Letting Go of the Past to Embrace the Future
The last weeks of August are always bittersweet.
Summer is coming to an end, school is about to begin and the days are getting shorter and cooler. But Summer lingers – the Sun is still hot and burning, the nights still need fans. Today when I went to the beach it was almost empty of people compared to how it’s been this past month. But the water and sky and wind were still playing in the heat. The water was nicely cool and its clear green waves rolled lazily into shore.
A perfect August day. A day to enjoy Nature’s beauty and benevolence. Especially the sweet breezes that cool the Sun’s heat. A day to savor life.
Now the Sun has moved into one of the seasons of change, as all mutable signs end the four seasons. The Sun’s month in Leo is now past, with the Sun slipping further south into the sign of Virgo last Monday. We have another month until the Sun sits on the equator before slipping into the southern hemisphere, bringing them Spring and Summer, leaving us here in the northern hemisphere Fall and Winter.
When the Sun resides in the sign of the Virgin, we’re energized to look at what we’ve accomplished this past year and what we still have to do in the growing dark of the year.
Like the winnowing that goes on at harvest time, Virgo asks us to discern what we have really given birth to this year. Because Virgo is not just the Virgin—She is the Virgin Mother with her Child. The seed that was conceived at Winter Solstice, when the Divine Virgin/Mother gave birth to the Light and to Her Divine Child, is now ready to be harvested and taken into the world as nourishment for ourselves and others.
Leo asked us to use our creativity to ground in our vision. In Virgo, our task is to hone what the soul gave birth to this year. That’s why Virgo celebrates both Mother Matrix/Soul and Child/Life.
What we harvest is particular to ourselves. We each have our own journey and our own quest. The quest is always the same and the journey never ends, but our stories are our own. So each harvest will be different.
My harvest this year is a house that will be a home. In my spiritual youth, I thought this wasn’t a worthy enough goal. Oh, I made a good home for my kids – but the house and home never satisfied me. There was always something beyond. But chasing that beyond never fully engaged my heart and soul.
So one day, I just decided to stop. To let it all go. I finally let go of my need to achieve, to do, to act and settled back to just Be. I re-learned how to go with the flow of my childhood and let myself see what showed up. In the quiet of BEING, I realized I also needed to know what I wanted, what my heart’s hope was. What did I desire most?
When I finally recognized what I longed for and asked for it, it came to me so easily, it was a blessing.
It took me a while to finally get that I had to be whole-hearted, all of me had to want it, which is a quality that Virgo also exemplifies – integrating what the body needs, the heart hopes for and the mind finally acknowledges.
We have to be totally honest with ourselves to be whole-hearted. This task is reflected in the Gene Key for the New Moon at 5* Virgo. The 59th Gene Key is about our innate dishonesty – embedded in our DNA. It is what attracts us to others, while at the same time making us fear and distrust them. So it seems we’re hardwired to be afraid to reveal ourselves to others – and to ourselves!
But there’s a deep planetary transformation going on that requires us to overcome our old operating systems and learn to be honest with ourselves and with each other. Once we release the programmed fears, we engage in a higher consciousness and can develop intimacy with ourselves and with each other.
(This is why so many of my clients are doing Shadow-work now. Our Shadows are behaviors that we all develop as children to hide our truest Selves from rules and judgments that try to shape us to society’s plans. Once you work with your Shadow, you release the authentic parts of yourself to grow and thrive. And once you’re living authentically, blessings flow.)
The Goddess energy for Virgo is the Great Mother with her Divine Child. We can look to the Egyptian Goddess Isis and her son Horus as our Virgo guide.
Isis was one of four children born to the sky goddess Nut and her husband Geb, the Earth. She married her brother Osiris, who became King. Together they taught humanity all the arts of civilization. But Osiris’ brother Set was jealous of him and killed him, scattering parts of his body all over Egypt. Isis and her sister Nephthys found those parts and Isis, through her magic, restored Osiris to life long enough to be impregnated. She gave birth to Horus and Osiris became the King of the Dead.
Horus fought Set for the kingship and eventually won it. And thereafter, Horus was believed to incarnate in each Pharaoh, while the deceased Pharaoh became Osiris.
Isis and Horus represent the source of rulership for the Egyptians. For us, this Mother and Divine Child can become a source of our own sovereignty, our own self-rulership. They symbolize not only what we harvest in our lives, but also good rulership of who we are and what we have.
For this New Moon, you can invoke the Great Mother Isis and her Son Horus as both the source of your Being and the Doing that comes from our authentic Selves.
The Virgo New Moon 2022
The Virgo New Moon occurs on Saturday, August 27th at 1:17am PDT/ 4:17am EDT/ 9:17 am GMT.
The Sabian symbol for the Sun and Moon at 5* Virgo is: A person becoming aware of nature spirits and normally unseen spiritual agencies. This image is a call to use our creative imagination to give us insight into the spiritual powers that are available to us in these changing times. We are entering a new age where we will value the unseen realities not as moral forces which condemn us, but rather as spiritual energies available to us to use to make a better world.
This New Moon makes one major aspect – a very tight square to Mars in Gemini. Mars entered Gemini on August 20th, where it will remain for over 6 months as it retrogrades on October 30th at 26* Gemini until January 12, 2023 at 9* Gemini, and finally enter Cancer on March 25, 2023. So we have a long time to work with this energy. It’s time to use our Minds as they were meant to be used – as a support and aid to what our Hearts know and desire.
The Sabian symbol for Mars at 5* Gemini is: A revolutionary magazine asking for action. This image speaks to our need to re-create something – our lives, our beliefs, our perspectives, our society, our government. But it is not a call for violence! We need a peaceful revolution going forward. (The right -wing has made use of these revolutionary times – the US Pluto return – to manipulate people and try to turn the clock back and repress us. Steve Bannon has studied the ‘occult’ and knows all about the astrological energies of our times.)
Mars is the planet of action, of assertion, of anger – of doing. It is the sacred masculine energy within all of us. While patriarchy has honed it into a killing, dominating energy, it is essentially the energy of movement and action. When we allow Mars to embody the Green Man energy of life, it turns against its patriarchal modeling and protects and defends the rising Feminine energy of life. That is its true function.
With Mars in Gemini, the sign of the Mind, we can become scattered with all the things we want to do and learn – our over-use of technology has scattered our minds. That is why meditation is so important right now if we want to ‘own’ our own minds. This tight square to the New Moon challenges us relate to and integrate those higher spiritual energies into our harvest. Like Horus, Mars here can help us organize and focus our new gifts for the greater good by disciplining our minds. Or if our Mars is still entrenched in the old Mars model, we will cause disruption with our communications and aggressive opinions.
The other big aspect of this New Moon chart is a fixed T-square between Venus in Leo, Uranus retrograde & the North Node in Taurus and Saturn retrograde in Aquarius. Venus is being resonated by the lingering Uranus/Saturn square of 2021 – will we energize a hopeful future or will we succumb to the ancient fears in our DNA and continue to foster hate and fear with others.
Venus here is challenged to get creative and find ways to leave behind what no longer serves life while integrating us into Mother Earth’s biosphere.
After the big Uranus/North Node/Mars conjunction in Taurus around July 31 – August 1, Uranus turned retrograde on August 24th at 19* Taurus. The Sabian symbol for 19* Taurus is: A new continent rising out of the ocean.
We are in for major changes for sure. It’s sad that our leaders are not asking us to change our behaviors to make life more sustainable. We did it for war – WWII – and we can do it for life. Uranus retrograde can help us find our inner freedom from old behaviors (shadow work) and from old societal beliefs.
Mercury, the planet that ‘rules’ Virgo and Gemini, just moved into the sign of Libra, the scales of justice, on August 25th. It will turn retrograde on September 9th at 9* Libra.
The Sabian symbol for Mercury retrograde at 9* Libra is: Three ‘old Masters’ hanging on the wall of a special room in an art gallery. This image speaks to the ‘need to return to ‘source’ during a confused search for new value in a chaotic society.’(Dane Rudhyar) It calls us to meditate on the values we hold dear and to re-establish our lives based on them. While we need to leave the past behind us, it is important to save and bring forward those values that are most truly the source of life – Power, Love/Wisdom and Intelligence-in-action.
Mercury in Libra opposite Jupiter retrograde in Aries can open us to new ideas about how we can relate to each other – if we can face our inherited fears, learn from them and then let them go.
It’s time to wake up and change our habits. It’s time to take responsibility for our behavior. What do we value? Are we living by our values or do we only pay lip-service to them?
At this harvest time, count your blessings and work to be worthy of them.
Blessings on your harvest!
Cathy
