The Cosmic Story: The Leo Gateway of Lammas: Leo New Moon & 2nd Aquarius Blue Full Moon 2021

We’ve just arrived at the cross-quarter day of Lammas here in the north, a time of harvest and fulfillment. With the receding light and warmth, we are now definitely heading toward Autumn.

Welcome to Lammas season, the Harvest Season.

 

 

Regardless of what’s happening in our world regarding COVID and politics, Mother Earth still holds us in her yearly cycle of life and death and renewal. When we orient ourselves with these cycles, we can ground and connect to Earth’s biosphere, giving us the energy to align with our life’s evolution in a natural way.

Here in the North, we’re at the beginning of harvest time and the second half of summer. We’ll begin to notice the days growing shorter more quickly now as the Sun continues on its journey south as we head into Autumn. Down in the southern hemisphere, you are experiencing the light returning, heading out of late winter and into spring.

For us in the northern hemisphere, we can celebrate our personal harvest through ritual and meditation, gratefully acknowledging the new harvest this year. Is it a new job, a new book you’re writing, a new relationship with yourself or another, a new attitude or perspective on your life? Have you let go of fear and opened to your heart’s desires? Have you faces your shadow and freed up new energy? Whatever you’ve created this year, it’s now time to name and acknowledge it with gratitude.

Change is here, whether we like it or not. The question is, who is going to be making those changes? This summer’s astrological energies are intense, urging us to release what no longer serves us so we can start following our heart’s wisdom and start living our soul’s story.

The power of Leo’s energy is to help us discover and attend to the Heart and what really matters in life, giving full expression to our creativity. This year, while the Sun is in the sign of Leo, we will experience two Aquarian Full Moons (the first was on July 23^rd at 2* Leo and the second is on August 22^nd at 30* Leo and is the Blue Moon) with the upcoming Leo New Moon on August 8^th near the Leo power gate of 15* Leo.

Uranus, about to turn retrograde on August 19^th, is stopping at the Taurus power gate at 15* Taurus, squaring this week’s New Moon. It is a reminder to us that what we create must be sustainable and must benefit the whole group in some way. It can no longer be ‘art for art’s sake’ but ‘art as a healing modality for the collective psyche’.

It is only through the heart’s wisdom that we’ll get through these global health and environmental crises.

These power gates occur at 15* of the fixed signs – Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius – and are represented by the cross-quarter holidays of Beltane, Lammas, Samhain (Halloween) and Imbolc that mark the halfway point between the solstices and equinoxes. They are the energetic center of these ‘fixed’ sign, generating portals to other dimensions. If you have planets at any of these gateways, their energies will give you a persistence and determination to get through any troubles in life.

 

 

So as people continue to get in touch with their heart needs, they are quitting jobs that no longer satisfy them or leaving relationships that no longer give them the freedom to be themselves. We see this struggle between the old, repressive behaviors of patriarchy and the new freedom we each want to express in light of the Saturn/Uranus square – pitting the old (Saturn) against the new (Uranus). It’s up to each of us to break the chains of old patriarchal rules and beliefs within ourselves so that this societal paradigm dies out in the collective consciousness, leaving room for something new to arise – something better to arise.

For these past few years, we’ve talked about discovering our new story, which implies changing our beliefs and behaviors. Well, the need for change is upon us now! Yes things are getting chaotic, but the truth is out of chaos emerges the new forms we need to recreate our global society. And while there are a lot of powers in our world that want to take us back to the past, there is no way the past will win out. We are set to move into the future – the Age of Aquarius is calling to us. We just has to deal with the shadow karma of the Piscean Age – the old Them vs. Us beliefs that hinder the truth of Pisces – that we are all one.

When we re-emerge into a post-covid world, we have an opportunity to change our society and culture. Many of us want to change. How that’s going to happen will become apparent when we begin to let go of our fears and worries about the future. We are heading into that future and the one thing you need for the trip is a sure sense of yourself, a grounded presence that is willing to go with the flow and change when it’s appropriate, yet is strong enough to support and protect you.

We each have to find our wholeness so we can become holograms for collective wholeness.

 

 

Astrological influences through Leo and Virgo

There are a lot of planetary changes going on this season, especially between the two Aquarian Full Moons on July 23^rd and August 22^nd.

The themes coming up now in your life are important to the future, so pay attention. We’ll be making decisions about how we want to live our lives as we go forward. It’s time to take some action on our personal changes.

If you’ve been frustrated lately, blame it on Saturn in Aquarius opposite the Leo Sun on August 2^nd, with both squaring Uranus in Taurus. Once again, the theme is out with the old, in with the new.

 

 Sekhmet: the Heart of the Sun

Leo is all about heart energy. Leo is the fire that is passionate, creative and utterly unique. Leo is a shining Light that warms everything it touches. So this month, burn brightly and let your light shine out.

Mercury met the Sun at 9* Leo on August 1^st and rushes through the rest of Leo, moving into Virgo on August 11^th. Our creative vision gets down to earth and practical.

 

 

The Leo New Moon occurs on Sunday, August 9^th near the Lion’s Gate at 15* Leo. With the square to Uranus in Taurus and opposite Saturn in Aquarius, it’s time to actively work on changing our ways, discarding what no longer serves our future Self. With Venus in Virgo channeling Neptune in Pisces, we can begin to make our dreams a reality. Don’t forget that beauty and embodiment go together. It’s time to let go of the ugliness we’ve created in our world and remember how beauty makes us feel.

It’s always good to let go of expectations and just accept the reality of the Now. Yes, old patterns need to be broken, but everyone is doing it in their own time and way. The frustration comes from how slow vast changes take.

So it’s up to us to make the small changes in ourselves that can make change happen in the world.

Uranus turns retrograde on August 19^th at 15* Taurus. It’s time to turn all that revolutionary, transformative energy inward. Awaken your soul body. 

 

 

The 2^nd Aquarius Blue Full Moon on August 22^nd occurs at 30* Leo. Blue Moons occur when there are two Full Moon in an astrological sign – NOT when they occur in a calendar month. This is because they switch the lunar cycle back to its original rhythm of New Moon followed by a Full Moon in the same sign. For the past two years, the cycle flipped and so we’ve had the Full Moon come before the New Moon in a sign. This part of the lunar cycle splits us open to encompass different energies. Now we can get back in rhythm and feel more whole.

For this second Aquarius Full Moon, Jupiter is conjunct the Moon, opening up our perspective to what is possible. Jupiter can make magic happen, so stay open to the synchronicity in your life that can show you the path forward.

While Uranus is now retrograde, it is still squaring Saturn retrograde in Aquarius, so the tension between old habits and new turn inward. Uranian awakenings are strengthened by a nice earth trine to both Mars and Mercury in Virgo, who can help plan out the small changes we need to make to shift our energies. Venus is in Libra opposite Chiron in Aries, asking us to love and respect ourselves as much as the Other. Because we have to ‘love our neighbors as ourselves’, we need to do the work of loving ourselves and facing our inner critics, those voices of old patriarchal beliefs that we need to shed now.

 

                                             Virgo with her Wheat Shaft

 

The Sun enters Virgo late in the day August 22^nd . I’ll leave you to find out about the Virgo New Moon on September 6^th and the Pisces-Virgo Full Moon on September 20^th, two days before Fall Equinox arrives on September 22^nd.

Virgo is the sign of the Great Mother and Child, the womb and the fruit together. What have we woven into being this year? How do we integrate that into our ongoing evolution? Virgo’s great gift of service comes from being aware of what’s really needed in any situation.

Exploring the Myth of Psyche & Eros: Part 2

Psyche & Eros

 

Venus stays in Virgo until August 15^{th –} 16^th, when she enters one of her home signs, Libra. But while she’s still with Mars in Virgo, this pair wants to work out the details of their union at 20* Leo on July 13^th.

I wrote about their union in relationship to the ancient myth of Psyche & Eros.

If you remember their story of an initiation into the mysteries of Love and Desire:

Psyche (our word for Soul) is married to Eros in a secret marriage. She can only make love to her new husband in the dark of night, without seeing who he is. When she finally lights a lamp to consciously see who her secret lover is, she discovers that it is the god of Desire himself who is her mate. But he flies off, leaving her to search the world for him.

She finally presents herself to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty and Love, who is the mother of Eros and who initiates Psyche into the wonder and magic of this divine love. Aphrodite sets Psyche four tasks to complete before she can be reunited with Eros.

1) The first task is to sort and separate out a big pile of different seeds. When Psyche despairs of the job, friendly ants come to help her sort things out. Ant is a symbol of discipline, hard work, strength, unity, determination, teamwork, and patience. Sometimes, if we stick to the work of Love, we have to trust our instinctual nature to sort things out when relationship issues arise. A sorting of seeds lets us understand where things began. This is also the type of sorting that Virgo is good at, because it asks us to use this initiation’s gift of discernment in this sorting.

2) The second task is to harvest the golden wool from the sun rams. She gets advice from a friendly river reed to wait until the Sun is descending and losing power so the rams can settle down. Then she’ll be able to gather the wool that got stuck to the brambles. This initiation makes us face our fierce aggressive need to compete with the Other – to make our point and take our stand. It asks us to use our golden intellect in a different way. Can we stand in our own power without having to destroy the Other? How do we relate to power in relationships?

The ram symbolizes boldness, new beginnings, new paths and power. Like the reed who gives Psyche this advice, we need to understand the flow of life and not go head to head with our loved ones in the midst of powerful emotions and power plays. Instead, we need to let things calm down and then find out what really is going on. The gifts Psyche receives from this initiation are a sense of her own courage, strength and spirit.

3) The third initiation demands that Psyche find the source of the River Styx, or the river of life, and draw up a crystal cupful to take back to Aphrodite. There are dangers surrounding this river. But Zeus’ eagle comes to help, taking the goblet and filling it.

This is a test of our faith, our belief in love and our ability to fly high and see with the eyes of Spirit. It is also a challenge to take a larger perspective on the issues. And the paradox is that to do this, we have to stay in the NOW and deal with the present moment. There are so many possibilities in life to drink from, but we need the wisdom to know which possibility is the best to foster and deepen love. I would say that the gift of this initiation is that higher, spiritual perspective.

4) The fourth and last test is the most important. Aphrodite wants Psyche to travel to the underworld and obtain from Persephone, the Queen of the underworld, a little cask of her own beauty ointment.

 

 Psyche's last task

This initiation involves staying on track and not getting thrown off track by other people’s needs. This is a journey into our own inner world to discover our own unique Beauty and Truth. On this journey, we have to curb our instilled sense of generosity and kindness and own our dark side. Persephone, Hecate, Kali all represent the dark energies that influence our decisions, those shadow aspects of our personality that used to keep us safe but now just keep us stuck in old patterns of low self-worth and self-criticisms. The gift of this initiation is a grounded “NO” in response to outer demands on our freedom of choice. Love must be freely given, never demanded.

This initiation asks us to die to the innocence of our youthful imagination and expectations of what love is and means. Then we can be reborn without fear, allowing a transformation of our consciousness to ripen and mature our understanding of the Other and ourselves. This is the path of individuation, where we can embrace all our ourselves so we can see and embrace the wholeness of the Other.

As the story ends, Psyche and Eros are reunited and Psyche gives birth to a daughter, who is Pleasure.

A life lived in and with love blesses us with all sorts of pleasure, especially joy and wonder.

 

Our task at the end of the Age of Pisces is to learn Love in all its forms.  Love is never easy.  It takes work.  So work on loving yourself and then you'll know how to love others.

May the many blessings of Lammas flow through your life,

Cathy

 

Now is the Time

 

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider 

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know.

That everything you do

Is sacred.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Gift - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

The Cosmic Story: The Sacred Marriage of Venus and Mars in Leo: July 13, 2021

The Cosmic Story:

Venus - Mars conjunction, July 13, 2021 at 20* Leo

Once upon a time, a King and Queen had 3 daughters. The older daughters were beautiful, but the youngest daughter was exquisite and her beauty was breathtaking. Her name was Psyche….She was so beautiful that people began to talk about her as the ‘new Aphrodite’.

Well, you can imagine how the great Goddess Aphrodite took that!

 

Psyche ~ Susan Seddon Boulet

This week there is a Cancer New Moon on July 9^th, and the planets Venus and Mars will come together in the heavens in a ‘sacred marriage’ to begin their new cycle early next week. Both planets are Evening Stars and they will appear right at sunset with the Crescent Moon in Leo on July 12^th-14^th, depending on where you live. Look to the West!

The Cancer New Moon is the most fertile Moon of the astrological year. It is the Mother Moon, the birthing Moon, the caretaker of the Soul. This New Moon in Cancer considers the family first – not just blood family but our tribe of like-hearted people. With support from both Uranus in Taurus and Neptune in Pisces, the seeds we plant hold our intention for what makes a good, secure, sustainable, loving life and community. As the Moon also opposes Pluto in Capricorn, it seeds a renewed vision of our culture, one that allows what is dying to die, so that Mother Moon can birth the new collective life the world needs and deserves. A society that really takes care of community as extended family.

 

 

Venus and Mars symbolize the archetypal energies of desire, need, connection and love. Both are passionate energies; both emerge in us as desire or need. The last time they began a new cycle, on August 24, 2019, they were both in Virgo and they were in their underworld phase. Both planets were hidden behind the Sun.

Venus was being transformed in the fires, stripped of all her allure, letting go of what she had desired before, so she could understand her needs again, wiser and more clear-sighted because of Virgo’s gift of discernment and integration. Mars embraced her new knowledge and gave his energy to strengthen the new integration that needed to be birthed within each of us. This was an inner, perhaps unconscious, union.

Venus vanished from our morning sky on February 14, 2021 while she was in Aquarius as a Morning Star and reappeared as an Evening Star on May 7^th in Gemini. It seems Venus had to die to some of her ideals and fixed judgments and emerge all the wiser in Gemini knowing there are many truths that make up The Truth. And each of us has our own lessons to learn and beliefs to express.

Just a reminder. Earth can be a harsh school, but we’re here to learn Love. The most precious gift of our life here on Mother Earth. Once we ‘become as little children again’ we’ll remember love and how it can turn our world into paradise.

This year, these two passionate planets come together in the fires of Leo, and are visible to us, so that we can consciously connect to them. They are getting ready to birth some new creation into the world. We each have a part to play in this. The world needs our input. So practice opening up your imagination and see what wants to come out and play with you. This is Leo, after all.

Where in your birth chart is 20* Leo? While you’re at it, check out Uranus at 15* Taurus and Saturn _rx at 12* Aquarius. The houses they occupy will be the areas of your life that are going to be part of this change and where your gifts will be used and appreciated.

The Sabian symbol for Venus and Mars at 20* Leo is: Zuni Indians perform a ritual to the Sun. The Zunis are ancient Pueblo Native Americans whose religion is central to their culture. They worship Earth Mother, Sun Father and Mother Moon. This image suggests that we too need to honor and respect the world we live in and all of Nature through ritual, connecting with life’s creative powers.

What is Need? What is Desire?

Desire: verb

"to wish or long for, express a wish to obtain," c. 1200, desiren, from Old French desirrer (12c.) "wish, desire, long for," from Latin desiderare "long for, wish for; demand, expect," the original sense perhaps being "await what the stars will bring," from the phrase de sidere "from the stars," from sidus (genitive sideris) "heavenly body, star, constellation".

Need: (v.)

Old English neodian "be necessary, be required (for some purpose)," intransitive; also transitive, "require, have need of," from the same root as need (n.). Meaning "to be under obligation (to do something)," especially in negative or interrogative sentences implying obligation or necessity, is from late 14c.

What is the shape of your desire? What do you need for a fulfilling life?

When Venus and Mars come together in love and desire, what do you want the outcome to be? Do you have a desire for something vital? Is there a need in you that is required for your continued sustenance? 

 

 

With the Crescent Virgo Moon providing their marriage bed, we have the opportunity to reach into the heart of the spiritual flame that burns in our souls. And then bring what’s there out of the creative fires and into the world.

Leo’s desire (from the stars) is that we each become our own unique Self. That we learn to express that Self in our life and in our creativity, whether in literal children or creative children. Venus and Mars in Leo and the Virgo Moon will help you birth that new life.

What creation is waiting to be birthed by you?

If you don’t know the answer yet, don’t worry. Mercury has just come out of its Gemini shadow, hopefully understanding something that it worked on from May 3^rd to July 7^th. What are the new perspectives you’ve gained in these past months?

I learned that I still needed some work on going with the flow – and I got a chance to let go and flow. And it worked! So I also learned to trust a bit that the world wasn’t going to ignore my needs; rather it would make things easier for me. And I definitely re-claimed the wonderful truth of kitty love! And also children love.

I haven’t put it all together yet to have a clear focus on what comes next. But now I know more about what I want it to feel like.

As in the myth of Psyche and Eros (yes, I’m getting back to them soon) I will just say: Follow your heart’s desire. Uranus in Taurus is squaring this union, challenging it to embody your Self (soul consciousness). Uranus is the wake-up call to follow your heart! That takes courage.

Recognize what you need to to do to change. Saturn in Aquarius stands opposite this sacred marriage, meaning he wants to integrate the new life direction that is being conceived into the Aquarian mindfield. He’ll create the structure for this new life to thrive in, available to all humanity, not just the few.

And I might add: Go through this initiation. Maybe the initiation is just for the healers and light-bearers; for conscious, wild women and strong green men; for our children and wonderful youth. Maybe it’s for everyone in the world. But these few years of necessary chaos and change must be met and embraced and transformed if we want a future where we all will thrive.

It is the divine Feminine that will ground in this work, as she always does. She appears to us now, in this time, as Lady Wisdom/Sophia/Mary Magdalena. And she is appearing most often in women – because Wisdom is always seen as feminine. (Of course there are exceptions – Thoth is the Egyptian God of Wisdom or Hermes Trismegitus).

But Wisdom is a gift that our world has suffered without for too long. And it needs to come back into collective consciousness for our survival as a species.

Women are the bearers of Wisdom. Hopefully men will work with Wisdom and share in the labor of birthing a new world order, not one organized and run by corporations, but one created by, for and of the people!

Venus & Mars Sacred Marriage

So to go to back to the Psyche & Eros story:

Psyche is condemned by the Oracle of Delphi to marry ‘death’ and ‘a beast’, but instead she finds herself married to the god of Desire and Love himself. But at first they only make love in the dark (Venus and Mars’ union in Virgo, hidden behind the Sun). But when Psyche wants to discover who her lover is, he runs away. And She must go on the search to find again. Because she shows up, Aphrodite (our primal, oceanic feminine nature) initiates her through four tests. And when Psyche completes her tasks, she is reunited with Eros.

Because if you’re going to take the place of a goddess, you need to know and own that goddess energy in yourself!

 

 Psyche & Eros

In this ancient story, which has given rise to many of our western fairy tales, Psyche is the human soul who has to own Love and become Love. She has to unite with Eros, the desire to create and generate life. Out of Love.

(I’ll be writing about Psyche’s four tasks next month when Venus and then Mars goes into Virgo.)

These are the archetypal energies that this ‘sacred marriage’ embodies. Before we look outside ourselves for this love, we need to birth it within ourselves. 

 

 

Mars is the archetypal energy of the instinctual will to live, our desire and vitality, as well as our ability to act on that desire. Like the Greek God Eros, Mars represents our sexual drive, the outward yang energy of the universe to create life. It can also represent the darker energies of that desire nature like aggression, domination, violence and anger.

In King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette say this about Eros/Mars as the Lover:

The Lover is the primal energy pattern of what we could call vividness, aliveness and passion. It lives through the great primal hungers of our species for sex, food, well-being, reproduction, creative adaptation to life’s hardships, and ultimately a sense of meaning, without which human beings cannot go on with their lives.

The Lover archetype … is the energy of sensitivity to the outer environment.

The Lover is the archetype of play and of ‘display’, of healthy embodiment, of being in the world of sensuous pleasure and in one’s own body without shame.

 

Venus is the archetypal energy of connection, of love, of beauty and wisdom. Venus describes what we value, what our feeling nature needs to feel loved and worthy. She energizes the wisdom of the body – our instinctual, feeling, intuitive nature. She speaks through our heart.

Venus is challenged by Saturn in Aquarius to stand up for her principles and she is also in a tense aspect to Uranus (exact Wednesday 7/7). This opens her initiation into claiming greater authority of the beauty way as an expression of her Heart's wisdom and activates her role as Queen of Rebellion during this turbulent time. (Sasha Benedetti)

Leo concentrates our heart energy. With the Saturn/Uranus square pushing us to let go of what no longer serves us so we can create something new, this Venus/Mars union will bring that revolution into our daily life.

Our modern culture is based on desire. We don’t need to work as much as we do. We could all survive by working less and needing less. But capitalism is based on stoking our desires for more, for all those things advertisers make us think we need to survive and be happy.

We humans are thinkers, doers, creators, makers. What happens when we turn our attention away from desiring ‘things’ and look instead toward our inner wealth? We can enrich ourselves spiritually, mentally, and physically. We can enrich the greater social good. We can heal Mother Earth.

Let this union of Venus and Mars open your imagination to the treasures of your Soul. Let Psyche/Soul meet your divine lover in the light. And let your creativity flow.

Blessed Be!

Cathy

 

 

Concerning the Atoms of the Soul

Someone explained once how the pieces of what we are
fall downwards at the same rate
as the Universe.
The atoms of us, falling towards the centre

of whatever everything is. And we don't see it.
We only sense their slight drag in the lifting hand.
That's what weight is, that communal process of falling.
Furthermore, these atoms carry hooks, like burrs,

hooks catching like hooks, like clinging to like,
that's what keeps us from becoming something else,
and why in early love, we sometimes
feel the tug of the heart snagging on anothers heart.

Only the atoms of the soul are perfect spheres
with no means of holding on to the world
or perhaps no need for holding on,
and so they fall through our lives catching

against nothing, like perfect rain,
and in the end, he wrote, mix in that common well of light
at the centre of whatever the suspected
centre is, or might have been.

~ John Glenday ~

(Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds,
ed. by Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce)