Dear Friend and Reader:
On Saturday, the Sun and Moon align in early Capricorn and form the New Moon. This is exact Dec. 27, 7:22 AM EST. For many of us, this will be a life-changing New Moon that calls us to a new (and truer) understanding of selfhood and service. This an extraordinary chart, because Pluto is in Capricorn for the first time during the [Northern Hemisphere] winter solstice season. Mars will be right there, in a conjunction. The two are aligned on the Aries Point, which is a kind of cosmic magnifier that will bring whatever unusual news occurs that day or the days surrounding it, into a deeply personal context.
The most potent aspects of the chart make a close trine to Vesta in Taurus. Vesta, for its part, is precisely on the discovery degree of Chiron. So this chart opens up a flow of energy from that Chiron/Vesta dimension.
Not long ago I read about a French woman (let’s call her Vesta) who, for 30 years, lived with and cared for the people in a Cairo trash dump colony. By choice. The community — men, women and kids– tended the burning piles of trash and raised pigs for their meat. No devout Muslim would touch them because they ate pigs and lived in filth. Their kids climbed mountains of other people’s broken furniture, and the stiffest brush couldn’t scrub the smell of burning refuse and pig shit from their little bodies. Even straight from a bath, they were grimy, as if the soil were part of them.
This amazed me, so much so that she lived in my mind for weeks afterward. Whenever I threw out my own trash, I added some detail of what I imagined her life was like. My potato peelings and the onion skins became her dinner. My snotty tissues, her kindling. My foot-high pile of mail order catalogs, a guilty offering of expiation to the recycling gods. “Please, please forgive me: I signed up because I thought the stuff was pretty; I never had an intention to buy it. So sorry…” I offered them to this woman, too, who once tended the flame and smoke of Cairo’s burning trash heaps.
After her death, Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her, marveled that this woman chose “one of the worst qualities of life on the planet… [she] was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life.” Together they created a composting plant to process the tons of pig manure and sold it as fertilizer. In time, Vesta also brought a school and medical care to these unwanted people.
People like this are unforgettable because they’re so rare. But they are a type of modern day Vesta, the Roman goddess of selfless and devoted service. Traditionally Vesta was the original keeper of Rome’s eternal flame, and her mortal servants, the Vestal Virgins of the Roman Empire, served to keep Rome’s flame alight, night and day. As any camper knows, maintaining a perpetually burning flame requires careful, sustained attention and patience. Call it investing. Today when we invest, we’re likely to think of money instead of attentive service. While there’s nothing wrong with money, it’s a poor substitute for Vesta’s original meaning. We haven’t forgotten Vesta; we just renamed her.
This is because our culture defines us by our spending power. At the bank and in shops, we heap our offerings upon a false Vestal altar hoping that somehow our little flames of self-importance might not go out. With devotion we cultivate our next contract, our next project, our next gig that might lead to the kind of connections and wealth that guarantee our worth to others — and ourselves. It’s so pervasive, it functions like an autonomic response in the body politic. Someone would have to throw us into a burning trash heap of a town to get our attention.
This New Moon we might just get that experience. Right now Vesta is approaching the Chiron discovery degree. This is a degree that functions as if Chiron is always present. Chiron is our astrological marker for the struggle or quest for awareness, and so we’re approaching a moment where lots of us will find ourselves standing, latte in hand, negotiating the next “deal,” more aware that the whole thing’s a sham and uneasy about why.
Vesta is now in Taurus, and that gives a clue. Here Vesta wants to illuminate our resources, but because she’s moving toward Chiron, she’s inclined to purge our Taurean weakness to seek financial security at the expense of sexual and creative confidence. Vesta’s approach to Chiron uncovers our secret shame about this whole money game. At heart we’d all rather enjoy a lot more creativity and a lot less embarrassment about our bodies, but we don’t know how to ask for it. This is the other side of Vesta, which Eric says, “holds space, warms the room, offers compersion, helps the birthing and the dying, surrenders her body to the reproductive process when called upon” that calls us. She is the woman within who honors the core sexual self, the body in service to the act of biological and artistic creation.
Conflict between desire and shame emerges because Vesta gives selflessly, abundantly. But we don’t. We take and tend not to give, and then wonder why we feel so impoverished. But when we hate our core selves and neglect our core needs, feel ashamed of our bodies and ashamed of our desires how could we possibly have anything to share with others? Fear and avoidance take the place of generosity and grace.
Eric calls this “The Beltane Issue”:
Beltane is the celebration of sex as the source of abundance. We live in a society that is not only sexually shut down, and in enormous pain, but which is gradually criminalizing sex. To wit, states trying to ban gay and lesbian people from getting together; and the decades-long abstinence campaign, which is a �ban sex’ campaign. Now, where is our abundance going to come from, if we cannot connect to the source of human creation? Note that Vesta also addresses the shame we feel about our creativity and our core sexual fire. There is a necessary element of healing shame to heal sexuality and abundance issues.
If you doubt this, let me ask you: When did parsimony ever turn you on? And who would you rather eat crackers in bed with — Santa or Scrooge?
This New Moon, we can change that. If we want.
A return to the awareness of service.
Every chart has a history, and this chart reminds us to two BIG historical charts: The Dec. 26, 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami chart, and the Sept. 11 chart. In other words, this New Moon is about power that change fundamental structures in our lives.
First, the history. Chiron, the planet of awareness and healing, was the lead character in the past charts, so the story of this New Moon is also very much about awareness and healing.
Chiron entered Capricorn Dec. 11, three months after the September attacks. Chiron in Capricorn forced our awareness of corruption in corporate and government authorities, a prelude to the real renovation that Pluto would bring in 2008.
Chiron is now passing through Aquarius, the sign of the people and their dreams, awakening us to our Neptunian visions of a false future, aided by Aquarius’ ties to the media. Connect the plot points and you get a rising awareness of institutional failure and media manipulation. Each time Pluto approached Capricorn and then hit the Aries Point, that awareness became incontrovertible.
The hammer and the flame
With this back story in mind, let’s look at our chart. The most obvious feature in all three is a Mars-Pluto connection to the Aries Point. This is the power to transform in all caps, and in the sign of Capricorn, the transformations that will hit our foundational institutions — governments, big business, banking. In this chart a Capricorn Sun, Moon, Mars and Pluto power are directly tied to a Taurean Vesta. Think of Mars, the hammer, striking a hard blow against Pluto, the chisel.
Now think of that chisel laid to the already cracking foundation of one our favorite false Vestial temples, say, Citigroup. What do you think’s gonna happen? With the Aries Point involved, and an earth to earth contact, the ground (literally or metaphorically) is bound to shift and we’ll all feel the rumble. The aspect is trine, a supportive energy, but the aim is breakthrough — growth through transformation. A new Vestal fire.
Saturn trines Mercury and Jupiter, too, which gives us three planets in harmonious earth signs, expanding (Jupiter) and structuring (Saturn) the message (Mercury) of the chart. Saturn’s Sabian degree is a “royal coat of arms,” which rewards those who aim for the highest principles of humanity. Jupiter’s degree is the image of an aviary, Mercury’s image is of a woman entering a convent. Together they say this moment is about a search for meaning and a commitment to a turning point within a group or common interest. So take some time to reflect and get organized, practically and philosophically.
With reflection and organization, we can construct better futures for ourselves. The great theme of this chart is the call to serve. Capricorn calls us to be practical; Chiron calls us to open our eyes and hearts to the mixed messages and false ideals of the media; Pluto and Mars says the change happens now. Vesta is the proving ground, and the scene of this transformation.
What do you want to break down, recreate, rebuild? I ask because I want you to be very intentional this New Moon, specifically about how Vesta functions in your life and how you want that to change. How do you feel about your sexuality, your body? Do you burn a flame within that resonates with your true self and creates feelings of abundance that have to be shared?
These are personally significant questions to me. I say this because the day after this New Moon, on the 28th, I turn 40. I can’t help but project myself into this chart’s message and it’s call to a renewed awareness of service.
If you’ve passed the 40-year mile mark, you know what I mean. You examine you work, your friends, your kids, partner, hobbies, everything — and ask, “Now what?” Mid-life, most of us have acquired the stuff our culture thinks is important: a career, maybe a home, usually a car, complete with a settled-in feeling of community connections. At least that’s the way it used to be. Maybe today the settled-in feeling isn’t there, and maybe instead of a church or a club membership, we’ve got a Facebook membership, 8G of iTunes memory and steady rotation of Netflix envelopes to keep us connected. It’s a busy ol’ world out there, y’know? Technology keeps us in touch.
You don’t have to be over 40 to spot this lie. Even if you’re not yet 40, you can still appreciate the problem. There’s a lot of “now what?” in the air these days; it’s a sentiment that doesn’t discriminate by age.
So I don’t ask these questions because I feel I’ve adequately answered them all myself, I ask because they’re my questions, too.
I, too, am caught between the hammer and the flame. And actually, that’s not a bad thing.
Yours & truly,
Shanna Philipson
Tachi, when we first met, I was impressed with your free spirited relationship revelations. No doubt in my mind where that came from.
I did come up with some water dad stuff. He took me to the water, where I had some powerful experiences, within the safety of his watch. And we were crazy on land together. I’ll look closer at that.
What do you mean the jukebox disappeared? Where did it go? Is it like the car keys that show up again in the place you already looked? Or is it really gone?
Saggis huh? My equally uneducated astrological friend of yor . . . he gifted me a calendar that got me started on this stuff, well, he always said fire boils the water and keeps it warm. My response to him (another Virgo of course) was, but then again doesn’t water put out fire. I ain’t even going to go to what fire does to earth.
annat, oh my goodness, a gemini-libra pair. The twins from hell are libras (am working through my air issues yet) and they both married geminis. They had me believing for years their lives were perfect, an example for all of us to follow, even though they each individually drove me nuts.
Whenever I meet someone and the two of us can’t shut up, I find myself guessing gemini or virgo? It’s usually one or the other if we are expressing in the purest form, which is I guess why we can’t shut up. As a virgo brain, I love playing with geminis on that mental level, but in relationships, when that other thing comes out, I don’t know what to do. I have had really deep deep deep physical “of the flesh” relations with two Geminis, maybe they had some water energy going somewhere?
And maybe the unspoken easy beauty of my Mother lies in her libra moon (she’s still not easy to live with), and oh the beauty of my libran niece as she flowers (although the quality of her beauty smacks to her mother, my sister’s, piscean quality). I’m learning to enjoy the gifts librans bring (although I am having trouble finding it in the twins) and stay calm, but be aware of my boundaries.
This may all be poopie. I’m just fishin around in the elements right now for some reason. I am an earth sign of sorts, after all. And sooner or later I’ll be able to take this back to the houses of my life.
Tachi, there’s you and your dad playing in the water together again. I suppose you are going to make me really jealous next and tell me he sang in the shower or submerged himself in long soothing baths.
As a novice to all this astrology stuff, I find myself asking the question about my Cancer moon, Cancer sun dad, and his aversion to water in all forms, except the sweat from his work, his passion for fishing, and a cold beer at the end of the day. What makes your father’s water energy flow? Does my father’s heavy cancer stellum suggest obstacles to that free flow?
In celebration of the child in time who with wonder used the medium at hand to create her first masterpieces, I brought in the new year with a review of The Poopie List. It’s a universal language that all of us understand. I would tag it in, but we get enough jokes clogging our email, without that. It’s an oldie but a goodie on my list.
Victoria, Tachikata, Mystes,
Been following the weaving of your threads all this dark quiet week, this soul time of the year. Mirrors, the great Ladies room, art, shit, moms, energy, boots. And, yes, the families (I am sun-sign Cancer).
Ha! My mother and father, Gemini and Libra, smoked and fought and agued bitterly – this sensitive one left home early to be away. Abusive father, finally dead, now becoming close to the family/relatives I haven’t been with for 30 years.
Oh, we all have our stories. I have so loved hearing yours.
thanks,
AnnaT
Tachi, I am going to try bare feet in the wetland, when it melts that is. But I will have my tall boots in my backpack just in case (safety girl always needs a backup plan.) I was up to my knees in water and barefeet would probably be more comfortable than water in my boots. And water does bring some nice soft soil with it.
Eight poopies. That’s alotta poopie.
mystes, laughing is one of the gifts I share with my Mother. She was sometimes brutal and her laughing could hurt, but not as much as when her laughing stopped. After all, she was laughing. And what great belly laugh she has. So I suppose she taught me to laugh at myself. It is good to be amused. And I am an easy source of entertainment, coming off of taking myself so seriously for so long.
On a more interesting note, she harbors great joy, even though she would never admit it. Sometimes that cancer shell can be awfully hard to crack. I have not cried out of sadness in a long time, but I find myself weeping uncontrollably in joy quite often. That trickster Mother has brought me to my knees in the simplest of ways more than a time or two. (She’s still hard to live with overall.)
About the children thing. I was 7 of 8, with a six year gap preceding me and succeeding the twins from hell. I took responsibility for my younger sister (2.5 years diff) and also was the entertainment for a family in shock as my much older sister Mitzi developed cancer when I was in the womb and died when I was 4. The end was not pretty at all and never discussed.
My first nephew was born the same year my sister died, followed quickly by 4 more children and of course Grandma’s house was where I lived, so I took care of children my whole life. Those Catholics reproduce like bunnies. There were always children to take care of no matter where I travelled. I even had relationships with them (it was always the child in the man that attracted me. If the eyes had a twinkle I was there to provide the care.)
I relocated here largely because my younger sister, decided she was wanted to Mother. And for the first time I was present for the birth of two wonderful little human beings. Much more powerful than my early experiences with farm animals. I am still involved in their lives. As Tachi said, the extended family is very important. So Mothering, kinduv sortuv, in a removed kinduv sortuv way. And that’s a little more insight into the cancerian energy? Thanks. My niece and nephew make fun of me because I fuss about their safety. They say it is good I did not have children because I would have killed them with over concern. Their teen years are good for me because now they are completely out of my control. Either I play fun or they close their doors. And maybe that’s what an aunt is for.
Tachi, I am jealous, your dad played with you, and still does. I did get to experience some of that. When I relocated here, we played home improvement together to get ye ol farmstead of mine habitable. He was a wonder with wood. And it was the first time I experienced someone actually whistling while they worked. So thanks for the memory.
DNA is one thing. I think the energy thing I needed has to do with the Cancer moon as both my parents had Cancer suns and my father’s sun was accompanied by a major kind of stellum. I understand Cancerian energy better now. I know the hits I have taken. I know how angry it made me. And that makes me understand our volatile household so much better. How hard it must have been on Mother with all those self obsessed children running over the top of her all the time without a second thought. And she knowing how hard it was to see her own Mother cry, never let us see her shed a tear. And no wonder my father had sympathy physical symptoms with each child’s illness. Now Mother, was never sick a day that I remember: I am sure she thought it would have been too hard on us.
As I climbed out from under the emotional debris, I realized a couple of things. My emotions were my sensors. When younger when I was uncomfortable, I would run (literally) and they would chase me in anger (literally). I learned the joy of running in the rain. And freedom always outran anger. But then I got older and the thought occurred to me that maybe my running days were over. So I stopped and took the beating. That got really uncomfortable. Time to look in the mirror (not literally: but am thinking about doing that again.)
These emotional responses were running me to the point of shutdown at times. And as I became aware what set me off and how I was reacting, I began to feel freer. But also guilty sometimes, like I was supposed to be emotionally participating in every drama going on around me. And then one day I felt a free flow of unflavored energy going out from my heart followed by a free flow of energy from my gut. And then I had to start channelling energy through my physical body and out my pores. And there is something about the gushing of what feels like pure odorless, colorless, tasteless energy that is undeniable.
There was also an unspoken mystery about my parents, a knowing. I think maybe that was the real intrigue. It’s the intuition that caused confusion as I struggled with the socialization process. It always seemed like something esle was really going on. It isolated me. I tried to explain, to talk about it. But the room would go silent. And I came to accept the isolation and the water could roll off me if it didn’t rain too hard or the water wasn’t too deep.
So the moral of the story is: it feels great to float naked in the sun or just to dive in and swim underwater. I can breathe in the depths now. It feels really great right now to know absolutely nothin. I just never know what I will discover.
On a less self obsessed side, do you really walk the floodplain? (What are the best water boots you have found?). As mine reforests, I am freaking at the new plant life emerging. Have you walked a wetland? It was my new joy this year, as we removed the invader phragmites from an absolutely pristine place? Talk about interesting plants and creatures, but it is delicate so I need to step more carefully. I am more hesitant about bog jumping. Can’t quite trust jumping into decay. But the opportunity is knocking.
I love the feces tale. Can’t stop the creative force. Use what you have. Great art can come out the deepest shit. Isn’t that the formula for a great artist? (Those favorite funny stories . . . my Mother had one about each of us. And they kinduv all played out into easy correlation for me in the end). Our parents are not stoopid. They know us like nobody else.
And about your parents, the tale is classic. They lived in the times they lived and did the best they could so we could live better now. In the parental blame game phase, I forgot that part. And the weight of the eight children on my father . . . aaargh! The rotating shifts were hard on him and hard on us. That schedules makes monsters. But I know while he was at work, he whistled.
So much here and I do go on. You have provided me with a feast to munch on. Completion . . . that’s what I was getting last night and this morning about this journey through my family and the place where I am now. It was something I needed to complete (although I highly do not recommend it unless you have to). So completion, as we rip another year off the calendar, I believe I have a match. And one day left before starting up again.
You are awesome.
Victoria… I just wanted to say how much I enjoy you and your self-effacing humor. You can be selfloving&effacing at the same time!
Cancer Moon? and you have no babies? Wow! that’s quite a maneuver! Congrats!!
Tachi…” she finally understood why she never finished a canvas when she had great talent indeed.”
I don’t know a single artist who ever ‘finishes’ an artwork. They (we) simply a) get so sick of the work that we move on, or b) it kicks us out of the studio/office.
It is the nature of art to be ‘incompletable.’ My work as a critic/muse/asskicker in this realm has put me up against this bare fact on many occasions.
So tell your friend to chill. I guess you could say that since ‘mother’ is *the* unsolveable puzzle, She goes along with art’s irreducible unfinishedness. Your pal can use that fact to ground her, to give her something to push against, but it doesn’t serve as an excuse not to work. You can think of it like this: all art is failure at some level.
Every studio artist I have ever worked with / for has left each work uneasy, knowing it isn’t ‘finished.’ I actually think this is why Mark Rothko committed suicide. He couldn’t bear that fact, but I also think women have an edge with that reality. Being less interested in the heroic of art, we can bear it’s incompleteness more philosophically.
(Ducks are actually very sensitive creatures, you know…)
M
mystes, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about mother. There is much beautiful and wonderful about her. I took this time with her and got that gift. Needed to know what energies I got from her and from father. And I did get to work through lots of stuff. Like my sibling crap which was a truckload full. (What’s sicker than a truckload of dead babies? One trying to eat its way out).
So she swung the door open, gave me a swift kick in the arse, and the door slammed behind me. So I drove to my house: hmmm well, that’s over do do do do do. And then I arrived at my house and sitting in the car in the driveway, there it was, the house my mother was born and raised in. Aaaaaaaaaaargh!!!! Yup it’s the house I bought 16 years ago. Oh my. I really do love my old weathered farmhouse and yard of plenty. So I lit a fire, poured a glass of wine, my two fur babies jumped up on the couch next to me, and hey I was home.
And I got alot of water going in my chart, enough to flood out the rest of it at times. My old Cancer moon has taken a beating in this lifetime. And Neptune, well it’s awesome since I have come to an understanding, which was a feat of acceptance for my Virgo brain. And yeah I have come to grips with the value of the Cancer moon, too. The fun part is the zany experiences that happen near and in bodies of water. Being a water baby, how do you feel about fog? Like a warm balmy summer night with the hint of a cool breeze. That’s when I feel most alive.
PS I live on a flood plain.
V… gran jetee I think it is called. Good for deer and other cervicals I am told. Keep practicing! One fine day, while you’re burning the anthracite coal of your mother’s criticisms, you’ll take off and suddenly ‘hang fire.’ And that –as they say– will be That.
Pretty good trick for a watersign. But then again, we don’t *really* understand what water is… if we did, our houses would be full of Neptune’s love.
and more Love,
M
mystes, “funny girl”. I’ve been called worse. I have been piroquetting in my dreams. Never as exciting is when I do those long extended leaps (what’s the french word for leap??? grande something??). Too much nutcracker over the holidays? What can I say, when I am having fun, I am funny, and hopefully not too preverse.
V writes…” About momsy: there is a method to the madness. Mother to the end. I do believe she feels safe enough now (certain sibling transitions) to go back to abusing me to drive me off. Ah, home at last!!!!!!”
LOL, You *are* a funny girl! keep twirling that parasol, Vee…
oh my, a natal mars uranus conjunct, I can’t imagine.
I’m experiencing all this on a very physical body level. You probably have developed a great athletic approach to life. You’d almost have to. My Mars in Pisces is in shock.
But since this is all manifesting in my physical body . . . and I am a creature of comfort . . . I am still left with the physical sensation of overloaded cramping muscles. Water is indeed wonderful, but it is all frozen or chlorinated.
But ask a question, get an answer. And silly me, I forgot that I have skin. So the sieve covering my body is activating. (News flash: Virgo diverts from straight line circuitry. Uncontrollable energy release in all directions. Skin is alive. Will she survive the sensation?)
About momsy: there is a method to the madness. Mother to the end. I do believe she feels safe enough now (certain sibling transitions) to go back to abusing me to drive me off. Ah, home at last!!!!!!
St. Vicky of the Circulatorium,
Sitting in my spa’s hottub the other day (first time in toooo long), saline water, purified by R/O, a *beautiful man* in his late 30s glides in with me. We’re neighbors, it turns out. His ass hurts he tells me, do I know what might help? I say: let’s go down the list – food, fuck, fight, flee or frolic. What’s in balance, what’s out of balance? and by balance I amn’t talking pirouette here, I’m talking sloppy-big-lurching-across-the-proscenium balance. Goofy balance.
We did some silly yoga together, waterbound stuff. He doesn’t ache anymore.
Might I ask? who’s at the root? Pluto likes it down there. Especially if you have (as I do) a natal Mars/Uranus conjunct. Spin it off, channel it off, fuck it off. Build-up makes things ache and go kaboom at odd times.
Yours from the bottom of the barrel…
M
P/S . . . Marguerite Duras says: “I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhood, and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.”
Be glad she is out here where you can *see* her…
You are an extemely brave person, Shanna. You ask a question like “now what?” I tried that once. Only once. Maybe it’s my natal saturn square pluto thing. I feel that maybe plutonian energy has a way of hitting home in a very direct way. Maybe my saturn being in scorpio gets me a double whammy, I don’t know.
I do find it exciting to see you perched on the starting block ready to move at the sound of the gun. But me, I just keep walking in the backyard, and wowing at what springs up in my path. I’ve learned to slow down time, so it doesn’t eat me alive. So I think what I’m feeling is a deepening. Maybe that’s what happens at 52?
Does anyone feel this fire in any particular part of their physical bodies? I have had this open out pouring of physical heart energy going on. And I feel it starting to come from my gut too. But the top of my head feels pressure. These forces are so powerful that I am having to work on circulating the energy in my body to keep it moving.
I was like the movie Red Shoes with my Christmas baking, cooking, canning, like my movie would be the Red Oven Mitts. So creatively, it is good. But like I said I can get lost in the backyard of wow. and end up with an aching body. And I don’t want to drive my physical body to extinction (uranus sits on my natal mars). When I circulate the energy through my body, is there a direction I could send some of this excess from my body so I don’t have to be in physical motion? Any input on this out there?
thank you for the great article, Shanna. i turn 35 on the 27th this year, and this question is one of those i will ask myself as i make my intent: “Do you burn a flame within that resonates with your true self and creates feelings of abundance that have to be shared?”
reminds me of something someone said to me, not sure who – “If you’re passionate about something, set yourself on fire with it and people will gather to watch you burn.”
why not be passionate about ourselves? with ourselves? …and be so thankful to be alive and be empowered to change.