The Cosmic Story: Saturn in Pisces --Renewing Our Archetypal Terrain

 

The Cosmic Story: Saturn in Pisces

Renewing our Archetypal Terrain

Saturn Journeys Through the Sign of Pisces

from March 7, 2023 – February 14, 2026

There are two archetypal energies at play when we look at planets in different signs. The planet is the action or archetypal energy in play, while the sign gives us the archetypal landscape where that action takes place.

In 2023, we’ll see three big planetary energies (Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto) moving into new signs, so be prepared to flow with the changing energies.

The first shift will occur in early March, when the planet Saturn, the ‘reality’ principle, leaves Aquarius and moves into Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, where everything dissolves back into the ocean of the Collective Unconscious .

Something big is coming to an end.

Before Saturn enters Pisces, the sign of dissolution, let’s review what Saturn has been up to in the last seven years (¼ of its cycle) before he sinks into the depths of Pisces’ ocean currents.

 

In November 2015, Saturn was just beginning to transit through Sagittarius, the sign of truth-speaking, when it squared Neptune in Pisces, the sign of illusion, delusion and imagination. Suddenly we were confronted with ‘fake news’ and the questioning of our consensus ‘reality’.

Saturn’s transit through Sagittarius brought up the question: What is Truth? What is Realty? What we believed was a single shared reality was shown to be an illusion. These past few years has thrown us into cultural chaos because of this ‘not knowing’.

But for things to really change on a collective level, we have to descend into some Chaos, so something really new can emerge. Otherwise, we get a repeat of what we had before, only worse.

The truth is, we all live in our own separate realities. Ask don Juan or the Buddhists. This belief in separate/alternative realities, which is the new scientific paradigm, is finally going mainstream. Have you seen the movie, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once? This movie about parallel lives/ alternative realities is a masterful example of how these multiple dimensions affect our lives. 

 

 

Then Saturn transited through Capricorn – one of the two signs Saturn ‘rules’ (has an affinity for). From January 2018 to March 2020, Saturn in Capricorn tried to make sense of what was going on in collective culture – what was true and what wasn’t. To shore up what was worth saving and to let Pluto’s wrecking ball smash the rest. And then in January, 2020, a once-in-500+ years conjunction in Capricorn between Saturn’s energy of structure and order, and Pluto’s energy of destruction for evolution’s sake, came to a head with the world shutting down over COVID.

Life changed. Our culture changed, like it did 500 years ago after the Protestant Reformation.

Next, from January 2021 to March 2023, Saturn moved through Aquarius, another sign it rules according to ancient astrologers (who knew nothing about Uranus, the modern co-ruler of Aquarius). It began its transit by conjuncting Jupiter at 1* Aquarius on Winter Solstice 2020, starting a new 200 year cycle of collective growth and well-being in Air signs.

With Saturn in Aquarius, we had to look at the big picture issues to see where we stand. For the past few years, people have become more engage in fixed-air Aquarian issues: in politics, in community action and in their personal tribes. We had to recognize what was working and what wasn’t working in our social contracts. 

 

And then there's AI.

 

 

One gift of Saturn’s transit of Aquarius is to help us bring our ideals into our everyday consciousness, and into our collective consciousness. I think this is the result of the last quarter Uranus-Saturn square in 2021 – 2022. Will we hold onto the old story or will we move into a new story based in Mother Earth’s biological terrain? We were all being shaken and now we see the results. People are standing up for equal rights, for women’s rights, for voting rights, for people-power in the marketplace. People are taking back our freedom concerning work and we’re beginning to see through the corporate manipulation of our ‘reality’.

And those who are afraid of change – really they’re afraid of life – are trying to control the rest of us by lying and manipulating, or by bombing innocent cities or killing us in mass shootings. The old paradigm doesn’t want to die and let something new be born. This is part of Saturn’s ancient mythic story: Saturn swallowed his children; refusing to pass his power on to the next generation.

We’re seeing the split in ideals mostly because the manipulators are trying to divide us as they play morality police. But in reality, most people want the same things – peace, love, good work, security, comfort, companionship, community. The morality part is personal and needs to be kept personal. Nobody should force another human being to think, believe, and act on things that go against their personal beliefs. Nobody has the right to force those beliefs on others.

That’s the Aquarian ideal of community. Take personal responsibility for what you do as long as it brings no harm to others or to Nature.

After 5 + years in signs it rules (Capricorn and Aquarius), Saturn’s energy has helped us see how our modern 3D reality is sick because it is removed from both Mother Earth and our human needs. And our collective emotions are being played out in large measure through Mother Earth’s intense weather patterns. This disconnect is due to religious beliefs as well as the mechanization of life. The collective chaos is needed for cultural renewal.

And so when Saturn steps into Pisces, the chaos might feel worse, but we have the opportunity to transform our fear through playing seriously with the Creative Imagination.

Saturn’s Archetypal Energy

The Ancient Greek story about Saturn has him swallowing his own children, sickly mirroring his father Ouranos, when he kept stuffing his children back into Gaia’s womb. That led to Saturn castrating his heavenly father, cutting Earth off from our cosmic community. Ouranos’ phallus, his potency, fell into the ancient oceans and gave rise to Aphrodite, the personification of Love. That’s the parting gift the cosmos left us. The Power of Love.

For most of the past, astrologers saw Saturn’s powers through the lens of it being the last planet they could see with their naked eyes. It marked the boundary of the known universe, so Saturn became the boundary, the limit, that held us all in its embrace.

Astrologically, we say that Saturn’s archetypal energy embodies the principle of limits, structure, constraint, necessity, patience, endurance and manifestation. It rules achievements in life and in your career. Saturn is associated with Time, maturity and mortality (the Grim Reaper is one of Saturn’s masks). Saturn is the symbol for authority, old age, status, hierarchy, structures (like government and rules), sobriety, and mortality.

Saturn’s energies can also repress, make rigid, negate and defeat our ego needs, or restrain them until we face our responsibilities. Saturn builds boundaries, foundations, laws and restrictions. Saturn is called the Great Teacher, because we have to face those tests to achieve our destiny. Saturn teaches people to work through limitations, adversity, and obligation. So Saturn also symbolizes the wisdom gained, the discipline learned and the karma that needs facing.

 

 

Saturn is the archetypal senex – the stern old man. This is an apt image of patriarchy. Since patriarchy is finally being named as the system we live under (when you can name something, you can have power over it), we can begin to leave it behind, like Zeus, who wasn’t swallowed, and who led the rebellion against Saturn and his followers, the Titans.

In the Chakra system, I place Saturn at the Root Chakra. The Root Chakra is the energy that grounds us in Earth’s biosphere. Our culture and our family shape this chakra, for good or for ill. For a long time, our collective root chakra has been shaped by patriarchal rules that inspire fear, insecurity, male domination and female submission, disconnection from nature, over-reliance on logic and rational thought, and a denial and rejection of our feeling, emotional and spiritual natures.

These are the characteristics that have become almost stereotypical of patriarchal far-right beliefs – which in turn constellates its opposite – extreme left-wing wokeness. Here is Saturn in Aquarius, sorting out the group Mind.

We have to stop rebelling against the old story. When you rebel, you’re still tied to the old story – like being a teenager lashing out at dad or mom. To be truly revolutionary, we have to leave the patriarchy-within-us behind so it can die in the outer world. We all need to step out of that paradigm. Personally we can be as radical as we want. But collectively, we have to create a balance that can help us all evolve together. Otherwise the war mongers and corporate elite will win out and control the future.

The Root Chakra is the origin of where patriarchy lives within us and it influences all the other chakras. So look at what keeps you grounded or gives you a sense of security. Are you doing the things you want to be doing? Or need to be doing?

Check in with yourself because when Saturn is in Pisces, those things will no longer serve you. 

 

Milky Way Galaxy

 

Since 2012, when there was a galactic alignment of the Sun, Earth and the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, we have entered a new 26,000 year cosmic cycle, a new beginning for life here on Earth. That means, we’ll be re-imagining all the archetypes, letting them break out of their old stereotypical shells, so they can re-define themselves for us. This is especially true of Saturn’s transit through Pisces for the first time since this new galactic alignment.

These next few year will hopefully see patriarchy swept away while Saturn is submerged in the mysteries of the Great Mother’s watery womb. Since we are coming to the end of the Winter Solstice season, the Great Mother is still our guiding archetypal feminine energy. Mary is worshiped by Catholics as ‘Stella Maris’ – the Star of the Sea, the Goddess as Cosmic Womb. When Saturn enters Pisces, its archetypal energy goes back into this Cosmic Womb for rebirth.  So don't be afraid to call on her for her help and wisdom during this transit.

 

Stella Maris

 

Archetypes are the basic instincts that make us human. They are the blueprint of those instincts, which get filled in by each Cosmic Age, culture and generation. When an archetypal energy no longer serves life, it becomes a stereotype. It loses the energy to engage people and needs to be renewed.

When Saturn transits through Pisces in these next few years, we have the opportunity to let go of those rules which shaped our root chakras, and let Spirit re-shape our understanding of the rules of Life. If we let patriarchy die, Saturn can center us in a new reality, a reality that invites us to re-align ourselves with a multi-dimensional understanding of ‘reality’. This will happen easier if we all develop a strong spiritual practice.

When Saturn enters Pisces, this energy will be striped to the bones/the essence. Saturn’s renewed archetypal energy can create new bones, new structures of realty that are not based in patriarchal thinking. Saturn no longer serves as the limit of our solar system. When we dive into Pisces’ oceanic womb, Saturn can form the bones of a new collective reality that includes those other, more subtle planetary energies.

Saturn doesn’t have to be the old judgmental man. Saturn can become a symbol for the old wise woman, whose bones instinctively know the limits of growth.

The Sign of Pisces: The Return to Source

“The Otherworld changes people. Without a strong sense of self, or of purpose, it will transform you into your deepest desires or fear.”

Charles de Lint, Spiritwalk

Charles de Lint is speaking of the old Celtic belief in the OtherWorld, an inner psychic landscape where the archetypes become myths and magic abounds. 

 

 

The 20th century scholar and mystic, Henry Corbin, named this inner realm the “mundus imaginalis” or world of images. He describes this as “a truly real though subtle landscape located in a third domain that is neither precisely spirit or matter, but lies somewhere in between the purely intellectual world of angelic intelligences and the sensible world of material things and participates in both.” It is the Mundis Imaginalis, the imaginal realm where symbols arise and begin the process of manifesting. This is the dimension where our human mind can interact with the Creator’s Mind. This is where shamans journey to speak with the spirits. We could say it’s the Quantum Field.

It is also the realm of the meta-verse, all of those parallel worlds we create with our choices. Once again, if you haven’t seen it yet, go watch Everything, Everywhere All At Once. It shows the fear and pain patriarchy creates in us and how we are constantly creating parallel universes by our choices. When we connect to those other parts of ourselves/ our world, we can find the resolution of that fear in remembering to Love.

This is the realm of Pisces: the ocean, the multiverse, other dimensions, the Imaginal World, the Collective Unconscious, the World Soul.

 

 

Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, the return to Source after our long journey through the cycle of life. It is the realm where energy dissolves back into its essence. It is the watery womb we all return to, where we let go of our sense of individuality and dissolve back into the Source of Life. This final sign receives into itself the lessons of the previous 11 signs.

In Pisces, we swim through currents that connect us to cosmic consciousness (Aphrodite again), and we sense the ideas, influences, and revelations of the rest of humanity. Pisces symbolizes the World Soul, which holds within itself echoes of all human and natural experiences. It is the magical realm that connects to all dimensions of cosmic reality.

As we come to the end of the Piscean Age, we are facing all the sins and the glory of the past 2,000 years. What have we learned about the energies of these two fish, swimming in opposite directions? If Jesus Christ is the god-man of the Piscean Age for us westerners, our work has been to understand that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. This is the first fish.

 

 

When the Christian Church chose as its symbol the Cross over the Resurrection, it tied us down to a belief system that gradually became one of fear and control rather than love and peace. And for the past 1000 years, our Christian society became the opposite fish, the Anti-Christ. While some Christians want to point to a specific person as the Anti-Christ, it is obvious that our whole society has become anti-Christ—opposed to the idea that we are Spirit. Our society only believes in what it can touch and see, it believes matter is dead and there is no real connection to Spirit. It acts as if the outer world is the only life available to us. That is why we are a death culture. We see Death as a final encounter rather than a translation to another realm of being. And we are so afraid of death that we create death all around us. We’re stuck on the cross of life without the redemption of the Resurrection.

As some of us leave this old paradigm behind, we are changing the beliefs of the rest of the world.

Pisces symbolizes the watery realms of the Collective Unconscious. Carl Jung said that this is the realm of the Archetypes, as well as all the feelings and values humanity has rejected from our collective life. Neptune and Jupiter are co-rulers of Pisces, and Neptune is finishing up its transit through Pisces in 2025, just as Saturn gets set to leave it as well. Saturn and Neptune will meet up in early Aries in 2026, working to align our collective reality with a deep mystical vision that will take this Aries initiative and make things manifest.

The realm of Pisces is a mysterious sea of mysticism, creativity, and imagination. It is a space where we birth the shape of our most heartfelt desires and dreams. It is a realm where the Creative Imagination speaks to us in symbolic language. It is the realm that gives birth to stories and dreams, as well as delusions and illusions. There are no defining boundaries. Everything is in flux. Everything moves to the tidal flow of this watery womb.

So what’s going to happen when Saturn, the archetype of structure and boundaries, enters the watery realm of multi-dimensional realities?

I imagine that this time, when Saturn is in Pisces, we’ll all be going on a collective psychedelic mushroom trip. 

 

 

As my Psychedelic Counselor friend told me: Mushrooms are the children. They are playful and can also bring in trickster energy, depending on the state of our own personal unconscious. Mushrooms are great for deep inner work, bringing intensity to the work. In a high dose can bring people into different realms of reality.

We will meet all our demons and angels on Saturn’s trip through the inner world. This is a good time to brush up on your knowledge of stories, myths and dreams, because these are the tools we’ll need for understanding what’s happening and to give meaning to it.

It’s time we faced these demons and angels, so we can get on with our new story. So hang onto your center and don’t be afraid to dive deep. As Lady Gaga sings so beautifully, We’re far from the Shallow now.

Saturn in Pisces

“True Freedom is not an effect. It is a kind of ever-expanding spaciousness that arises spontaneously inside you as you come to understand how deeply victimized you are by your own core beliefs.”

Richard Rudd

On February 20^th, there is a New Moon at 2* Pisces. This New Moon sets the tone not only for this last lunar cycle of the astrological year, but for Saturn’s entrance into Pisces.

The Gene Key for the first five degrees of Pisces is Gene Key #55 – The Dragonfly’s Dream. It is an important Gene Key for humanity, and it is a unique one, for while the Shadow of this #55 key is victimization, it is the only Key where both the Gift and the Blessing is the same: Freedom.

 

With Saturn entering Pisces an hour after the Virgo Full Moon on March 7^th, our cosmic instructions will be to begin letting go of the story of victimization so we can create the new story of Freedom. An excellent image of how we are going to transmute our collective root chakra: out of fear and victimization and into a new grounding in spiritual awareness and unity.

 

 

We are going through a personal and collective transmutation. Our DNA is literally going to mutate. The image that Rudd gives us to describe this awakening is the image of a dragonfly. Did you know that dragonflies live their early lives underwater, not coming up to breathe air at all? They are called nymphs and are quite successful predators. Then over a period of years, they start a series of moultings – shedding their skins while still staying submerged. They go through hidden mutations until suddenly, something in their DNA is triggered and they find a plant stem and climb up it into the air and sunlight. They emerge into a whole new world. The Sun continues the final phase of their moult and their wings unfold and are filled with the remaining water inside their body. Once their body is completely reshaped, they fly free!

That’s a beautiful image of this upcoming transit of Saturn in Pisces. The hope that we will emerge in a completely different story in two years. Hold onto that hope as you go through this multi-verse initiation.

Saturn enters the sign of Pisces on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 5:34 am PST/ 8:34 am EST/ 1:34 pm GMT just about an hour after the Pisces/Virgo Full Moon.

Set for Washington D.C.

When Saturn enters Pisces, we’re still in the Full Moon energy. Both the Pisces Sun and the Virgo Moon want to be of service, one in a grounded way and another in an imaginal, spiritual way. This Full Moon wants us to find ways to ground our spiritual insights into our natural healing abilities. Mars in Gemini squares the Sun and Moon, perhaps overloading the mind with too many facts and too much information. So it’s a great time to get out of our Minds and into our Hearts to discover the Truth of Life once again.

Jupiter, Venus, Vesta, Juno and Chiron are all in Aries, healing our sense of Self and expanding our vision through Feminine energy of love and connection.

It’s a chart that points to the ending of the old and the renewal of energies so the new can arise.

Just to remind you, the Collective Unconscious / Anima Mundi / Mundis Imaginalis / Quantum Field speaks to us in symbols and images. So it’s time to shift gears out of your left-brain rational mind and get down into your right-brain imaginal one. Learn the deep meanings in fairy tales and ancient myths because this is the language of the archetypal realm.

 

I also feel that if we work consciously with these energies, we'll become more 'psychic': we'll experience telepathy, we'll connect on our 'inner-net' with family and friends and even strangers.  We have to begin to trust our intuition, our feelings, our instincts.  All very feminine ways of seeing the world. 

None of us can predict the outcome of a transit. We can only comment on the energies. There will be changes in our collective consciousness (around water, pollution, religion, fuel, climate change, media) but I’m more interested in how we personally work with this energy. How well we understand those energies helps us to work with them.

So I can only offer you the way I’m going to work with this transit. I’ll begin by imagining Saturn walking into the surf at my local beach (or at any of the many beaches of the world). I see Saturn as a giant stone Being, carrying the weight of the past 26,000 years on his shoulders. Remember, this is the first time Saturn has entered Pisces since 2012 when our solar system lined up with the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to the start a new 26,000 year cosmic cycle.

I’ll imagine myself walking into the ocean with Saturn. First I’ll watch his form dissolve until only the bones remain. Then I’ll look around to see what I can see as well as what Saturn sees. To let something new arise, I won’t focus on anything in particular, but I’ll let the images come to me on their own. These will be the energies to work with, attracted to Saturn to be tested and re-birthed. There will be different images and symbols that arise at different times throughout these next two years.

If you do something like this, use your Saturn discipline to keep a record of them, because like dreams, these images and what they tell you hold information that you’ll need to create that new story once Saturn emerges again into Aries.

Let Saturn help you hold your center and allow the images to flow. Ask if whatever image comes to your awareness is in its true form. Use Saturn’s gift of focus and concentration to stay with the many changes in the image, because, like the Old Man of the Sea, as you hold on, it will shift and morph until it reveals its true form. Once the image stays consistent, you can let Saturn work with it.

The ocean holds many hidden treasures. It’s interesting that two movies this past year have to do with beings who live underwater. Both Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Avatar: The Way of Water awaken us to the beauty and dangers that lurk in the Womb of the Great Mother, both literally and symbolically.

One of the dangers of interacting with the Collective Unconscious is that it is too easy to get inflated by the archetype’s energy if you don’t have a strong ego to balance you. You are NOT the archetypal pattern, but rather you get to work with the archetypal energy. That will be one of the dangers of this journey if you’re not prepared or if you bring your patriarchal root chakra of fear with you.

As so many astrologers have said, this will be a time to bring your dreams into your conscious reality. I believe you need to speak to those dream images in symbolic language and let your creative imagination tell you the new story you’ve been waiting all your life to hear.

More on Pluto’s dip into Aquarius in my Spring Equinox newsletter.

As we begin this new phase of our journey, may the peace and the love of the Goddess and the God be ever in your hearts. Merry meet, merry part and merry meet again!

Cathy

 

 

Shallow ~ Lady Gaga

Tell me something, girl
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more?
Is there something else you're searchin' for?

I'm falling
In all the good times, I find myself longin' for change
And in the bad times, I fear myself

Tell me something, boy
Aren't you tired trying to fill that void?
Or do you need more?
Ain't it hard keeping it so hardcore?

I'm falling
In all the good times, I find myself longing for change
And in the bad times, I fear myself

I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in
I'll never meet the ground
Crash through the surface, where they can't hurt us
We're far from the shallow now.

The Cosmic Story: The Wheel of the Year: Imbolc The Season of Light Returning

 

The Cosmic Story: The Wheel of the Year

Imbolc: The Season of Light Returning

The Seasons of the Earth

Now that Astrology is once again a hot topic, since its popularity does comes and goes through the centuries, most people identify themselves with an astrological sign and its characteristics – I’m a Taurus, you’re an Aquarian, he’s overemotional because he’s a Cancer, she scatters her energy like all Gemini’s.

And so they should. Signs tell us a lot about the character of a person: is he a fire sign like Aries, Leo or Sagittarius? There’s a lot of passion and creativity and energy there. And we all know about the empathic gifts of water signs, the practicality of earth signs and the social skills of air signs.

But most of us don’t think of ourselves in terms of the season of the year we were born into. While the astrological signs are part of the season, they are the heavenly part of the story. The actual Earth seasons, described by the Wheel of the Year, tell us about what’s going on down on Mother Earth – at least in the northern hemisphere – while the Sun moves through those tropical zodiac signs. The season tells us what our earthly energies will be like this lifetime. The Innocence of Spring, the Fertility of Summer, the Knowledge of Autumn, the Secret Wisdom of Winter.

 

Winter Solstice, the season of the rebirth of the Light, holds sway until Spring Equinox, the emergence of the Light. Along with Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, these are the major turning points of the seasons. In-between these annual changes of seasons are the cross-quarter holidays of Imbolc (February 2), Beltane (May 1), Lammas (August 1) and Samhain (November 1). They are all fire festivals and they illuminate the end game of the season.

Imbolc is the cross-quarter holiday of the Winter Solstice season. It is celebrated on February 2^nd in the U.S. as Groundhog’s Day or St. Brigid’s Day in Ireland. Astrologically, because of precession, the date is now closer to February 4^th, when the Sun hits the 15* Aquarius power gate. Each cross-quarter holiday occurs at the 15* of a fixed sign, because it is on those days that the shift in the seasons begin to occur.

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. 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 is the feast of the returning light. In Ireland, it occurs when the sheep are birthing their lambs and lactating, a sure sign of Spring. You’ll notice that the daylight begins to grow longer quickly now. The Sun has reached a point on its journey back North where it stays visible longer in the sky. And we begin to know that Spring will indeed come again.

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. We’ll talk more about her below, as she is the Goddess we look to in this later part of the Winter Solstice season.

All the Imbolc festivals are fire festivals. The fires are lit as sympathetic magic to help bring the sunlight back. And with the Light comes vision. So Imbolc is also a visioning timed: doesn’t the groundhog look for his shadow to forecast the return of Spring? 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. 

 

So if you are born into the Imbolc season of the year, your purpose is tied in with vision – envisioning the future, nurturing new life, finding your creative talents. These are the gifts of the season to you.

 

 

 

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 it 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 birthgiver, 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 (you can read about her here) 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 smith craft, 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.

What area of life calls to you? Looking at the astrological houses and their meanings are a template, is it a year to concentrate on yourself, on your talents, on your family, on your work? Or perhaps it’s about friendships or partnerships, about deep intimacy or a time of silent reflection.

Let Brigid’s fire light your way through the remaining dark.

Astrological Happenings in Imbolc’s Season

Imbolc Chart

I heard a song the other day – it sang “the future ain't what we thought it was no more.” After a quiet laugh, I stopped and thought how true it is. Our future isn’t going to be what we thought it would be.

We all sense that our world is at a turning point in our history. Our technology has made us ONE World. Our next lesson, coming in the next two years as Saturn travels through Pisces, is to learn to be ONE heart that cares for all of us – people, animals and Mother Nature. The crisis and change of heart will most probably come through climate change, since it will be Mother Earth who has to set things back in balance. But She needs human beings to do our part in stopping the continued destruction of our environment, as well as helping Her heal. What can you offer to help heal? 

 

A quick look at the chart for Imbolc (when the Sun gets to 15* Aquarius) tells us that this is going to be a busy six weeks, with all the angles in cardinal, initiating signs. With a Libra ascendant, it’s all about relationships and balance. Our society needs to learn courtesy again. Cancer on the mid-heaven tells us that our homes, our families, our soulful needs have to be foremost in our sights. With Aries on the descendant, we have to learn to be ourselves with others, to know our boundaries without shutting down to others.

The Aquarius Sun exactly squaring Uranus in Taurus is certainly another wake up call to us concerning the state of Mother Earth and our civilization. Why can’t we bring our collective awareness concerning Mother Earth to the forefront of our political awareness, instead of unjustified moral outrage at what … people being free to be who they are? Aquarius is the rebel, the freedom-fighter. Uranus is Prometheus, bringing fire from heaven to humans.

The Moon in Cancer is opposite Pluto in the last degrees of Capricorn before it enters Aquarius for the first time on March 23^rd. Our emotional needs must be met – we have to stop the politics and get back to common sense and take care of our world and each other. Saturn in Aquarius is hidden from the Cancer Moon, so we have to make an effort to put those emotional needs in terms the collective can understand and accept.

Venus in Pisces squares Mars as he moves ahead again in Gemini. Since Venus is exalted in Pisces, she’s sure to charm Mars into slowing down and thinking about what she really wants him to do now. Jupiter is back in Aries, and is once again beginning his twelve years journey around the zodiac. Change is on the menu this year – or at least the beginnings of change – with both Saturn and Pluto moving into new signs this Spring.

 

There are astrological signs of real change coming over the course of the next few years. While we’ll be dealing with the dying rattles of patriarchy for a few more years as Pluto finishes up his business in Capricorn, we’ll also be honing our vision for the future: Pluto enters Aquarius for the first time since 1778-1798 CE on March 23, 2023 and will travel back and forth over the Capricorn/ Aquarius cusp from 2023-2024.

As an archetypal energy of the power of evolution, Pluto finally settles into the sign of Aquarius in 2025, hopefully signaling a renewed vision of the Age of Aquarius, rather than the End Times story of patriarchal religions (Capricorn) that is unconsciously feeding the crisis of our times. (See my book, Wisdom’s Daughters, for a summary of these End Times beliefs.)

 

 

Saturn is moving out of Aquarius and into Pisces on March 7, 2023, shifting our reality to the deep needs of the Collective Unconscious – the deep needs of Life. We have been exploring the deep divide over beliefs and mindsets on Planet Earth for the past five years during Saturn’s journey through both his homes in Capricorn and Aquarius. Saturn conjuncting Pluto in Capricorn in early 2020 set the stage for the massive change (or social experiment of Covid) the world went through in these past few years.

Saturn has been in Aquarius since December 2020 when it teamed up with Jupiter in early Aquarius. Aquarius is a fixed AIR sign, an energy which gathers together collective thoughts and beliefs, and as we have seen with Saturn there, makes everyone stubborn about seeing the other side of the story. Aquarius’ shadow is judgment, which is different from having a well thought-out opinion. So look to see if you’re judging or just expressing your opinion.

When Saturn moves into Pisces on March 7^th, he will be staying in Jupiter/Neptune’s home waters until mid-February 2026. No longer in his own comfort zones (Saturn rules both Capricorn and Aquarius), Saturn, the reality principle and ruler of our Root Chakra, will have to ground us into those watery depths.

But what does it mean to us if our root chakra/reality is grounded in the watery depths of Pisces? It can be a time of inner turmoil and delusions, or it can be a time of great spiritual awakenings. It’s a question I’ll explore in my next newsletter on this big planetary move in the next month.

Pisces/ the Collective Unconscious/ the World Soul is a vast realm, a place that isn’t material like the Earth plane, but more like the Celtic Otherworld, a different dimension that holds the imaginal/emotional/spiritual energies of the Earth. This is where we all share in life. It’s where we are ONE.

 

 

Carl G. Jung call the Collective Unconscious a second psychic system within each of us, deeper than our personal unconscious which contains our personal (this lifetime’s) memories, experiences, complexes and trauma. The collective unconscious has a collective, universal and impersonal nature which all of us inherit. This is the realm of the archetypes, our psychic DNA, the pre-existent forms which make us human.

Jung also said that the Aquarian Age would be an age where the waters of the Unconscious will be poured out and renewed, a time when we make the archetypal energies of life conscious. 

 

 

The Collective Unconscious could also be called the Anima Mundi, the World Soul of Mother Earth. It contains all human archetypes and experiences, most especially all those things which the collective society rejects and denies. It holds the fear and terror of war, rape, abuse, cruelty and domination, and it also holds their opposites – peace, love, concern, kindness and communal well being. So it holds humanity’s hope for a better world – a world in which we no longer go to war to settle arguments, where we care for our elders and children, for our mothers and fathers. Where all genders, races and beliefs are accepted and respected. Where human beings are allowed to BE themselves and do what they incarnated here to do – pursuing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We will probably experience the watery, mysterious powers of the unconscious in some form – psychic hits, telepathic communications, dreams, visions – as well as being imprisoned on our own worst paranoid delusions. We can get lost in the watery realm of the Collective Unconscious, so it is important to learn to understand what you are seeing and experiencing instead of putting a label on it right away. Carl Jung spent years trying to map this vast realm, and his theory of archetypes came from those explorations.

Neptune will be moving through the last degrees of Pisces while Saturn travels through it for the next two years. That will add some magic and mystery to the process, since Neptune is the ruler of Pisces, and the energy of the wild, erratic, powerful forces of the Deep. Neptune will leave Pisces for good (2012 - 2026) in early 2026, after moving back and forth over 0* Aries, the Alpha point of the Zodiac, through 2024-2025. (As you can see, these next few years will be unsettled in many ways.) 

 

 

Neptune will settle into Aries and meet up with Saturn at 1* Aries in mid-February 2026, right after a total solar eclipse at 29* Aquarius. (Did our collective consciousness get the message?) These two very different energies will bring the dreams of the lost values and hopes of our collective unconscious into the beginning of manifestation.

While we wait, this is the time to ‘cry for a vision’. So hone your imagination (Neptune) and get disciplined (Saturn) concerning your work. The world of 2026 awaits us all! 

 

 Cause the future ain’t going to be what we thought no more!

Carl Jung says in the prologue of Memories, Dreams and Reflections, “My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.” Each of us has that same ability to learn the symbolic language of the unconscious, which is the voice of the imagination. It’s time to listen to what wisdom it has to offer us. This is how we re-connect with Mother Earth’s inner-net. This is how to get through the hard times ahead for our world. Our rational minds have got us into this mess. We need our imaginal minds to give us the information that will heal us and heal Mother Earth.

What part of the collective dream are each of us called to bring forth? It’s not going to be tied to our patriarchal values of money, work and success. The new dream will be something else entirely.

This year as a great time to relate to the archetype of the Fool from Tarot. The Fool sets off on his life adventure with an innocent heart and a fearless attitude. He packs his tools (values, attitudes, beliefs) in his sack, brings his dog companion along for company and instincts, and is prepared to step off a cliff to find that new dream. But he’s so much more than that. He is our ability with dance with life, to see and experience what’s before him. 

 

 

One of my favorite authors is Charles Williams, a friend of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote stories about supernatural powers breaking in on everyday life for good or evil. His book, The Greater Trumps, is about the original Tarot pack and a magical table with all the tarot figures moving with each other on invisible lines of energy. The mystery of the table is that the Fool is the only figure that doesn’t move. That is, until someone with spiritual vision sees the Fool dancing with all the figures. The Fool is immovable yet moving, the unseen cause of all the rest of life’s energies.

The Fool’s fluid state is probably the best one to emulate as we move through these next few transitional years. Keep an open mind, an innocent heart and a clear vision of how much better life can be when we change our collective values from individualism, consumerism and competition to community, creativity and happiness.

Buckle up, because the future ain’t gonna be what we thought it was no more.

Happy Imbolc. Life’s energies are rising again. May Brigid’s bright blessing shine to light your way.

Cathy

 

 

Prayer to Brigid on Imbolc

Sacred light in the darkest night

Our beacon in the cold of winter

Our guide to the dawning of spring

We hold vigil on this sacred day

Welcoming the Goddess Brigid

Welcoming the return of the sun

Asking for protection and abundance

To our hearth, our homes, our fields, and family

On this night and every night thereafter

Bless us Brigid, the keeper of the flame