Today is Friday, December 16, 2011. If you feel yourself alternating between conflicting urges as you head into the weekend, you are in tune with the sky, as the luminaries and two personal planets are making strong aspects. The big event on the horizon is the Sun, nearing its conjunction with the Galactic Center in late Sagittarius on Monday.
The Sun’s alignment with the Galactic Center (the core of our galaxy and our spiritual homing signal) offers a sense of contact with something we long for — if we’re open to feeling it. With the Sun making a sextile to Saturn in Libra at the same time, see if you can let this sense of contact and spiritual clarity or spaciousness infuse your relationships.
This could happen in how you perceive these relationships emotionally, or in how you actually structure them. With a sextile, you can work the flow of energy from either side of that equation to inform and evolve the other. Either way, the idea is to allow contact and a feeling of surrender to genuine loving-kindness. Then by Wednesday, since the solstice can arrive with a sense of release from our feeling of time compression, you may feel like a destination has been reached.
The Moon is a little easier for most of us to feel and conceptualize than the GC. It entered Virgo last night, and tomorrow it squares the Sun. This is the last quarter (waning) Moon, and it generally feels like an urge to finish up whatever projects you have been working on for the last three weeks, rather than starting new ones. This year we have a New Moon on Christmas Eve. If you celebrate that holiday you may feel an extra sense of pressure to finalize gift-buying and other preparations, with a natural sense of completion when done. Since tomorrow’s quarter Moon is in Virgo, don’t be surprised if you find yourself a bit more particular than usual about how your holiday preparations and projects get done. Try to take ‘imperfections’ in stride and go with the flow. When the Moon enters Libra on Sunday at 3:06 am EST, you’ll be better able to see the beauty in it all anyway.
Also in Virgo (for the long-ish haul) is Mars, the planet of drive, desire and libido. This weekend, it moves closer to a square with Pholus in mid-Sagittarius, which will be exact later in the week. Feel like if you let go of any inhibition, you’ll become the scarlet whore of Babylon? That’s Mars-Pholus talking – but is there any truth to that feeling?
Pholus can have the sense of letting the genie out of the bottle, and has the key phrase, ‘small cause, big effect’. But rather than keeping your inhibitions rigid, it’s more useful to keep any self-critical thoughts in check — especially with regard to who and what you desire sexually, how you want the desire of others demonstrated to you, and how you do or do not allow the concept of ‘healthy service’ into your relationships. Mars in Virgo square Pholus in Sagittarius can also come with insights about facilitating your spiritual (possibly ancestral) healing around desire and sexuality — plus the desire to do so.
You may alternate between feeling constrained and then wanting to bust out over the weekend. The square between Venus in Capricorn and Saturn in Libra also carries some tension. Part of this is a case of mutual reception: these two planets are each occupying a sign that the other rules. This can sometimes feel like a hostage situation, and that term describes many ‘monogamous’ relationships. As Len noted of this aspect yesterday, on the one hand, you may feel an urge toward the material and pragmatic; on the other, there’s the potential to demand reciprocation as the rule rather than allow it as a freely given gift.
Ask yourself (to paraphrase Len), ‘Do I truly want relationships in which we both receive what is offered graciously? Or do I just want what I want’? See if you can open yourself up to the idea of spaciousness in your relationships to allow genuine, deep contact — as suggested by the Sun conjunct the center of our galaxy. This requires a willingness to let go of many of society’s prevailing dictates about what a ‘real’ or ‘worthy’ relationship looks like, and you may feel unsure or vulnerable as you give it a try. If you need to consider things pragmatically, try answering this: If what you have to gain is alignment with the source of life itself, what exactly are you afraid of losing?
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Amanda: That is a truly sublime photograph of an amazing piece of art. Thank you.
Thank you for the gift of a very well wrapped and satisfying Daily Astrology blog. Love your description of the Mars-Pholus square. Have not see the Scarlet Whore of Babylon for ages, but i’m sure she would get a kick out of it. Thank you as well for extending on the mutual reception so graciously.
Be, yes! it – the sparkly blue dress very well could have been water! very sunshine on water-like. What do you think of that?
Additional the dream continued on with water theme — The next “scene” of the dream – after walking through the hall of politics – was a split “room” – I was in a viewing room of sorts looking out into a grey deep water area surrounded by rocks (but continuing on – so a large deep body of stormy water.) The other side of the “split room” I could not see into but I knew it contained family members, friends and others.
They too had a view through glass walls of the water and rocks. Looking out with binoculars I could see that several children were somehow out climbing on the tall rocks in the water. The youngest and smallest explored too close to the edge and fell – me watching knowing that “no one who has ever fallen into those depths has come up alive”.
However, the “family, friends and others” from the unseen room ALL immediately jumped into the water and brought the child to safety into the room I occupied. He was cold and shaking and being bundled by his mother who was the first there to him in the water.
(Interesting, isn’t it – how I had no access to get OUT into the water – but they all had access to come in. Aren’t dreams great?!)
xo
Linda
absolutely, bkoehler! and that’s one reason why i thought it a good idea to give vesta-neptune some space in these pages yesterday: to be sure we all knew about it, but also b/c not everything can be squeezed into one post!
thank you so much for giving that aspect some attention in today’s comments.
🙂
At the moment I am typing now, transiting Vesta is neck and neck with transiting Neptune at 28+ Aquarius, and she’s taking the lead. She’s also on the ascendant (transiting) here in my home town.
In several ways the Neptune and Vesta (and what a combo. . talk about push-pull) energy contribution to the big picture you have described here could be meaningful to us today. Gift-buying, relationships, spirituality, surrender or letting go, . . . it seems Vesta wants to help you and Neptune makes it intoxicating. Work is play and loving is healing, and letting go is grounding. What a great day to be alive, don’t you think? I’m off to see the wizard myself.
aword, the blue dress. . . could that involve sparkling water?
be
Yikes! I’m being put through the wringer right now. This is soooooo helpful! Muchas gracias 🙂
Such beautiful stuff here – addressed by Len yesterday. and carried on today. Thank you guys, thank you Len, for your wisdom and generosity. Perhaps I can face Christmas as Scrooge at the end of his journey, rather that at the beginning. Have been going through hellish days since the eclipse – but yesterday realized once again that it’s the crap that has to surface in order to be cleared. And what is coming to light somewhat violently is my constant self-criticism, the partypooper, which used to work in the shadows – but has come out to show his true self. Painful but necessary. Aword, I loved your image of Glen Close in the dress yesterday! That sparkling blue colour is truly amazing – a gift!