The Flow! April 21 – May 5, 2013
Shell Shocked
Shell shocked; an appropriate title for the period following The Wild and Wooly World. From Boston to Texas to our highways and living rooms, explosions, collisions, and aggressive actions have roared rampant and unwelcome into our daily lives.
Whether near or far, we go about our daily lives in a partial stupor, as if a part of our brains continually try to process these events like waves of emotional adjustment wearing down stony rocks of utterly horrific events. And just when you think you have eroded them to pebbles, some unexpected bit of news rises them up from the froth and foam; only to be pounded again by waves of heartache and yearning for understanding.
That’s where astrology can help, and I suppose why most of you are here. Astrology is a language that is specifically designed to describe reality, so is rather uniquely suited to help explain it. Regardless of the mechanisms by which astrology may or may not work, the symbolic language of astrology is humanity’s compendium of historical observations.
The Sun and Mars have been joined at the hip in Aries. Although I tried to get a discussion of that topic in our last installment, it was perhaps too soon as if often the case before energies ripen. The actual conjunction didn’t culminate until the 17th, perhaps a bit too distantly felt when originally published on the 7th.
In any case, the Sun is our Selves, it is our core, and it is the well-spring source from which all energies and power flow. Without the Sun, the Earth is but a dank dark and dirty bit of rock tumbling aimlessly along the currents of the universe. Without our astrological Sun, we’re not so pretty either. Mars organizes those energies and puts them together for a purpose. Mars is our muscles, our deeds, athletic competitions, and the mechanations and arms of war.
When combined together, as they have been all month, they egg each other on like childhood twins, who individually might otherwise preoccupy themselves sitting harmlessly entertaining themselves with Lego blocks, conspire to create chaos and mayhem.
And they are both in Aries. Aries is ruled by Mars and exalted by the Sun. What that means is that there is a natural affinity between both planets and the sign. Both are more powerful in conjunction here than any other sign except, perhaps Leo which is ruled by the Sun, because their energies can flow more freely and are less tempered by the designs inherent in the nature of the sign.
For example, in Cancer, the Sun is tempered by Cancer’s emotional perspective. And Mars turns more inward and introspective. So when the Sun and Mars are conjunct there, the results are more passive, psychological, and emotional. There may still be mayhem but it’s more personal, and one tends to feel guilty about it afterwards.
Not so in Aries. Aries, in some ways, is like a race horse with blinders on. Not that they’re oblivious to their surroundings (which they sometimes are) but that they are driven toward specific goals, spend a lifetime training themselves to get there, and usually have well-defined finish lines. An Aries generally knows exactly where they’re going, and when where and how they are going to get there – even if they won’t say so.
That makes them very direct, very straightforward, and very driven people. They may be aggressive, but it isn’t personal. They’re not racing you on the freeway because they don’t like you or think you’re too fat, but because they need to see if they can go faster than you.
All of which can be a bit much to contain within flesh, blood and bones. Show me an Aries who has made it to middle-age, and I’ll show you someone with a photo scrap book of splints, casts, and bruises. But unlike other signs that may respond to such events by adopting more staid and placid ways, Aries will often use them as milestones on their way to more significant accomplishments. They don’t need Rockstar to power them, they are rockstar incarnate.
Enough on Aries. Uranus is still plodding through the sign and will for another 5 years, and Mercury, like a bird blown backwards by a strong wind, has recovered himself and is now charging forward to Taurus.
The Sun, Mars and Venus are already there. The Sun and Mars entered on Friday, April 19th, and slowly but surely and steadily, the healing will begin.
If Aries is pure energy, Taurus is the result of that energy. Think of lone atoms quietly floating along the universe. But then with the big bang (a magnificently symbolic Arian event) they begin tremendously speeding up with purpose and newfound power, and they begin to interact with each other creating the matter that creates the universe and everything in it.
That process is Taurus. Matter from energy. So Taurus isn’t just earth, but Earth, Mother Earth, Gaia, and in a sense all the planets and stars around us. Taurus is the rolling hills and green growing things, and the jewels and ores inside. Hold a rock or a sheaf of wheat and you hold the magic and power of Taurus made manifest.
The first part of Taurus is exactly that – the magical manifestation of the nature of whatever exists there. Its symbol is the clear mountain stream. What you see is what you get, purity with no cover ups; no games, no snark, no sarcasm. Well, maybe SOME snark. Some of my best friends are snarks.
So with the Sun and Mars blazing through the first part of Taurus for the next few days, we are still going to be dealing with their effects in Aries as they turn their attention toward manifesting the results of their activities. What that means is that we’ll be finding out more about the nature of what happened, what it means, and how we need to deal with it. As the Sun and Mars move deeper into Taurus we’ll see how that process functions.
But if there is one idea to keep in mind that will help us make the most of the moment, it is to approach the events in our lives with authenticity. Be who you are without artifice, schemes, or masks. In the clear mountain stream, the clear authentic waters make their way down hill; the detritus is pushed off to the side, and what is like will coalesce into what is like. What is true to you will come to you, but only if you stay pure to the truth of your nature.
But that is not all that we must deal with over the next few weeks.
We have a partial lunar eclipse coming on April 25that the Full Moon of 6º Taurus/Scorpio at 11:57:06am, which should slow things down some.
As astronomical events go, partial lunar events don’t rank very high on the excitement scale. Those of you in the Eastern Hemisphere may see a bit of darkening on the Moon during the height of the eclipse. Those of us in the Western Hemisphere won’t see anything at all.
But just because it’s a yawn astronomically, doesn’t mean it’s a yawn astrologically. In fact, much to my surprise, a yawn is definitely what it is NOT. Bear with me, I’ve got to transport you through an astronomy lesson, but it’s worth it in the end, I promise!
Eclipses are not singular events. They are produced by a highly complex relationship between the orbits of the Earth and Moon with relation to the Sun. That’s partly shown in the diagrams below. There’s a lot of stuff down there, so I’m going to try and organize them for better reference.
The controlling factor of an eclipse is what is known astrologically as the North and South Nodes (of the Moon). That squiggly that looks a bit like the symbol for Leo or a capital Greek Omega is the North Node, and when upside down it’s the South Node. What is actually is, is where the equatorial plane of the orbit of the Moon crosses the Ecliptic, which is the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. There’s a diagram below for reference.
The nodes move because the orbit of the Moon isn’t static, it wobbles like a top. A similar “wobble” to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun gives us the Ages, a la Aquarian Age.
Anyway, because the movement of the Nodes of the Moon is fairly regular (regular enough for the Greeks to have discovered it over 2,000 years ago) eclipses that occur in similar places with the same relationship have similar characteristics, known as the Saros Cycle.
This lunar eclipse belongs to Saros Cycle 112. It began on May 20, 859, and will end on July 12, 2139, and reached its peak in 1490. There are 144 eclipses in all, each about 18 years apart, and we’re on the fading edge of the cycle. In fact, this current eclipse that can even claim to be partial at all, as the rest fade off into the sunset. Litarally.
In researching the meaning of each Saros Cycle, I look to its origins, when it reaches peak, and what historical events were occurring during the most recent similar eclipses to our own. And that’s when things got interesting.
Not much is known about the second half of the 9th century, but we do know from history that it was a pretty bleak time in Europe, though the Chinese and Arabian cultures were then flourishing. If anything at all was going on in Europe except evading rats and picking off lice was that the families that would eventually spawn the ruling class of Normans, Capetians, and Hanoverians were defining themselves. And around this time Arabia began commercial dealings with India across the Indian Ocean.
Fast forward to the 1490’s and you have Leonardo da Vinci busy in his workshop, the Renaissance about to kick into overdrive, the voyages of Vasco da Gama, Columbus looking for backing, and the ratcheting up of the Spanish Inquisition.
At the next period of significance, when the eclipses ended totality, is during the reign on James I of England when the English began to colonize America, the Pilgrims were fretting in Holland, and Pocahontas was living as Rebecca Rolfe in England.
But most surprising is more recently when the most recent eclipse in the series occurred on April 15, 1995. On April 5, 95 the US House voted a huge tax cut, on the 7th, the GOP celebrated passage of the Contract with America, on the 13th, Egypt and South Korea established relations, on the 19th we had the Oklahoma City bombing, and on the 24th the Unabomber struck, and on the 28th a gas explosion killing 101 people occurred in Daegu South Korea.
How much of this is coincidence?
What could be the reason for so many similarly relevant events?
I looked at the charts of each of the last five occurrences of eclipses on this cycle, (April 15, 1995; April 4, 1977; March 24, 1959; March 13, 1941; and March 3, 1923) and tried to find commonalities that might explain the situation. One link that was common to the 2013 and 1995 eclipses is that Mars and Saturn are in opposition as seen from the Sun, whereas they are not in all the other eclipses.
Certainly much more research needs to be done, but if this is true, then the eclipse that occurs on May 17, 2049 could contribute to similar events.
What does this mean for us, here and now? Some themes are clear — exploration, discovery, and violence, but mostly the imposition of the wills of some over the many. That is what I believe we most directly face today, and what I hope as we move toward the next eclipse on May 10th, and the third and final lunar eclipse on the 25th of May will help us toward a salvation, a way of finding both peace and a path toward justice that will truly help us heal some very old and very deep wounds.
In other news, we have the Lyrid Meteor shower through April 22nd. This shower is often temperamental, so it can either be a bang or a bust, and this year an almost Full Moon may overpower all but the brightest meteors, but for those of you who are intrepidly determined to watch them, the best viewing will be in the Northeast sky between 10-11pm Sunday night the 21st, and between 3am and sunrise on Monday the 22nd.
Wishing you all a wonderful fortnight!
Blessings,
BillG
April 20, 2013
skywatcher888
Skywatcher888's Blog - The Flow! 