The Cosmic Story: the Wheel of the Year -- Spring Equinox

 

The Wheel of the Year:

Spring Equinox: March 19-20, 2024

The Opening Notes to the Song of the Future.

The Wheel of the Year: Ostara – Spring Equinox

Spring is arriving in southern Rhode Island. Crocuses dot the gardens and lawns with purple and yellow, white and lavender. We often ignore how connected we are to Mother Earth, but rarely in the Spring. As we watch Nature re-birth herself in the warmth and light of the Spring Sun, we can’t help but feel that connection. Spring is the season of hope and possibilities.

It’s the season of new beginnings.

The traditional religions recognize this connection to Spring and have their own ritual celebrations. But I’d like to look at the myth that gave its name to the Christian celebration of Easter. The story of the Goddess Ostara and the Easter Bunny.

Ostara, the Saxon Goddess of Dawn, who was responsible for bringing spring each year, was feeling guilty about arriving so late. To make matters worse, she arrived to find a pitiful little bird who lay dying, his wings frozen by the snow. Lovingly, Ostara cradled the shivering creature and saved his life.

Legend has it that she then made him her lover. Filled with compassion for him since he could no longer fly because of his frost-damaged wings, the goddess Ostara turned him into a rabbit, a snow hare, and gave him the name Lepus.

She gave him the gift of being able to run with astonishing speed so he could easily evade all the hunters. To honor his earlier form as a bird, she also gave him the ability to lay eggs (in all the colors of the rainbow), but he was only allowed to lay eggs on one day out of each year.

This beautiful and interesting myth of the Goddess of new beginnings offers us the promise of the gift of rebirth each Spring. Beautiful because a Goddess has compassion for and responsibility to life. She saves the bird’s life.

Interesting because she filled this wingless bird with her own life-force and it transformed into a snow hare, an animal spirit associated with creation, fertility and swiftness. These are certainly the characteristics of the Spring season. New beginnings, lots of fertility – and it all happens rather quickly once it starts.

I love that the Goddess opens up the hare’s feminine side so it can give birth once each year. The hare gives birth to all the colorful possibilities waiting to be hatched from the wishes we made on the ornaments on the Christmas tree at Winter Solstice.

This myth promises not just a re-birth of life, but also the possibility of a transformation of one form for another. It can hint at reincarnation, a whole new life with new gifts. But it can also promise us that the new birth each Spring will help us shape-shift into the form that best suits us at each stage of our lives.

The astrology of this season will inspire us to radically change our form – to step into our authentic Self, as we step out of the patriarchal overlay of our souls.

 

 

Spring Equinox 2024 Season: Emerging from our patriarchal sleep

This Spring Equinox ushers in a month of the most power energies of the year. After the Equinox on March 19-20^th, we’ll see a lunar eclipse in Libra/Aries on March 24-25^th, a total solar eclipse in Aries on April 8^th, and the conjunction of two powerhouses in Taurus, Uranus and Jupiter, on April 20^th. During this Aries’ month, Mercury in Aries is the only planet to go retrograde, once again emphasizing the Aries quest.

Who am I?

With the arrival of Spring in the northern hemisphere (hello Autumn down south!), these celestial happenings might bless the Earth with an extra influx of energy, sending us on a quest to understand who am I? Our world is in crisis. Now is the time to step onto the road, like Bilbo and Frodo, that leads to the Hero’s Journey.

This quest asks us to take responsibility for our lives, our cultures, and our world. During it, we will learn to start doing our part to help the world transition into a new age, leaving behind patriarchal perspectives and psychological imprints, hopefully for a more balanced perspective about freedom, gender, race and religious equality, and a deeper awareness and development of our human potential.

Astrologers always look at the Spring Equinox chart, which we consider the beginning of the new year, to see what energies we get to play with that year. This year’s chart is quite simple at the same time as it is inwardly complex.

At Spring Equinox this year, the Sun enters Aries on March 19^th at 7:06pm Alaska Time/ 8:06pm PDT/ 9:06pm MT/ 10:06pm CDT/ 11:06pm EDT and on March 20^th at 3:06am GMT.

At the Equinox, the Moon is in the sign of Leo. I like to call the Moon the operating system of the day/season – the basic soul energy that is infused into the day. The Moon in Leo is generous, open-hearted, creative and fun-loving. Since this Moon is Out-of-bounds, meaning outside the usual boundaries of planetary movement, we can expect lots of unique forms of self-express and creativity, as well as kindness, generosity and responsibility. Oh yes, Leo is supposed to be responsible because it is the sign of the King or Queen, those people who are mediators between heaven and earth, the gods and the people. It can also make people feel entitled and bossy. But in the Equinox chart, this Leo Moon is in a creative aspect to the Aries Sun, so it will express that need to know who am I? quest that Aries is known for.

This is a great chart for artists who want to speak to the people (Moon also symbolizes the people in a country’s chart) through their art. This trine aspect between the Sun and Moon makes me think of the guerrilla theater of the 60s. Guerrilla theatre is a form of socially and politically active public performance, in which actors use satire, improvisation, and drama to disrupt cultural norms. (google: https://study.com)

The Leo Moon is opposite Pluto in Aquarius, so our emotional body (Moon) is being pulled into the deep need to regenerate (Pluto) our collective Mind (Aquarius). The best way to change people’s minds is to feed them stories, art and music that opens their hearts so their minds can see new possibilities. Activist artists are needed now! (Where are the protest songs similar to the ones our musicians sang in the 60s-70s?)

The Sun goes into the sign of Aries at the Spring Equinox. It rises over the equator and begins its 6 month stay in the northern hemisphere. I love the Sabian symbol for this first degree of Aries. A woman just risen from the sea. A seal is embracing her. This image makes me think of Aphrodite rising out of the ocean, new-born of her father Uranus’ phallus/cosmic creativity. This myth tells us that the real power of life is LOVE. The seal is a reminder that our instincts play a big role in our awakening consciousness. We have to get out of our heads and into our bodies. We need our instincts to be awake during these critical times. Our heart wisdom/love opens the way for our instincts to help us with life.

This Equinox Sun is close to Neptune in Pisces, having joined with it on March 17^th opening our imaginations to the longings of our collective Soul. So the Sun already picked up Neptune’s information that the collective needs of our world want us to grow up and take responsible action (Aries love action) to create a better world for all of us.

 

 

Aries is a joyous sign, an exuberant burst of heavenly fire that wants to manifest its potential. That’s why its quest is all about their identity. You have to know yourself and what you love so you can build it in the 3-D world. This Aries Sun is in a good relationship to the fiery Leo Moon and as well as to Pluto in Aquarius. The new identity (Aries) we’re all seeking has to do with our own sovereignty (Leo) and our connection to our society and its beliefs (Aquarius).

We can all see what’s going on in our society. The wealthy are trying to control our country, using the Christian right as a shield and a sword. Nobody is going to vote to give the wealthy ultimate power so they’re hiding behind the morality card. HA! We are facing an ecological disaster that big corporations want us to ignore. Technology is controlling our perspective, running amok with issues of privacy and control, so let’s get everyone off the addictive phase of using technology so we can figure out its best use.

We counter these destructive forces by banding together, by protesting, (I still think we need a general strike), by going out into our communities to bring a different perspective to our neighbors and friends, by really listening to those people who have a different perspective and actually having a conversation with them. We the people aren’t as far apart in our vision of life as the news and their wealthy owners make us seem.

Women especially have to stand up for those kinder qualities that the divine feminine symbolizes. We know how to take care of each other and the children. We know that war is just a way of bullying others. We know that we need a healthy environment for life.

Women. Please step into your power this year – use your feminine gifts to help change the energies of fear and death that are looming over the world.

As I said, the Equinox chart is both simple and complex. The complexity comes from the pairing up of so many planetary energies.

Mercury in Aries enters its shadow retrograde period at the Equinox. It moves between 28* Aries and 17* Aries during its retrograde period starting April 1^st until April 25^th. So it will slow down to ask the question Who am I? before it moves ahead. Since Mercury is a degree away from both the North Node and Chiron in Aries at the Equinox, the question of identity is up again.

Chiron’s energy shows us a wound that is our initiation into higher consciousness. Right now, Chiron is in Aries, making us question our identity. The Aries Solar Eclipse on April 8^th is conjunct Chiron in Aries, in both the present chart and in the US Sibly chart of July 4, 1776.

We really need to think about this question of identity. The Chiron in Aries wound to our national identity is that the ‘father’ is not a loving, kind, strong protector of the land and of the people. The ‘father’ of the US is capitalism and corporations – machines and ideas rather than flesh and blood. This ‘father’ is willing to eat his own children to stay in power. So our task is to shape our own identity, to rebel against the machines of American capitalism and its expectations of us.

If we overthrow the tyrant, who will we be?

Can you see the strong weaving that is occurring in the cosmic energies?

Venus and Saturn team up in Pisces for this Equinox chart. Usually Saturn makes Venus shy, insecure and a father’s daughter who obeys the masculine rules. But I don’t think this is what is happening here. First, Pisces dissolves the old patterns we develop, and it’s been dissolving Saturn’s rigidity for the past year so far, so it can create a new collective structure when it moves into Aries in 2025 – 2026. And Venus is exalted in Pisces, starring in her role of Lady Wisdom. So I think this joining will be centered around Venus shaping what this new Saturn structure will look like. I think she’ll add in compassion and caring, community and equality to our collective dialogue. She’s building a spiritual structure to manifest Love in the world. Creating a vehicle of love for the world. We can help her make it happen.

At the Equinox, Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus are getting closer together for their conjunction on April 20^th. Jupiter is an expansive, lucky energy while Uranus is the surprise giver. So look for a surprising shift and expansion of your Taurus energies. Taurus rules the body, self-worth, talents, money and pleasure and is ruled by the Goddess of Love. Look for what house 21* Taurus falls in and expect the unexpected.

Uranus is squaring Mars in Aquarius, so there can be unexpected accidents and incidents. But mostly, this is a call for independence, a need to be free of outer authority. It’s time to be the author of your own story.

Interestingly, Mars is at the same degree as America’s Aquarius Moon in the 4^th of July chart, and America’s Moon, symbolizing we the people, will be squared/challenged by Uranus in Taurus in 2024-25. I keep seeing all of us waking up out of our consumer stupor and taking back our government peacefully, rather than seeing a ‘bloodbath’ that mr. maga-oo is predicting.

Libra Lunar Eclipse March 24-25, 2024

This Libra Full Moon eclipse at 6* Libra/Aries occurs on March 25, 2024 at 12am PDT/ 3am EDT/ and 7am GMT. The energy of this eclipse favors risk-takers and the unconventional and loves innovation and originality. (Where Dragons Dance/Kory Varlen) Chiron is still conjunct the Aries North Node. This eclipse can help us achieve our goals and begin to move our culture in a different direction.

Keep asking Who am I? And find out where you want to go.

Aries Total Solar Eclipse, April 8 2024

This Aries Solar Eclipse occurs on April 8, 2024 at 11:21am PDT, 12:21pm MT, 1:21pm CDT/ 2:21pm EDT.

 

 

Solar eclipses are super-charged New Moons. This is another big solar eclipse for the United States. It crosses the continent in a different direction from the one in 2017. Someone pointed out that the 2017 eclipse divided the country from north to south, whereas this one goes almost right up the middle before veering to the northeast. This eclipse goes over many cities and will be seen by millions of Americans.

It’s interesting because at this 20* Aries’ solar eclipse, the Sun and Moon are exactly conjunct Chiron, the wounded healer and mentor. The Equinox theme repeats. But even more interesting is that it occurs on the US’s Chiron at 21* Aries.

So this important solar eclipse energizes our collective wound to our identity. I wrote about these identity wounds in my last Substack article. Basically, we all (even the Native peoples because of us) have a wound to our identities because we are all immigrants. This is not our native landscape, and we’ve all had to adjust our identities to become ‘Americans’. But the culture we have now has been shaped by corporations, which are not people, and so our culture needs an overhaul. We need to deepen.

But first, let’s address the question of our identity concerning what it means to be an American. Does it mean what the Christian nationalists mean? Or does it mean that each of us has a responsibility to stand up for what we believe America stands for. Are we a mob or are we a group of people who are willing to stand up for our values?

The Right likes to drape itself in the mantle of patriotism, but it doesn’t work if they don’t stand up for our country’s ideals. For those of us who do, we have to acknowledge that we are the patriots that our country needs now. (I never could get into this patriotic myth. But I guess I am now!) Not people who use violence to get their way, but people who know how to use peace to bring about change. (I’ve been rewatching Star Trek Discovery in preparation for its last season. And the heroine of Discovery is someone who whole-heartedly believes in the foundational values of the Federation – freedom, truth, honor, valor, peace. And because she does, she constantly takes a stand that ultimately results in a new consensus and, sometimes a peace.)

The American story (which is our myth while not yet our reality) is that America is a land of opportunity, of freedom and equality, of potential and progress. The Land of Milk and Honey. Some people found that land, but many haven’t.

We’ve exported that myth into the world, but we aren’t living it. These times call on us to become passionate about our freedom and our values. Look at what’s happening in Russia today as the people go to the poles to vote. Some people have guns aimed at them to make them vote for Putin. Some protested by showing up at noon to vote to honor Alexi Navalyny’s call and some were arrested for protesting. Putin won by a large amount. Of course, because there wasn’t anyone else running against him. We could have that here too if we let mr. maga-oo run the show again.

If we don’t like our choices in leaders, then we need to become the leaders we want. But first, let’s finish up old business with this election. Pluto will have moved from Aquarius back into Capricorn for the two months before the US election and will return to Aquarius for the next 20 years by mid-November.

I see this as our initiation and our choice. Will we let money and power take over this country or will we vote in the people who will move us forward, so that in 4 more years new leaders will emerge to continue to move us into a new future.

There’s so much Aries energy up now. Find out where Aries lies in your birth chart. That’s where a new spirit of freedom wants to come into your life.

Until next time,

Merry meet and merry part. And merry meet again.

The Cosmic Story: The Wheel of the Year: Imbolc 2024

 

The Cosmic Story: The Wheel of the Year – Imbolc 2024

Re-Aligning Ourselves with Our Instinctual Wisdom

 

 

Our Dis-connect From Nature

We modern humans have to face the fact that we have divorced ourselves from Nature and from our human nature. We’ve lost our connection to our INSTINCTS. We no longer read the signs that Mother Nature shows us, depending on our ‘weathermen’ to tell us what’s going on around us. (Remember the 2004 tsunami in Thailand – how people just watched the waters receding instead of heading for hills like the Native people and animals did?) And so we find ourselves in a dangerous moment when climate change needs to be addressed but it isn’t, because we no longer understand our body’s wisdom and our instinctual nature.

If we were in touch with our instincts, we wouldn’t stand for the poisoning of our waters, our land, our food, our air. Our senses would revolt. We would know that we have to change the way we’ve been programmed to live, especially now that corporations have us hooked on technology. No leaders are asking us to sacrifice our unnecessary things for the greater good, which we did during wartime. (Because it would wreck the economy?) Remember how George Bush told us all to go out and buy things after 9/11 to show Osama Bin Laden that he wasn’t going to defeat us? He didn’t tell us that we need to change our ways and learn to compromise if we want a peaceful world. And so war and genocide are still viable options for nations. Revenge, domination, greed and pride shape our world instead of peace, love and cooperation.

Instead, we bear our sicknesses without pointing our finger at the source of that poisoning; by not insisting that our leaders hold corporations accountable for the mess they’ve made of our world. And we would also look at our own part in that poisoning, for we consume what isn’t necessary for life. We trade our health and our children’s future for things that we often throw away or ignore soon after we buy them.

Another thing we’ve lost touch with is our IMAGINATIONS. Our psyches are filled with images from TV, video games and movies – often violent images which stay stuck in our psyches, which result in the violence we see all around us in the world today. Without a deep connection to our instincts, our imaginations languish. We lose touch with the values and beliefs that sustain life.

Americans are especially susceptible to media mind control, because we do not have the deep roots that Europeans, South Americans, Africans, Middle-Easterners and Asians have from living for millennia in their homelands. America was founded by corporations and our society has been shaped by corporations. Corporations have destroyed the power of families to create culture. I’m not talking about white Christian culture. I’m talking about the little rituals that families and communities develop by eating together, playing together and working together.

If anyone wants to point to the Anti-Christ of Christian mythology, it is the flat-earth, materialistic culture that America has fostered on the world. Anti-Christ means against spirit. Christianity mistakenly chose the image of the Christ’s crucifixion as its central image, rather than his Resurrection, which was the whole point of his story – that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Mary Magdalene chose the resurrection. The Divine Feminine knows about life and spirit and soul.

But that human experience means that we have to understand our instincts rather than reject them, which is what so many of our religions have pushed us to do. They tell us that earthly life is evil and only heaven is important. They reject the Goddess of Life, and so we have learned to reject life’s magic.

And when these masculine religions rejected the beauty of earthly life, they also rejected and dominated women and their feminine ways of knowing – our instincts, our intuitions, our emotional intelligence. And our imaginations, for our right brain speaks to us through the creative imagination’s symbolic language.

Carl Jung said that in the Aquarian Age, the archetypes would be poured out of the unconscious and made conscious. He also said that there is a spectrum – like the light spectrum from infra-red to ultra-violet – that stretches from instincts to archetypes. The archetypes are the structures that shape the Earth’s instinctual nature. And so now we find ourselves having to get back in touch with our instincts through the archetypal figures of our dreams and visions. We pull animal cards to make us aware of which instincts are pulling at us. We pull Goddess cards to name the feminine instincts that have been suppressed by patriarchy.

That’s why it’s so important to reclaim and work with our imagination. It isn’t good enough to just pick a card and read what it means. We have to take that meaning into ourselves and embody it. We have to re-birth our instincts. We can do this through listening to our imagination.

 

 

I also believe that our original language is the symbolic language of the soul. In the story of the Tower of Babel, everyone spoke the same language until men built a tower to the heavens. They were punished by forgetting that original language and speaking different languages so people couldn’t understand each other. Perhaps if we all became proficient in symbolic language once again, we would understand each other better.

If we are to survive this time of cultural chaos and change, we all need to ground ourselves in our body’s instincts and our soul’s language. We can begin to do this by syncing once again with Nature’s natural cycles.

That’s what the Wheel of the Year can teach us.

The Wheel of the Year – Imbolc: A Time of Visioning

 

The Wheel of the Year sets out 8 specific turning points of light during the year. These gateways initiate the different seasons. There are the two solstices, when the Sun is either at its extreme northern or southern boundary. At the two equinoxes, the light is balanced. And then there are the 4 cross-quarter days, which occur midway between the solstices and equinoxes in the power signs of the zodiac. There four signs – Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius – are where the seasons are concentrated and take hold. Even with climate change, the relationship of the Sun to the Earth stays the same. So while the exact dates sometimes change, the message and meaning of the season remains the same.

We begin at Winter Solstice, when the Sun is at its lowest southern point and begins its journey back north. (Of course those of you in the southern hemisphere experience the opposite seasonal shifts.) At Winter Solstice, the Light is re-born. The instinct of this season is the feeling of hope that we get in the darkest times that life will return to nurture us. The shift in light begins the yang part of the year, when the Light begins to grow. Our instincts tell us to go within, rest and restore ourselves.

We have arrived at the next gateway of the Wheel, one of the cross-quarter days that occur between the solstices and equinoxes. This second gate occurs when the Sun reaches the 15^th degree of the sign of Aquarius, the power degree of the power signs of the zodiac. This is the festival of Imbolc or St. Brigid’s Day – or even the Catholic Candlemas. While we celebrate it on February 2^nd, because of the changes that occur due to the Earth’s wobble, true Imbolc is now on February 4^th.

This is a festival of the returning light. Despite the cold and snow still on the ground, we sense a shift.  We look for the light.  Soon we’ll notice that the light grows more quickly, the daylight hours growing while the dark of the night recedes. We celebrate it here in the US as Groundhog’s Day, when this large rodent peeks out of its underground burrow to see its shadow. In Ireland, snakes were the animals that would come above ground to see if winter was receding. The instinct here is to envision the future when light would bring warmth and growth back to the land.

The Sabian symbol for 15* Aquarius is: Two lovebirds sitting on a fence and singing happily. This power gate calls us to let our soul unite two complementary spiritual (birds) energies to achieve real happiness or bliss – at a midpoint in time/the fence. One way to understand this is to let our imagination (right brain) show us our path and to use our rationality (left brain) to help us walk it.

The inner light of the unconscious unites with the heavenly light of consciousness to bless our lives. Love is what unites them.

Imbolc was called Candlemas by the Catholic Church, a time to bless the candles that the church would use during the coming year. In Ireland, they celebrate St. Brigid’s Day, as she is the Patron Saint of Ireland along with St. Patrick. But in reality, Brigid was a goddess before she was a saint. One of the most important Irish goddesses, such that the Church had to adopt her as their own, since the people would not give her up.

The Imbolc festival is a fire festival. The fires are lit as sympathetic magic to help bring the sunlight back. And with the Light comes vision. Just as we look to see more light at Imbolc, it is also a time to envision the new life that will emerge in the Spring. 

 

To honor the energy of Imbolc, light some candles and be present to the light. Gaze into the flames, and let images arise within you. Ask for a vision of what your inner child of light wants to do this year. How is the baby of Light growing? What does your soul need from you to grow strong enough to emerge in the Spring and root into the deep soil of your life?

If you need help, ask the Mother Goddess who helps us grow in this second part of the Winter Solstice season: Brigid, the Gaelic Mary and the foster-mother of Christ. (The Celts placed great value on fostering their children and one’s foster mother was just as beloved and important as one’s birth mother.)

Brigid, Goddess of Imbolc: How do we work with the Light?

Since the Winter Solstice is about the re-birth of the Light, the purpose of that season is to nurture and grow that light until it is strong enough to stand on its own. The Goddess energy that works in the Winter Solstice season is the Divine Mother – the birth giver, the nurturer, the bestower of gifts and talents.

At Winter Solstice, Mother Mary embodies the archetype of the Divine Mother who keeps her child nourished and safe and secure from death. At Imbolc, the Goddess form changes to one of Teacher, Healer and Inspirer. We look now to Brigid, whom the Irish call Muire na nGael or Mary of the Irish. She is called the foster Mother of Christ.

If we acknowledge that the Christ is the part of us that is the Eternal Spirit of the Creator, then Brigid is the Divine Feminine Mother who now takes that spirit and helps shape it into life-giving purpose.

Brigid is the Celtic goddess of the fires of the forge and the hearth, of poetry, healing and childbirth. The name Brigit itself means either ‘Fiery Arrow’, ‘Bright One’, or ‘High One’ in the ancient Celtic language, referring to her solar aspect, as she is a goddess of Light and Flame. She is an ancient image of the solar feminine – from a time before the masculine deities took over the rulership of the Sun and its gift of self-consciousness.

 

Brigid, Brigit or Brighid (pronounced Breed) is an important Celtic Triple goddess, changing form from Maiden to Mother to Crone. At Imbolc, she comes to us in her Crone aspect and leads us to the inner depths where the Cauldron of Inspiration waits for our gaze to seek a vision. When we emerge, Brigid comes with us as the Maiden, renewed once again. She is the Mother of our spiritual birth, when we recognize our soul’s gifts and potentials and purpose.

Brigid is the patroness of poetry, healing and smithcraft, all different ways humans use the creative fires of life with practical and inspired wisdom. As a solar deity Her attributes are light, inspiration and all skills associated with the creative fire, especially the fiery power of inner healing and vital energy.

Imbolc is a great time to gather with friends and family to tell stories, recite poetry, make music and feel the joy of returning life to Mother Earth. It’s a time to use our imaginations, to listen to our dreams, and to feel the possibilities of life.

There are many foods the Celts made to celebrate this season, many tied to the fact that the sheep gave birth now and so had milk to share. This is a link to different recipes people made for Imbolc.

Magical Foods of Imbolc

The Astrology of the Imbolc Season – February to mid-March

The astrology of this season is full speed ahead – all the planets are moving forward now that Uranus turned direct on last weekend (only the asteroid Juno is retrograde now) until after Spring Equinox. That means, these archetypal energies can work for us in the world. Of course, it’s up to each of us to figure out how we want to be love, take action, speak our truths, engage in our collective society and channel the larger energies of life.

Since we are living in a time of evolution and revolution, each of us is responsible for evolving ourselves into the person we want to be. Each year we get this chance but this year seems to be crucial not only personally but collectively. If we want to change the world, we need to be the ones to do it.

The most important energy to engage with this year is Pluto in Aquarius. I did a zoom presentation on January 20th about this major shift and you can view it on my You Tube channel The Cosmic Storyteller.

But to recap the most important points:

Pluto dipped into Aquarius for the first time since the American Revolution last year from March 23 – June 11, 2023, when it retrograded back into Capricorn. During that time, AI really took off, with all the major companies releasing their version of AI. In October the US government released a study about concerns over AI.

On January 20, 2024, Pluto once again entered Aquarius, where it will move forward until May 2^nd, then retrograde back into Capricorn from September 1 – November 19^th – just in time for the US presidential election. It seems to me that the cosmos wants US citizens to make a choice between democracy and dictatorship, just as it did for those American revolutionaries back in 1778. The choice is up to us.

After November 19, 2024, Pluto is travel through Aquarius until 2044. Pluto in Aquarius is associated with revolution, social justice, scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements. We’re already seeing some of those breakthroughs – I just read that someone might have discovered the cure for cancer.

Pluto is going to evolve our Collective Mind, which Aquarius represents. It’s how we as a collective view the world, our beliefs and prejudices, our worldview. We are evolving out of a Newtonian cause and effect understanding of life into a quantum understanding that we are all one. Hopefully, it will be a time when humanity finally grows up and takes responsibility for our actions. It is definitely a time when humanity has to spearhead evolution if we want to survive as a species. Mother Earth will heal her wounds and birth new life, but humanity might not be part of that if we don’t take up our stewardship of the Earth.

Pluto in Aquarius will also bring up what is no longer viable for the Collective Mind, just as it brought up what wasn’t working in our society during the years (2008 – 2024) it traveled through Capricorn, sign of our collective institutions such as government, finance, the military, our justice systems. There is always the negative use of power, and so we have to watch what is happening with technology and put some stops on it until we find a balance there.

On the positive side, Pluto in Aquarius is all about freedom, equality, and the people rather than hierarchical rulers. It will be a time when we explore outer space as well as the inner space of our psyches. Perhaps we’ll learn mental telepathy and start to use the Innernet rather than the technology that is destroying so much of our human interactions. Connecting online is totally different from personal human interaction.

The New and Full Moons during the next six weeks occur in the signs of Aquarius, Pisces and Virgo, opening us to the collective energies we share as well as how we can be of service to the collective.

Venus, Mercury and Mars move through the signs of Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, and Mercury goes into Aries where it will retrograde on April 1^st, conjunct the Aries Solar Eclipse on April 8^th. (more on this in my Spring Equinox newsletter).

Jupiter and Uranus are moving forward in Taurus to their meetup on April 20^th at 22* Taurus. (More on that in the Spring Equinox newsletter)

That’s all for now.

Let this season bring you insight into what your soul has planned for you this year. Whether you meditate, journey, dream, get an astrology or tarot reading, take a peek ahead now and let that vision and wisdom guide you into the Spring.

May you be blessed with inspiration this season.

Cathy

 

Dear God of Higher Love,

Beautiful Source, the Divine Within,

Let the soothing balm of love and justice

Pour over all of us,

Filling us with peace, kindness,

And the powerful, passionate will

To do what we must do,

To heal the ruptures, the corruption,

the transgressions and the wounds of this country.

I humbly ask you to let good win.

Give us the opportunity to do better,

To be better.

We will not squander it.

We are awake now,

It took us a long time to see

And we are grateful for your patience.

But we are here now,

We are ready.

We are warriors for love.

With your guidance,

We will make it right,

repairing the inequalities,

the injustices, the offenses.

We will lift this country,

this planet and its people

and finally be the beacon of hope,

the shining light, the loving heart

that we are destined to be.

-Pamela Bongas McIntyre, 10/27/20