conjoined the Vertex, enabling healing to pour in from parallel lifetimes and other dimensions.
The August 28 total eclipse of the Moon manifests the energy in the August 12 New Moon which occurred at 20 Leo, "Zuni Indians perform a ritual to the Sun." That New Moon opposed Neptune (our relationship with all things larger than our self/Ego, especially "God," whoever that is to you). The Grand Cross in this chart was across the Moon's Nodes, with Vesta-Jupiter on one end and Mars on the other, bringing into awareness any contrast between what we hold sacred and where we invest our energies.8 August 2007: Deep Churn (modified 3 Sept 2007)
In some ways 2007 is the pivotal year of the decade - and thus a turning point on our serendipitous journey toward 2012. In August and September we again experience, as we did in March, the possible malaise or even despair of this rebirth. We won't go into detail about the astrological origins of this transformation here, because we deal with it at length in our forthcoming book, The Path to 2012: Part I - The Polarization Decade (send your email address to jbuss@juno.com if you want to be kept posted on the book's progress). For now, the important thing to remember is that it's not personal, it's global - in fact, it's even bigger than that. Bottom line, it's extremely positive, but it requires a very deep release before we can plug into the potential. Go back and retest the healing tools you've tried over the years that didn't seem to work as well as you wanted them to - they're likely to be much more effective now.
Can we ignore this energy? Yes, definitely, if you can get away with it. Letting go is always the first thing to try. For many of us, it feels at the least enervating, if not depressing to the point of despair. If you can get around that cognitively or by burning it off with your spiritual fire, by all means go for it. The energy is transformative, but we need to recognize that it may overwhelm our existing physical and emotional processes, and those processes may require upgrading so they will be able to handle the load.
We get a lot of blank stares when we tell people to step outside their hopelessness and look back at it empathetically. But that's the quickest path through this muck, and the quickest route to creative and productive ways to move forward. So how can we rephrase that, to make it more understandable? The Universe we live in is limitless. Miracles abound when we open to their possibility. So despair is never a bottom line, it's always a dark emotional/intellectual culdesac that we've stumbled into. While we're transforming our emotional/intellectual relationship to the Universe (another part of The Path to 2012), such culdesacs abound.
When we're moving forward joyfully and creatively, we know we're on the right track. So what if in every dark culdesac there lived a loving Mother figure, someone larger than yourself who loves you unconditionally, and who is willing and eager to embrace you and soothe you and tell you convincingly that it's okay, that everything is going to be all right, and who will then turn you so you're facing into the dawn and send you happily on your way with your innocence restored? Well, there is, and that Mother is you.
By their nature despair and hopelessness overwhelm us, and when they do we lose track of our ability to nurture ourself. So the first step is to recognize, lovingly, that we're in despair, and remember that we can take off our dark glasses and be loving with ourself, right where we are. If you've never known a loving Mother figure, you'll have to do the best you can to imagine one. There are only two things to change, nothing more. First, direct your gaze at your self, as consciousness. Second, embrace yourself with love and gratitude and respect.
There is another process that is extraordinarily healing, and which is relevant during 2007. In this process, rather than embracing your discomfort from outside of it, you move as much of your attention as you can directly into the center of the discomfort. Serious discomfort is usually surrounded by a ball of fear, so you may need to just send nonjudging attention into the fearball for a while. The fearball will feel centerless, but keep at it. After a while, you'll dissolve the fearball and find yourself in the center of your pain or anger or despair. By then you've already jumpstarted the healing process, and it will proceed on its own.
This period provides a strong opportunity to learn to shift our reality away from the negative not only because the leverage is so great, but also because the self-rescue habits we build now will be very useful over the next 18 months. Over the last 18 months we've become clear about our priorities, and over the coming 18 months we may feel compelled to take some risks to defend them. To do that we'll need to keep our priorities clear, and we'll need to stay loving with ourself as we abandon or confront old realities that no longer serve us. What we'll be defending comes from the Heart, so there will be no question about their defensibility. But there may be questions about our resolve - we may be tempted to fudge a little to keep old friendships alive, or to avoid conflict with old belief systems that our ego is attached to. The assured outcome here is Integrity, so there is no need to compromise. There may be calls to make amends over situations where we've compromised under our old belief systems, if we now see them as contrary to our values and important to our mission.
Remember this. If you are having difficulty manifesting a lifelong Desire, it is usually because an obsolete Ego blocks the way. If your old Ego was capable of manifesting it, it would have been doing so effortlessly all along. We change the World only by changing ourself. That doesn't just mean that the World changes one person at a time. It also means that when we change, the World changes with us. If we felt guilt over receiving something, anger over not receiving it, or fear over how we would adjust to it, then the World reflects that. When we let go of our guilt or anger or fear, we allow the World to mirror Grace and Abundance to us. So how do we manifest the Ego death/rebirth necessary to create this? We could (and will) write a book about this, but for here let's keep it short.
Spend as much time and energy as you can muster imagining how you'll feel when your Desire manifests. Completely bypass mechanisms (How will it manifest?) and outcomes (What will it - or he/she - look like?). Both mechanisms and outcomes are old-Ego tricks to make miracles seem impossible. The feeling sense of your Desire is your Heart's Truth. It will guide you unerringly in ways you haven't even imagined.
Chiron octiles Pluto on March 25 and September 10, 2007, and January 10, 2008. The January occurrence finds Pluto in the last few minutes of Sagittarius, which colors the entire Pluto-in-Capricorn journey (2008-2024) just as the Chiron-Pluto conjunction colors the entire 2000-2010 decade and 2000-2099 century. The illuminated degrees are 12 fixed, 12 mutable, and 27 mutable. The Chiron-Pluto square occurs 2028-2030. The September octile finds Pluto stationary (ie, very strong), as Pluto ends a retreat across much of the Scorpio duad of Sadge (the last two and a half degrees of Sagittarius) on September 8. For the last dozen years, we've been learning that "the way out" is to "let go." Do you remember the lesson plan for 1983-1995? It was "the way out is through." We've been learning to let go for a dozen years now, but during 2007, while Pluto crosses the Scorpio duad, the way out is again "through." On this path, we'd make ourself physically safe, then surrender completely to our despair.
Until September 21, Mars opposes Pluto, so the Chiron-Pluto energy may be extended till then if we don't release it. The Mars-Pluto cycle began in January (with Mars out of bounds) at 28 Sadge, "An old bridge over a beautiful stream is still in constant use." The Moon is out of bounds (exacerbating everything) from August 7 to 10, August 22 to 25, September 3 to 7, and September 17 to 21. The outabounds Moon ignites the Chiron-Pluto degrees on August 8, August 22-23, and September 4-5. And of course the partial solar eclipse of September 11 (see above) could well extend the Chiron-Pluto energy's prominence into the next nine months. No harm there, since this energy is growing anyway, so the more familiar and comfortable we are with it, the more effortless will be our experience of the next few decades.
Meanwhile, since July 28, Venus is on retreat in the last half of Leo (a re-evaluation of the things we congratulate ourself for). She trines Pluto (waning) on August 14, and finishes her retreat on September 9 at 17 fixed. Her broader retreat period (wherein we examine whether our lifestyle matches our values) spans June 24 to October 11. She meets the Sun in inferior conjunction on August 17 at 25 Leo, initiating a new Venus-Sun cycle. She'll rise as the Morning Star starting August 24 or 25. Venus as the Morning Star is kin to Pallas Athena, Goddess of War and Wisdom. She is finishing a stint as Venus Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Receiving, and now transforms herself into the Goddess of Good Boundaries. 25 Leo is "A large Camel is seen crossing a vast and forbidding desert," or, as Rudhyar paraphrases it, "Self-sufficiency in the face of a long and exhausting adventure." The Venus cycle runs 19 months; the next one begins March 27, 2009 at 8 Aries ("A large woman's hat with streamers blown by an east wind" or - Rudhyar - "Protection and spiritual guidance in the development of consciousness"). The one after that, in the Summer of 2012, is the second in the pair of once-every-250-years Venus "transits" (the astronomical term) across the face of the Sun. But we'll talk about all that in The Path to 2012; here let's see if we can find out more about this "long and exhausting adventure" that awaits us over the next 19 months.
The cycle that's ending (which we should know all about, eh?) started in January 2006 at 24 Capricorn - "A woman entering a convent" or (Rudhyar) "Total commitment to a transcendent goal." Look back over the last year and a half - what transcendent goal did you find yourself committed to? (Mine was Joy, give or take.) Hint: you would have experienced your commitment intensely in October and November. So, over the next year and a half, take care to reframe all difficulties you encounter as speed bumps (not brick walls) on your road to that transcendent goal. Whenever we ask for something, we always get illustrations of the reasons why we haven't manifested it effortlessly all along - it's by releasing those reasons that we come to receive it as Grace. Next, the larger Venus cycle takes eight years (five shorter cycles - there are always five larger cycles going on concurrently), so we can look at the last Leo cycle, which began August 20, 1999 at 28 Leo, "Many little birds on a limb of a big tree," or (Rudhyar) "A wide, and perhaps confusing, openness to a multiplicity of inspiring potentialities." Since 1999? Boy, ain't that the truth! Okay, so by now we've been offered a zillion new belief systems, and we've chosen one that we think might carry us forward for a while. So this arduous adventure is about purging the places where our old belief systems stop us.
The action actually began even earlier, but more effortlessly, as Saturn trined Pluto (order arising from mayhem) on August 6 while Jupiter was stationary (rapid expansion), finishing a retreat across the Aries decanate of Sagittarius (opening the space for copious new energies to flow in), and sextile to Chiron (lots of healing potential). Both the trine and sextile were waning (opening space but usually leaving a void best left unfilled till the next cycles begin - in other words those copious new energies may puzzle us; if so, let it be, confusion is good). The trine closes the 9/11/01 Saturn-Pluto cycle - we'll have its dying screams in late 2009. Yes, that's the 9/11 cycle - isn't that a Blessing! The sextile is a parting gift from the Jupiter-Chiron cycle that began in June of 1990 at 17 Cancer - "The unfoldment of multilevel potentialities issuing from an original germ" or "The life urge to actualize one's birth potential" (Rudhyar). Whoa, isn't that an interesting twist considering what Venus is up to! The next Jupiter-Chiron cycle begins in May 2009 at 26 Aquarius, "A garage man testing a car's battery with a hydrometer" - tuning up our Energies in preparation for our 2012 launch. This cycle reaches opposition in 2012. The ending Jupiter-Chiron cycle originally opposed Saturn and Neptune; the next one conjoins Neptune. The bottom line of this is the healing of our relationship with forces larger than the Ego and larger even than the Self (Neptune), as well as bringing those forces to bear on the healing of what formerly kept us limited.24 October 2006: Letting Go and Moving On
We finish two years of self-exploration, during which time we've learned a lot about our own emotions, how they operate in relationship, and how they lead us to God. Now the current shifts, and we spend the next couple of years learning about letting go of what we've enjoyed, in order to allow deeper and broader satisfaction and meaning into our lives. The more intense it feels, the more important it is to let it go. Within a year or so, we'll see a lot more people feeling strongly about protecting their home planet from abusive profiteers, and helping their planetmates of all stripes survive sustainably.
Venus-Mars-Sun conjunction at 11pm PDT on 24 October in 2 Scorpio, "A delicate bottle of perfume lies broken, releasing its fragrance: the accidental nature of opportunities that impel one to break away from a past, the remembrance of which is still poignant and cherished. A new and greater realization usually demands the sacrifice of something which has brought loveliness and fragance to a lesser form of living and feeling" [Rudhyar 1973]. The conjunction squares Chiron from behind. The new Crescent Moon is out of bounds, and an out-of-bounds Ceres moves toward conjunction with a stationary Neptune.
What we're doing here, and why.What we're doing here, is "reading the stars" not for any individual, but for the Planet as a whole. Each paragraph describes an energy or wavelength that's impacting the Planet, with an approximate timeline for it. At any given time, we put the most important energies at the beginning. As a cell of the Planetary Being, on some level you'll be experiencing what we write about, though every individual will experience it differently. Bear in mind that when anyone "reads the stars" out loud, they can't help but make an interpretation, and every interpretation is one out of a great many possibilities. So you may have to stretch your imagination to see how a given energy is affecting you. Sometimes such a stretch will be very useful to you, sometimes not.
Why do we do this? It's simple, if obtuse. So you won't bother personalizing these energies. What does that mean? Well, each of us is impacted by our own personal "work," but we're also impacted by the "work" of our culture, and the "work" of our Planet. The way we deal with each of these "works" should be quite different. For instance, if your culture shifts toward fascism, you might respond by enriching yourself on opportunities it offers you, by resisting it, or by visualizing its opposite, so as not to feed the shift. But if you see yourself shifting toward fascism, we would hope you'd rush to seek counseling. With Planetary energies, we believe the appropriate response is usually to take advantage of the opportunities they offer us, and this is how our interpretations are structured. There's little to be gained by resisting Planetary energies, because they're simply too big. But a lot can be gained by interpreting them positively. For instance, Saturn-Pluto energy, as was about in the last half of 2001, can feel dreadful. But the core of Saturn-Pluto energy is a very powerful one-pointed focus. Knowing that, you can direct that focus into intentions that align with your personal values.
Knowing which energies to personalize and which not to personalize can help you let go of them. As a friend once said, "I know that 'this too shall pass,' but you know when!" If you don't like the feel of an energy, you always have at least three choices: you can let it go, you can move more deeply into it, or you can embrace it. The first option is always to let it go, because that's the nature of energy, it's always moving on. If letting go doesn't work, then moving more deeply into it can be a great teacher. The difference between moving into it and embracing it, is that you become the energy when you move into it, and you separate yourself from the energy when you embrace it. You step out of the energy in order to reach back and embrace it, rather than stepping into it. Knowing that an energy is temporary, how long you're likely to have to endure it, and that it may not even be yours, but the Planet's, can be a great aid to letting go and moving on. When we're conscious of an energy, it fades quickly when it's finished. When we aren't conscious of it, it can linger in our field long after it's gone from the Planet's field, simply because we haven't let it go.
At the end of each paragraph, in gray text, we describe what it is about the stars that we're interpreting. If you know some astrology, you may make more sense out of the energy by reading the gray text, though of course even the choice of what to include and what not to include, is an interpretation in itself. We use some strange terms, most of which are explained in our glossary.
And what's with the rocks?
Each type of crystal, or mineral, has it's own distinct energy, wavelength, or vibration. Your own response to any given mineral, at any given time, will be different, depending on the needs of your physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, parallel, and other-dimensional bodies at that moment. You can find books which tell you how each mineral is likely to impact you, and some of them are quite good. The best book for you is the one that you resonate with - get to know a mineral or two, and then look them up in the book to see if you relate to the book's stories about the mineral. The books I use most frequently are Roeder 1994, Marquist and Frasl 1999, and Gienger 1998. In the end, though, your response to each mineral will be uniquely yours, and you will resonate with one crystal one day, and another the next, as each crystal rebalances your energy. Since crystals can be expensive, we put these pictures of them here so you can "try them on" to see how they fit before you go rock shopping. And the picture conveys some of the vibration of the stone itself, so often it may be enough to gaze at the picture. In times like the present, where we're changing rapidly, we may need a lot of different crystals to get through the day gracefully, and some of these minerals aren't that easy to find. We preface each update of Now with a rock that may help balance the energies described in the most recent entry.
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HOME AND ROCKS HISTORY JBULL ARCHIVES
