By Len Wallick
Today, the Sun’s apparent motion southward reaches its limit. It stations directly over the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere. That makes it the first day of summer below the equator, and the longest day of the year for those down under. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere it’s the other side of the coin — the shortest days and mostly cold. For those wishing to mark the occasion with some sort of ceremony, the exact time is 6:38 pm EST.
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Concurrent with the Sun stationing over the tropic of Capricorn on our globe, it also moves into the sign of Capricorn on the zodiac. It is a change of season experienced in one way or another by every human being on Earth. Its a personal experience concurrently and publicly shared. That’s how cardinal point events come to be known — as the congruence of the personal and political.
Your faithful correspondent is fortunate to have both residence and employment near the 48th parallel in the upper northwest corner of the United States. The two are close enough to each other to allow nearly two hours of commuting by daily perambulation. This has allowed for abundant sky viewing at dawn, dusk and during all hours of the night as the the duties of a salaried subordinate would dictate. During these long recent nights with the sky obscured by sleet-laden clouds, one has turned attention to the itinerant businesses that sprout up along the roadside at this time of year, providing frequent and ample opportunity to contemplate the odd tableau of trees nailed to crosses.
Two pieces of wood affixed at right angles to each other has a powerful resonance this time of the year, representing the martyrdom of perhaps the most influential figure in Western Civilization. The meaning of the cross has evolved from a predominant method of torture and execution to an abstraction connected with faith. To get some perspective on this, just imagine wearing a golden miniature guillotine, hangman’s noose, electric chair or water board on a chain around your neck. Come to think of it, there may be a few who do.
In astrology, the cross goes even further back than Christianity, representing the relative orientation of signs that share a common quality — cardinal, fixed or mutable. It is especially associated with the cardinal signs as the first degree of each represents a solar station over one of the tropics or the equator, dividing the year up into four equal parts. It is thus that the beginning of each season has a direct correspondence between astrological sign and geographical location. Something conveniently left out of the lessons at a public school.
Having a common quality or identity while being at right angles to one another symbolizes the tensions of a conflicted personality. The seasons of a human life, no less than the seasons of our planet, are resolved through oscillation to equilibrium and back again. Today, the Sun does its part to keep the cycle going. Our part is awareness.
The awareness begins with the events that precede and concur with this solstice. The short term background is a Mercury retrograde cycle that thrice crosses the same cardinal point separating Sagittarius and Capricorn. Twice before with yet one more, Mercury, associated with electricity (among other things), has served to effectively galvanize the threshold in preparation for the Sun’s own crossing. This crossing results in a discharge of sorts, distributing the potential into the kinetic, literally turning the wheels as so many times before. But this time its with a bit of extra oomph. Indeed, it is this Mercury retrograde that most clearly distinguishes this particular solstice from the last time the Sun’s ingress to Capricorn was immediately preceded by a lunar eclipse — in 1638.
And how about that eclipse? Those of you favored by weather and gifted with fortitude really got quite a show. The umbra’s shadow fluctuated over Luna’s face as if it were itself in demonstration of the energies that an opposition of the luminaries on a cardinal point would imply. Indeed, it is not just a close association in time but also the externalized qualities of polarity that is synchronous — the internalized tension of the cardinal points phenomena makes the eclipse and solstice essentially one event.
The last time this happened, 372 years ago, the Holy Roman Empire was falling apart. All over Europe, Protestant and Catholic nations were playing out the polarity, bankrupting themselves by waging interminable wars that settled nothing. It was the time of the Three Musketeers and others of their ilk working out the internal tension of a cardinal square between serving as a mercenary or being true, at the very least, to one’s self. In Great Britain, King Charles I was holding out for absolute monarchy, a position that ultimately led to his execution with a swing to the opposite extreme in the person of Cromwell. And the astute, erudite Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for daring to speak her mind in the presence of men.
Ah, but they did not have Mercury in retrograde providing reiterated perspective and activation. Nor did that time bear witness to the collection of outer planets near the cardinal points, focusing creative awareness and initiative. As a result, the last time the sound and fury accompanying an anaretic lunar eclipse immediately preceding a Capricorn solstice did little more than provide the founders of the United States an example of what not to do. And that’s the long term against which today’s change of season can best be interpreted. We are closing the year of the cardinal T-square that found so many of us at odds with the mercenary pursuits to which our lives had been devoted with no return but betrayal. We are setting in to a new rendition of that cardinal square phenomenon. That rendition begins the new year when Jupiter’s expansiveness becomes more sudden and unpredictable in the presence of Uranus at the Aries point — astrology’s greatest mystery. All this while Pluto patiently prepares to meet this energy and transform it from molten potential to a transformed expression of that potential to endure for a long time.
So whether your day be longest or shortest, whether your nights be cold or balmy, take a moment to contemplate. You are alive and aware as none who have gone before. You are available to participate as none have before. Step back and take this perspective of your self thus. It has always been that our choices have defined who we are. But now, as no other time, our choices are functioning to determine what and who those who follow us will be. Think of them, be kind and be wise. Those yet unborn are depending on it.
Offered In Service
Fe? Are you out there? Remember a few weeks ago, here at Len’s column, you asked me if “DADT would end up permanently off the books so that the next Administration cannot put it back in. Do the aspects support that?” And then in my meandering way I told you that, based on the total lunar eclipse and the winter solstice charts of 12/21, yes they did and “the people have accepted change and are ready to leave DADT to the history books.” And here we are, with a beaming president, and the many supporters of the legislation to end the rule DADT, live and in color on your own TV! Don’t you just love astrology? http://planetwaves.net/pagetwo/2010/11/30/of-mercury-and venus/
I said it then and still believe that the major aspects, the ones we only see rarely, are the history makers in that they set up the situations for change, but it is the personal planets, the little guys, Venus and Mercury and Mars and the Moon that carry out the task of making it happen, along with not-so-little Sun. In their relatively speedy cycles they make contact with those slow and powerful guys, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Chiron, Saturn and Jupiter, passing the desires and feelings, and problems of us human beings to them, and then retracing their steps (Venus and Mercury and Mars) to reconnect and revamp and re-negotiate until finally, one day, say a historic Full Moon with a total lunar eclipse lock-step with a winter solstice, featuring the Galactic Core/Center. . . well it just happens and wow. . . everybody looks so surprised!
We are those little guys, represented by Venus and Mercury and Mars in the sky. And we astrologers try to keep up with their doings, especially Eric and Len here at PW, who daily grind out a report after much mental study and intuitional sensing of what’s going on and what it could possibly mean to us. You got to wonder what it must have been like thousands of years ago when astrology was only available to the privileged few. I say we’ve come a long way baby, and maybe, just maybe, not so far to go!
be baby, be
Cheers Linda! So Sydney is cool and there’s snow on the mountains today? Thanks for the heads up. Here’s me thinking you were off for a barbie on the beach (pardon the cultural cliche!) and my feeling jealous as heck at the thought 😉
Yeah the Enya music seemed fitting for a solstice celebration, plus that’s the first time I ever heard/saw that particular lyrical arrangement. Seems to pull together the various aspects of the season quite nicely.
Season’s greetings to you in Australia!
Oh shebear – no apologies to the southern hemi needed as this music and words are so beautiful. Thank you for posting it.
And strangely enough…..Sydney is cool and we had snow in the mountains yesterday!
All best wishes for an aware and loving and break to everyone!
Gosh Be, the notion of working with the energy of an oyster also popped into my head this morning. Howsabout that then — the collective consciousness at work this solstice! I was pondering the onerous task I face each darn day on how can I possibly become more consistent at lowering my anger levels, which have the irritating habit of appearing like black ice on my pathway, causing me to skid and derail all intentions of loving kindness all. too. frequently ! Also, in questioning all that, this day of days, it ties in with the lovely Reiki invite you posted Hazel, thank you. I hope to focus more intently and consistently on making those captivating pearls of happiness, crafting them out of the inevitable dreck thrown up alongside those icy patches.
So far I’m loving this winter solstice *very* much! Thank you too Len, for expanding on what the symbol of a cross can mean on the cosmic and geographical plains. I learned to widened my own narrow definition of a cross several years ago, and now I look at it as the combo of the vertical beam as a powerful connector between the infinite heavens surrounding us, lovingly pulling us up, to rise above the horizontal beam of our flat, finite meanderings.
I got up during the night with my son (who thankfully *willingly* accompanied me to the outdoors!) and we gazed up at the eclipse. I am still basking in the heavenly event. I feel creative and loving this morning — of course it helps that the sun is streaming into my front room as I write — and my project over these holidays is to find the book on my shelves, “The Art of Loving” by Eric Fromm and see where that all takes me. I firmly believe that in all of our encounters *fromm* this moment forth, especially those that bring out our anger, we do well to be forearmed with loving techniques that just might make the difference in steering the energies in a more positive direction. It’s not a black and white world we live in, though my base reactions to many things make it seem so, over and over. It’s the spaces in between that will prove to be our salvation, where we do the hard work of cleansing the irritants, big and small. We owe it to the “yet unborn” like Len says, to figure this thing out.
Yes, enjoy this special solstice wavereens, wherever you are on this beautiful planet! Happy “pearl making” from here on in, and here’s some music you might want to accompany your solstice today — more for the music than the images (apologies to those *down under*!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJz_VMKUOWA&feature=related
” Invite Happiness
Do not be angry
Do not worry
Be grateful
Work with diligence
Be kind to people”
I have a friend who does Reiki healing and I didn’t really know what it IS, so I googled it and the site I found says that the above sayings are some of the basic ideas for Reiki healers. I really like the first one, not that you’re supposed to pick a favorite, but it’s a wonderful start.
Hi Len,
As always, you make us see beyond our immediate and/or imagined situations and that perspective can utilize gifts we didn’t even know we had. I have to remember this perspective as I often tend to think of square aspects as threatening only, and not the gift of transformation and creativity they really are. For example, today’s eclipse could be daunting if I only look at the 12 squares involved in the cross created by the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Pallas, Jupiter, Uranus and Juno. I could. . but I won’t. I will think instead of all the possibile creative solutions to the thousands of problems we, all together, face these days, and this day specifically. What better way to rise above the poop and invent something brilliant than to be faced with an object you can’t get around. A pearl starts with a bit of sand irritating an oyster, right? Well, lets all go out and tackle one or two, starting right now.
Off the subject a bit, but since I can’t read everything written by astute minds who talk politics and astrology, have you ever thought of or read a viewpoint of the square between Saturn in Libra and the Sun (+Jupiter & Venus) in Cancer in the U.S. (Sibly) chart as the two party system of the Republicans (Saturn) and the Democrats (3 Cancer planets)? I’m sure it’s occurred to others, but it just recently came to me. Seems apt and I will pursue this idea for a while. Happy solstice all!
be