Post by Sowelu on Jun 28, 2010 7:07:14 GMT -5
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From Here to Posterity
By Len Wallick
Thursday, June 28, 2010
This last weekend featured what can fairly be described thus far as the aspect of the century: a partial lunar eclipse that was temporally current and spatially aligned with a grand cardinal cross. Hopefully you found some sort of reward in the time. If you are reading this you can at least say you survived to tell the tale.
After such a weekend it may be well advised to step back and look at the big astrological picture of where we are and what’s coming up. Contrary to what one might might expect, there is no let-down. The ramping up continues in the form of what might be called two intersecting continuum’s. The shorter-lived aspects of today and this week inform the process.
We are now in the two week period between this last weekend’s partial lunar eclipse and the total solar eclipse on July 11 in the sign of Cancer. We are also in the multi-year period of the cardinal t -square. Those are the two continuums and they compliment each other.
Let’s begin with a review of the cardinal t-square. This started with Pluto’s ingress to Capricorn in 2008. It continued with Saturn’s transit to Libra in September of 2009 forming a 90-degree, or square aspect to Pluto. Finally, Uranus and Jupiter crossed over to Aries just weeks ago, opposing Saturn and forming their own square to Pluto. Over this last week the Sun and Mercury crossed into the sign of Cancer, temporarily transforming the t-square into a very tight grand cardinal cross that was compounded by the lunar eclipse with the Sun in 5th degree of Cancer, and opposed by the Moon in early Capricorn. This amounted to a crescendo of sorts but not by any means the end of the symphony.
One of the things that distinguishes the cardinal t-square is that it is a continuous aspect. This is not only because it involves slow-moving planets. As has been the case with Pluto and will soon be the case with Saturn, the transit of Uranus and Jupiter across the cardinal point takes place more than once. In all four cases the first ingress to the respective cardinal sign was soon followed by a retrograde into the previous mutable sign before finally settling in for a long cardinal transit. This has functioned to make the orbits of influence moot as the respective cardinal points are activated successively and in turn, over and over again.
This has served to prolong the corresponding synchronicity of a transit into or out of the first degree of a cardinal sign. The personal and political are one, and by implication, all human beings are one. It is no longer functional to compartmentalize our personal and public lives with different standards of behavior for each compartment. We are being compelled to integrate ourselves individually and collectively, presenting the same face to all, realizing that for all intents and purposes, we all wear the same face — that of a human being. It’s as if we are being given the opportunity to get acclimated to a new way of being, a new form of human consciousness so that it becomes second nature.
By extension, it is worth noting that Chiron is in the midst of a similar process between a fixed and mutable sign, going back and forth between Pisces and Aquarius. Like a rock skipping across a pond, Chiron is prolonging the contact on the interface between the last degree of one sign and the first degree of the next. This gives us time to get a feel for the edge, the border, the threshold, before starting a new phase. That Chiron is doing the same dance as the cardinal point planets is extraordinary and beyond coincidence. It seems to add a spatial parallax helping us to appreciate the depth of our time. Chiron writes a counterpoint to the harmony, providing needed complexity to address the requirements of specificity we face.
An eclipse cycle represents another kind of continuity born of the lunar nodes. The moon does not orbit around the earth in the same plane that the earth orbits around the Sun. If it did, the New Moon would be a solar eclipse and every Full Moon would be a lunar eclipse. Rather, Luna’s orbit around our planet is inclined to that plane called the ecliptic by about five degrees. The places where the Moon’s orbit intersects the ecliptic are called the lunar nodes.
There are four fundamentals of the lunar nodes to consider for our purposes today. First, they are not stationary, they move. The day-to-day detail of the movement is a bit of an oscillation but, in sum and over time it is functionally a retrograde movement. Second, the node that corresponds with the Moon moving above the ecliptic is called north (now in Capricorn). Third, the intersection point where Luna moves below the the ecliptic is called south (now in Cancer). Finally, the nodes exist in opposition to each other – the ultimate continuous aspect.
It is this perpetual opposition that invests the lunar nodes with their fundamental astrological property, that of having to do with the phenomenon relationship. The north node is related to the future and the state of participating in its creation. The south node is interpreted as having to do with the past and dealing with its consequences. The aggregate retrograde movement implies a continuous review of the present.
When the Moon is at the full or new phase while at the same time being in the vicinity of a node, an eclipse takes place. The timing of the Moon’s orbit is such that a second eclipse of the complementary kind will inevitably take place when Luna’s orbit reaches the next node. Thus eclipses take place in pairs and the period between them takes on a quality of one continuous thing with a beginning and an end. One could call that a story or perhaps a song, but a very powerful one because things having to do with relationships are never quite the same again after the story or song is over. Things having to do with relationship are reset, rebooted and not by the eclipses themselves but by the synchronistic events that take place during that in-between time — events that you and I participate in. Hence we contribute to and must take responsibility for the new pattern that emerges.
So how do the two continuums — the eclipse cycle and the cardinal point t-square — connect? The answer is to be discovered and created over the next two weeks, informed by more ephemeral aspects and transits along the way. Today, there are two aspects that give us a good start.
The first is Mars in Virgo, applying in sextile (60 degrees) to the south node and trine (120 degrees) to the north node. Sextiles encourage and trines enable. Mars spurs us to action. The aspects of the cardinal t-square call for action. Hence, Mars bridges the two continuums, encouraging us to respond to the long term imperative of the t-square by first acting in the sphere of our relationships. In other words, act locally on what is your personal now but in the framework of a global and long term intent.
The second of today’s aspects to take into consideration is the conjunction of the Sun and Mercury opposing Pluto. This connects with the long term integration process implied by the cardinal t-square. It also relates to the concept of relationship implied by the astrological paradigm of opposition, the lunar nodes. Like Mars today it informs us that we must begin with ourselves and in our personal relationships. Begin by acknowledging the light of our rational and conscious mind represented by the Sun and Mercury, and the dark, irrational but creative side represented by Pluto, integrating them with an eye on the long term and the big picture.
So that’s the message today. It begins with the personal by providing space inside ourselves for that which we are proud of and that which we are not comfortable. Then, acting consciously on that awareness, integrating both sides. Carrying that process over to our personal, everyday relationships, we are creating a foundation from which to expand that practice out into our communities, our tribes and the world as a whole. We don’t have time for a let down. We have our work cut out for us.
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