Here is a 30-second explanation of the Great Attractor by Prof. Jeremiah Ostriker of Princeton University, who describes how all of the galaxies near our own are being pulled in the same direction — by something. Remember that galaxies are large; our island in space is fairly modest in size, containing 200 billion to 300 billion stars. Many bigger ones are coming along for the ride, in the direction of the Great Attractor.
Today is Tuesday, December 6, 2011. We live extremely complex lives at this phase of history. We’ve all noticed how little time we have for ourselves, for the people we love, for the things we love. So when there is an astrological aspect that describes how we can get unnecessary things out of the way and go in the direction of what matters the most, it’s a good idea to listen. Right now we are experiencing just such an event.
Today the Sun, on its way to the lunar eclipse at the end of the week, is in a conjunction with a deep space point called Great Attractor. You may still be trying to figure out Mars, and you’ve never seen a little book called How To Lose Weight with the Great Attractor in the supermarket because there is no such thing. But it’s always there, at the midpoint of Sagittarius — wrapping space, time and a million galaxies around it like a kid stretches a rubber band around her finger.
Currently, right in the same degree is something called the North Node — Rahu, the mighty head of the dragon, which is one point that draws us toward our true dharma or life path. This alignment of the Sun, the Great Attractor and the North Node is happening today and it will not happen again for 18 years — and it’s happening right now, in this moment. If there is something you’ve wanted to do for the last 18 years (or more, or less), today is the day to get it going.
The Great Attractor is a massive object in deep space that is pulling everything in our galaxy’s vicinity toward it as it simultaneously moves away from us. It is the largest thing known to science. We can’t actually see it, because it’s obscured by the dust along the galactic plane. But we can see its effects and read the various types of waves (infrared, gamma, etc.), which is how any images are created (such as the one above).
It takes special astrologers to pick up on what this thing is about; we are friends with one of them — Philip Sedgwick. He has noted that the Great Attractor “doesn’t appear to be punching a hole into another dimension, but rather, it allows us to see around things. It allows you to see around the bend. It clears the way. It’s almost as if you’re moving around behind something.” Or as Eric wrote in a piece on the Great Attractor from 2001, “In other words, its massive gravitational force bends space-time so profoundly that we can get a view around the back of the universe,” which is another way of saying a view of our own lives, so often concealed in various blind spots.
Sedgwick describes Great Attractor as “the ultimate Sagittarian statement of leave me alone, don’t crowd my space, coming into the most extreme.” People with this point aspected strongly in their natal chart often find their effect on others is a confounding mix of attraction and alienation. So what does this polarizing point mean for us in this configuration – conjunct the Sun and North Node?