Though much remains uncertain and unresolved, the air has a sharpness and definition to it. It also has a clean, light and unfamiliar feeling, like we’re time traveling into an atmosphere we have never experienced. Which we are. Big changes are underway, inside and out, changes that are transitioning us from one era to another.
A major step in the transition happens as the week begins, with the one-two punch of Mars contacting all the ascension planets, then the Capricorn Full Moon lunar eclipse on Tuesday. Let’s start with the eclipse. It’s the second milestone in a process that lasts from late June to early August. The process is like moving through a sequence of air locks that take us safely through successive levels of pressurized environments. We walk into a chamber; a door shuts behind us. After we adjust to the environment, an airtight door opens before us; we walk through, that door shuts behind us and we stand in another chamber. The sequence is necessary because the difference in pressure between the first and last environments is too great for us to go straight from beginning to end. We have to make the required adjustment in measured intervals.
We stepped into the first chamber around the New Moon of June 22, when Pluto opposed the Moon and unleashed a transformation of our attitudes about nurturing, family and home. In the light of Tuesday’s lunar eclipse we will see and feel the first new growth from that transformation. A door opens in front of us in the airlock and closes behind us as we walk through into the next chamber. Our commitment to personal security and emotional sustenance is blossoming, and so is a boldness to cut loose from unsupportive ties. Commitment and boldness alike may be uncharacteristically fierce and fearless. Our emotional future is at stake, and we are inspired to act with passion and intensity.
Tuesday’s lunar eclipse launches a cycle for the summer and for the next year. The summer cycle continues with the second Cancer New Moon of the year, on July 21. This total solar eclipse, in the last degree of Cancer, moves us into deeper, more intense pressure to re-boot and rebirth the Cancer-ruled areas of our lives. The Cancer/Capricorn eclipses will return again in December and January and culminate next July. In the meantime, the Full Moon lunar eclipse on August 6 wraps up the 18-month Leo/Aquarius cycle that has been playing out since the beginning of February 2008. The August event will be a time of ripening for decisions that crystallized in early February of this year, when we realized what we were going to have to leave, eventually.
This is one intense, jam-packed timeline. Keep in mind that it is affecting everyone. Tap into the highest potential of that Jupiter/Neptune/Chiron link and treat everyone with kindness and compassion, yourself included. We will come through this timeline permanently changed, more responsible and emotionally freer and healthier. Families will take on radically different structures and balances of power. Many people will emerge as well without spouses, or with powerful new connections in their places. This is not a time for recriminations, blame or resentment, though. (Actually, there will never be a time for them again; they’ve lost a place in the world as it is now.) Spouses that leave or are left now have been spouses in name only, not energetically, for some time. New pairings have the potential of a profundity and totality of union beyond what we’ve previously been wired to experience. For more on the Full Moon, read my report on the site.
As the Full Moon builds and disperses, activity whips up involving the triple conjunction in Aquarius and their traveling companion Uranus. Mars, the planet of action, slams Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron on Monday, in an aspect that demands action. When two forces of action meet, expect movement and lots of it, demanding that we reconcile spiritual life and concepts with our earthly existence. Beliefs and perceptions are being pulled, stretched and even punched. The impact will be like what happens when the arms are moving in a taffy-pulling machine. (Any of you who are seaside and have access to a taffy-making store, it would be a worthwhile meditation to stand in front of the machine for a while and just watch.)
We have an immediate opportunity to make something positive out of this tension when Mars hits an opportunity aspect to Uranus overnight on Tuesday, a couple of hours before the Full Moon. Insight may be so stark and startling that it wakes you up. Whether it does or not, take notes about what’s running through your mind when you get out of bed. Our minds will balk and argue with the insight. Watch for nervousness and mental flitting when Mercury agitates Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron on Wednesday.
Jupiter makes his second conjunction with Neptune on Friday. The first occurred on June 14, when both were direct. Today they are both retrograde and a degree back from their first meeting. Ask for guidance into the role that they played in your life then, and that they are playing now. A different, big-picture perspective is likely possible now. Their union exponentially expands transcendent experiences — communion with and compassion for all of life, connection to spirit and higher purpose, artistic inspiration.
The confusion and fogginess that has engulfed some of us could heighten again at this moment, too. If your brain feels fuzzy, don’t worry; allow yourself to enjoy the softness of the experience. Controlling the fog isn’t really possible; any attempt would be as effective as grasping a cloud. Look instead for currents of bliss and ride them. We’re being stretched again into the nonphysical realms, with the purpose of bringing the experience down to earth. Much of the importance of this week’s stretching will become clearer when Jupiter and Neptune meet one last time this year in mid-December.
Our grounding cord during this conjunction are a pair of gentle sextiles to Saturn in Virgo, the first with the Sun on Thursday and the second with Mercury on Saturday. Watch for opportunities on Thursday to organize and improve your personal infrastructure (routine, health, work environment, interpersonal boundaries). Saturday is suited to thinking and talking about practicalities and ramifications. You may give or hear a message that shows how to bring some of Jupiter and Neptune’s magical bounty down into mundane life.
On Saturday, Mars moves into Gemini and trades the earthiness of Taurus for fleet-footedness. He’s following the trail of his cosmic lover Venus, with whom he has remained close since their June 21 conjunction. Now that both of them are in Gemini, they are on the same page again, and the inner and outer unions that we have been experiencing will flow even more smoothly. Mars and Venus each enjoy the lightness of Gemini, which allows them plenty of room for movement. Their combined presence there is an antidote to the seriousness of the atmospheric pressure shifts in the airlocks. They encourage us to dart about physically and mentally, dance, explore, play and generally be nimble and quick. As Mary Engelbreit’s dancing jester poster advises, “Life’s too mysterious. Don’t take it serious!”
Kathy has podcasts, mp3s, a discussion forum and more on the Aquarius/Pisces traveling party and the Saturn/Uranus opposition at her site, FortunaWorks.com. To join her mailing list, send e-mail to kbiehl@fortunaworks.com.