Well, Pluto and Uranus really threw us a curve ball on the Full Moon! I knew something was coming, but Pluto doesn’t announce intentions and Uranus loves surprises. This trickster was triggered by Mars on July 15th. Six days later at the Blue Moon in Capricorn, Joe Biden passed the torch to Kamala Harris.
I must admit I was disappointed that the media and celebrities were driving Joe out of the race, but within a few hours of the announcement, I could feel the energy shift. There was a new excitement. Joe’s sacrifice bolstered the youth vote as well as Black voters which had been drifting away. The air crackled with excitement. There was a sense of renewal.
As Kamala’s campaign came into focus, a vision emerged for the future. This is what has been missing all along. We were given nightmarish glimpses of dystopia from the Right, but fear is a mindless motivator. From the Left, we were getting stale speeches written by uninspired aides who rolled out a laundry list of past accomplishments. Yawn! Where was the juice? Faith and hope were waning as we envisioned more of the same wrangling, blaming, character assassinations in a bitter campaign. We needed something to unite us, to inspire us, to get us involved in our democracy. That’s the thing about our wild experiment in equality – we all have to participate, or it just withers on the vine.
Now we won’t only be voting against an autocratic attempt to destroy our democracy. We will be voting for a vision of a better future, one in which we address the imbalances in both our society and our government. We will be energized by hope for a renewed clean environment. We will welcome the rebirth of our nation as it emerges from the shadows of death. This has been our Pluto Return process. Can we keep our Republic? Yes we can!
The Full Moon was a climax of sorts. Pluto brought us to the brink, but now we see our nation with all its wounds and scars, with all its weaknesses and flaws, with all its shadow. We are slowly realizing that we are One – one species, one nation, one spiritual family that includes all species, all of the abundant diversity that makes life so magical and fascinating. Nature is continually displaying this one simple fact – life is exuberant and diversity is its precious gift, an expression of the Divine Source. Humanity will now find its way back from the frontiers of “rugged individuality.” That doesn’t mean we will lose it. We can’t. Like every snowflake, each one of us is a unique expression of our Divine source. The difference will be a shift in focus from “what’s in it for me” to “what’s best for all of us.”
That brings me to the New Moon in Leo. The word and the image project warmth. As we enter August, the month in which nature ripens into harvest, we’re past the halfway point in this growth cycle and the Fall Equinox is on the horizon. The light is shifting from its harsh brilliance. We’re getting more of the nourishing darkness in which we can rest.
New Moon in Leo
Moon and Sun conjoin on August 4th which is a Sunday, a day of rest. Think of how lions love to yawn and stretch out their limbs. The exact time is 4:13 a.m. Pacific, and they will occupy the 13th degree of Leo. The Sabian Symbol is “Old sea-captain rests in neat little cottage by the sea.” Sounds like refuge, peace and comfort.
Rudhyar continues to describe this degree as a “reward of growth from outer to inner realms. Serenity through the overcoming of storms. Self-gained mellowness.” Mellow is the key here.
Leo is associated with individuality and leadership, with the heart in which our courage lies. It calls up childlike purity in its enthusiasm for life. It speaks to our creative inner child that seeks expression.
I ran across the following quote by chance the other day – this is part of the magic of life. I grabbed a book off a shelf of art instruction books that I collected years ago with the intention of attempting to paint. The book was entitled Freeing the Creative Spirit. I don’t know where the impulse came from to reach for that book, but it provided a deep insight.
“Creativity is a different quality of spiritual life than humility and asceticism; it is the revelation of the god-like nature of humanity.” Nicholas Berdyaev
I had never heard of the author but looked him up. He was a Russian philosopher of the early 20th Century who wrote tracts criticizing the austerity of the monks and the complete control of the Russian Orthodox Church over the people. He realized a hundred years ago that Humanity had a free soul that expresses Spirit in creative ways, and this creative spirit is our connection to the Divine.
Reading his quote gave me a new outlook on the many dimensions of spiritual expression. When we do what we love, when we enter the unknown waters of the creative flow and allow it to take us, we are embodying Spirit and putting it out into the world.
It is our nature to express the creativity that is our essence. We all are creating our lives. We’re writing scripts that are stored in the Akashic Record. We’re making choices, groping our way through the fog, but we’re doing it creatively. We’re unique!
Mercury Retrograde
On the same day the luminaries kick off a new cycle, Mercury turns retrograde at 4:06 degrees of Virgo. This is a great opportunity for inner exploration. First of all Virgo is one of Mercury’s domains. In Gemini, Mercury is curious, energized, exploring, gobbling up information. In Virgo he is sifting through the contents of his collection. Virgo is all about discernment, such an important faculty in these times of illusion and falsehood. Virgo is interested in finding the gems in the harvest and weeding out the chaff, the non-nourishing husks that no longer serve us.
In this lunar cycle, we have a context of relaxation, a time of rest when we allow our batteries to recharge. Autumn carries an electric energy of its own – it’s the beginning of another cycle of industry – bringing in the harvest. In that “back-to-school” spirit, it’s time to launch new projects, complete old ones. August, however, is a laid-back month, a time to reflect, maybe indulge in a hobby. The essence of the message from the book I pulled off the shelf, is that there is a creative flow and we can slip into it. The fun lies in the adventure. We don’t know how it will come out, but we’re excited to explore. We can connect with that inner-child innocence and curiosity and find out something new about ourselves.
Creative expression, whether a painting, a story, an act of kindness, making music, letting our bodies move and dance, is the manifestation of the creator within us. It the essence of who we are. We can be a kid again and create without fear or judgment. It’s the journey that is its own reward, the fun of discovery.
I have suggested before, and will do so again, even though I have not been faithful myself, it’s a great time to keep a journal. We are being transformed from within. We have goals and ideals about who we will become, but we have no idea of our true potential. All of that is simmering beneath the surface. All the churning of consciousness that has been incessant in this century, is cooking up an expanded identity. It will be fun a decade from now to read about the transformation we underwent.
Mercury will be retrograde for most of August, from the 4th to the 28th, but even as it begins to move forward, it will be in its retrograde shadow until September 11th. (There’s a memorable day – this century kicked off with a terrorist attack.) What have we learned in 25 years? Who were we at the turn of the Millennium and who are we now? We’re beginning to emerge from the cave of illusion.
Mercury Aspects: A New Cycle Begins
On August 7th Venus will conjunct retrograde Mercury – great time to bring head and heart into coherence. Then on August 18th Mercury comes together with the Sun initiating a whole new Mercury cycle that lasts through November. This is an important Mercury cycle. If there’s something to process, now is the time to do it. The heavens are blessing us with these opportunities, and the energy in which to grow.
Bringing in the Dwarfs
Ceres has been retrograde in Capricorn and will station direct on August 26. Mercury turns direct two days later. The synchronicity suggests that this is a time to nurture ourselves. This reinforces the Leo and retrograde energies.
Ceres is transiting our first house, but she is not alone. She is conjunct a confluence of dwarf planets – transiting Ixion, Quaoar, our natal Eris and the centaur Pholus. It appears that Ceres is the go-between that delivers information from the outer dwarf planets and transmutes them into an energy we can incorporate and work with. So let’s take a look at these one by one.
The closest conjunction is with Quaoar. This enigmatic archetype is a non-binary energy that seeks embodiment and expression through song and dance, sound and movement. Ceres is saying we can nurture ourselves through the creative expression of this raw energy, another resonance with Leo. Quaoar is raw energy, the kind we need to fuel our inner transformation. I have experienced moments of Quaoar’s energy field – in meditation as my body dissolves into pure energy; in the middle of the night when I wake up and my body is literally lit up with energy coursing through it. There’s no content, nothing mental, just the energy. It’s powerful and we can tap into that through Ceres.
Natal Eris is another story. She tends to be a troublemaker. That’s what we call someone who upsets the status quo. She is a part of our identity. Her negative expression is rancor, resentment, revenge – really rotten ways of handling her energy. We’ve seen a lot of it recently. But her positive expression is quite Aquarian.
During our passage through Darkness, Pluto has been squaring two powerful sources of the Divine Feminine. Eris is one of them, the sister of Mars who carries the aggressive energy of feminine causes. She instigates chaos so that all the parts are whirling in a cyclone, breaking apart old structures in an attempt to level the playing field. Eris is egalitarian. She fights for the underdogs, the dispossessed, the pariahs, to give them voice. She is an ally in discovering our Oneness, the next step in our evolution.
Eris has worked well with Pluto over the past decade, both of them loosening the soil of our hardpan institutions. While transiting Eris is stirring the pot, Pluto has been digging up the dirt and releasing all the toxic corruption cemented in our systems. We see what doesn’t work, what needs to be changed.
As we move into the Aquarian Age, we enter an age of reform, historically enlivening and rejuvenating, potentially a rebirth or renaissance. And this is the domain of Haumea, the other planet that has been square Pluto. Opposite Eris, she is the goddess of regeneration, prolific creativity and amazing diversity.
Less than one degree away from Quaoar is Pholus, an aid to clear perception. Pholus is a centaur, reminding us of our dual nature, or more accurately triple nature – animal, human, divine. Pholus helps us see a larger truth. It works through the subconscious, releasing little insights that help us perceive truth and develop wisdom.
Finally there’s Ixion, who, like Eris, has the power of defiance. Ixion is a rule breaker. We need this influence now because change is imperative. We cannot keep going down this path of destruction. So Ixion pokes us to look at the status quo and shake it up. In negative expression Ixion is a lawbreaker. Our former president is a living embodiment of the negative Ixion traits.
From a spiritual perspective, however, Ixion prompts us to challenge the boundaries, especially the ones set by dominators. He also encourages us to find our passion – what Joseph Campbell called our “bliss.” We came into life with a mission and its fulfillment lies in what sparks our passion.
These planets have gathered in our First House of identity – our collective identity as a nation. They are at work deep in the collective unconscious, preparing for the future. The original intent of our founders was to form a more perfect union. We’ve lost sight of that mission and are a deeply divided nation, but as Joe Biden keeps reminding us, “We are the United states.” Our mission now is to begin the process of knitting our population back together.
August 19th is the next Full Moon with some dramatic shifts. Mercury will complete one cycle and initiate a new one, just as the Moon shines brightest. And Jupiter in Gemini forms a square to Saturn in Pisces. This is the first quarter aspect of the 20-year Jupiter/Saturn cycle that began on the December Solstice in 2020. These are the planets that form the context of our evolution as a society. We’ll take a deeper look at that next time, but in the meantime, have some fun. Let your inner child come out to play.
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