The Shape of Things To Come

Thursday we will experience a New Moon in Libra. For the next three to four days, the Moon will be in its extreme waning phase, which is another way of saying the end of the lunar cycle. Therefore, this is the time to focus on ending old cycles and seeding the new cycles. Remember that most years each sign gets a New Moon once, and which focuses maximum energy on that particular vibration. This is our Libra moment.

Libra has themes we recognize: relationships and how we do them; the concept and expression of beauty, as much for its own sake as for the sake of what it is representing; and a quality of subtlety that can give way to a creative fire like none other, under the right circumstances.

Over the weekend Mercury ingressed Libra after more than two months in Virgo. That two months included one of the most psychologically challenging Mercury retrogrades in a while. It’s unusual for Mercury to spend so long in one sign, but that’s what happened this time around. Its ingress into Libra is the covering-all-bases moment of ‘this whole mentality is over’; whatever journey Mercury retrograde in Virgo, or Mercury in Virgo, represented, is over — and now we take with us, and apply, what we learned. At the moment of the New Moon, Mercury is conjunct Saturn in Libra, which you might say is about applied creativity.

This event will take place rather precisely on the ascendant of the chart for a certain event back on Sept. 11, 2001. That event being Flight 11 colliding with the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City, which creates a moment of transparency for this blight on world history.

This auspicious conjunction of Luna and Sol will be the focus of our Daily Astrology & Adventure blogs this week. To begin this journey, we will review the astrology of the past several days. Then we will look at three of today’s aspects to get a feel for developing issues.
 
By the time you read this the Sun will have left its conjunction with Saturn several clicks (known as degrees) behind, not to be revisited for another year; that one is also an annual event. Also, Venus and Mars are slowly departing in sweet sorrow from yesterday’s union in Scorpio. Mars is pulling away toward Sagittarius while Venus is slowing down, about to back up and head into Libra. The planets of yin and yang will next meet in May of 2011 on the lush fields of Taurus. But before then, their intricate dance in Scorpio continues; we have a Venus retrograde beginning later this week, a developing story that we’ll be following in this space. 
 
Appropriately, this aspect of exploring gender metamorphosis is rearranging itself just as luminaries are getting into the act, applying to a conjunction of their own — the New Moon.
 
In addition, late on Saturday or early yesterday, depending on where you are, Mercury moved into Libra. This ended over two months of tenure in Virgo, the sign of Old Fleet-Foot’s dual rulership and exaltation. These last nine weeks included a powerful retrograde period, the third consecutive earth sign retrograde for Mercury this year, and later in the season we have another retrograde of Mercury that touches earth sign Capricorn.
 
Currently, Mercury in Libra aligned with the cardinal cross that has been developing all year; Mercury has been, and will be, talking to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto, those planets also having recently completed some significant chapters. As if on cue, when Mercury crossed the Aries Point, the U.S. put out terrorism travel advisories for Americans abroad in Europe.

All of the planets that took part in the cardinal cross earlier in the year are now experiencing a transitional period, both individually and in concert. If synchronicity were to be believed, such a concordance might herald something for all of us that we can create or that ‘might happen’ and in any event is worth paying attention to.
 
This is an invitation to partake fully in the change of paradigm, or reality framework, implied by the outer planets.

Yet, there remains a sort of drag as most of us remain to some extent invested in protocols for how we live our personal lives that are becoming less and less tenable. Many have decided that these customs just don’t work but don’t know what to do about their circumstances, or their guilt. What is up with that and how to address it are the subjects we will address with the New Moon and the days leading up to it.
 
Perhaps the best example of overstayed attachment is the Republican Party in the United States. This last week they recycled a promotional strategy that worked 16 years ago, as if nothing had changed in the meantime. This last year they have been falling all over themselves to incorporate an increasingly narrow-minded, radical and crackpot fringe as if this were 1980, when defeating the Equal Rights Amendment for women was all the rage. Five candidates on various Tea Party tickets are campaigning to disallow women’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy even in the case of rape or incest. Seemingly until last week that was just too ridiculous, stupid and unfair to even consider. Now it’s the thing that supposedly gets votes.

What makes it even worse is that even those opposed to draconian politics and governing models are overwhelmingly intimidated by prospects for its success. Buffaloed and backpedaling rather than advancing confidently against the obstruction of progress, there is no actual progressive agenda being articulated. That would not happen if there were not some internal concessions inhibiting external confrontation against that which does not work any more and, in reality, never has.
 
So it seems that we are revisiting a theme of the cardinal T-square, that the personal is political. In this case, personal inhibitions, conflicts and even pathologies influencing the conduct of our public (and hence political) lives.    
 
Today, the Sun provides a clue in what might be called a co-dependent relationship with the centaur planet, Thereus. Philip Sedgwick interprets Thereus as having to do with an attitude commonly applied to relationships — comparing ourselves to others. Status, in other words, which usually comes in the form of feeling superior or inferior to another based on image and appearances is the path of least resistance.

There is also a theme of getting the word out.

Taken in combination with Sol as the representation of how we express ourselves, we find it challenging to develop and live by our own values because there seems to be more security in accepting those handed down to us. Even if we know good and well that they don’t work. Even if we can feel more whole and less conflicted by bucking trends sustained only by an inertia derived of coercion.
 
In an interesting parallax, the Moon forms an aspect of its own today that is geometrically identical with Sun-Thereus but with a completely different feel.

A few hours before leaving Leo behind, Luna develops a fire trine with the core of our galaxy. The Galactic Center in Sagittarius is a powerful indication that we are more authentically distinguished by what we have in common than by our differences. 

The Moon connecting with our emotional and intuitive component, culminating in a sign ruled by its counterpart is well positioned to open us up to the flow of that truth. While our egos may be preoccupied by keeping up with the Joneses, our hearts are better served by being open to what it’s like to actually be them.
 
Which leads us to Mercury’s first substantial aspect in Libra. Mercury and its progress through the zodiac finds itself associated with how we think. Today, it briefly stands in the shoes so long occupied by Saturn. In a cardinal square to Pluto in Capricorn there is tension. How we think confronted by the imperative to transform it. But there is also some common ground. Both are recently in direct motion again. Their brief encounter today may not have profound consequences but it is at the very least indicative. If we can resolve our inner tension by moving forward and revising our reasoning process we can avoid having to deal with the same problems over and over again.
 
So those are the first few steps on our way to getting a grip on the week. Topics are already developing that will influence our interpretation of the New Moon. The equivalence of our personal and public lives is taking on a Libra flavor. How we define ourselves needs to be balanced with an evolved reality. What we are invested in and attached to is feeling less sustainable, both within and without.

The definitions and the practices of relationship that we have inherited are not working so well. The goals no longer serve. The resolution of these things begins by transforming how we think, and how we respond to what we feel.
 
Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That would seem to be the issue we are faced with this week.
 
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