New Moon, Solar Eclipse and Equinox

The Sun Total Of Who We Are (Pun intended)

A Story About A Story

The other day, I came across an old box of folders and books. Dusty and gritty, they had been sitting there for a long time. Inside one folder, I stumbled across a story I had written at least 25 years ago. Currently in a writing phase where nothing gets completed, I wondered where that story had gone to. Apart from school, it was the only story I had ever completed. Ideas and plots run thick and fast, even the conclusion to the story, but threading all the details together to make a whole, is a monumental and complex task. All those threads that must be woven together and remembered as the story progresses. It can and will be done, I tell myself. This story, The Lunar Lady, was written as an exercise for a writing course and at a time when great changes were taking place in my life. It was a defining point that significantly contributed to the sum total of who I am today. It was also a finished piece. No loose ends, a satisfying finish. But, like life, it was still full of mystery with not a detail revealed.

Discovering this story on the eve of a solar eclipse – when the Lunar Lady is passing in front of the Sun in very close alignment - in the very last degree of the zodiac, Pisces 29, was no coincidence. It made me think of all that had gone before and all that had gone since. In a nutshell, it made me think of the sum total of who I am today.

There’s no need really to write a big long dissertation on what this eclipse means. Suffice to say, the last degree of the zodiac contains the energy of all the degrees before it. It is the sum total of the great universe and our gone-in-a-flash lifetimes. It is the sum total of who we are. Both the Sun – our core being – and the Moon – our emotional and psychic being – are conjoined – this is a wonderful chance to examine our complicated layers, to peel back the thick and maybe tough skin we have grown through our lifetimes. And yet we forget sometimes why that skin had to grow so tough. All those threads that have become knotted and frayed, broken or forgotten can be picked up. Our Lunar Lady gracefully brings to the attention of the great Sun what we feel at this time in our lives, at this time of the planet’s evolution. She blocks the ego so that we can feel, instead, all the hurts, the wonders, the love or the bitterness.

Given that we are also in the midst of not only an intense New Moon and an eclipse but also the Equinox, when day and night are equal, with great consciousness and intent, perhaps we begin to work with these energies in fresh ways. While we are summing up, we are simultaneously moving forward, we are on a level playing field where the dark inside is equal to the light both metaphorically and physically. Can we pack up the baggage and put it in the attic or better still throw it into the sea and watch it float away, or can we simply read our life stories without having to live through it all over again. Can we finish off the stories we have created with our lives up until now so that we can turn the page and begin writing another. It can be done!

With the beautiful auroras many places on the globe have been witnessing so unexpectedly, I think the Sun is very happy with the Moon.

The New Moon is a solar eclipse at 29 Pisces. It occurs at 10:37pm (NZST +13hrs) tonight.

The Autumn/Spring Equinox occurs when the Sun moves into Aries at 11:46 am tomorrow, March 21st.

Virgo Full Moon, March 6 2015

Today’s Full Moon is in Virgo at 14’50 at 07:05am (NZST +13hrs GMT). It’s an edgy, nervous Moon that gives rise to all sorts of free-floating anxieties and places a huge strain on our nervous systems. The celestial energy is zinging and pinging all over the place and it can be very difficult to know which road to take off the roundabout. Opposite the Sun in boundless Pisces, worries skitter across the mind like clouds across a dark night and, like a scene in some dramatic horror movie, we may be fuelled by all sorts of creaks and groans that, in the end, was just the house settling down after the heat of the day. We may need to work hard now to keep grounded in reality so keep your road-map firmly in hand knowing there is more than one route to get to the desired destination. Yes, we may feel like we are going around in circles achieving very little but we are midway through many journeys now and this is where the roads converge. Pull off the road out of the way of all those erratic drivers who threaten to run us off the road; take a coffee break, Zen out by taking deep breaths every time some thought threatens to cloud logic; focus on grounding the mind by dragging erratic mental energy back into the here and now. Rather than float up and out into an ethereal wilderness, we may need to come back down slowly through the body until we can feel our feet standing on solid ground. Nourishment, physical or spiritual, is what Virgo needs. This way we can calm the rising waves of fear, anxiousness and worry and plan the next leg of the journey so that we do indeed arrive safely.

Another way is to focus on the facts rather than the what-if scenarios that replay over and over again in the dark of the night. Build on small details that fly in the face of the illogical; enter into your own power source and keep yourself contained in that rather than leaking energy and draining your personal battery. For instance, if we are having conflict with someone we may then summon up all the people we are or ever have been at odds with instead of focusing on this one particular situation. Doing this could save a lot of needless worry and all that strain that can be placed on our bodies and our nervous systems during this time of high mental stress. Letting go and trusting is a big ask but if we are aware that Virgo is the sign of the worry-wort, then we have a better grasp of why we feel anxious about real or imagined issues.

Indeed, some of us are very sensitive to the energy that is building in other areas of the sky. Impatient Mars, the planet of assertion and physical acts, is now firmly in his own sign, Aries, and because he is connecting with the South Node (that which is not good for us) and moving rapidly toward Uranus (an even more highly-strung planet who has his own problems with Pluto), there could be a sense of our pasts catching up with us. This can be disempowering. We want results quickly but there are too skeletons or too many variables, too many loose ends to allow this to happen in a calm, orderly fashion. Full Moons are times of release and culmination, and the various threads of cosmic energy are interweaving to bring many things to a conclusion. But it is all highly frustrating with so many planets at awkward angles to each other. We can see where we wish to go but we keep encountering detour after detour, obstacle after obstacle. Some outcomes may be spectacular, some may turn abrupt corners into unknown territories, some require more time than our patience is willing to allow; however, because the Moon is connecting to Pluto in a positive way, as Uranus and Pluto make their last connection in the coming days, we can tap into our own personal power sources and resources. The trick is to avoid forcing issues and instead come back to our own desired goals knowing that there is more than one way to reach them. Know that in the light of the day the end result may simply be very different to how we imagined in the dark of the night. With Jupiter in the Sun’s sign at this Full Moon and at the trailing end of the planetary patterns, truth, justice and the laws of nature will prevail.

Mercury Retrograde 2015

If we can’t feel the cool ripples of air tickling our thoughts, then it may be time to open the windows of our minds and allow the playful currents to riffle and ruffle our mental feathers. With Mercury turning retrograde in airy Aquarius, the breeziness of this sign combined with the intellectual bent of Mercury both add up to a year of examining how we think, react or communicate in relation to our community, groups, teams and clubs that we belong to. What fixed concepts can be altered, adapted or aroused by what takes places now? And, by the same token, what loose concepts can be staked and developed as the year progresses?

All Mercury retrograde phases this year (Jan/Feb; May/June; Sept/Oct) occur in each of the three Air signs. 2015 is a time to expose our minds to bigger and better territories, to allow ideas to flow, to carve out new channels of expression. It’s time to move the compartments of our minds around to make room for what will come at us in the coming months. Studying other people, cultures and communities to see what makes them hum or unique is a very useful and quick way to examine and express our own originality – what makes them/us stand out, what ideas are we introduced to or can introduce to others, how do they make us feel when we are bouncing ideas around versus how do we make them feel? These are all questions to ask in or of social situations. Observing other groups of people that are distinct from our own, or studying standout individuals can help us to observe our own conditioned way of absorbing, processing, interpreting and manifesting ideas from, and into, the world around us. We can explore how ideas took root in the first place and whether these roots still have relevance today.

In January, because Mercury turns retrograde in Saturn-ruled Aquarius, Saturn holds the guidebook. If Mercury is the journey, then Saturn is the nuts and bolts of that journey. He knows the details of each intellectual place we will visit during this first retrograde in Air signs (the following retrograde phases will occur in Mercury’s own sign, Gemini (very potent) and Libra, Venus’s sign). Saturn’s opinion and advice will come from the sign he is in - and having recently moved into Sagittarius, the sign of the big thinker - his opinion will lean towards covering as much territory as we can so that we can bring a suitcase of ideas or details back that can be translated and integrated into the ideas we have stored at home. The trick is not too spread oneself too far and wide, or to collect so many trivial items that we can’t see the wood from the trees; we may need to develop the wisdom to know what baggage to pack, as well as to know what to unpack to make room for the new.

We may need to whittle this down even further by year end, and if we don’t know what to do with the excess, we can always discard or give these ideas to others. Generosity of spirit is also vital to maintaining a humble attitude. With Fire sign transits (Jupiter in Leo/Saturn in Sagittarius/Uranus in Aries), we can often get swept up in the moment and forget to think of others. If we see something on our travels that would help someone else, then that is just as much a treasure. We can discover  this year that there is plenty to go around and that instead of fearing competition we can learn to put our own special touch on something, make it our own. The twist is to understand that the flow of events this year is mercurial and that people, places and projects will need to move quickly and adapt.

This will also be Mercury’s first retrograde phase of 2015. Mercury likes being in Air signs and the upside to this is that humanity may have a chance to catch up with itself as we adapt to and process the huge technological changes that have occurred in the last ten years. Of course, advancements may also accelerate as people’s mental processes increasingly pick up on the electrical currents that are all around us now. 2015 will definitely be of an intellectual, switched on, social nature but we will simultaneously learn to be more discriminating and to switch off from the useless chatter. As a result, it becomes easier to look to the future and actually muster up some sense of motivation for ourselves. By tapping into our own processes and what we have gained from others through prolonged interaction or exposure, whether on social media or physically, we can develop a mental focus and stamina that had been difficult to achieve during the sloshiness of the past two years. It doesn’t matter that there is no end goal, the journey is what is important to us now. The feeling that boundaries are slowly falling away will stimulate and invigorate and we’ll wonder how the barriers prevented us from moving on in the first place.

The more we can get out into the world or bring the world to us via books, documentaries, or by inviting into our lives people who come from worlds that are vastly different to our own culture, creed or community, the faster the process will be. That which is completely different to our own life experience or environment is preferable to staying solely within the community we feel safe in if we are in danger of stagnating or of wading even deeper into philosophies and ideas that are too deeply entrenched to change even when we feel we have outgrown them. Brick by brick, person by person, we can replace walls and barriers with windows or doors where new vistas can expand our souls or enrich our thoughts. In turn, Jupiter, Saturn’s ruler, is in fire-sign Leo, a fixed sign, which means that any changes will become a permanent part of our intellectual realities. We can use the Fiery energy to create new concepts or we can use the fixed energy to further fuel longstanding ideals that are a natural occurrence arising out of the company we keep, the beliefs we have always held or because of the ideology of groups of like-minded people who allow us to express and expand upon limited rules and guidelines. We may need to ask ourselves whether we stay with these groups out of fear of the unknown or whether we truly gain something from them.

Mercury turns retrograde on Jan 22^nd at 17 degrees of Aquarius. Very close to Venus, also in cool, logical Aquarius, we have recently had plenty of opportunity to balance our thoughts as we relate to others. During the retrograde phase, we have a chance to see where we can compromise, strike a deal or simply listen to the other side of the story before deciding which path to follow – on your own or with someone. By the time Mercury turns direct – Feb 12 on the first degree of Aquarius – we will be at the start of a new intellectual journey and it will be time to assimilate or act on what has taken place between Jan 22 and Feb 12. Mercury is very close but not quite up to an opposition to Jupiter as it turns retrograde signalling a need to avoid allowing one’s thoughts to get swept up by the fantastic or unattainable. Take small steps toward the new future without too much commitment. Otherwise, by March, we will find ourselves with more than we bargained for.

The interactive feel and the mental fizzy-ness of all three Mercury retrogrades means that 2015 is the year to communicate and socialise with people and toy with unique concepts will help us to get a sense of the broader concept of our lives.