The Cosmic Story: Beltane
and the Libra/Aries Blue Full Moon
Our Pandora Beltane Tree
This is going to serve as my
Beltane newsletter as well as a short summary of the energies at play
this upcoming second Libra Full Moon. Beltane, the fourth gateway of
the Wheel of the Year and the beginning of summer for the Celts, is
the time when the veils between the worlds grow thin and the Faeries
come out to dance under the moonlight, bringing their magic and
mystery back to our mundane world.
Beltane is the climax of the
Spring Equinox energy. Although we celebrate Beltane nominally on
May 1st,
it really occurs when the Sun is at 15* Taurus, the power gate degree
of the fixed signs, which this year is on May 5th.
So happy Beltane and Cinco
de Mayo.
Since my birthday is during
Beltane, I can admit that this is my favorite Wheel of the Year
gateway celebration. It’s near Earth Day, when
we have a collective opportunity to honor Mother Earth for the
blessings, the beauty and the blossoms of May. And don’t forget
the Faeries! They’re the spirits of the Earth, who come forth from
the hidden realms to bless us each year with
growth and sustenance.
To really get in touch with
this hidden realm of spirit, we need to use our creative imagination.
Since the Enlightenment, patriarchy has tricked us into believing
that imagination needs to be left in childhood. When we all found
out it just isn’t possible to live fully without using our
imaginations, we let our mass media colonize our collective
imaginations through advertisements, movies, sports, video games and
TV.
Linda Olson
Lucky for us, both Venus and
Mercury have just connected with Neptune in Pisces in the past few
weeks. (Mercury on April 2, Venus on April 10.) While Neptune can
open us to deception and illusion if we are un-grounded, it really is
the archetype of the Creative Imagination. And with both Venus and
Mercury connecting us to our hearts and our minds, we can begin to
work with this imagination, especially as both planets move into the
more dynamic sign of Aries (Mercury on April 17, Venus on April 20)
We need to have a revolution
of the
imagination,
where we take back our unique imaginative capacity and use it to
interact with Mother Nature and with
our souls. I’m not saying that the
right stories aren’t
important for us – they shape the energies of life. But when we
are confined to only the stories of
our mass media, which are often violent,
we lose out on an important facet of life.
The fact is that we can use
our imaginations to connect to and communicate with the other species
in our own world as
well as spirits from
other dimensions. To
imagine our souls into our lives, we need to interact with the
archetypal energies that shape life. We do not have to live on
Pandora
to live in a magical, mystical world. We have that world right here.
Right now. Within us. And around us.
Let’s dedicate this year’s
Beltane blessings to our collective good – we are learning hard
lessons in community as the weather continues to overwhelm large
parts of the globe. We need to create strong communities to deal
with the issues we face. This would be a good project to put the
creative imagination into practice. Bring calm weather to your
community in whatever ways you can, using your creative imagination
to speak with the nature spirits and see what they need. Or take the
temper of the town you live in and see where you can contribute
something. With the lunar nodes in Cancer and Capricorn, we are
called to be Caretakers: of the Earth and of each other.
With everything going on in
our world, from the mysterious synchronicity of fires breaking out at
Notre Dame in Paris, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York
and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, to extreme weather devastating
much of the world, it seems a good time to step back and get a bigger
perspective on life
now that Jupiter is retrograde (April 10th).
For every instance of political uproar around the world, there are
people doing interesting, innovative and important things to take the
world into the future. Why not be one of those future-oriented
people?
Notre Dame, Paris
This 2nd
Libra/Aries Blue Moon is asking us to balance our perspective as well
as our relationships. Seeing the problem is only half the process.
We have to be open to finding solutions. This is where the creative
imagination comes into play. We literally can play around with
ideas. Who’s to say
you might not be the one to come up with a truly innovative solution
to our collective problems?
We’ve arrived at the literal
crossroads where we have a decision to make: do we hang on the past
and try to keep the old boat afloat, or do we step into the future
and re-design the boat. The future is depending on our response.
I just listened to a group of
master astrologers talk about the upcoming astrological cycles
ending/beginning next year and we are in for more intense times,
depending on your perspective and standpoint. If you’re future
oriented, you’re in for a wild ride of
inspiration and hope.
If you fearfully hang onto the past, you’ll get tossed and tumbled.
The only way forward is . . .
forward. We’re taking evolution to a whole new level.
So how do we go forward amidst
the chaos and uncertainty of our times? Take
your
cue from Mother Earth and the heavens.
The Cosmic Story has been reflecting/shaping our world since its
beginning. It’s
time to look within and get to know ourselves, to look at our values
and to take a stand on them. To do this well, we have to unplug
ourselves from our mass media and listen to the Earth’s voice with
our imagination, and then work to
create a new world that reflects those values.
The Libra/Aries Blue
Moon
The
second Libra Full Moon occurs on Friday April 19, 2019 at 4:12am PDT/
7:12am EDT and 12:12pm GMT. This day is celebrated by Christians as
Good Friday, with the Jewish Passover on Saturday and Easter on
Sunday. And on Monday, April 22nd,
we celebrate Earth Day. This
is a powerful weekend, so spend time meditating on what you want to
birth this year.
This
second Libra/Aries Full Moon is a Blue Moon, switching the lunar
cycle back to its normal New Moon/Full Moon flow. And it’s the
second chance we have to get our relationships on track. It occurs at
the last degrees of Aries and Libra, fulfilling the purpose of those
signs just as it also releases what we’ve learned from those signs.
Aries
and Libra form the relationship axis of the zodiac, the dynamic
energy of Self vs. Other. Who am I? And who are You? If we don’t
know ourselves, we unconsciously see ourselves through other people’s
perception of us, which can set up a power struggle. If we do know
ourselves, we’re more available to accept other people and their
differences.
This
Full Moon
brings
back
the revolutionary/evolutionary energies of the 2012-2015 Pluto/Uranus
square. The Aries Sun is conjunct Uranus in Taurus with the Libra
Moon opposing it. The
Aries Sun is quite independent on its own, but with Uranus there
tends to be a further pull toward independence. If we’ve done our
Aries work in the past years as
Uranus transited Aries,
we are grounded in our archetypal purpose, our bigger self identity.
When we know ourselves, we can enter into a real relationship with
others, because we have something true to share. So the Libra Moon
will reflect that for us in our relationships.
We
have to remember that Libra is not about giving ourselves and our
options over to another. Libra demands that we have our own
standpoint (Aries) so we can balance the scales (Libra) when we
interact with others. The gift of Libra is the ability to hold the
tension of opposites until a third option arises. Libra knows how to
compromise.
So
in
all your
relationships
– with a lover, a family member, a friend or a stranger – this
Full Moon asks you to relate from your deepest truth. But please
learn to do it in a graceful, courteous and kind way (Libra). Let
Uranus bring you surprise awakenings
about your relationships. Perhaps you have to open up to new forms
of relationship, bringing in new ideas and/or new people. The old
patriarchal form of relationship has a lot of ownership/possessive
energy
attached
to it. We can never own or possess another person, and if this
energy is getting in the way of being intimate and truthful, it won’t
work any longer.
The
reason for that is
this
Full Moon is also
squared
by Pluto, Saturn, and
South
Node in Capricorn. With
both Pluto and Saturn slowing down to turn retrograde in the next
week – Pluto on April 24th
and Saturn on April 29th
– their energies are stronger than usual. This
dynamic combination is releasing old karma, asking us to let go of
old forms and rules that no longer apply to us as conscious, adult
human beings.
What
is emerging is a new consciousness about relationships, where we
begin to understand that ‘going it alone’ is harder than joining
with others who can help and support us on our journey.
As
a relationship coach, I see the biggest and most basic need is for
better communication between partners. The ability to speak our
truth as well as the ability to actively listen. The poet Rainier
Marie Rilke says
Love
is work,
and we have to work on our relationships if we want them to be deep,
intimate and fulfilling. A great relationship brings out the
excellence in each partner.
This
is also about being able to speak and listen to people who don’t
hold to our political ideals. We have to listen to each other –
and when we do, we’ll probably find that we agree on most things,
perhaps just not on how to and who can carry those ideals forward.
Most disagreements come from unconscious fears and when we know who
we are, our fears do not rule us.
“Do
you not know the Mystery saying that all the gods are one god, and
all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator? Do
you not know that at the dawn of manifestation the gods wove the web
of creation between the poles of the pairs of opposites, active and
passive, dynamic and
receptive, positive and negative, and that all things are these two
things in different ways and upon different levels. . .?”
“The
ancients . . . said the soul is bi-sexual and
that as one or the other aspect manifested in the world of form (as a
woman or a man), the alternative aspect was latent in the world of
spirit . . . – the side that is forth-flowing by its own dynamism,
and the side that lies latent, awaiting inspiration, and that come
not forth unless it is evoked. And this is the greater side of each
one of us: and in a man it is his spiritual nature, and in a woman it
is her dynamic will.”
Dion Fortune The Sea Priestess
Regardless
of our gender identification (rebelling against our patriarchal
conditioning)
we are composed of these two types of energies. And
the rulers of Aries and Libra symbolizes these two cosmic currents:
Mars and Venus. Mars
is desire, the fire in the belly. Venus is connection, the
hope
in the heart. We need to connect with our desires in ways that grow
life instead of planting death.
Venus is
at the last degrees of Pisces, opening us to compassion, imagination
and wholeness. Mars is in Gemini, focusing his will on what
interests him. Water and air can stir up storms or bring calm
breezes and beautiful days. It’s up to us to create the weather in
our relationships.
So if you’re wondering how
our April Fool is doing on his journey, he’s about to meet The
Lovers, the
two who become one, for
his first initiation under this magical, mystical Blue Moon.
He needs to learn the balance between these
two forces (dynamism and latency) within himself and with others. If
he can find his inner balance and stay open to the world, perhaps
he’ll meet the Other
who can help him on
his journey.
Crowley's The Lovers
As a relationship coach, I’ve
discovered that the one thing everyone in the world wants is to be
in a good relationship – where it’s with our family, our
friends or one specific person. And ironically, it’s the one thing
we don’t teach our people. While we’re all ‘engaging’ in
relationships, none of us know what the rules are or how to do it
naturally.
And to make matters more
confusing, we are living at the end of a very restrictive patriarchal
version of relationships, changing and growing as we stumble against
each other. For many of us, there’s more pain than gain in being
in a relationship.
No man is an island.
It all begins with our relationships. This isn’t just a man-woman
issue – it’s a mother/child issue, a co-worker issue, a
friendship issue, a trans issue. How do we maintain balance in all
our relationships? And that includes Mother Nature and her other
children.
So this is where our Fool
finds himself. He’s been given the assignment: set off on your
journey and find what makes your heart sing, what makes you feel
accepted down to your very bones, what will keep you strong and
balanced. Some of us will find this initiation with an actual
person, while others will be meeting their Inner Other for the first
time.
To
imagine a better possible future takes self-awareness.
Let’s try something old and new. Let’s learn how to communicate
the truth in a kind and courteous manner. Let’s have compassion
for each other. That will begin the process. Nobody gave us a
guidebook on how to live free. We’re here to learn how to make
love, not war. That’s a big shift in collective consciousness,
since our species has been at war for at least 5,000 years under
patriarchy.
Let’s
become the grandparents of the future and exemplify how to be truth
speakers and collaborative visionaries. Our people and
our world need us.
May
the blessings of this bountiful and beautiful season bring joy to
your hearts. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again!
Cathy
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copyright 2019 ~ Cathy Pagano
