"Conflict is the essence of the Self." This quote from Krishnamurti exemplifies the nature of Aries. The archetype of Aries is that of the Warrior, and its motto is I AM. Born of the preceding sign, the spiritual Pisces, with the first breath the new soul realizes it's new existence in the earthly realm of duality. In breath, out breath; from mother, into self.
Life is a battle. The struggle for bodily survival is real. To be a Warrior means to be enagaged whole-heartedly with your life as it unfolds.
Aries aligns with the head in the human body, and its ego. Many teachings suggest one eradicate or transcend this vital part of our beings. But the ego is not the enemy, likewise it is not what the heroic Warrior defends. The ego is the protective armor one wears to protect the Self on the "battlefield" of duality. The ego impels ones to defend the divinity housed in the temple of the body.
Hubris does the hero in every time. The noble Warrior fights only from a place of inner peace. Understanding his struggle is not personal, the Warrior nevertheless seeks to perfect his individual strengths. He accepts he may be called upon to defend something larger than the finite life of his body and ego.
Big shifts are happening, as slow-moving planets Uranus and Chiron prepare to change signs for the first time in nearly a decade. Mercury moves direct in the early degrees of Aries, and Saturn will soon be retrograde. As these shifts begin to manifest in your life, notice what makes you defensive. Before you react, consider the words of Krishnamurti. Choose your battles wisely--are you fighting against yourself or others, or are you defending something greater?
PISCES NEW MOON: Void and Source
At the start of March, four of the ten major astrological planets were in Pisces, and with Jupiter in Scorpio, the celestial energies were swollen with the water element. By the time of the Pisces New Moon on March 17th, Mercury and Venus have moved on to Aries, re-distributing the elemental balance in the skies. With the Sun having recently moved through a conjunction with Neptune, the modern ruler of Pisces, the archetypal expression of the twelfth sign has been especially strong. The mythology of Neptune is linked with the ocean--waters so vast, deep, and powerful that humans have more easily stepped foot on the surface of the Moon than the ocean floor! Yet, despite this apparent inhospitality, it remains the primordial waters from which all life on Earth originated. The last sign of the zodiac, Pisces encompasses the potentiality of void as source.
This dual nature is emblematic of the Pisces archetype, as evidenced by its glyph of two outward-facing crescents attached and intersected by a horizontal line. This is not the microcosmic duality of human consciousness as represented by Gemini, but the macrocosmic duality that underpins the manifestation of Spirit as Earth. Digging further, we find the symbol for the sign is embedded in its name. Meaning “fishes,” Pisces is represented by two fish facing opposite directions. This deliberate opposition indicates the philosophical essence of the symbol--the concept of a visible duality existing within a hidden unity. Though the fish may oppose, they still swim within the same sea. Fittingly, it is the Mutable Water sign of the zodiac, and this combination of its adaptable modality and its intuitive element makes Pisces arguably the most sensitive of all the signs, most receptive to the signals traveling through the psychic sea.
For all its connection to the ocean, there is a quality of Pisces that is yet more cosmic. While the energy of its traditional ruler, Jupiter, is expansive, the energy of Neptune is diffuse, meaning its nature is to disseminate itself evenly across a given space. Water will always yield to gravity and find its level, but with the influences of Jupiter and Neptune, the Piscean influence often operates more like a fog--water in its most ephemeral form. Fog can be felt, but not touched. Fog exposes the hidden folds in the topography of the surrounding landscape, but also obscures the path immediately before us. In the way it diffuses the light, fog reveals to us the true nature of our senses--that they are limited, that they can be confounded, and therefore, they require our heartfelt discernment.
In Pisces, we have come full circle in the archetypal wheel, the point in one’s life journey where one prepares to shed the mortal form and reunite with Source. As the body ages, we lose the sharpness of our external senses, and through this experience we are compelled to atone with the quiet stirrings within us, the internal compass which has guided us throughout our lifetime, but were we to listen. This wisdom of experience serves to heightened one’s inner awareness to better hear these promptings, to resolve and redeem the mistakes and missed opportunities garnered along the way, as we prepare to end this life’s journey. Opposed to the analytical Virgo, this Piscean awareness does not demand an incisive intellectual focus, but rather is compassionately holistic. The motto for Pisces is I believe, suggesting the Great Mystery of Life and Death is too vast a concept for the human mind to dissect and categorize. At the threshold of Death, the path ahead is not clear. The blurring of certainty throws what we know into contrast with what we do not, and in the absence of knowledge, it is faith that carries us through.
A key concept for Pisces, therefore, is transcendence. Authentic attunement with the Great Mystery is to make the miraculous manifest, but, like the ocean, it is a way so vast and deep that we often do not learn to navigate this wisdom until old age. Of all the signs, Pisces is least yoked to the material plane. It is an energy that sensitizes the individual to one’s own spiritual nature, but that also leaves one susceptible to deception, illusion, insanity, and other mis-manifestations through the subtle realms. Transits through this sign stimulate one’s emotional nature, and heighten receptivity to psychic phenomenon and insights from the dreamworld.
To be able to ride its surface with grace, any surfer will extol the necessity of respecting the ocean and her power, which can be deceptive in its ferocity. Although Pisces season can be exciting with the richness of its energetic landscape, a certain maturity is required to handle the corresponding swelling tides of one’s internal emotional ocean. This new moon in particular will be challenged by its conjunction with Chiron, a lesser astrological body that is associated with one’s archetypal “wound.” Additionally, a square to Mars in Sagittarius will increase the tension. With no planets in Air signs, communication may be at a minimal, further frustrating one’s ability to express the profound feelings stirred up by this moon.
Respect the power of your own emotions by learning to read their arrival as they ripple through your being. By identifying the patterns that accompany your different emotional states, you can learn to rise above them like the surfer riding the waves of the ocean. The sources of emotional pain are the places where one feels an internal void. In correspondence, the lessons of Pisces are often centered upon sacrifice, a ritual of releasing. It is through practicing this that we may restore our faith, accepting that fulfillment is measured only in self-love, and not by way of external validation.
What feels heavy in your life? Let it go, and allow your natural buoyancy to return. Yield to the flow, having faith that the currents are leading each along their necessary path. Mercury, the Messenger, conjunct Venus in Aries may be energized to the point of combativeness, and additionally frustrated by the lack of a clear channel communication. Like fish facing opposite directions, we can only see from our own perspective, but still we share the sea. Mind your heart. Has the path of integrity become lost in an emotional fog? Release the need to “speak your truth” if doing so would potentially hurt others. Listen instead, and rise above by believing in the power of compassion. Claim authority over your wound and its triggers. The void is source--perhaps the pain of what you felt you have been lacking is simply showing you the source of self-fulfillment. Once you feel it, you can heal it.
AQUARIUS SOLAR ECLIPSE: Spirit of Reinvention
February’s new moon is the second eclipse of 2018. Generally speaking, eclipses arrive in pairs, making this new moon the solar partner to January’s lunar eclipse. Occurring across the polarity of Aquarius-Leo, this pair is related to the eclipses that happened in August 2017. Last year, the total solar eclipse visible across the contiguous United States dominated the headlines and sent millions of people outdoors to witness the event. February’s new moon solar eclipse in Aquarius is opposite the degree of last August’s solar eclipse, and marks the center of the Leo-Aquarius eclipse cycle.
The August solar eclipse launched a phase of introspection. With both Sun and Moon in the Fire sign of Leo, we were asked to consider our innate creativity and how it is channeled through our self-expression. Ruled by the Sun, Leo is the sign of the sovereign individual. Leo governs one’s willpower, self-expression, joy, and children. By accessing one’s own “inner child” archetype, we can uncover the past injuries that wounded the budding ego and later inhibited its authentic self-expression. In the process of protecting our vulnerabilities, our organic flow of creativity becomes blocked or diverted, which then affects how successfully we project our identity in the world.
This makes the eclipse, with its medicine of shadow and alignment, a potent time to investigate the quality of our wounds and the caliber of our emotional armoring. Last August, Uranus in a tight trine to the sun/moon conjunction acted as a cosmic sword, piercing the rigid armor that locked our behavior into its unwitting habits. Thus exposing our vulnerabilities, the last pair of eclipses demanded we no longer shield our sacred light from the vagaries of the external environment, but rather employ our creative agency to craft a life that best allows our self-expression to shine. Leo’s motto is I will, and these last six months have served to reveal the ways in which we radiate or restrict our willpower, and whether or not this behavior is aligned with our soul mission.
This next eclipse is at the center of the Leo-Aquarius cycle, and establishes a new phase--one of initiation. In Aquarius, the focus broadens from personal to social, from the individual to the collective. The Sun reaches the mountaintop in Capricorn, and begins its descent in the Fixed Air sign, Aquarius. Aquarius is the Water-bearer, much like clouds that carry water that been crystallized (fixed) within the atmosphere (air). As earthly experiences become concrete knowledge, mountains serve to break open the clouds so the water can be channeled to the valley below. Aquarius is the sign of the humanitarian. From this high vantage, the superficial differences between peoples are irrelevant in view of the similarity of our silhouettes, as principles are elevated higher than personalities. Opposite the inner child of Leo, Aquarius is representative of the elder, and the perspective, knowledge, and wisdom that come with abundant life experience. The traditional ruler of Aquarius is Saturn, who also appears in myth as Father Time, who is prescient precisely because he understands the past, who knows the world because he knows himself.
Saturn governs structure. While Aquarius certainly has the perspective to see the cultural form undergirding a civilization, the heavy, earthy quality of Saturn is at odds with the transiency of the Air element. The Aquarian attitude is generally not one of preservation, but innovation. The modern ruler of the sign is Uranus, the planet of originality and unpredictability. Air is invisible, but hardly ineffectual--its subtlety is its strength. In the wireless age, it is easy to see how technology travels on air--spreading across populations, connecting previously distant groups, and provoking new ways to structure social order. All these qualities combine to make the Aquarian archetype that of the intellectual genius, revolutionary spirit, and technological inventor. If the Fire sign Leo is represented by the warm light of the Sun, Aquarius would be the cool, electric light bulb--the former the radiance of the heart, the latter the brilliance of the mind.
The beauty of Astrology is to reveal the different planetary movements in their symphonic composition. While in the lunar cycle we are in a new moon phase, there are other concurrent cycles playing their parts. Let’s consider three main cycles--lunar, solar, and eclipse. In the solar cycle, we have just celebrated Imbolc, the cross-quarter holiday when the Sun’s ascent quickens towards the Spring Equinox in the Northern hemisphere, a phase akin to the waxing crescent moon phase. Within the eclipse cycle (the partnership of the lunar and solar cycles), we have reached the full phase, the midpoint of the Leo-Aquarius set. While this midpoint is a phase of culmination and completion, the individual lunar and solar phases are initiating. This indicates that the broader lessons of these eclipses should be clear now, and it is time to make a personal plan for moving forward to integrate what you have been learning.
During the August eclipse, several planets were in retrograde motion. Now, ALL the astrological planets are in direct motion. This moon is co-ruled by Saturn and Uranus. While not aspecting this moon exactly, Uranus will be in sextile to Mercury, which is conjunct this moon, intensifying the emphasis on mental activities. Mercury was retrograde last eclipse, asking us to consciously remember from whence we came, recall our purpose, and revise our expression. This phase of past reflection has ended. It is time to decide upon a direction and advance. Neptune (planet of illusion) in tense aspect to Mars (planet of energy) may leave us feeling drained just as we are ready to move ahead. The key here is Mars’s placement in Sagittarius, the sign of philosophy. In this placement, our actions (Mars) are fueled by the meaning (Sagittarius) that we ascribe to them. This eclipse cycle has prompted questions that cut to the core of our being--the matrix of our identity, willpower, and self-expression. Why are we here? How can each individual expression (Leo) contribute to the evolution of humanity (Aquarius)?
Notoriously, eclipses reveal previously unknown information and, for this reason, are unsettling. It is okay to move slowly now, so long as the focus remains forward. Let each action be full with the pregnancy of why. Towards the end of the month, there will be five planets in Pisces, which may further stall one’s momentum. Remember a period of gestation is required before birth, and while this is a liminal stage, it is nevertheless a vital process in which energy begins to fill the framework of its future form. Though the effects of our actions may seem nebulous, it is that much more crucial to keep clear intentions for what you would like to bring forth. Thomas Edison famously failed thousands of times before he succeeded in inventing the lightbulb. The clarity of intention (Aquarius) combined with a determination of will (Leo) allowed him to persevere through these trials, and because he did, in one instant, the world was revolutionized.
The planets will all remain in direct motion until Jupiter moves retrograde in early March. Practice self-study, trust your intuition, and have faith in what is growing inside you. In June, Mars will also station retrograde, giving us a period to review the progress we have made up to that point, and rectify any missteps made along the way. Embrace mistakes to reap their instruction. Offer yourself up as a channel to the Divine knowledge that surrounds us as inconspicuously--and as indispensable--as the air we breathe. Use your awareness to ascertain how you are undermining your natural state of joy, and commit to authentic expression in whatever creative form it takes. Allow your respiration to be your inspiration, and commit each breath to the spirit of reinvention!
