Author Archives: Rachel Andrews

By Sarah Taylor

From the get-go, I was part of a love triangle. Not in the conventional sense of an entanglement of lovers, but it was an entanglement nonetheless. And the love itself was entangled.

Sagittarius. Painting by Carlos Cedillo.

I was born into an aristocratic family in north-west England in the early seventies. My father had unexpectedly inherited a ‘title’ from his uncle when he was 18 and living in Africa. The accounts of his life of that time that I managed to draw out of him were sketchy – much like the accounts I received of most of his life, which he avoided relating as much as possible; many of his memories seemed to be imbued with an indescribable amount of pain.

What I do know is that, upon inheriting, the form and content of my father’s life changed markedly and permanently. He went from being a country mouse, to a cat with a rep to protect; he went from bare-back horse-rides to school from his uncle’s farm, to trust funds, fast cars and a fast life. He had been married four times by the time he met my mother, as a VIP passenger on an ocean liner where she worked in the purser’s office. The story goes that he was trying to extricate himself from a tricky situation, homed in on my mother and asked her to be his alibi. My mother has often said that she was swept up in the romance of who he seemed to be. She also said that she felt a deep need to protect him. I think in that moment the contract of my parents’ relationship was sealed.

And so, like all self-respecting aristocrats, after marrying my mother, the next thing on the agenda was to produce an heir. Specifically, a son – daughters did not, and continue not to, inherit titles in the UK. In my mother’s words, she chose to give up her independence as a professional woman – which defined much of who she said she felt herself to be – and become “a baby machine.” She was a mother, but she was not maternal. As much as she loved my father, she had been seduced by the trappings that came with my father’s title, and those trappings started to feel restrictive. There was another part of her dying to live another life. The more it called, the more she threw herself at the trappings, the more trapped she became, the more it died. My father wasn’t killing her: Her choices were doing that all by themselves.

I’ve never asked my mother outright how she felt about becoming pregnant with their first child, but I’m pretty sure both she and my father breathed a collective, if tentative, sigh of relief that they had potentially managed to provide a successor: My father already had two children from a previous marriage – both girls – and perhaps the voices of the trustees were getting a bit more insistent. The pressure from tradition alone would have been ringing loud and clear. My parents also decided that, given the life they led, my mother would need help with childcare, and I have a sense that the childcare became more necessary when I emerged, nine months later. Another girl.

So it was that from birth, my day-to-day care was handed over to a woman called Ovidia: The wife in a couple that my parents employed to tend to childcare, home and garden. I have little or no memories of this time; images are scant and fleeting. But the presence of Ovidia is something that I can still feel today as calm, and warm. I have little doubt that Ovidia was, to my infant self, more like a mother in some ways than my mother was to me. From that day until I was 13 years old, I, then my sister, then my brother (who finally arrived in the mid-’70s) had a succession of surrogate mothers in the form of various nannies and governesses. Some were qualified nursery nurses, others were mothers themselves, and they ran the gamut from fun to staid, involved to detached, loving to cruel. Whatever they turned out to be, one thing was constant – there were always three in the mother-child relationship: Mother, nanny and child. In fact, there were three operative, interconnected love triangles – one for each sibling. We were a motley group of pointed shapes within shapes, moving around, conjoining, and glancing off one another.

Another thing was constant: They all left. If they had been cruel, I rejoiced. If they had been loving, I was bereft.

My experience back then set a deeply ingrained pattern that dictated how I was in relationship to others – whether lovers, family members, friends, colleagues, relative strangers – although it was the people closest to me who experienced it most, and in a more concentrated form.

It was also a process that, until recently, was primarily unconscious. If you’d have asked me at age 23, for example, if I was ‘relationship material’, I would have told you I was a catch. And with conviction. I thought that I came unencumbered by the baggage that my parents carried, and that I’d somehow managed to emerge from my family intact and immune. I definitely remember telling my therapist that my childhood was great, thank you very much, and that I had no idea why I was sitting opposite him. Twice-weekly.

Come age 33, when my first marriage was on the rocks, I was less sure of myself. After years of isolating myself and, quite frankly, alienating most men who showed an interest, I had thrown myself into a relationship wholeheartedly, so wanting to make it work. My then-husband was – is – a good man, but the slow-dawning truth over the 11 years that we were together was that we were kids playing at marriage, still bound up in the narratives of our childhoods. Our illusions could only take us so far. Eleven years, it seemed, was about our limit.

As reality crept in along with the ending, I started to take stock and began to notice something else: That for every person I had either been interested in or involved with, there was a third party, whether that third party was someone else, or – more often – me. My first unrequited childhood crush was years older than I and very much involved with a woman his age. My first viable crush in my late teens hadn’t gotten over his ex. My second left me for his ex. My third fell in love with my friend. Then, in 2004, I left my first husband because my love for a man made me realise that I had been running away from a vital part of myself – my sexuality. He, instead, fell in love…with his ex.

The eternal triangle, it appeared, had not given me up, even as I had tried to run from it.

In 2006, chastened, I decided to go into the dating game. With my eyes open this time! Sure, I was still in love with the man who triggered the end of my first marriage, but I wasn’t going to let a little bit of unfinished business deter me from my new life. I set up a profile on a dating website, and the next day my future husband got in touch with me. Funnily enough, I had already seen his profile and, for several good reasons, had decided not to initiate any contact. In that way, at least, I feel that I was working in my best interests and it was a small but significant step towards making better decisions for myself. It didn’t last though: He emailed me quoting a passage from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
– But who is that on the other side of you?

It fit with my psychology in such a way that I was hooked, immediately. Hooked back in, more like it. We met. He was charming, intelligent and funny, and there was a part of me that was screaming “No! Don’t do it!”

Then it happened. The same thing that I think happened when my mother met my father; the same thing that happened when I met my first husband. The moment when I signed my contract with him. I could feel it. It was a form of surrender, but not the kind where you “let go and let God.” It was the kind where you let go and let your history dictate the movement of your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, your feelings. And when I write this I am casting no aspersions on him. Oh no – like my mother, I did this all by myself, and whatever invisible contracts my husband may have signed on his part, he did those by himself too. We are both fully responsible for what we brought into our marriage, and what we didn’t bring into it.

What I didn’t bring into my marriages was the whole of me. How could I? I didn’t even know there was a part missing. It was the part that was used to withholding because there was always someone else, and I didn’t feel safe, and someone would always leave. So I left – Little Ms. Pre-Emptive Strike. Rather than leaving physically, I vacated my body by padding it out with fat, dressing it down so that I became all but invisible, hiding my femininity so that I wouldn’t be noticed, let alone viewed as attractive. I didn’t do attraction; I did repulsion – right back to my pattern of yore. In turn, I chose partners who repelled me. But all they were doing was mirroring back to me the belief I wouldn’t acknowledge, which was born the moment that I came into this world with a vagina and not a penis: A part of me was missing. How’s that for the idea that I wasn’t able to bring all of myself into relationships?

Yet, in spite of this, quietly but insistently – and getting less quiet and more insistent over the years – I could feel something calling to me. I had no idea how to get to it. It was encased in a membrane that was at once paper-thin and impenetrable. Or maybe I was the one encased in a membrane; perhaps I was the one who was impenetrable. I felt the frustration of being able to sense another world that was out of reach. I realised that world was me.

I decided to start changing things in a more aware fashion – to push boundaries and shift myself out of the mould of domesticity, normality and convention that I had tried, and failed, to fit into. I decided to question my attitude to parts of myself that I had either taken for granted or ignored. In short, in practical terms, if I had been unconsciously creating threesomes in my relationships, this time I was going to create them consciously.

Last year, after a suitable period of separation from my second husband, I joined another dating site. I was equipped with a modicum of insight – another five years in therapy was enough to make a difference – and a more mature ability to work with my intuition. The next two-and-a-half months were a beautiful storm. I initiated contact with a man who turned out to be a soul mate in the most meaningful sense I can give to the term. We decided to embark on a polyamorous relationship and see where it took us, beginners that we both were. I remember saying to him, “Expect the unexpected.” I thought I’d covered all the bases so that even the unexpected wouldn’t take me by surprise.

Ten weeks later, he was gone. He had met someone else and our plans lay in tatters at my feet. I brush over this in one sentence as if it meant no great thing, but I was devastated. I’m still not sure what happened, and I don’t have the ability or the right to account for his side of the story. However, this much I think I do understand at the point where the past and the present meet:

We either play out our patterns unconsciously or consciously, but it’s when we do it consciously that we have the greatest opportunity to change them. In his book Bringers of the Light, Neale Donald Walsch cites the following principle:

As soon as you decide who and what you are, everything unlike it will come into the space. …

Thus, we can see these ‘opposites’ as a sure sign that we are on the journey of transformation. These negative-opposites are only temporary, and their purpose is to heal forever any negative feeling that we had about the outer-experience of our life.

So who is it that I am, and what is it that I really want? If I’m choosing my experiences in order to define these things – and I believe that I am – better, then, I have some awareness of the choices I’m making and why. Is polyamory a logical step in a string of eternal triangles that started from birth? If so, do I want to change the pattern, or do I want to make it mine? I’m still working that one out.

What I did find out in the bitter-sweet aftermath of last year was that I was capable of feeling a depth of love that I hadn’t considered possible. I’d always had intellectual notions of what love between two adults was, but it was only when it brought me to my knees (sometimes in the most delicious ways) that I understood that there was no way of planning for anything, no way of controlling anything any more.

I also found out that I still didn’t believe that I deserved that love. The child born a girl and not a boy waged an unconscious battle with love at every opportunity. Vulnerability felt like a blow-torch to my skin. Opening myself to someone felt like annihilation. I was still my parents’ daughter.

I spoke about that “moment of contract” in my parents’ relationship and in both my marriages. That moment presented itself to me in the relationship with my soul mate too. In a heartbeat, in a conversation with him one night, I felt the inertia of ancestry pulling me into doing something because it was “the done thing to do” – namely, to put aside my own emerging sense of who I was in order to toe the family line. I would have done anything, been anyone, for him. This, by the way, had absolutely nothing to do with what he was asking of me. It was my conditioning, my generational and genetic makeup kicking in like a time bomb. Why? Because I wasn’t lovable for who I was, but for who I should have been.

In that heartbeat, however, I felt that contract flying at me, and I named it to myself: “Oh, there you are. I know what you are!” It passed me by. Thank the gods, it did. I felt the release and, perhaps not unconnected, the relationship ended soon afterward. Maybe it needed to fall away in part because of that – the structure as we had made it could no longer hold the two people inside it. In tarot, structures that no longer serve us and which must fall to make space for the new are the realm of The Tower card. In the Mayan Tarot, The Tower is called “The Released Man.” This makes profound sense to me. Only once we have been set free can we reconnect with our true selves, and by extension each other, in the next card, The Star.

And so, it is 2012, and I am completing and starting another cycle in a year that, in the Mayan calendar at least, marks the ending and beginning of a cycle that is far greater than one lifetime. Perhaps I can take a leaf out of its book, stand back, and see the larger picture: Who cares if it’s onesomes, twosomes, threesomes, foursomes or moresomes? Who cares whether our behaviour comes from an origin of security or dysfunction? Isn’t that all beside the point? Isn’t the point that we connect at all? That we are prepared to have an encounter with love that cannot be conducted on our limited terms. That we meet with something that we are not able to rein in and hold to our accounting. And that when we do so, we do it fearlessly and with the acceptance that we may, indeed, fall on our arses? Hell, we might even get hurt. And to that statement I say: So what? So what if it hurts? Maybe we need to break a few shells and shatter a few illusions – the ones that keep us trapped inside the story of our past, of our parents, of the things that we have held on to because we never thought to question whether they were ours in the first place. Here’s to fissures, cracks and ruptures in the crust of acquiescence and acceptability.

So this year, I wish us freedom. Freedom from limiting beliefs, freedom to explore, discover and express who it is that we are. Most of all, I wish us freedom to love – ourselves and others – shamelessly, courageously, fully prepared to risk ourselves for it. Love liberated; love unentangled. That, to me, is an adventure worth having.

by Adrienne Elise PDHom(uk)

“There has never been a year in your life, nor will there ever be, like the one we are approaching.” Eric Francis

Scorpio. Painting by Carlos Cedillo.

2012 is a year ripe with change. How do we know? Is it because the Mayan baktun coincidentally ends on the solstice? Is it because doomsday theorists are always looking for a new hype? Is it because it is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

On June 5th, 2012, the earth and the sun and Venus will be precisely aligned. Venus will be able to be seen crossing over the sun as a visible black dot. These exact conjunctions come in pairs separated by 8 years, the last one happening in 1984. The next time this happens won’t be until 2117. Not much is known about the effect of this astrological event, but the Venus transit of November 1630 was followed by a plague of disease that wiped out 16,000 Venetians.

In late June 2012, planets Uranus and Pluto form an exact 90-degree square angle. Uranus and Pluto are outer, slow-moving planets, and aspects between them are rare and long-lasting. We are already feeling the effects of this aspect and we will continue to feel it through 2015. A conjunction of these planets happened in the mid-1960s and was said to have spurred the hippie, love, anti-war, revolutionary change that happened during that era. Astrologers call aspects, or angular relationships, between these two planets ‘revolutionary.’ They mark a time where things that seemed they could never change, do change, and faster than imaginable.

These two astrological events of 2012 speak of ‘health’ and ‘revolution.’ 2012 marks an opportunity for a ‘healing revolution.’ It reminds me, metaphorically, of a homeopathic ‘healing crisis’. In homeopathic treatment, movement toward health is stimulated by a correctly chosen homeopathic remedy. Sometimes for a short time after a remedy, symptoms can intensify before they improve. Sometimes symptoms from the past can reappear before harmonizing into health.

I tell my homeopathic clients this: The key to a homeopathic ‘aggravation’ or ‘healing crisis’ is movement. You may be feeling strong symptoms, but with the vitality of the remedy behind you, the symptoms are sure to quickly change, moving you right through it, taking you to the next place. It could look like a couple hours of feeling down and an opportunity for emotional release, or maybe the returning pain of an old injury that is now having the opportunity to heal in the right way. Whatever it is, it is in movement. It is in flux, it is change, it is healing. What you are feeling in the moment won’t last long. You are not getting sicker, you are in fact getting healthier!

We are living in a time of crisis. It is everywhere and hard to deny. People are feeling squeezed financially, politically and spiritually. This is right in alignment with the rare astrological events of 2012. It is a very important year for all of us. Eric Francis, Astrologer (planetwaves.net), describes it as “like nothing we have ever experienced.” But the question is…Is it a healing ‘crisis’, or is it a healing ‘opportunity’? That all depends on how you decide you would like it to be. For those of us that are lucky enough to continue through life unaffected, blinders securely fashioned that hide the reality of the chaos, confusion and crisis around us, the choice may be to do nothing. But most of us more aware beings will not have a choice in whether or not to take notice. The conscious landscape around us is vastly changing as our physical hereditary body structure, as well as the social and political structures of the past, are shaken to their core.

The 2012 astrology is like getting a dose of a high-potency homeopathic remedy. And it might feel like things are getting worse, but they are actually trying to release, heal and express, so that things can get better. We are moving and changing. It is a dynamic time. That is the key to sanity in 2012. Don’t get attached to where you are in the process, because the process itself is essentially about change. It is like the saying in Montana, ‘If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes and it will be different’. Our lives will be full of movement in this time of rapid transformation, IF you can let it happen. Don’t get attached to where you are now. You are in process, you are changing. Let the old fall away and welcome the new, more healthy picture. Find the tools and support and creative projects that can help you to stay grounded and harmonized through the changes.

Most of us are sentimentally attached to our various sicknesses, whether they be expressed through symptoms in the physical body or mental/emotional sphere. We are so used to them, they start to define us. How else would you describe the common phenomenon of modern diagnosis of mental illness: “I am bi-polar.” It’s not that you simply have a disease, you are that disease, at least in the programmed belief system of Western medicine. ‘I am _name your disease_’ is a statement that, on the one hand, defines a person, and on the other hand, indicates that it is a condition that is not expected to change anytime soon, if ever.

Our attachment to our illnesses, physical and mental, make it seem like they will never change. And in fact, the Western medical system is very invested in us continuing to believe such rubbish. They are holding hands with the pharmaceutical industry that wants to keep us believing that we need to be on those drugs now, and for the rest of our life. But with the 2012 healing revolution…change is here. And even the dis-ease that defines us, that we have been programmed to think can never change, will begin to change, whether we like it or not.

2012 is marking a period of accelerated change, just like the body after a well-indicated high-potency homeopathic remedy. It is up to us to decide how to make the most of it. But the spectator part of the game is near over. Very few of us will be able to maintain our comforting attachment to illness and dis-ease. Our world is getting shaken up. The good news is that the physical, emotional and spiritual healing done by individuals in their own life will positively affect the rest of the world, like an infinitesimal homeopathic dose. Personal healing is global healing because of the increasing interconnectedness spurred by the growing collective consciousness in our new Age of Aquarius. It is time to transform this era of a personal and global ‘healing crisis’ into a personal and global ‘healing opportunity.’ 2012 sounds like the perfect time for A Healing Revolution.

Adrienne Elise, founder of the Intuitive Empowerment Institute, is a Waldorf-Trained Teacher, Classical Homeopath, and Intuitive Reader, having completed over four years of training based on the BPI (Berkeley Psychic Institute) model with the MT Center for Psychic Studies and Intuitive Way of Walnut Creek, CA. Adrienne completed her Waldorf training at the Eugene Waldorf Teacher Training School in 1995. She is certified with an Advanced Practitioner Diploma from the School of Homeopathy, Devon, UK, an internationally accredited four-year program. Adrienne has a private practice in Missoula, Montana: ‘Freedom Homeopathy’ (freedomhomeopathy.com), also the home of the Intuitive Empowerment Institute (intuitiveempowerment.com). Adrienne Elise is a singer/songwriter. You can check out her music at adrienneelise.com.

By Eric Francis

The Milky Way. Photo by Anthony Ayiomamitis.

Lately I am hearing the discussion about 2012 happen just about every day. The concept of this being an important year was introduced to popular culture by Jose Arguelles at the time of the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. His work is inspired by Mayan astrology, and in that system we experience a turnover in the calendar, which – so far as I have been able to discern, from the best source I have – reaches the date 13.0.0.0.0 on Dec. 21, 2012.

That 13 at the front tells us that on the winter solstice of 2012, the 13th baktun will have ended. A baktun is 5,125 years and five of them represent a “great cycle” – the precessional cycle of about 26,000 years. (Our scientists still cannot calculate an exact length of one precessional cycle.) This is one full wobble of the Earth’s axis, which makes the backdrop of the cosmos seem to slide along and which causes the astrological ages to change.

When you hear about the “Age of Aquarius” that is a reference to precessional movement. There are no exact dates when the astrological ages begin and end (though it’s pretty clear from the early Christian iconography that we were in the Age of Pisces at the time of the presumed birth of Jesus/Joshua). Generally when people talk about an astrological age, they are making reference to the position of the Sun on the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. This will come about one day earlier every 70 years. However, a Mayan scholar and philosopher named John Major Jenkins has proposed that what we need to be looking at if we want to understand the Mayan system is not the first day of spring but rather the first day of winter – the position of the Sun at the Winter Solstice. That would be the position of the Sun on the first day of Capricorn, which incidentally is where Pluto is hanging out lately.

When you look at that, you find that it aligns closely with the center of our galaxy, and this, he says, is where we need to be getting our information. Because of the Earth’s wobble, that position is retrograding toward the Galactic Center and in particular the dark band at the center of the galaxy, which is known to some modern-day Mayan thinkers as the Road to Xibalba. It is the mythical opening to another dimension, the Mayan underworld; and the symbolism is distinctly yonic in nature. Cave systems in Belize and Guatemala have also been referred to as the entrance to Xibalba, though one physical expression referred to by K’iche’ peoples is the dark rift which is visible in the Milky Way.

Let’s set aside the Mayan symbolism for now and consider the Western astrology on the road to 2012. As of June 1, 2009 we are exactly 1,300 days from the winter solstice of 2012. During that time we experience many significant changes. For example, Uranus, Neptune and Chiron all change signs. We recently experienced the sign change of Pluto, which transited from Sagittarius to Capricorn (where it will remain until about 2023). As the other outer planets follow suit, our perception of the world will shift again and again with each of the transits.

Then there exist a wide diversity of aspects that tell the story. The most significant of which is occurring right now, as you read this: Chiron conjunct Neptune in Aquarius. Jupiter also happens to be in the mix and even through June these planets are within one degree. Through the month of June they remain in an exact conjunction. My sense is that this is astrology that will shape our time in history. More to the point, it is helping open up a new dimension of reality wherein we have increased creative authority over our lives. And we can, together, create a space where we can meet in psychic space and physical space and restructure our patterns of social interaction.

When we talk about the need for humanity to get free of its current moribund spiral descent into fear and self-repression, materialism and darkness, opening up such a living space, and recreating our relational patterns, is essential.

Aquarius, where this conjunction is taking place, is the sign of both mental and social patterns. Neptune, which has been there for a decade, has melted away the structure of our old patterns, though for many introducing a layer of pure fantasy, media haze and drug haze that makes it impossible to see reality. Chiron focuses Neptune energy, at once applying it precisely and providing an antidote, if necessary. Chiron is like a utility that helps us work with the energy of the outer planets.

Its conjunction to Neptune draws in and clarifies Neptune energy like a laser, which can be applied to awareness, to healing and to creative endeavors. Jupiter adds a wisdom factor, the quality of expansion and a global theme.

This aspect is big, and it is rare that we actually get to live through astrology consciously as it shapes our generation. Such is one of the powers granted by the Internet, and I am certain that the Net is one of the most important platforms for the changes we are witnessing. Yet what I am really describing is an entirely natural network in consciousness that is opening up and that we can access. I described this recently as a phenomenon of 6th dimensional morphogenetic fields in my weekly magazine.

This aspect holds well into 2010 and is a threshold to what follows next, leading to the first full-on 2012 astrology, which occurs in June 2012: the Venus transit of the Sun, and Uranus square Pluto. The Venus event is a precise conjunction to the disk of the Sun, a rare event the Mayans revered. Uranus square Pluto is astrology that says liberation and revolution like nothing we have seen since the mid-1960s.

While there is a lot of noteworthy astrology on the way to 2012, that is the year that the really interesting movement begins. However, I can assure those who wish to participate in the strange, the new and the unworldly will find plenty of intrigue and growth opportunities as these aspects unfold on the road to Xibalba.

All in all, what we need to give up is our attachment to our fears, our defenses and inert fantasies. We don’t need to give these things up all at once – the place to start is with our commitment to them. What I am saying here is that the reason we tend to have so much negativity in our lives is because we’re attached to it. That doesn’t mean we want it, but it does mean we tend to cling to it like it was some precious thing to be proud of, rather than something to let go of and embrace the framework of the next phase of reality.

One other crucial quality we must embrace is the feminine side of our brains, meaning our body and our consciousness. I don’t mean gender bending, but rather a true encounter and integration with the biophilic (sensitive to all of life) quality that is distinctly female. I would propose that this is something essential particularly for women; through this process they can bring in their natural healing gifts and allow them to flourish.

The following is an abbreviated list of events between now and 2012. More examples are available at PlanetWaves.net.

Chariklo square Chiron (2009-2012).

These are two very small, meaningful planets orbiting our Sun in the relatively new centaur class. They are currently in a square (90-degree) aspect. This aspect repeats in seven separate events between now and 2012, and as such is a constant companion along the way. The square is currently from Scorpio to Aquarius. It will gradually shift to an aspect between Sagittarius to Pisces.

The Milky Way near Cygnus showing the lane of the Dark Rift which the Maya called the Xibalba or Black Road.

In mythology, Chiron and Chariklo were consorts; she was a nymph and the wife of the famous surgeon, healer and mentor. Their story contains none of the philandering, mockery and hubris that is so common to the Greek myths. Yet they endure the many pains of the world and endure the flaws of both humanity and the gods. Chiron is about healing processes that benefit from or demand the raising of awareness and a humble approach to life, as tempered by awareness of both mortality and immortality.

In a square aspect, they are here to help us work out a dynamic in our relationships that is held internally. Our issues with fear, abandonment, psychic pain, physical sickness, inferiority and jealousy are all internally mediated. Chariklo’s presence is calling us to be present for our own healing process. She is holding devoted space for us to make peace with our dualistic human/animal nature, and to gradually integrate the two without judgment.

Saturn square Pluto (2009-2010).

In November, Saturn transits from Virgo to Libra. Once there, it will begin a series of three squares to Pluto in Capricorn. This will take place in aspect to the Aries Point, that is, the first degree of Aries, which magnifies the connection between the personal and the political. When Saturn and Pluto get together, the results can range from violence to a conservative backlash against our inherent freedom as humans.

In 2001, we experienced the opposition of Saturn and Pluto and we all saw the results, which lasted for the ensuing decade and created damage we are still dealing with. Indeed, we will for a long time. We now have an opportunity to see how our own obsession with fear and suppressing our life force contributed to the catastrophic aftermath of the Sept. 11 incident.

People who fancy themselves ‘conservative’ will have a chance to see the fear that is at the core of that ideology. Those who fancy themselves ‘liberal’ will have an opportunity to apply structure and discipline to their lives in the way that is essential to existing in an actual state of freedom. Through this aspect we will all have a significant opportunity to assess our relationship to fear. We will get to bear personal witness to the idea that trust is the key to love.

Chiron and Neptune enter Pisces (2010-2012).

Both planets are now at the end of long passages through Aquarius, in a conjunction. As this conjunction separates, Chiron will lead the way into Pisces, beginning in 2010. Neptune will follow over the next two years (slow planets take a while to go into a new sign, usually retrograding back into the prior sign once.) In effect this is one transit and represents the full activation of Pisces energy.

We are accustomed to all the toxic forms of Pisces, from violent films to television advertising to wanton consumption of alcohol to every mood-altering pharmaceutical to spill out of corporate laboratories by the train carload. We obsess with status, fashion, appearance, glamour and living fantasy lives. Then to this we try to add a little sprinkling of ‘spiritual’ as if that would magically open the way to God.

Neptune is the modern ruler of Pisces. Its presence there will refresh the spiritual waters, flooding through both society and consciousness with revitalizing life. Chiron will make us aware of how toxic our ways of living and thinking are, and introduce – often poignantly – awareness of how we need to feel our emotions, our bodies and our souls.

Uranus enters Aries (2010-2011).

The mighty liberator Uranus, the planet of foresight, technological advancement, innovation and revolution, will personally cross the Aries Point three times starting in 2010, ending up in Aries to stay for seven years in 2011. If we are looking for a tipping point where the signs of change are inevitable, and this odd thing known as ‘the public’ actually wakes up, this is the event. On the personal level, this aspect says we have to think of ourselves differently. The real evolution is not a news event but an awakening of who we think we are. But we don’t need to wait around – this awakening is happening right now, just when we least expect it.

By Christine DeLorey

“2012. We’ve really waited for this one, haven’t we!
Let’s hope we have our mojos working, our intentions
in place, and our homework done to give the best of
ourselves to this new year – and to take confirmation
of our own blessings within it…”
Judith Gayle – Political Waves

2012 is not the end of the world. It is the end of a system – the class system – that has brought our world to a state of such inequality, unfairness and imbalance, that we can no longer survive without drastic changes of priority and direction. In 2012, it will finally dawn on those who are currently controlling life on Earth that a huge portion of the population is wide awake, powerful, watching their every move and angry! And yet, the majority of people are proceeding in a peaceful and solution-oriented way, with determination and hope for a better future. Humanity’s desire for real and positive change is starting to outweigh our primitive need for revenge and our inclination for WAR.

Anger is not meant to be used as a weapon. Anger is a natural reaction to pain – and pain takes many forms. Anger is a vital emotion which pushes us to find solutions to problems that are hurting us. When properly understood, anger is an instrument of constructive change – and constructive change is what 2012 is all about.

The fact that life doesn’t have to be this way has penetrated mass consciousness. The emotional antenna of humanity has kicked into gear and we are starting to feel and sense the truth, rather than relying on others to tell us what’s what and go passively along with the program.

We are all fellow travelers on the road of life, but we are not all the same. 2012 is a 5 global year (2+0+1+2=5), and 5 represents everything that is “different.” 5 is the number of DIVERSITY. The acceptance of diversity is the acceptance of differences, which is PEACE.

“It is amazing how fast your life can change…
events can alter your course in the blink of an eye,
and all you can do is go with the flow
and see where it takes you.”
MaryAn Sigafoos

5 is the number of ACTION. 5 is alive with movement. 5 is a hive of activity. In 2012, this means facing reality and having the faith to steer ourselves along unbeaten paths that we’re creating as we go. We need to be fully engaged now, and ready to adjust to new and unexpected realities. If we just watch everything unfold on TV or the Internet like it’s some kind of entertainment, we’ll be very shocked when suddenly we are part of what is unfolding.

We are going to have to be at our most resourceful and creative. And out of this, we will develop STYLE. Our individual styles have been washed away by mediocrity, uniformity, monotony and sameness. To be who we are, we must lose our fear of being different.

War Department. Pentagon, aerial view II. Photo by Theodor Horydczak.

The main symbol of 5 is the shape of a pentagon. No doubt we’ll be seeing a lot of America’s military headquarters in 2012 as it is the largest structure on Earth that is pentagon-shaped. From the very start of 2012 there has been talk of invading Iran. But, on January 5, President Obama announced a reduction in defense spending. “After a decade of war, we are turning a new page…the tide of war is receding”, he said. Let’s hope so. He also spoke of learning from mistakes, which is a major principle of the 5 energy. We will see.

The pentagon shape also resembles a house. With so many people homeless now, and so many houses just sitting empty all over the world, something innovative needs to be done to help people attain the basic need of shelter.

Toward the end of 2011 (a 4 global year symbolized by the natural shape of the square), the Occupy Movement in the USA and other countries started to move in that direction by occupying foreclosed homes. The Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring and other extraordinary uprisings of the human will, all emerged out of city squares, plazas and parks. That movement must expand now. The square symbolizes limitation and breakthrough. The protesters (pioneers) certainly came up against limitations in 2011, but they also achieved many important breakthroughs that have set the stage for the changes yet to come. What will they do now that the limited square has transformed into a pentagon and a 5-pointed star? That will be interesting to see.

The pentagon and 5-pointed star (pentagram) are highly representative of the military and corporations, and are widely used in advertising, sports and politics. The flags of many nations contain 5-pointed stars. China’s flag has 5. The American flag has 50!

but, most importantly,

Everybody is a Star!

Image of a human body in a pentagram from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Libri tres de occulta philosophia. Symbols of the sun and moon are in the center, while the other five classical "planets" are around the edge. Image from Wikipedia.

5 teaches us about the physical aspects of life, including our own physical bodies, the wellbeing of which is likely to be a major issue this year. The body is the vehicle which transports us through this journey called ‘physical life’, and we need to learn how to take proper care of it. 5 is the number of ALTERNATIVES – and various areas of alternative medicine are likely to make great inroads now as its practitioners expand their knowledge – despite the attempts of the pharmaceutical and medical industries to stop it. Alternative fuel could significantly impact the energy industry this year – despite the attempts of big oil, coal and gas to stop it. Wherever we have been going wrong in the world and in our personal lives, the 5 energy enables us to find alternative routes and approaches. 5 is the number of CHOICE; the basis of freedom.

As we become more aware of our true needs in life (as opposed to what the system tells us we need and then removes our choices) there is likely to be a great emphasis on the damage done to our food supply by corporations such as Monsanto, and the pollution caused by industry and consumerism in general. There is likely to be a LOT of anger as the truth finally sinks in and moves the population to change things.

This is the year when PEOPLE really start to understand themselves, inside and out. 2012 is the year in which we have the opportunity to BECOME the change we want in the world. 5 is the number of CHANGE. 5 is the number of OPPORTUNITY. As our knowledge expands, we will find solutions. 5 is the number of RESOURCEFULNESS.

For the past 12 years, ‘we the people’ have been rapidly developing our sensory system – our inner radar – the emotional circuitry which runs through the body and meets with the spirit in the heart. The heart is the point of LOVE within the body where the physical connects to the metaphysical – mind and emotion. It is from the heart that we develop perspective and broaden our view of life.

People are realizing how limited and frozen our points of view have been. We have looked at life from the shallow standpoint of materialism but are realizing that our potential as human beings is so much more than that. Through the rise of our emotional feminine energy, we are feeling much more deeply into life. As we develop DEPTH through the love in our hearts, shallowness falls away and huge waves of heartlessness are exposed. Our hearts need to be reset because right now they beat in accordance with a dying system. Only warmth can counter coldness. Only love can counter hate. Heartlessness is life without feeling; light without love.

Science itself is going to change because science made an assumption that was fatally flawed – that life on Earth is a purely physical experience. It is becoming increasingly difficult to explain the laws of physics without bringing metaphysics into it. The prefix ‘meta’ means ‘beyond’. In an interview with New Scientist magazine this January, world-famous physicist and author of A Brief Moment In Time, Stephen Hawking, was asked what he most thinks about. He answered, “Women. They are a complete mystery.”…and therein lies the biggest problem that science has. The inability to progress beyond the physical or even consider the essential role that feminine energy – emotion – plays in the fabric and vibration of life.

The problems we created in the era we are evolving from will not disappear of their own accord. We cannot progress until we recognize our mistakes, learn from them, stop making them, and move in a different direction. We severely limit ourselves when we assume we should already know the answers. As evolving beings, the learning never ends.

5 operates by learning ‘from experience’ – from discerning what works and what doesn’t. 5 is the number of the inquisitive scientist – and in case you didn’t realize it, there is a scientist in all of us. It is that part of us that is looking for truth; the part of us that needs to understand.

“Life is one big road with lots of signs.”
Wake Up & Live ~ Bob Marley

In 2012, we will have an array of new experiences for which we have no previous experience to guide us. Some may be painful and shocking. Others may be exciting and joyful. Whatever the case, this year’s experiences will broaden our potential even more. 5 is the number of EXCITEMENT, ADVENTURE, CURIOSITY and DISCOVERY, and it is important to remember that AWARENESS OF REALITY is the best safety net we could possibly have.

The past, present and future are converging in 2012, bringing us into present time in a most unusual, ‘strange’, and all-encompassing way. Issues of the past are being buffeted into the present so that we can learn from them, heal from them and create a future that is based on what we have learned. This mirrors the convergence of body, mind and emotions going on within our hearts. This activity will accelerate significantly in 2012.

Memory Lane is a passageway to healing, but we cannot dwell there. We must develop the firm intent to let the past go. The intent to heal all that unexpressed emotional energy is how the healing starts. Only then can we put the past behind us where it belongs, lighten our load and move forward. We will learn this year, firsthand, that what we did in the past creates the present and what we do in the present creates the future.

5 is the number of FREEDOM – and while it is true that freedom is what most human beings aspire to, we must be careful not to define freedom on too broad or narrow a scale. Freedom for one could feel like hell to another. As election after election takes place all over the world this year, the word freedom is going to be used, abused and twisted, as a lure for political gain. The controlling few are trying to pull us back to the past, to times-gone-by, when people were so much easier to control. Be aware.

A huge numeric shift took place when we moved from the millennial vibrations of the 1000s into those of the 2000s. This massive transfer of energy has taken us 12 of our linear years to acknowledge, feel and accept. Our evolution from 1 to 2 now brings us into the year the whole world has been waiting for. 2012 – the year in which whatever is going to happen will happen – but perhaps not in the way we expect. 5 is the number of the UNEXPECTED, the UNFORESEEN, and the UNPREDICTABLE.

Those in control, the infamous 1%, who cannot seem to understand that they are part of the 100%, will do everything they can to prevent this shift from a purely ‘man’s world’ into a world brought into balance by the infusion of the feminine. Resistance to this shift is the fundamental cause of most of the turmoil going on in the world today.

With all of its ups and downs and unexpected turnarounds, 5 is not the most stable of paths to travel. Anything can happen. The fact that 2012 is a Leap Year makes things even more shaky and volatile. Leap years occur every 4 years so that the calendar remains in alignment with Earth’s motion around the sun. An extra day is added – February 29 – and this ‘hiccup’ causes an energetic ‘wobble’ in the flow of time which cannot help but effect the flow of life. We last experienced a leap year in 2008 – a year of much upheaval in the world, the year the free market (capitalism) imposed its failures on the people in the form of bailouts and so-called ‘austerity’ measures. 2008 was the year the sub-prime mortgage crisis impacted the USA and then the world. At the end of 2008, Barack Obama was voted the first black president of the United States, creating a massive rise in people’s feelings along the entire emotional spectrum. There was a lot of hatred mixed up in all that jubilation. 2008 was a 1 year in the world – an important BEGINNING to the current leg of our journey. It was the year in which humanity found the enormous power of emotion and, one way or another, was deeply moved by it.

2008 was also the year that 69,000 people were killed in one earthquake alone, in China, but we did not hear much about that enormous loss of life because of the cloak of secrecy under which China operates. It is safe to assume that Mother Earth will continue to move and shake in whatever way allows her to heal from the onslaught of abuse we have imposed on her, and continue to do!

Notice that we are now at the halfway mark of the journey that began in 2008. 1, 2, 3 and 4 have gone. 5 is dead center – the balance point – and 6, 7, 8 and 9 are yet to come. We now need to lean emphatically in the direction we want this journey to go. We are the only ones who can tip that delicate balance in the right direction.

The last time we were in a 5 global year was 2003 – the year of the Iraq war. We have a chance to do things very differently this time around, as the very same arguments that took us into Iraq are now being made for an attack on Iran.

Our millennial journey from 1 to 2 is taking us from secrecy and isolationism to openness and connection. It was secrecy that enabled the old system to flourish for so long. It is taking us from the big LIE that this crumbling system has always been, into HONESTY. Honesty is what our feelings are.

By the end of 2011, the people of China, Burma and Russia were spontaneously rising up against oppression and slavery. The emotional energy of the entire population on Earth has been moved by the pain of not being allowed to be the free spirits we really are.

The 2000s ushered in an era of equality and balance in which the vibration of our feelings open the space that consciousness needs in order to expand. This is why women are under attack on so many fronts all over the world. The controlling few cannot allow feminine energy to expand because such an evolution, such change, would render them irrelevant in terms of what they believe relevance to be.

Feminine energy is our FREE WILL, and we are well aware that the WILL of the people is anything but free. It never was. In 2012, we will experience the power of our personal and collective WILL as never before. The battered, bruised and abused Will of humanity is starting to heal – because it is starting to feel.

Creativity and evolution are working together. They are part of the same process of growth, but at different speeds. 1 is the number of change through progressive, one-step-at-a-time action. 5 is also the number of change – the sudden and unexpected kind that occurs through seemingly random events. In this year’s convergence of time, it may be difficult to tell which is which.

We must learn as we go in the 5 energy, so that our mistakes become channels of self-education, not self-torture. We allow ourselves to be beaten up by guilt, the only objective of which is to punish. Guilt is not an emotion. Guilt is judgment we make against ourselves, often without realizing it, and which stops us from taking the most basic steps. We don’t need guilt to tell us what is right and wrong. We need loving intention in our hearts, and the desire to do the right thing no matter what the circumstances.

If your idea of freedom excludes caring about others, denied guilt is in play. Denied guilt says, “I don’t care about other people’s suffering,” but the love within really does care, and so love is denied, too. There is no freedom in pure selfishness.

5 is the number of FREEDOM – not freedoms. By pluralizing the word freedom, we diminish its meaning and dilute its effectiveness. And defining freedom for others is to deny freedom altogether. In 2012, it is not enough to simply talk about freedom. It is a year in which we must strive to be as free as possible no matter what our circumstances happen to be. We must encourage others to be free as well, even if their idea of freedom does not match our own. We must learn to live and let live.

As this 12-year journey out of denial continues, not only are we coming face to face with our own guilt, we are also gaining a deeper understanding of the healing power of forgiveness. Life is too short to bear grudges. That is what keeps us locked in the past.

Everyone is becoming more resourceful now, and there are likely to be some very convincing tactics used to sway people in one direction or another. Never forget that this failing system is engaged in a major war against each one of us – the war to capture our HEARTS and MINDS with misinformation and propaganda. What they did not bargain for or prepare for was the response of our emotions which represent TRUTH within.

We must be very aware of those who are so afraid of losing possession and position, so afraid of change, so afraid of the unknown, that they will go to the most extreme lengths to prevent this natural change from 1 to 2, from alpha to beta, from imbalance to equality, from war to peace. 5 is the number of the unforeseen, the unknown, and people are very afraid of that.

It took us 12 years into the new millennium to put 1 and 1 together and make 2, all the time wondering why the number 11 was so visible in our lives. It took us 12 years to connect the dots and accept that life as we knew it was over. Our task now is to create a new form of living based on what we have learned from previous experience which is supportive, not destructive.

The damage done to Mother Earth will be more apparent than ever this year because 5 is the number of the physical, and Mother Earth is the physical plane that sustains us. Mother Earth is feminine energy manifested, and she is in the process of healing from the unrelenting abuse she has taken in order to feed our addictions.

In traditional numerology, 5 warns against the over-use of alcohol, drugs and gambling but, over the course of time, we have developed many other addictions, technological ones especially, from which we need to detach ourselves if we are to be free. This includes TV, the Internet, phones and other devices which occupy our lives to an unnecessary degree and keep us tied to this collapsing system. Technology must have its place in the 2000s, but it must serve us, not own us.

The principle characteristics of 2 include the chemistry that occurs when ideas and ideals, cultures and beliefs, gifts and needs are combined. 2 is the number of cooperation, not competition. 2 brings us from pure selfishness to truly caring about others; from isolation to connection. From I AM to WE ARE. That is the only way for the fabric of humanity to pull itself together and heal.

2012 – PART TWO – (coming soon)

NUMEROLOGY YOU CAN FEEL! What happens in 2012 is likely to reveal the true reason you came into the world at this precise time in the human journey. Creative Numerology Year Books by Christine DeLorey were written specifically for these fast-changing (r)evolutionary times, and will bring clarity and insight to your life on a daily basis. Click here for more details.

By Fe Bongolan

On a recent visit to my friend and stylist, a Brazilian man I’ve known for years, he abruptly said to me, “You know, in Candomble (a Brazilian expression of the Yoruban religion), you are close to Oya, the goddess of wind, of change.”

Cancer. Painting by Carlos Cedillo.

From the many conversations we’ve had over the years, talk of the orisha – Yoruban deities – was never part of the dialogue, let alone open talk about one’s orisha affinity, particularly in a beauty salon. Up until that point, after years of speaking of everything else under the sun, I understand how it probably took years to get to this point. He was waiting to tell me, trying to gauge my credulity threshold as well as respect for Brazilian mythology and African religion. When he told me, the tender earnestness of his voice, the intent he placed on the words he imparted, felt like he was delivering a message long-held quiet until this moment. It was important that I knew this now.

It was not as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. I’ve met enough people in my life to understand the power and have respect for the following of the orisha. When he told me that it was Oya those words registered inside with the impact of a submarine’s depth change. They would lead me to a new journey – letting this information seep in slowly, testing as it starts to saturate – with me taking in its wake a long, hard look at my life.

For those unfamiliar with Oya’s place in the Yoruban orisha – worshipped in Africa and all the far-flung places of the African diaspora – Oya is a warrior goddess, the ultimate cool head in the height of an emergency, and a protector of women in trouble. She is the spirit of change on the scale of a massive hurricane, clearing away the debris and rubble, making room for the new. She is also a guardian of the cemetery, which brings to mind the image of the Death card in Tarot. It is said her ruling planet is Pluto, the planet of profound and compelling change. Her associated Catholic saint, Our Lady of La Candelaria, has a feast day of February 2nd. A day after my birthday.

Proximity of my solar return to Oya’s day was the least of our coincidental ties. As a kid whose father died early and unexpectedly, I was an unfinished spirit, jump-started by my dad’s death with the winds of deep change in full force and control early on. The day after my dad died, my mother was so distraught she couldn’t function. It was that day I pulled off the skin of my childhood. I began making decisions affecting my mother’s life and mine in the space of a few short weeks. Something had taken over me, a kind of calm that returns every time since, when in a crisis situation. Oya took my child’s skin, replacing it with hers. This was my initiation.

At 18, I left home, full of questions I could not yet verbalize, propelled forward onto life in a big, unfathomable world. I had no idea who I was, or what I was doing. Was this adulthood? If it was, was it always like being a leaf in the wind?

Despite my new-found ability to be cool under fire, I was scared most of the time, looking for the missing parent to fill a father wound that cratered my heart. I was needy, terribly insecure and desperate for the trappings that gave one the picture of credibility and stability in the world: a regular job, a steady man, a secure home – to replace the profound loss of one of the principal figures of my soul. When I grasped for these things they always slipped away. Despite my protests otherwise, Oya had other plans for me.

Oya’s skin was a resilient shield, keeping my spirit upright even when I would rather fall down and die. She led me from one teacher to the next. I built up my social skills, learning to be with people outside my comfort zone without fear. I was shamed into learning how to respect the cultures and traditions of others. I learned I had to cast away the anguished small-town girl I was, separating herself from other women like me: poor, confused, alone. I learned to embrace the woman I was becoming – a strong woman, mature and confident. A woman with a voice. I learned that I had to be in connection with others in the world. Not to shy away. Not to hold back. I learned that my life not only has a value, but a purpose, and that I must honor that purpose until it is my time to leave.

Oya shaped me. I found my niche as a theater artist working in the county jail with a world of women struggling and in pain and who needed help. It was there that I uncovered the parts of my underdeveloped soul. I became part of a clan of women who midwife other women’s voices so that all women living on the edge could be heard with compassion. Things started to fall into place, saturation point had been reached, and my Brazilian friend’s words were ringing true: I was close to Mama Oya, comfortable inside her skin, so much so that I didn’t know where she began and where I ended. I grew into the swerves and contours of Oya, the orisha whose skin I was wearing, old enough to realize now that I was walking her path on earth, the path of profound change – of myself and others. After all those years, I lost track that we had been together at all until that afternoon, waiting for my haircut, my friend timing his words for the right moment to detonate and have their deepest effect.

You might say that from 2012-2017 will be the years Oya will make her presence known, visiting us more than once. There will be debris flying, lives disrupted, unexpected catastrophes and major adjustments to be made. Yet, if you’re ready, something else will happen to you as well, because of her, because of the worlds she will dismantle and the ones you will create. Something will slip away: a floor, a foundation you once thought solid, a wall that no longer has studs to hold it up, a person who is no longer going to be there for you, a job that will get de-funded and another purpose coming into view. You will soon realize that even though you may miss these things, you will also no longer need them. You are becoming something else, something bigger, something more: Yourself. Fearless, free, and moving swiftly through the walls and passages of time. Just like the wind.