Attention Span – Ceres Returns To Pisces

By Len Wallick

Retrograde Ceres returns to Pisces on Wednesday after having spent a month on the Aries Point. That’s the first degree of Aries. It’s the place where the Sun is on the Vernal Equinox. That is when the cycle of the tropical zodiac starts over. It’s almost as if Ceres was trying to get our attention by slowing down and turning around in that particular spot. Of course, that’s a silly notion. How could an inert chunk of rock and ice out in space possibly do that? After all, everybody knows attention can only be given, or else it must be paid. The importance is in knowing the difference, and that may be just what Ceres means in your life right now.

In astrology, planets are archetypes expressed in our lives. The nature of the expression combines the mythology (if any) behind the object’s name, its history, motion, and our correlated observations. On the whole, dwarf planet Ceres appears to have a yin character that, in western culture at least, corresponds with the feminine.

In ancient western mythology, Ceres was indeed a goddess, and not a minor one. She had power. She also had a daughter. Her daughter was kidnapped by Pluto, with the tacit approval of the patriarchal authority structure. Ceres needed to use all her power in a quest for simple redress, but things were never truly set right. Rather, things were reset. It was a compromise. Ceres would enjoy the company of her daughter half of the year and mourn her absence for the other half.

Thus the archetype of Ceres is expressed in our lives through the seasons. Production of food is not constant as we would please, but subject to cycles that reset and return in portion. That requires the inhabitants of Earth to adjust as Ceres did. Perhaps the most prominent reset is when the Sun returns to the Aries Point. On that day, Sol is directly over the equator and all of us together are equally sharing its light all at the same time. That appropriates a very broad meaning to the word “equinox.”

What happens when the Sun is on the Aries Point is a quality bestowed upon any object while it is there. It’s the sense of all of us together, all at the same time. It’s the idea that personal experience is actually in common and that our shared existence is in fact a personal matter. When Ceres first entered Pisces in direct motion earlier this year, it was the Vernal Equinox. The Sun was in the first degree of Aries. Now, after spending 30 days in the same spot, Ceres returns to Pisces with a message for our attention.

That attention can be given or paid. Giving will mean that we are aware, possessed of our being and acting consciously. Attention given is an independent act that reflects a simultaneous sense of being alive and in connection to a larger whole. We empower others and ourselves equally when we give our attention. It is really the only thing we always have that we can always share.

Paying attention is more a matter of duress. When our awareness and presence are demanded, and when we acquiesce to that, we surrender what we are and what we can share and receive nothing in exchange. Independence, equality and balance are lost as the egos of those with power over imagine themselves to be the larger whole.

The message of Ceres entering Pisces at the Vernal Equinox, then taking up a preternaturally prolonged residence on the Aries point before returning to Pisces is that all of us together are about to experience a reset of sorts at about the same time. It is not the end of the world. It is the end of a long season. There will probably be loss only partially recovered. We will almost certainly need to empower ourselves and each other to prevent that loss from being greater. That empowerment will begin with our attention and whether we give it in time or pay it when it is too late.

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11 thoughts on “Attention Span – Ceres Returns To Pisces”

  1. You’re welcome, Amanda; and I’m glad to see Penny’s work posted further up the page today. Also in this vein, words of wisdom from another prophet, come and gone…

    โ€Ž”When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty & shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up & express their anger & frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.”

    ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

  2. rob44 — thanks for sharing that link. it’s important context with useful — if not actually “new” — insights.

  3. RE: paying attention in the context of the London + riots, this first-person analysis by Laurie Penny via Common Dreams.org…

    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/09-0

    “Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They donโ€™t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

    “Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”

    “Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

  4. Giving attention, as in a gift, the only thing we can always share…but most often don’t as we stayed wound tight in our own minds. Giving attention at its most basic is about listening – listening to others, listening to your self and your soul, listening to Spirit. By listening, something can be heard into being.

    This threshhold between seasons (as Len noted last week), the season md-point of cross-quarter day of Lughnasadh, a time beween First Harvest and Second Planting, it is a good time to give attention to what is happening. With Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all retrograde, Mark Borax notes that “tremendous surges of power turn inward this month.” http://www.markborax.com/pages/cosmic_wthr_rpt.html

    June and July always seem to be noisy busyness (trying too hard to “enjoy” summer vacation?) but early August has a calmness. Is it that between the First Harvest and the Second Planting, the sounds of things growing slow in anticipation of harvest? Is it the heat of the season that sends everything into a siesta?

    For me, these early days of August (“the Dog Days” of Sirius) in Michigan always seem to have a quiet stillness that is palpable, noticeable, and at times startling when one notices and gives attention to the stillness. It’s an opportunity to reclaim control of our minds. (Thanks to Len and Eric for all these threads for me to tangle.)

    JannKinz

  5. Then there is divided attention Len. In this case, Ceres is still in opposition to her sister Juno in Libra. They both had recognized the problem at the time of the New Moon when they squared off over Hades in Cancer, and now that Mars has stepped into that messy scene it is even a more complex problem.

    In an article titled ‘Mercury Retrograde and Cancer of the Mind’ a reader Genevieve commented that Phil Sedgwick once said “Ceres gives voice to those who don’t have it”. I reminded her that Maya del Mar had said about Juno that “she represents the disenfranchised.” So these two goddesses are both demanding our attention, but they have opposing perspectives. Neither is wrong, both want our attention, but their focus isn’t the same.

    So in a chart, for example, the USA, Ceres would be at the nadir of the Sibly chart and Juno at the midheaven. Ceres might be telling us to pay attention to what’s happening to families and homes while Juno would want to call attention to what is happening in government circles. The Hades mess that Mars stepped into just a few days ago is in the 7th house of the Sibly chart and way too close to it’s Venus for comfort.

    The two problems that the two sisters are championing are directly related to the Hades/Mars situation but because they have two different perspectives they force us to divide our attention, until or unless a way to rise above the divide and find a way to manage the Hades situation that Mars inherited is accomplished. Pallas Athene was in a strategic position at the time of the Leo NM; sextile Ceres (and Uranus) and trine Juno. She was also opposed the New Moon and Venus.

    I’m hoping she’s negotiated a trade off with the Leo Trio but it could still be a balancing act since the Moon will join her in Aquarius while Venus is still with the Sun in Leo. It might mean that we will have to pay attention even though we have given attention as best we can. The answer is probably in the Cancer Solstice chart as the somber Saturn off by himself in Libra was squaring good-news-bad-news Mercury who trined the Moon conjunct Chiron, saying “this is gonna hurt me as much as you, but. . ”

    Perhaps it is best that Ceres returns to Pisces as she will soon square the Galactic Core/Center, and in the Full Moon chart this coming Saturday, Mercury will trine the GC. He will oppose Neptune who has been communicating with the GC since his return to Aquarius four days ago. What better source could provide us the answer we seek to the multi-faceted problem we face? Who better to transmit those answers than Ceres, Mercury and Neptune?
    be

  6. Yes. As Amanda perceptively points out, would the riots in London even begun if attention had been given? If from that, compromise had been reached?

    This news also struck me yesterday re: the story of the 8 people shot in Ohio. What was it that the shooter felt was not being heard? No doubt he felt he had no voice. He forced attention. Attention is being paid.

    My concern for the All of Us are One that we are living at this time is that many people will feel that as a dispair; all of this political bru-ha-ha is theirs and they will solve it best they can, since no one else is listening.

    A time for caution, a time for compromise, and time for listening and for Giving – of our time, our patience, our love.

    Yes.
    Thank you Len
    xo

  7. Thanks Len,
    This is so simple and clear. I wish I had this yesterday.I just did not want to give attention to my adult son who has autism. He got my attention in a powerful and painful way. I was fortunate to be able to remain calm and defuse the situation rather quickly but damn I wish I had just given him attention. Then came the pity party which spiraled into shame. I felt real victimy and bullied needlessly.The day was pretty well shot to hell until he went to bed last evening.
    I will deffinatly GIVE my attention today.
    Thans,
    Caroline

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