Where are you going? Where do you want to go? I don’t mean Tahiti or London or back to bed for a nap. I mean: what kind of vision do you have for the way you walk in the world — your impact, your sense of your own presence, your spiritual/energetic and social footprints. I ask because today at 8:33 pm EDT, Mercury conjoins Mars in Taurus as we near an eclipse.
Mercury-Mars in Taurus more than just a concentration of mental drive, though you may feel it like that in your day-to-day movements. Mercury and Mars are part of a larger aspect denoting a rare opening — and all of it constitutes an important landmark along the on-ramp to Thursday’s astrologically impressive Taurus New Moon eclipse: itself a rare opening.
Today’s opening is formed by a very tight (within a few arc minutes) sextile from Mercury-Mars to Chiron in Pisces, along with Mercury-Mars trine Pluto in Capricorn (just past exact). They form an earth-water-earth triangle that’s all about flow: the easeful flow of the trine, and the two sextiles, which ask us to take a little initiative to catalyze the energy they offer. (Chiron and Pluto are also making a water-earth sextile to each other.)
In particular, the Taurus-Pisces connection integrates spiritual and visionary ideas into our values system.
And with Mercury-Mars at (or very near) the midpoint of Taurus, there is an alignment with the Aries Point. (The midpoints of fixed signs — Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius — share a special resonance with the early degrees of the cardinal signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.)
The Aries Point is the sensitive area where personal and collective themes, ideas and events blend and intersect in compelling ways. Translation: the decisions we make today and through this week, in an effort to synthesize our spiritual/visionary ideas with our values, have some true potential to shape the world around us — at the same time that we take the helm of our own inner direction.
Making decisions about your values inwardly only matters if you allow those decisions to guide your actions outwardly. Otherwise, how can you claim them as values? Without a connection to and harmony with your actions, they are just ideas that you like.
In other words, this aspect pattern is about willful progressive decision-making, with the freedom to let go of what does not work (represented by the lunar South Node, the locus of Thursday’s eclipse) and integrate what does work (Chiron). Nobody has any excuse to claim being stuck at this point — the power of decision is right in your hands. You can think consciously and choose progress, which is the message of this aspect pattern.
The Aries Point resonance indicates that we can take this to the level of choosing together. Can you imagine what that might feel like? What might that look like?
As you formulate your vision, harness the heat, drive and agility of Mercury and Mars. In Taurus, they have some real determination that you can use — both to release what it’s time to release, and to put into action what is calling to be integrated. Part of the trick of formulating a vision and making decisions to support it is not getting hung up at the start with, “How will I do this? I don’t know all the steps!”
If inventors started with that question, nothing would ever get invented. Sometimes you have to see the big, brilliant picture first and fill in the steps to get there later, after you’ve committed energy and psychic space to it.
As luck would have it, even the astrology is spelling out that order of operations: the Sun is nearly conjunct asteroid Pallas Athene, which is about strategy. But even though they are functionally conjunct at the moment of Thursday’s eclipse, they’re not exactly conjunct until afterwards. The moment for planning your steps will come; but first, get your vision and your values in line, and get busy making choices. You know what is no longer serving you. You won’t disintegrate if you let it go; you’ll just be getting into the swing of things and opening up the space to choose again.
With additional writing by Eric Francis
Thank you for the beautiful words of your teacher, Daniel. 🙂
Hi Shaun,
That’s wonderful that you paint! And that you are sharing your energy with others in a teaching way and growing with your potential. I’m on that path too. It’s as though the creative energy was under a lot of focusing power. As we go along, we understand how that had a limiting influence, and so we desire deeper relating. It’s beautiful.
My teacher said about a painting: “You want to create light? Don’t paint there.” I think that’s a metaphor for allowing energy into our lives. Allowing Light is the conscious ability to get out of the way on purpose. Too many voices, instruments, or movements turns Light into colour, and we have moved away from stillness.
Hi Daniel,
I’ve been away and not sure if this comment will get lost in the ether, but wanted to let you know that I heard you, that you are a composer and you learned orchestration by analyzing paintings. Wow! My background is in painting, although these days I do a lot more teaching than anything else. It feels like a necessary thing, the putting aside of object making for the moment to live other ways, namely, learning to interact with other humans and leading a group instead of relating primarily to brushes and canvas.
Thank you Amanda for your article, and especially your highlighting on mercury and Mars is trigger home visions that sheds much light on my conscience. The mask falls with Mars and mercury to show the truth in Mindfulness… good cycle of the moon to you 🙂
Hi Shaun, I’m a composer actually. My composition teacher was also a painter though and he taught me orchestration by analyzing paintings!
Thanks, Daniel, for the good wishes. I loved your metaphor of the clean canvas and pigments ground up from earlier times. (Was it a metaphor? Are you actually painting? 🙂
And Be, thank you for sharing your insights about the current sky and its recent past and how much goddess energy there is and how it harkens back to Pluto’s second ingress and the eclipse last May. Neptune’s influence is certainly welcome now. Awareness of spiritual forces at work indeed.
Shaun,
Thinking of Vesta as a kind of “devotion ground work”, “necessary for re-focusing energy” for “healing and renewal” is a perfect metaphor for her symbol as she works with (trine) Pluto in the 2nd ingress chart (November 2008). Thank you for that insight. As a big part of the Pluto ingress to Capricorn (if not all the recent ingresses of outer, slow-moving planets) is the theme of balance, the lop-sided approach to “becoming equal” for women in this country (USA) has been to become more like men. More business-like in dress and behavior, more militant, more of what has been deemed to be of value in society.
In tomorrow’s solar eclipse Vesta will trine Neptune and, using your phrase, she will “refocus” the energy even more by also including Neptune’s “healing and renewal” energies; softening the harshness of the Plutonian energy she has been working with. As Venus is the lower octave of Neptune, and Venus will re-activate the May 2012 solar eclipse degree of 0 Gemini tomorrow, the goddesses could be trying to tell us that the balance is to be found between reaching equal value between men and women over time. It’s isn’t that women need to change – be more like men – it’s that societies need to change their values.
I can see that has been happening slowly as we (society) move toward more traditional values in how we treat the Earth, how our food is grown, work-from-home moms, intervening in the killing of girl babies, etc. With this eclipse emphasizing the goddess symbolism; Juno at 15 Aquarius squares Mars in Taurus and the nodes, but also trines Venus’ occultation of the Sun degree (15 Gemini), Ceres at 12 Cancer trines Chiron and also conjuncts the U.S. Sibly Sun, Pallas-Athene at 19 Taurus conjuncts the Sun-Moon, Vesta at 5 Cancer trines Neptune and conjuncts U.S. Jupiter. Even Sedna supports the understanding and appreciation of the Value of the Feminine side from her degree of 23 Taurus.
The Sabian Symbol for tomorrow’s eclipse degree is WISPS OF WINGLIKE CLOUDS STREAMING ACROSS THE SKY – The awareness of spiritual forces at work.
be
great words Shaun! Warm wishes to you in your lovely ripening and unfolding.
Hi Daniel, and thank you. I so relate to what you are saying. Surrender and trust. “Letting go of ways of stopping the process.” Exactly. The deep rebuilding without forcing, the gratefulness for things that have come to you. This is a special transit and it feels like things that have been polarized are being fused back into a whole (not just triangulated). All the best to you in your Sun/Moon Solar eclipse adventure.
Be, your insights about that chart are just wonderful. Tomorrow I will read them a third time and let them sink in, there is so much there. The Pluto-Athene connection at the same time as the Chiron-Vesta connection feels really important. I don’t remember much of what was in the news regarding women at the time, mainly because of the election. But since then, wow. Will also keep my eyes open for the ad you mentioned.
Amanda and Shaun,
Your comments have me adjusting my lens for a wider, deeper visual regarding this solar eclipse, especially as it relates to the Pluto ingress into Capricorn. Like you say Amanda, seeing the influence of the outer planets makes for a different picture. Shaun relates to using the 2008 Pluto ingress chart as a birth chart and what is going on now as transits to that chart, and he notes that Pluto in the 2nd ingress chart trined Vesta in Taurus. So because of this and the overwhelming coverage of the military sex-abuse subject taking place now (which I attribute largely to Mars-Mercury conjunct in Taurus), I’m back at the drawing board for another look.
Pluto’s 2nd ingress into Capricorn followed his 1st ingress 10 months before when he was met with a unique planetary pattern. In January 2008, Pluto’s ingress chart had a see-saw pattern; two clearly defined sections of major planets separated on both sides by two empty signs and houses. What connected them was an opposition between the Moon (women) and Uranus conjunct Pallas-Athene. Pallas-Athene had two different myths, one before the patriarchal takeover and the one she was given after. I believe that she symbolizes in this 1st ingress of Pluto into Capricorn, the dichotomy of her two natures. I believe her conjunction to Uranus points to a breakthrough in her split personality. The Moon at 19 Virgo and opposite Pallas-Athene (17 Pisces) is about confronting this issue.
Pluto was met by Venus (and Jupiter) in early Capricorn on his first entry, while Neptune was conjunct Mercury in Aquarius and those two were trine Mars in Gemini, forming another connection between the two sides of the see-saw. Combined, they would describe the issues confronting Pluto as he approached Capricorn the 1st time. The 2nd entry would describe how Pluto would tackle those issues.
Taking only the issue of the U.S. military sexual abuse explosion into consideration, I suspect the underlying provocation has to do with the woman’s role in the man’s world of war. Pallas-Athene is now more ambivalent about her duality than she was in the days when she guarded the city of Athens. It is possible that (some) men sense that and feel threatened by the increasing numbers of women coming into military service. Rape and other forms of sexual assault may be due to this feeling. If we look at the 2nd ingress of Pluto into Capricorn, the major planets form a tighter pattern called a bowl. However, if we add in Vesta (0 Taurus) and Pallas-Athene (15 Gemini) into the pattern there is a release of that compressed “bowl” energy. Shaun noted that Vesta formed a trine to Pluto (0 Capricorn) and as noted earlier (somewhere on PW), Chiron in Aquarius trined Pallas-Athene. These two “outer planets” within the bowl pattern found a way to express outside the bowl through these two goddess symbols. Therefore, since the last part of 2008, Pluto has been able to reach out with relentless Plutonian strength through the warrior princess Athene, which no doubt could be pretty powerful, even scary. On the other hand, Chiron the Healer was able to reach out beyond the bowl to Vesta whose M.O. was also strong, also protective, but much more compliant with the “traditional” female role assigned by the patriarchy.
One last note of interest is that in the 1st Pluto ingress to Capricorn chart the Moon was at 19 Virgo and opposite Uranus in Pisces. In the 2nd ingress chart, Saturn is at 20 Virgo and opposite Uranus in Pisces. The two polar opposites – Capricorn and Cancer – through their rulers, Moon and Saturn are confronting change (transition) as they oppose Uranus (breakthroughs) in the story of Pluto’s stay in Capricorn. The solar eclipse this week, in fact the whole series of eclipses during this period will bring about change faster than it would otherwise occur.
The Sun and Moon, Pallas-Athene and Mercury in the eclipse chart will form a grand trine with the Pluto #2 Ingress chart’s Saturn (20 Virgo) and Jupiter (21 Cap) conjunct Venus (17 Cap), bringing about some stability in government and societal processes which should facilitate some needed change. A trine between Neptune (5 Pisces) and Vesta (5 Cancer), who is conjunct the U.S. Sibly Jupiter, will produce some comforting reassurance to the beleaguered parties who feel most threatened. I saw a commercial to that end designed to reach military men that will soon air. Watch for it. Again, Chiron and Mars in the eclipse chart are sextile each other and both quincunx the U.S. Sibly Saturn in Libra, forcing an adjustment in rules or structures via the Yod pattern. This too will speed the process of change (integration, adaptation, etc.) in government systems. I’m sure it will be affecting our personal systems as well.
be
Hi Shaun, I would say, yes exactly. Yes, for some time I’ve been working towards this precise moment. While Saturn is giving me a certain reconnection and rebuilding of Purpose, the North Node is opening up the space to enter into. I am working with a clean canvas but with carefully prepared paints from the ground up powder of my adolescence. With all this Taurus overload, I’m being asked to slow down and not be so god damn forceful. I have more to gain by letting go or rather, working it through from the other side, ease up and let others in. With the South Node there, I need to let go of ways that I stop that process, and that’s the part that can feel like two steps forward and one step back. Really what is happening now is surrender and trust.
Thank you for this, Amanda. Your opening paragraph went straight to my Center. Beautiful and brilliant, as always. And the bit about not needing to have your strategy figured out right away…so reassuring. You and Eric have managed to make some complicated energies crystal clear. Thank you so much for all you do.
Thanks Lizzy! I’ll make Google my friend and look for Pedagogy for the Third Millennium. I have seen the Ken Robinson TEDtalk. So. Very. Good. Worth another watch.
Sorry Shaun, didn’t post the link and now I can’t find it! (which is prob just as well).
Yes, I join Daniel in wishing you a really Happy Birthday, Amanda. You Taurus gals are the tops!
Thanks jinspace!
Hi Shaun! If you go to this link and scroll down to Pedagogy for the third millenium, there’s a rough outline (very rough, and really badly translated…) of the method they use.
if you’re interested in teaching and education (and nurturing creativity) you’ll really enjoy “Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity” at TED.COM. (link was so loooong so didn’t post it…).
Thank you, Amanda, for this:
“Making decisions about your values inwardly only matters if you allow those decisions to guide your actions outwardly. Otherwise, how can you claim them as values? Without a connection to and harmony with your actions, they are just ideas that you like.”
It is so easy to forget or not realize this.
Daniel: Where your Sun and Moon are are where my nodes are. My North Node is in Taurus, so my nodes are reversed from the transiting ones. Do you feel more compelled to action with the Sun on the North Node? I’ve been making a spiritual practice of walking towards my own North Node for several years now, so to have it reversed feels like walking forward while also walking backwards. Just curious how you experience the axis with your lights.
Be: Thanks for sharing the 11/28/2008 Pluto ingress chart. Your suggestion to see it as a birth chart was right on and underlined since at that moment, Pluto was on my Ascendant. Not fun but necessary. I also see that Pluto was trining Vesta retrograde at 1′ or 2′ of Taurus, which to me speaks of a kind of devotion groundwork, which is necessary for refocusing energy in order to bring about healing and renewal.
Lizzy: Hey! You’re an English teacher also? The method they used sounds amazing- starting from my soul and not the brain. Would you mind explaining a little please?
Happy Birthday Amanda!!! 😉
“Nobody has any excuse to claim being stuck at this point — the power of decision is right in your hands. You can think consciously and choose progress, which is the message of this aspect pattern.”
So, this is about taking the bull by the horns. (Unavoidable pun, sorry.) I’ve got natal Mars at 13 deg 20′ Taurus in my 6th house, and the Aries Point on the cusp of the 5th. And now I understand what I’ve been feeling building, and how to use it wisely – so far, so good. Many, many important decisions to make, and steps to take (and there’s always something else that can be shed, isn’t there).
Thanks, Amanda – this is tremendously helpful. A transit not to be squandered.
Lizzy – How lovely, and how reassuring! Thanks for sharing your experience.
In envisioning what we want, we need to understand and identify what we don’t want. All the flap about Syria right now is a smoke screen for instigating war with Iran. Syria and Iran are linked by their agreements to support each other militarily. World events are being orchestrated in much the same way that pieces are moved around a chess board.
At the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure last week, former Canadian Associate Minister of National Defense Paul Hellyer addressed the fact that the Bilderbergs, Trilateral Commission and CFR are keeping disclosure from happening primarily for economic reasons (Iran, by the way, has the third largest source of oil in the world). David Rockefeller is a member of all three groups and had the Clintons out to sky watch at his ranch in hopes of seeing phenomenon. This was while Clinton was office. You can find Hellyer’s testimony on Youtube and go to http://www.stormcloudsgather.com for interesting analysis of what is happening globally. Also, James Corbett and the Corbett Report is a great resource.
In November of 2008, Obama had the attention and support of the entire world. What has he done with that currency? He was in a position to form alliances with leaders around the globe to initiate change rather than go toe to toe with the Republicans. He is now a lame duck president, in my opinion.
I was distressed to read of his pick for Penny Pritzker as Secretary of Commerce. She has raised/donated $17 million dollars toward the purchase of a $35 million dollar estate in Hawaii for the Obamas.
Here is an article by Robert Scheer from today’s Huffington Post on Penny Pritzker:
Robert Scheer.
Editor, Truthdig.com; Author, ‘The Great American Stickup’
Obama Did It For the Money
Posted: 05/07/2013
The love fest between Barack Obama and his top fundraiser Penny
Pritzker that has led to her being nominated as Commerce secretary
would not be so unseemly if they both just confessed that they did it
for the money. Her money, not his, financed his rise to the White
House from less promising days back in Chicago.
“Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would
have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency,”
according to a gushing New York Times report last year that read like
the soaring jacket copy of a steamy romance novel. “When she first
backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes
list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who
needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew
close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer
home.”
But don’t sell the lady short; she wasn’t swept along on some kind of
celebrity joyride. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to part of the Hyatt
Hotels fortune, has long been first off an avaricious capitalist, and
if she backed Obama, it wasn’t for his looks. Never one to rest on the
laurels of her immense inherited wealth, Pritzker has always wanted
more. That’s what drove her to run Superior Bank into the subprime
housing swamp that drowned the institution’s homeowners and depositors
alike before she emerged richer than before.
Pritzker and her family had acquired the savings and loan with the
help of $600 million in tax credits. She became the new bank’s
chairwoman and ended up as a director of the holding company that
owned it. Under her leadership, Superior specialized in subprime
lending, hustling folks with meager means and poor credit into high
interest loans that were bundled into the toxic securities that
wrecked the U.S. economy.
As federal regulators began to move in on her bank after it had
dangerously inflated the value of its toxic assets, Pritzker assured
its employees: “Our commitment to subprime has never been stronger.”
Two months later, the bank was pronounced insolvent. At the time, the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s inspector general report concluded,
“The failure of Superior Bank was directly attributable to the board
of directors and executive management ignoring sound risk
diversification principles, as evidenced by excessive concentration in
residual assets related to subprime lending. …”
No biggie. In announcing her appointment, Obama joked, “For your
birthday present, you get to go through confirmation. It’s going to be
great.” It’s the same sort of joke he could have cracked in appointing
Citigroup alum Jack Lew to be Treasury secretary.
It is deeply revealing that in the midst of the continuing cycle of
misery brought on by the chicanery of the financial community two key
Cabinet positions dealing with business practices will likely be
occupied by people who specialized in those financial rip-offs.
For Pritzker, as with the confirmation of Lew, the fix is in. The
Republicans don’t dare push back too hard on shady business practices
that their deregulation legislation endorsed, and Democrats will go
along with anything the president wants.
The same restraint will be exhibited in exploring the offshore tax
havens that have protected the Pritzker family’s immense wealth. Back
in 2008, when she had been rumored for this same Cabinet post,
Pritzker was queried about avoiding the sort of taxes most ordinary
folks are obligated to pay, and she replied in writing: “I am a
beneficiary of some non-U.S. situs trusts which were established about
50 years ago (when I was a child) and are administered by a
non-U.S.-based financial institution as trustee. I do not control how
those assets are administered.” If the Republicans challenge that
canard, the Democrats will smugly remind them of Mitt Romney’s tax
havens, as if that excuses tax avoidance within their own ranks.
Certainly the Republicans will not raise questions about the
anti-union practices that helped create the Hyatt fortune in the first
place and continue to this day. Nor will the Democrats, who embrace
unions only at national convention time.
“There is a huge unresolved set of issues in the Democratic Party
between people of wealth and people who work,” noted Andy Stern,
former president of the Service Employees International Union, which
attempts to organize the miserably paid workers that produced
Pritzker’s wealth. “Penny is a living example of that issue.”
But it’s payback time, and even normally progressive Democrats like
Pritzker’s home state Sen. Dick Durbin are prepared to roll over.
Treating the appointment of billionaire Pritzker as a victory for
women everywhere, the senator said she’d “broken through the glass
ceiling with her extraordinary intelligence and business acumen.”
Right, Pritzker will be a fine role model for those women working at
the Asian factories that she’ll be touring as Commerce secretary
extolling the virtues of the American business model.
thanks, be — though eric gets the credit for noting the Pluto and Chiron influences, and seeing the bigger picture. this would have been a very different post without his input.
and yes, my sun is in taurus — basically conjunct this eclipse. it finally dawned on me that’s why i’ve had such a hard time “reading” this eclipse chart, which seems to have such obvious things going on in it: it’s in my blind spot.
so… we’ll see what manifests! i just read over Len’s post above; i think it gives some great tips.
One of the things I love about the Sun in Taurus is the lack of fluctuation. My Sun is in water and although there are many things to love about water, staying firmly on course is not one of them. You hit on this Amanda, and I believe your sun IS in Taurus, right? Too much of staying firmly on course could lead to “being stuck” but when there has been so much slipping and sliding for what seems like forever, some trusted, firm earth – AND clear vision – is a welcome relief. Like it’s totem Bull, it can provide a slow steady pace forward without being distracted off course. After surviving a tsunami, what could bring greater joy?
I had noticed that this Thursday’s solar eclipse would be forming a grand earth trine with the Pluto ingress Capricorn chart of November 2008, but until you brought it to my attention I’d not had a clear picture of how that might work out. The Pluto ingress to Capricorn (itself on an Aries Point) had Saturn at 20 Virgo and Jupiter at 21 Capricorn (with Venus at 17 Cap) and all the major planets were located within one half of the chart between Saturn and Uranus opposite him in Pisces. This concentration of power seems to invite the harnessing you spoke of, and if we think of the 2008 ingress of Pluto into Cap as a Birth Chart and today’s Mercury-Mars conjunction (as the lead team for the solar eclipse) being a Transit to that chart, we can consciously co-create the vision of what we want, rather than just being pulled along the course of evolution. I can’t thank you enough for this observation (vision) you have provided.
Ironically, you might appreciate that in that 11/26/08 ingress chart, Mercury and Mars were conjunct the Sun in Sagittarius, and when harnessed to the lone (major) planet in Thursday’s eclipse chart fire sign (Aries), Uranus could provide the stimulus (via his trine to the Sagittarius trio of personal planets) for visioning that “big, brilliant picture”. How exciting is that?
be
I’m grateful for all the reading I do here, truly it’s so helpful. My Sun is at 17 degrees Scorpio and my Moon 16 Taurus, so all this action including the south node on this degree is really having a profound affect on me. I don’t know what the next step is. I only know that I’m being asked to clean house and then see what new energy comes rushing in. I know what I want and I’m fearless in stating it, in believing it. I also don’t have any answers. I acknowledge my space, and am deeply grateful for everything that has come to me and that I’ve embraced. But I’m also pushing through the status quo. Yes, I can question if what I have is enough. Because “enough” may just be an excuse for not striving to bring in the whole shebang, the real deal.
I will! Bless you, dear sweet Mia! I’m so deeply touched and encouraged by your words. xoxoxo
Dear Lizzy,
So happy to read your post. The door has opened for you. I can feel it here in New York State! Enjoy what is happening and it will grow.
Italy has so many gifts with its art, culture and people. I have been on a number of occasions. It is the only country I have visited when traveling by train, the fellow occupants of my compartment have their lunch and offer to include me. Always.
Be ready to receive, Lizzy!
Thanks, Amanda, for your article. Looking forward to this New Moon.
Mia
Thanks 🙂
Last weekend I discovered this simple but very powerful meditation on the breath which I’d like to share:
http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/the-slow-breath/
Thank you for this wonderful piece, Amanda! It’s so spot on for me right now, and you give such great advice. Had a lovely experience involving synchronicity yesterday evening. At the weekend I realised that the way out of my fear and sense of lack was through opening up to the good I already had in my life by meditating on the blessings and things to be grateful for, every day. Well yesterday I gave my first English lesson to staff at an NGO who go out to India, Brazil, Israel etc (and Italy) to train teachers who teach children from the favelas, slums etc. with a particular teaching method they use. We had this amazing conversation about their teaching method where they explained that it began first with self-awareness, which involved many things, including working with gratitude and being in present time. I felt that i was sharing space with kindred spirits, and that I was being given support in my efforts to break free from my old, restricting mentality. Was weird and wonderful.