MOONFIRE pt 1 : the Pragmatist

A great deal of attention has been paid recently to the constellation of Ophiuchus as a possible candidate for the 13th zodiacal sign – the media, as usual, has hyped it up, and the astro community is humming over it! 13 signs in the zodiac? Who ever heard of such a thing….well, there was a time, long long ago when….you know the story by now, but, WHAT a surprise that this should suddenly put the Lunar cat amongst the Solar pigeons – time to wake up guys…!!!

We have the technology to thoroughly revise our place in the cosmos, but technology alone will not do it – as the astrologers will no doubt discover. The power to envision beyond the known is also needed. Over preceeding lunations we have been framing it as a cosmic dance – “as above, so below”, as the saying goes – the field of the stellar matrix funding the process with energy and opportunity. A wonderous thing to behold, it is so easy to become enchanted by its magix…..and to loose the plot in the process! Now, more than ever, there is no room for any New Age airy faerieness on this, the cusp of the ‘Age of Aquarius’. Paradigm shift, conscious evolution, realisation of the divinity within, of spirit within matter, or of ‘Sacred Marraige’ – no matter what you call it and no matter how far out or inwards our spirits reach, the process is hitting us here on the ground – and, as that other time honoured saying goes, “if it don’t grow corn”………

So, our attention now turns fully to the Earth as the matrix – we must ground the inner cosmos of spirit, nothing new in that. But the stars never repeat themselves and our individual soul paths both reflect and are reflected within this matrix – “as within, so ‘without’ ”….we are being asked to bring the fruits of our inner work to bear and take up the role of participants within this cosmic dance, funding it with the energy of active intent, the response, the follow through – and this current Full Moon pitches us onto the cusp of pragmatic realisation in this evolutionary process – either way, its up to us, now is the time, and its time to get real!

And, before we explore what this means, it should be said that, while there is a watershed moment embodied here, the process itself does not stop with this Lunation – we must look beyond; so, this post will be continued in part 2 in the coming days, after we have looked at the template for action, the focus that this Moon is describing. The zone of speculative preparation is closing, the Earth is moving, the going is getting tough – time to get down to work.

Many key planets stand on zodiacal cusps, in the last degrees of the signs, so transition is symbolically emphasised. With the Moon and the Sun opposed at 29.27 degrees of Cancer and Capricorn respectively they point to the transition, into Leo and Aquarius. The movement of both are further energised by Mars who, having just entered Aquarius, is burning a pathway for Sun to follow in his wake – and Moon will oppose Mars 5 hours after the full Moon which, along with the Moon’s nodal axis, will create a pattern that Marina at Darkstar Astrology describes as the ‘Rack’. It is a soul stretching configuration that here asks, ‘how far can we go with the fighting and extremism, how much pain can we be stretched to bear before we either snap or say “peace”‘, and come together – this is just one mundane aspect of the upcoming that this Moon will highlight….but, theres someone else in this particular mix who’s busy preparing us all for the big paradigm shift – Chiron, the shaman astrologer and initiator, bridge builder between the inner and outer planets.

Chiron, also heading for the borders, between Aquarius and Pisces, is taking the radical initiatives of Aquarian thinking and relating into a spiritualised zone of realisation. Chiron is always the maverick who can find the path that works, and he encourages to do it our way from the empowered position of initiate and healed healer – its a ‘never mind what the political agenda tells us, I own my own truth’ position – he is semi-sextile to Mars, and in a loose sextile with Pluto that will tighten in the coming months, just to push the point home.

Chiron’s role goes further – he is in a tight waning conjunct with Neptune and stands at the midpoint between the Sun and Jupiter, who also stands on the cusp, this time of Pisces and Aries. In this Chiron will fund us with new awareness that is expansive, emphasising the spiritual initiatives we can bring to bear on our worldy actions. Being infused with Neptunian vision he will help us to bring compassion home as an intrinsic necessity within the human sphere. We will return to Chiron shortly after checking in with the other players in the field….

Uranus, the unpredictable harbinger of ‘eureka’ moments, is in late Pisces in a waning conjunction with Jupiter. This thunder and lightning combination has been straffing the fixed star Scheat, the upside of which is creative genius with field changing potential – as many astrologers have speculated, the downside is climatic and politico/economic stress. Ever the pragmatic mother, Earth is literally flooding us with challenges that ask us to pull together, find our courage and compassion in our hearts – the ground is literally shifting beneath us. And, being square to the Moons nodal axis, the dynamic  is asking the question of whether we have the inner resources to meet the outer demands that our daily lives are placing upon us – can we access our potential energy and idealogical initiative, can we make it work? When Uranus and Pluto square up through this year this will come to a head and we will all want to know what all the money, food and energy resources that have been invested in the political/industrial complex and fed into the ‘war machine’ has gotten us…..Earth has the power to slap us down and force us to shed our arrogance and wise up – watch this space!

Mercury has his head down and is spying on the complex as he races towards mid Capricorn, the heart of the citadel of power. He has his own mission and we will be hearing from him again when he stimulates our awareness during the upcoming conjunction with Mars, Neptune, Sun and Chiron on the February Full Moon – you think this Full Moon is a hot one?!

This overtly masculine energy field is being tested and called to accounts – Jupiter cannot escape Juno’s opposition for starters. As well as this she will sextile the Moon, trine the Sun and together they create a matrix that frames all of the above within the question of partnership, unity of opposites within co-operation. We must find the inner balance and be prepared to embody it, a theme that Saturn in mid Libra continues to emphasise and now brings to the inner workings of the heart. Its a re-assessment of our ideals and values in all our relationships – Saturn soon turns retrograde and forms a tightening sextile with Venus who is in mid Sagittarius being closely shadowed (62 minutes of arc at the FM) by none other than Aesculapius, asteroid 4581. Aesculapius is the great mortal healer, medicine man and healer of mortal wounds who, taught by Chiron, is embroiled in the Ophiuchus myth!! Here is a link to a great article by Marina on this constellation. Ophiuchus/Aesculapius brandishes serpent power, the electric highway of kundalini and caduceus wand of the awakened healer…..we will explore this more in Moonfire part 2!

The themes of inner balance and outer re-volution are on hand – and there are two key aspects, unspoken of as yet, that reveal how they can, and will, be grounded….

There are two yods forming around this Full Moon that will ignite the Sun Moon opposition with an intensity that must manifest. Yods create a needs/must aspect when two luminaries in sextile have the midpoint of their energising interaction opposed by a third party, creating an arrow-head pattern – the third point, being at the sharp end of the aspect, acts as the energy point through which the combined energies of the sextiling planets is compelled to find expression. It usually takes the form of an event…..

Here, in the first yod, we find the Moon in sextile with Juno feeding into Chiron at the manifestation/action point. We will surely feel this, healing our partnership issues, feeling them deeply, demanding that all the idealisation of womanhood and its patriarchal usery, be healed. We can now take back our power, Juno exposing Jupiter’s infidelities through opposition and empowering our conscious drive for realism through trine to the sun in the process…..and Chiron has the payback, the trump card…..

He is in waxing sextile with the North Node, with the Moon at the manifestation/action point in the second yod! Becoming who we were always meant to be, embodying the healed emotional body and jetisoning all that does not serve the process we are ready to manifest our true collective inheritance – and we know we must. Our old affiliations, our traditions, our rightful claim to choose our own paths must now be cleared of the miasm of cultural indoctrination, political and economic manipulation, devisive dualism and suppression – we can claim back our potential and realise it!

Chiron knows…..without the spirits the shaman cannot shamanise; the old myths and stories, our very histories, tell us over and over again how our connection with the inner worlds and the creative power of our symbiotic relationship with the divine, within nature, with our Earth, has been usurped through both covert and overt control – the world is shot through with ‘power issues’ that highlight the need to reclaim and re-envision this relationship. We need to clean up our act…..Aesculapius had a daughter, Hygeia, herself a pythia, medicine woman of the snake – she maintains health through hygene and sanitation and helps us to remain in balance, clean. We will be needing her…..

We are not seperate, we have the power of choice, we can be discerning and we can bring this to bear…..the New Age paradigm has touted us as co-creators, spiritual warriors – ideas and idealogies; just what this means on the ground is now the question.