Today is Thursday, August 11, 2011. The Moon is in Capricorn most of the day before transitioning to Aquarius just before mid-night at 11:48 pm EDT. The Capricorn Moon usually feels more than a little cautious and serious, and for now that is a perfectly good thing for you to connect with. After leaving a conjunction with Pluto in Capricorn yesterday, the Moon is now plowing through the territory between Pluto and Uranus in Aries, whose square aspect is beginning to rear its head. In the end, the Uranus-Pluto squares will in many ways define this entire decade. For now we are just beginning our initiation into what this will look and feel like in our lives.
As the Moon waxes toward Full (on Saturday at 2:58 pm EDT, at 21 degrees Aquarius) it is now activating these squares via their mid-point. In other words, it is stirring up the interior of this aspect, the heart and soul and guts of what it is, and lighting that up for all the world to witness and become aware.
This territory that the Moon is crossing right now is home to the constellation Cygnus, the graceful swan who flies above us, and brings to mind the myth of Leda and the Swan. In that myth, Zeus came to Leda in the guise of a swan and seduced her. Swans and ‘swan medicine’ are also associated with shape-shifting and profound states of awareness and transformation in the shamanic traditions of other cultures. And the theme pops up again in The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen.
Transformation is the name of the game when it comes to Uranus-Pluto. As noted in the Tuesday subscriber issue of Planet Waves:
Anything at that midpoint comes under the spotlight of the Uranus-Pluto theme, which is about crisis bringing about deeply necessary structural change. There happens to be a slow-moving minor planet right there, conjunct the Full Moon and right at the midpoint: Nessus.
. . .
Nessus has a theme of the cycles of karma, or as author Melanie Reinhart puts it, ‘the buck stops here’. One other attribute of Nessus is ‘potentially inappropriate sexual conduct’, a theme that shows up in the Leda myth. Nessus is, on many levels, about responsibility coming home to roost. We can use the wisdom of Swan to navigate the entry into the powerful combination of Uranus, Nessus and Pluto, which will have effects well into the end of the current decade.
Transformation can feel daunting in chaotic times, and some may find it traumatic. But we have a little time to wrap our brains around Uranus-Pluto, and find ways to open up to the process that are creative, productive and meaningful. Right now, we’re getting a little extra juice in this endeavor. The other planet currently activating the epic squares between Uranus and Pluto is the red planet Mars. If you are an early riser, you can see Mars in the pre-dawn sky, shining near the twin stars Castor and Pollux. Morning sky planets are relatively ‘young’ in their sojourn across the sky and so this Mars is still inexperienced and gawky. In addition Mars is currently ‘out of bounds’ which is to say beyond the confines of the path which the Sun demarcates in the sky. Out of bounds planets often behave just as the term suggests, like a maverick, with no sense of boundaries or balance. When it is a young Mars, well, things can get more than a little heated.
The natural function of Mars is to separate things and make distinctions, to draw the proverbial line in the sand. What we have now are lines being drawn in places that are already beyond any line that matters: the riots in the UK and the Wisconsin recall elections (among other cultural dramas) as well as personal situations. Today’s opposition of Mars in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn can serve to intensify and/or contain this. It is a matter of choice. Mars went out of bounds on July 24, 2011 and returns within the confines of normal celestial activity on Aug 22, 2011. So Mars has reached his furthest extreme and is already on his way back. It makes no sense to ‘go there’ with someone or something that is clearly out of bounds. All we need to do is to allow the prodigal son home. As someone on my Facebook page suggested, it may takes a lot of self control to feel and act out what is peaceful, but sometimes it is the meek who are the strong ones.
By Gary Caton with Amanda Painter and Eric Francis
Note to Leos: Your birthday report is ready. Read this page to find out more. Note to All the Signs: We’re still offering the Mercury Retrograde Report (one of Eric’s favorite 12 sign reports ever; this one came in on a beam of light) and the Midyear Report also offers 12 signs of astrology for one low price. And if you’ve read this far, here is the August monthly horoscope (premium content), available for just a click — you’ll get an auto-reply with the link.
Chelsea, this photo is priceless! It captures so much. Thank you to you and Eli.
Wow, Mystes. Please check your e-mail because I have questions and I don’t want to clutter up these comments any more than I already have.
Um, Carrie, sweetie… You *are* having an affair with a married man. Remember? Your husband is married, ne?
And he is attached to someone else. Neither of you may know how to recognize that yet, but you are wandering toward it.
I have had the unsettling experience of walking into a room and searching for someone I was supposed to meet there. After 15 minutes, no luck. As I turned to leave, I suddenly saw her. She had stopped talking to a third party, so I suddenly recognized her. Her features had completely transfigured while deep in conversation with another person.
Your husband is also your married lover. Go look for him. And while you are at it, find the other Carrie he is consorting with.
(I usually have to be looking at a piece of artwork to do an oneirocriticon (dreamspeech), but not this time.)
Dream,
Good call. I think you are on to something, there.
for what its worth in my experience it can be valuable to view some dreams as a conversation from one hemisphere of the brain to the other, in the sense of the right brain/left brain or apollonian/dionysian dichotomy…
for instance, I don’t want to have children, but that is a rational choice -it comes from a logical place of knowing that is not the right choice for my life -and yet, sometimes I still have dreams and/or even fantasies about having them. I view that as my dionysian side compensating or evening out the choice of the logical brain, if you will -so that the psyche is not strangled by strict logic
dont know if that helps or even makes any sense, but IME the inner healer is always seeking balance
Oh and transiting Neptune and transiting Chiron are opposing natal Uranus (in the 12th H) and natal Pluto (in the 12th H) and trining natal Neptune (in the 2nd H).
Can my head explode yet?
OK, I get it now. In looking at my chart, (using Koch houses) I find that transiting Chiron is sitting right on my sun with transiting Neptune a mere 4 degrees behind also near my sun; all in my 6 house. Transiting Pluto is coming up on (but not quite there yet) my moon and Saturn in my 4th house and transiting Mars is opposing these two and it is in my 10th house. Meanwhile, transiting Uranus is in my seventh house, squaring both transiting Mars and transiting Pluto. It is also making an inconjunct (150 degrees) with my natal Pluto (in the 12th H) and my natal Neptune (in the 2nd H) forming a Yod. Transiting Jupiter is in my 8th house opposing natal Neptune in my 2nd house. Finally, transiting Neptune is conjunct natal Chiron in the 5th house. Damn, that’s a lot of big energy going on in several houses at once. It makes me dizzy just looking at it all.
No wonder I am feeling conflicted and change is upon me.
🙂 Agree they are amazing. I would be bereft without them. I’m starting to see a Jungian Analyst in October as part of my studies. I am *really* looking forward to the dream aspect of that!
Sarah,
Thanks for the insight. He wasn’t unavailable in my dream; just attached to another. It is part of a pattern I seem to have of being attracted to unavailable or emotionally detached men. This goes back to my childhood without my father who is still unavailable in the way that I really need him; caring, loving and supportive.
Lots to think about.
Amanda,
Good idea; I will have to think on that a while, thanks!
haha sarah — we were posing at the same time. had i seen your comment, i would not have bothered with mine! dreams are such amazing things… 🙂
Touché, Amanda 🙂
hey carrie —
i don’t want to interpret your dream for you, since i think you’re the only one who can decide what it means for you. but if you imagine yourself as “you” in the dream, and then imagine yourself as “the married man” (i.e., your feminine and masculine sides) and have a little dialogue with each, does anything come up for you that rings a bell?
no expectations/obligation to post it here. i just sometimes find it a useful technique with my own dreams.
now what were mine last night? hmmmm…
Carrie – from another perspective, your dream doesn’t have to be literal: think of the man as an aspect of your psyche. What did he represent to you? What part of you is he? And why is he unavailable?
Just a thought. S x
ok, no joke — right now, my college/community radio station is playing a country-western song whose chorus is “the buck *starts* here.”
🙂
laughing my butt off…
“Nessus is ‘potentially inappropriate sexual conduct’, ”
Tell me about it. Last night I had a very vivid dream in which I was having a relationship with a married man. I never even look at married men and I certainly won’t start now but my subconscious seems to think otherwise. It was a very emotionally disturbing dream for me; I can’t help wondering why I had this dream and what it is trying to tell me about myself, my relationship, and my feelings about my relationship.
I do know that in the past several months, I have been feeling a weird sense of dissatisfaction. Before this, I felt secure in my life as the mother I am, yet now I feel my “calling” diverging into a different (but alongside my current one) path. This sense of longing or unfulfilled feeling was hitting me hard during my Uranus opposition (mid-life, around 39-42) but it went away only to feel similar now. This restlessness is not comfortable but it is a change and I want to go with it as long as I can do so without reneging on my current responsibilities and commitments.
Couple those personal feeling changes with the greater upheavals happening in the world and I am vibrating with the energy of it all like a tuning fork.
Change is good; but sometimes uncomfortable.
Thanks, half.
Nessus is a dominating centaur factor in my chart and the more informtion that is available about it the more clear and confidnet I become in interpreting certain life situations and inward proclivities of mine. I am a third, at least, generation of several types of abuse, not to mention the pervading imbalanced patriarchy’s effect on myself and society as a whole. Stopping the buck here is taking all I’ve got and the clearer I am that this is actually really the truth (incredulous is a word Eric used recently in the Gemini rx report and that is about how I feel right now). As I accept that this is what is going on, the more confidnet and clear I am becoming in my choices and decisions. I am also now even more trusting of my intuition which has been almost all I have had going for me up until recently. Thanks for the heads up concerning Segwick and Reinhart again as resources.
Swan medicine I have found awakens the true beauty and power of the individual.It is the totem of the child, the mystic, the poet , the dreamer. It also has myths that caution the too-freely releasing of beauty–because of the primal life changing forces that react to it. (Ted Andrews is my source). Swan is a pwerful totem to be covering us at this time of transition under Pluto, Nessus and Uranus.
Peace.
Philip Sedgwick’s site is a real resource – particularly as it delineates positive, negative, ceremonial and mundane facets of all Centaurs as well as TNOs and Dwarf Planets. I’ve purchased Melanie’s book ‘Saturn, Chiron and the Centaurs’ and it is a very useful resource – I think she is particularly intuitive and creative in her interpretations and sees interesting connections. Philip, working closely with astronomers and with assiduous scientific scrutiny, also brings some interesting findings to the table.
As I posted on the podcast thread the other day, mundane characteristics cited by Mr Sedgwick for Nessus (he also looks at +ve and -ve facets and ceremonial ones):
“Bad blood between parties, feuds over money especially regarding relationship dissolution, diseases transmitted by blood, transport ferries over water (literal astrology in the pipeline?), potions, tonics & elixirs designed to cast spells, therapy designed for healing sexual or monetary issues.”
Finding reliable material on the Centaurs is quite tough – even Melanie’s book is a reprint (with updates) of her 1996 seminar series. Pockets of work progress but the mainstream carries much resistance, from what I can see. I keep bringing other planetoid-type bodies into the mix at my local group but with them, as with many folk, there seems to be an entrenched position that the Mercury-Pluto Solar System is their limit – even when I mention how Pluto was always a plutoid but we just didn’t know it in 1930 and how Pluto is an obvious bridge into a further realm that we first met, and mis-ascribed, when we first encountered the Dark Lord!
This whole adjustment within astrology seems a little like the Saturn/Uranus shift with limits and traditions from the 1780s. Chiron seems to embody that need to integrate polarities.
Of course, Chiron has been accepted like no other Centaur into the mainstream and so I have to ponder, with its malleable characteristics and almost constantly morphing evolution, whether it has been deeply embraced within the astrological community, or more in a grudging tokenistic way?
In any event, Go Nessus! I would like to see the potential seeds of healing in that Saturday semi-square conjunct the Full Moon, rather than any number of the more negative possibilities.
Half