The New Moon chart for our country reveals the planetary archetypes deep at work within our collective unconscious. The preponderance of planets lies beneath the horizon posing questions and offering us a chance to sort through the debris of our historic experiment in Democracy. The coming month is packed with potential as Neptune perfects an opposition to its natal point. Spirit walks among us.
The Aries Stellium
The Sun and Moon are conjunct at 22 degrees of Aries in the last quadrant of the 4th house, but they are not alone. Planets are lined up throughout the sign of Aries from Chiron at 9 degrees to Venus at 26 in the 5th house. So what does this mean?
The fourth house is about our inner life – our beliefs and attitudes, our convictions, uncertainties, our fears and dreams. Life isn’t lived “out there.” Life takes place deep within while we watch the movie reflecting back to us the products of our collective consciousness. But the real action is taking place beneath the surface. This is where we work out our issues. We worry over them. We try to understand. We grope through fog to reach clarity.
Our last president awakened the slumbering beast and our shadow burst upon the scene with snarling force. Race hatred, murder, xenophobia, greed, lust for power, deceit, injustice, corruption and, scariest of all, the specter of fascism, divided us into two legions each claiming to be fighting for the Light and projecting the Dark upon the other. This is what we must heal – not the surface squabbles, but the tension that holds perpetual fear and antagonism in place.
Chiron
Chiron is showing us our wounds and they are abundant. Jupiter is conjunct our natal Pallas Athene in Aquarius. Synchronistically we are viewing the trial of Derek Chauvin for the brutal murder of George Floyd. We’re taking a look at unjustified force, at inequity in policing, at our collective assumption that people of different color or ethnicity are crooks and need to be controlled. All the while white collar crime is in full bloom waving its sheaths in the wind. Matt Gaetz, mouthpiece for self-righteousness, is under investigation for child sex trafficking. Trump has scalped his faithful followers and continues to fleece in plain sight. We think of crime lurking in dark alleys, but it’s right out there basking in the sunlight. State legislatures are blatantly defying the Constitution with an assembly line of voter restriction bills.
The New Moon is conjunct our nation’s natal Chiron. Our issues are rising to the surface. Furthermore transiting Chiron is moving slowly toward a conjunction with its natal position, bringing up buried wounds for healing and release. At the same time, the Jupiter/Pallas conjunction predicts that justice will prevail.
Uranus
Uranus is semi-sextile, meaning 30 degrees away from Chiron at 9 Taurus. The alarm has gone off and it’s time to wake up. This year is even more definitive than last. We made some good choices in 2020 but there are many more decisions ahead. For instance, are we going to wage adolescent war over masks or grow up and become responsible citizens? Are we going to stop the spread of Covid 19 or contribute to it by refusing to get vaccinated? Are we going to stand up for everyone’s constitutional rights or lapse into apathy and wait for someone else to save Democracy? Are we going to continue to vote in representatives who have no interest in our interests?
Mercury
Mercury is next in the Aries line-up just 5 degrees away from Chiron. Mercury is catching up with the Sun and will reach its Superior Conjunction on April 18th just before both Sun and Mercury enter Taurus. A Superior conjunction is like a full moon in Mercury’s cycle. What was seeded at the beginning of the year – a month of chaos highlighted by the attack on our Capitol and the inauguration of Joe Biden – became the fodder for Mercury’s new cycle when it turned retrograde on February 1st. This material has been composting in our collective psyche for 2-1/2 months. We can expect more clarity throughout the Aries lunar cycle.
Ceres
Ceres lies at 19 Aries asking us “How do we nurture ourselves?” Not just with food, although that is vital. How do we grow our food and what is it doing to our planet, not to mention our health? Shout out for “Kiss the Ground,” a Netflix documentary about our soil and its role in healing the planet. Beyond that, what nurtures our collective Soul? Nature, beauty, loving relationships, inspiring works of art, connection to Spirit are a few. Can you think of others?
It’s all about healing this month – our misguided beliefs, our negative attitudes, our relationship with ourselves, each other and our beloved Earth. Ceres brings comfort, mother-love. She shows us how to treat ourselves and each other with a generous spirit.
Eris
Sun and Moon at 22 degrees Aries are sandwiched between Ceres and Eris. I’ve been learning more about Eris and have begun to see her as the archetype of authenticity. Eris has been in Aries all our lives. She is so far out in the solar system, she moves slowly through her orbit. Her energy has been concentrated in the first sign of the Zodiac. Aries says “I AM!” Eris says, “Be who you are.”
Thinking about Eris: authenticity, in Aries: new beginnings and rebirth – could we be moving toward a rebirth of authenticity? Looking back on the life of humanity, we were pretty authentic in our animal skins, hunting and foraging and trying to survive. I’m not advocating a return to the cave, but we can chart the loss of authenticity against the advance of civilization and see how separation evolved. How do we bridge that enormous gap now? Authenticity is the key. Eris has been squaring Pluto for the last two years and will for another two. Pluto is breaking ground for us to reclaim our authenticity which is found within, not on the battlefield.
Presence
In my last post I promised to write about the second kind of Presence which is the essence of authenticity. My thinking about this subject has been sparked by the teachings of A. H. Almaas. He defines presence as our true nature – “the primordial, pure essence beyond time and space, the very heart of our spiritual life.” Intellectually that makes sense, but what does it mean experientially?
I let that question simmer for several days and then in the midst of a Yoga pose, I remembered a time when I felt this kind of presence. My husband and I were preparing dinner and I was sharing some insight of mine, trying it out for his feedback. I was chopping vegetables at the island under blaring light when suddenly I was Present with a capital P. It was as if I had been in a cocoon and it unzipped from the bottom up and all that was not-me fell away.
Another way to describe it is volcanic. Something rose up from deep within me and when it reached my head, I was someone else. I was alive like never before. I could see clearly – everything in my field of vision was also vibrating with aliveness. Colors throbbed. My head was full of this palpable presence and I could see into the future. I could see the truth of reality. I felt myself as a giant striding over the peaks of a mountain range. I had total clarity and spoke from this knowing place. My husband turned around from his task and stared at me, as if I were a stranger. I must have become self-conscious, because I felt myself deflate, like a balloon, and shrink back to my shriveled self.
Once I recalled this experience, other incidents came back to mind – once at the dinner table with friends, once on a hillside near the Golden Gate Bridge, once overlooking the Rhine River and another with a group on ayahuasca when I became pure love. It was so intense I couldn’t contain it and it lasted for hours. You may say it was the vine, but now I know it was Presence in its love expression.
Aries carries the energy of that primordial, pure essence which to me is divinity itself, and when I have experienced it, I’ve known the wisdom, the vision, the peace and the disarming power of love. The big question is how to sustain it and that’s what I’m exploring now. This much I know, we have piled a load of debris on top of our true nature. We have clothed it in “personality” and armed it with defenses. We have donned blinders and adopted tunnel vision. We have thrown up walls around our hearts and patrolled the gates. And we have taken on the collective misconceptions about who we are.
Almaas is the founder of the Diamond approach which is a spiritual practice of inquiry. Rather than seeking Spirit outside or beyond ourselves, we dig down through the debris that has buried our true nature. So far in this course on Presence there are two questions to ponder: What are the obstacles to Presence and how do we experience Presence? I found it easy to answer the latter question. Answers don’t need to be cosmic. We experience presence through our sensations, our thoughts and feelings, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. As we press our minds against the question of what stands in the way, we begin to uncover attitudes, conditioned beliefs, ego defenses, wounds that made us contract in fear. As we remove obstacles, more presence emerges. It’s a process and every once in a while we may be graced by a full possession.
The Lunar Nodes
The South Node of the Moon has just crossed the USA ascendant headed north into the 12th house. This house represents our collective consciousness. The Ascendant represents our collective identity. We have seen that we aren’t all sugar and spice. Now begins the work in the 12th house of dismantling our dysfunctional persona and reconnecting with our true nature. What is our collective true nature? To learn more about that check out my series “What’s Going On?” I examine the American character through an analysis of the USA chart. Perhaps it’s a good time for me to review some of that material in upcoming posts.
The South Node carries our karma. We see what isn’t working. We see the disease at the core of our Union. We see what obstructs the expression of our true nature. New Moon in Aries inaugurates a zodiacal year in which we reconnect with that true nature, re-examine the discarded and overlooked “sins of the past” and realign with our potential destiny.
The North Node has just transited the Descendant and slipped into the sixth house. It is only 3 degrees away from the USA natal Uranus. It will be exact on July 29th just before Jupiter moves into Pisces. Remember my mention above that Neptune is moving into exact opposition with natal Neptune? This takes place on May 1st. Neptune and Jupiter are the co-rulers of Pisces. Neptune is the planet of our spirituality – our connectedness with All That Is. With Jupiter moving briefly into Pisces we will get a boost of faith, an evolutionary thrust that will reveal more of who we really are – our authentic nature – and what is possible in our future.
Take some time between now and Sunday evening, 7:30 Pacific time, to contemplate your own identity. How much of your authenticity do you allow to be present? At heart we contain both the dark and the light qualities of human nature. The dark only has power when we sequester it from the light. Once we bring the light of consciousness to the corners of our subconscious, the darkness is subsumed by the light. This is integration and part of the journey to enlightenment.
You may feel prompted to create a New Moon ritual and align your intentions with this powerful energy. We have an army of allies in our Aries ranks.
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