Dear Friend and Reader:
Enjoy the day-by-day account of this week’s aspects, written by Planet Waves’ own Genevieve Salerno. We are taking a more open-ended approach to the aspects this week, and I would like to invite you to add your thoughts about what you read — ideas about mythology of the asteroids, your experience of the aspects, and anything you think we may have missed. Comment away…
Yours & truly,
20 Monday: Sun sextile Galactic Center. Who you project into the world is the same as how you want the world to see you. Whether or not this is truly what you are made of is a personal decision. As Mars conjoins Chariklo today, the idea of being the supporter or witness to the process of another will come up. This is not so much about the victim as it is about pride. How hard is it to admit when you have been hurt, or to own up to when you hurt others?
21 Tuesday: Last Quarter. Moon enters Leo at 10:35 am EDT. Sun sextile Pluto. Leo is the sign most associated with creativity and playfulness and therefore with children or the state of childhood. The Sun sextile Pluto suggests a coherent understanding of time’s fleeting nature. Locked within the mystery of the child is the idea that the Child is an immortal state, while childhood has a beginning and an end. To understand a statement like that is to understand the transience of time. With Varuna stationing retrograde, Truth takes on more personal attributes.
22 Wednesday: The Sun is in the final degrees of Libra. Mercury trine Chaos. Venus conjoins Hylonome. Whenever the Sun makes an ingress (changes signs) there is a sense that something is coming to a close. It may be reflected by something hapening in your own life, or it may just be a new smell in the air that brings you to the fact that the season is maturing.
With these two planetary aspects occuring today the sense of flying off the handle, or losing control of the situations you are in, can be heightened. However, this is not a good reason to grieve, as Venus’ relationship with Hylonome might suggest. Rather, these powerful emotions are useful in navigating the idea of how much control you have over your circumstances and how much you do not have. It is true that as it grows colder (or warmer depending on your hemisphere), you change your clothes but your body itself stays the same. It might not be a bad idea to consider the parallels between the body in a sweater and the heart in the body.
23 Thursday: Sun enters Scorpio. Moon enters Virgo at 3:40 pm EDT. Juno conjoins Galactic Center. Venus conjoins Psyche. What is equality? What is justice? What is mercy? These are questions to consider whenever Juno and Venus are aspected, especially now that the Sun has crossed into the sign associated with the battlefield and with regenerative waters.
24 Friday: Mars semisquare Pluto; this is the last aspect before the conjunction coming late December. Mercury sextile Ixion. Something is coming up that is completely out of your character. You may get the chance to make some changes in your life, but only if you are ready to deal with the fear and embarrassment of being new in an old scenario. Put another way, the desire to grow and the courage to follow through with your actions is coming up against the tension of change actually happening. You may get the sense that you are flirting with disaster, but is this really the case? Also, Mercury is aspecting Ixion, the symbol of what you are capable of. Seems to me like the Universe is spelling out an oppurtunity for you to grow in a whole new, unexpected, genuine way. Should you take it, or should you risk waiting for a better time?
25 Saturday: Moon enters Libra at 10:47 pm EDT. Venus conjoins Pholus. Chiron stations direct. The Goddess of Affection and Attraction conjoins with the Centaur of “little cause, big effect”. Many times the greatest change you can make is a change of attitude or perspective. Chiron stationing direct in Aquarius addresses the sense of needing to be different in a crowd. Perhaps taking a new way home, or pausing in a natural setting will bring great ideas to your head today.
26 Sunday: Sun semisquare Saturn. Mercury square Jupiter. Pallas stations retrograde. Whenever the Sun makes an aspect to Saturn, the question is about power and limitation. And whenever there is a square in the picture, there is a sense of a locked door with a special combination to unlock it. Today is all about recognizing what your responsibilities are and what they are not. Also, with Jupiter in the picture, there may be a sense that everything is up to you, yet you cannot figure out the answer to the riddle. Do not despair. The good news is that while you are key player in your life, being stumped by the riddle is part of the riddle itself. As my father says, any decision you alone make in the name of what is good for you is the right one.
Sun sextile Pluto – as the owner of this as a natal aspect I’m thinking, ‘transformation is easier’. It is known at the core, in the bones, in ones essence – that this is so.
Life is change, the planet is change, the universe is change. It is a constant – the only certainty. It is fought constantly, this aspect, this transit – tells me that it is absolutely okay and to be embraced.
Yours, the queen of change.
“The Sun sextile Pluto suggests a coherent understanding of time’s fleeting nature. Locked within the mystery of the child is the idea that the Child is an immortal state, while childhood has a beginning and an end. To understand a statement like that is to understand the transience of time.”
Had this very conversation with my eleven year old daughter yesterday. She was talking about how surprised she was that her gifted class teacher is 53 because 50 is so “old”. I pointed out that her very own stepdad is turning 50 in a couple years, to which she responded that it only seems old because it is so very far away. We talked about how time seems to move at such a leisurely pace when you’re young, but how as you get older it seems to go by faster (even she has had the time-flies experience). I told her it seemed like yesterday that I was eleven myself. Then we were both lost in thought. I don’t know what went through her mind, but I thought ahead 20 or 30 (or hopefully more) years to a time when my partner who is fifteen years my senior will be gone, and of my grandmother who lost my grandfather (himself a good dozen years older than she) seventeen years ago now. Truly, it does go so fast, this life. Which only makes me more frustrated by the very many ways we waste it with target-marketed diversions (hi internet!). Though I can’t quite find the words to express it the way it rests so complete and multidimensional inside my mind, basically it is a necessary thing that we engage that Child in us to live actively, consciously and playfully, and not waste a drop. Yesterday was an exquisite view of all that; I can only assume tomorrow will be all the more so.