Today is Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. It’s quite a day astrologically: not only are we graced with the Aquarius New Moon just before 2:40 am EST, but Mars stations retrograde in Virgo at 7:54 pm EST – and the Chinese Year of the Dragon begins today. Listen carefully for the days’ messages: you may hear them again at the end of the week.
In the last week, we’ve scratched the surface of several of the messages offered by today’s sky as they’ve been coalescing. Len Wallick took a look at the Aquarius New Moon; Daily Astrology has considered the Year of the Dragon, Mars retrograde and the Sun’s sextile to the Ceres-Uranus conjunction on the Aries Point.
Now Mercury is poised to play courier with these astro-memos, perhaps even more obviously than usual. The reason is that Mercury, currently in late Capricorn, is about to make all the same aspects at the end of this week that the Sun has made with its ingress of Capricorn and conjunction with the Moon (New Moon).
It’s as though the messages are being repeated in a slightly different form to be sure we really get them. Think of it like calling someone to reiterate the email you sent so that they get the benefit of hearing the emotion in your vocal inflection. Or perhaps it’s more like the other way around: in order to make sure emotion and ego don’t obscure the message, you send an email after the phone call outlining the main points.
What is the Aquarius New Moon’s message? In part, this is the Moon that reminds us we’re not merely an indistinguishable segment of a mass – or, at the other extreme, an island disconnected from anything else. More than that, each of us individually determines how we engage with those around us, locally and globally. Neptune’s 14 years in Aquarius have ushered in radical new ways for that engagement to occur (think of the roles of Twitter and Facebook in the Middle East revolts and even last week’s Internet blackout protest); yet the fundamentals of communication, connection and integrity still apply — and may matter more than ever.
Why does this particular New Moon’s message matter so much? Well, as they say in showbiz, timing is everything. The Aquarius New Moon is a particularly good time for detaching from habits that are holding you in a rut, and all the signs suggest 2012 is a year designed to shake you out of any ruts you haven’t already stepped out of gracefully. We are entering a year of significant astrology, in particular the first exact contact of the Uranus-Pluto square, the Venus transit of the Sun and this Mars retrograde in Virgo. That last event is something Eric has described as a “systems check” for the rest of the year (especially May and June) – and by extension, for this next era of our lives.
Now, Mercury is trine Mars today during the New Moon lead-up to Mars’ station. Mercury trine Mars flows with alert, active and practical energy — and good thing. Once Mars switches gears, we will need to be alert, active and practical as we inquire into ourselves, feel compelled to consciously align our words and deeds with integrity, or heal our relationship to our desire. This will take self-compassion, too – another intention worth setting with this New Moon.
Eric wrote on Friday, “You may feel a palpable calling to improve your life, your health and your wellbeing during the next few months — and it’s essential that you proceed with any such quest gently. Warm up before you stretch, and remember, it’s not how far you go or how good you look, it’s how consciously you lean into the tension.”
Leaning into tension is one of the fundamental concepts of a dance form called contact improvisation. If your dance partner leans into you, you lean back – and in that way, create a stable structure, trust, connection and a point from which the two of you can flow into other movements, shapes and tempos. There is give and take – it is not all push. But without the lean back into the other, into the tension, the dance dissipates into stasis.
We have today both flow and tension, and Mercury connecting the two, albeit over a span of days.
The New Moon occurs as the apex of a T-square, with Jupiter and Saturn completing the structure with an out-of-sign opposition. Len wrote last week that, “Sun, archetype of consciousness, merging with the intuitive and subliminal archetype of the Moon means that your whole self will be present to the internal tension.” The tension is that Jupiter in Taurus offers the sense that we can step into tangible expansiveness in our lives and really put our metaphorical money where our mouths are; Saturn in Libra tells us, with hands on hips, to see our limits for what they are and get real about what we’re doing. Need they be mutually exclusive? Maybe not. As you figure out where the point of contact is for you – that place within where the tension allows creative movement both with and against this dance partner known as the world – file away that sensation for easy recall.
As noted, Mercury is going to make the same T-square at the end of the week, perhaps offering the intellectual version of the more emotional message we sense today. Mercury’s also going to make the same sextile to Ceres-Uranus that the Sun and Moon just have, so keep your ears pricked for the reiteration of the same global/personal messages regarding food insecurity, agriculture and health.
Clearly, if the cosmos is giving us two ways to get the message in the relatively short span of a week, the message must be one worth heeding. We’re being given a moment of alert, active practicality by Mercury trine Mars that we can carry forward into our interactions with the world and also on our trek within ourselves. The New Moon offers us a ‘seeding’ moment so we can grow these qualities in the early months of a year – indeed an era – in which we will need them.
Lean into the tension; maintain contact with yourself and your immediate and global communities in a way that allows flow. The year of the Dragon is known for unpredictability and good luck – but there’s something to be said for preparing the way.
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My pleasure dear Carrie. It’s a tough one to crack! xx
Good one susyc: “Spermatic!” LOL as well, and nice to think we made you giggle along Amanda. Now do tell about your conversation though. Not fair to be left hanging and imagining! 😉
Carrie: I’m so happy you got something out of the daily meditation I posted. I’ve found the book to be a very worthwhile purchase and highly recommend to PWavers out there. My last roommate was picking it up off the table where i had left it and read it every morning with her coffee. I was pleased to see that.
shebear & susyc — you are cracking me up re: the photo! i swear, i looked at it and thought “coral reef, anemones, little fish swimming in the blue!”
now, if i told you about a certain email conversation i had with someone last night before choosing the photo, you’d never believe me. 🙂 well, who knows — maybe there’s something to this whole “subliminal suggestion” stuff, after all…
Shebear! Thank you so much for that! That’s a perfect thing for me to do right now.
And Huffy, thanks to you as well for helping me see that “victim” voice I have in my head playing and playing all the time.
PS. Shebear, my first thought about the photo too, was “Spermatic!!” Those cometary knots as the description calls them definitely look like they’re going somewhere. Fertilizing the future perhaps. How beautiful.
“Make a list of plans and projects whose unfinished rubble clutters your way forward.” Thanks for this Shebear as I wrap up my 3 or 4 year old painting project. I was thinking back just yesterday wondering what impeded the completion. Exhaustion and perfectionism probably, as I noticed a big miss-swipe of the brush from my final 3 or 4 year old effort. And now almost done today with 5 doors and 4 doorway’s trim. Funny how easy it’s been. Just a bit more tomorrow to wrap up the little bits left and I’m done! For you Easterners, Mars has already stationed retrograde, but I have about 15 more minutes. I’m going to go out a bit ahead and walk my labyrinth to welcome in Mars’ retrograde. And then I’ll head to my writing group for the evening. May deep thoughts bless Mars’ U-turn, and show us the way in which we should go.
Wow! This was my day! The Govt expected me to lie down & freeze to death this week…..but I HAVE other plans! Doing the sketchbook project for the Brooklyn Art Library that goes on tour of the major cities in Feb.
The LIHEAP oil charitable gift, ( for the year total) was 99 gallons, gone,by end of Dec.
( christmas week I had to carry several 2 gallon cans of diesel fuel from the gas station to keep the furnace running until the “FOREIGN DEVIL kicked in with his gift of 100 gal free. Love that commie and his buddy Joe Kennedy! Now that is almost gone, my wood for the woodstove is not quite seasoned enough ( or good burning wood.) Spending as much time on sawing, gleaning twigs for kindling, & lighting fires as I am on my artwork.
Yeah, T saturn in the 5th, creativity, is exact sq my N pluto, 2nd resources…….
I finally resolved to use my property tax rebate for oil today, worry about paying property taxes later…………Then took a nap due to the stress…….
I have been stuck in capricorn mode with my visual expression, Uncharted Water…is about notjust boats/ water scenes…….BP floods and tseunamis…………it is passion ( bound to take you off the charts) uncharted depths archtypal images……….Mars is conj my neptune 4th house, with the merc trine……….I must have dreamed it, woke up & “got it” Juno & Terpachore are leaving a conjunction with my scorpio moon……..So an intensive work stint this week, remembering dancing with my husband with our mars cap conj & moonscorpio conj. people stepped away, sat down, and let us have the dance floor, we had perfected that tension. Now I will perform that dance with my paintbrush. and later in the week, I will review the results with the intellectual eye of Merc!
So interesting that health and fitness hit my radar in a from the head all the way to the gut way yesterday and the awareness that it’s time. Transitioning as I am (middle age) and shedding the powers of youth over the past years, I know that it is vitality and good health that will make me attractive as an elder and this is where I need to put my attention.
In addition, connected with my two older sisters very meaningfully yesterday after years of feeling, if not being, alienated from them. Is it significant to my sibling relationships that Neptune is in the last degrees of Aquarius and about to move into my third house, ruled by Pisces? The Pisces sister, btw, was just diagnosed with a scary disease and the Aries sister became a widow last January.
The onslaught of activity since God knows when continues. We moved into a new home November 30, but were called unexpectedly to travel over the holidays followed by a formerly planned trip the 2nd week of January. I realize how much I’ve traveled the past months, to another city for work over the summer, to Alaska to finalize the sale of a house in September, to Virginia Beach to visit daughters and grandkids in October, a move from a rental to new house in November, to California to care for mother-in-law and attend to stepkids in December, and to Florida for a writing seminar and workshop in January.
Does Mars Rx mean I can slow down and attend to my health, unpacking, and some stability at last?
Yeah, great piece. Thanks guys so much! And speaking of the “new moon offering a seeding moment,” today’s Celtic Meditation (The Celtic Spirit – Daily Meditations for the Coming Year by Caitlin Matthews, offers this lovely echo to that notion:
Clearing the Way
The plow must go five times over the site of a wood before it can become a field.
(Trad. Welsh saying.)
The sun has returned and the light is growing, but the plans we have been brooding upon may show little signs of progress. Now is a good time of year to prepare the ground for the projects and plans that are important to us. Make a list of plans and projects whose unfinished rubble clutters your way forward. These may include long, ongoing plans that are not going anywhere fast and short-term projects that are unfinished due to a lack of resources or energy. Look down your list: Which irritates you the most? Which nags you as unfinished? Which did not work out according to plan, and why? Do not be surprised if you access deep emotion, and do not be afraid of what you feel.
Go through this list, creating questions that challenge and uncover the roots of the problem. Has your vision for each of the plans changed? Are your projects still workable as they stand? Evaluate long-term projects for significant progress and assess which approaches might loosen things up. Do you perhaps need to break down long-term plans into shorter achievable components, for example? Are there associations with partners or friends that are impeding your progress? If someone else is involved, what contribution has that person made? Finally, go through your list item by item and mark projects for eradication, rethinking, or fresh start.
This procedure requires hard mental effort, but it can help dig up the soil of our potentiality and prepare it to receive new growth.
Invitation: Set aside time to clear your way and root out outworn strategies and failed plans.
P.S. The photo chosen for today’s blog put me in mind of the Monty Python song “Every Sperm is Sacred.” Go seed new life, boys!
“Here’s another thing that is really wonderful about it. The asteroid Terpsichore (goddess of the dance) is conjunct with Juno when Mercury makes its ingress to Aquarius. As a matter of fact, they have been in step with each other for some time now. That makes your improvisational dance metaphor absolutely spot-on with the astrology.”
seems to be one of those days, in a good way. while i was writing to Len asking him about posting the comment i just quoted above (from a current email exchange), he was posting something similar below his own post.
what fun synchronicities today…
Thank you. To echo Huffy, the improvisational dance metaphor is especially appropriate as an example of how we can navigate the the anticipated synchronicity of events.
Connecting dots:
PW: Aquarius New Moon and 2012: “detach from habits that are holding you in a rut”
EF: Mars Rx Virgo: “Mind on Fire”
Leah Whitehorse on the New Moon: “Let the fire of the bridges burned light the way into the future.”
Flicking my Bic… Or maybe, just maybe, I can use the snorting flames from the flying dragon I’m riding to get out of the ruts and start the fires…
JannKinz
Interesting times indeed. This is going to be a year to remember for this Earth Pig.
Thanks, people!
Really amazing. Thank you!
another magnificent, poignant piece. THANK YOU !
Ps and I LOVE the dance metaphor!
“we can step into tangible expansiveness in our lives and really put our metaphorical money where our mouths are” – yes, think I’m finally beginning to shake off the mantle of victim, to whom awful things always happen. Right now seems to be a process of going out into the world in a new way, and addressing its attendant problems (with very baby steps as yet!). At the same time, the inner journey is more important than ever, and is what allows me to be in the world in a different way. It’s a sort of hokey kokey “in out, in out – shake it all about”. And To paraphrase Sarah “as above so below”. And you guys are really helping to get the message from the cosmos. Thank you! Happy new Chinese year to everyone! xxxx