Recently a book from the library found its way into my hands - like some of them do, you know... you go looking for one thing and that leads you to something else and then you find this completely other thing and "oh, let’s try that". Anyway it’s called "Food of the Gods" by Terrence Mckenna. In the introduction he writes:

"When habits consume us, when our devotion to them exceeds the culturally defined norms, we label them as obsessions. We feel, in such situations as though the uniquely human dimension of free will has somehow been violated.....

The obsessions of the ordinary person tend to focus on the here and now realm of immediate gratification through sex, food, and drugs. An obsession with the chemical constituents of food and metabolites is labeled an addiction.....

Habit. Obsession. Addiction. These words are signposts along a path of ever-decreasing free will. Denial of the power of free will is implicit in the notion of addiction....

And then "coincidentally" one of the astrologers i follow was talking about how the current astrological patterns highlights our obsessions and tendency to check out as things become more and more intensified. he urged not only examination of this tendency, but also simply to do what we can to move towards the things that make us feel truly good rather than simply numbing or distracting us.

So it had me looking at the upcoming “super moon” – which is when a full or new moon is closest in its orbit to the earth. 20 Jan will be a lovely super moon. Both the sun and the moon join together for it at 0 degrees 9 minutes of Aquarius - which in and of itself is saying something, for the zero degree mark of any sign acts as a kind of threshold and has the energy and potency of such. Being a new moon this is then double echoed as a time of new beginnings and new intentions. 

Aquarius is the energy of the visionary, it looks into the future and tastes possibilities not yet even dreamed of, and then it yokes itself to the task of translating that vision back to society, however resistant or unable they might be to hearing that message. Aquarian energy is often thought of as the medium through which the divine channels itself.

What though is being translated? 

Do you think its coincidence that other planetary bodies for this new moon form a configuration known as a yod - aka: the finger of god? 

Maybe it’s just that, a coincidence, but it is worth looking at....

A yod is basically an elongated triangle. In this case, Pluto (the energy of what is unconscious trying to become conscious) fuses through a sextile with Chiron (the wounded healer and teacher). Together they form the base - where the energy is coming from. The "finger" - the apex - points from this base to where it is "wishing" to go. That finger is Jupiter (philosophy and faith) conjunct Black Moon Lilith (our shadow and what we disown). 

The theory behind a yod is that the thing that is being pointed to, is notoriously difficult to assimilate from the perspectives of the base energies because they are at such incongruous angles to one another. The trick with a yod is to try and activate the midpoint of the base and use it to sort of catapult to that of the apex or finger. 

Interestingly we have both Mercury (communication and oracle) and Venus (love and compromise) conjunct at this midpoint. This is like having 2 angels standing and holding space saying "Here. Look here. This will help". When there are no planetary bodies at a midpoint, there is nothing to anchor the energy but our own intention. To have something there helps a lot.

Ok.... so that is the somewhat technical side of it, but what does it mean?

Who really knows...maybe nothing... but my personal take on it is that whatever we are carrying around that we are wrestling with that is both sticky and dark and more than a bit deeply held in our subconscious is ripe for some Healing (with a big H). We all know it. And yet we are having trouble manifesting it. We are caught in our own woundedness and haven't yet figured how to catapult into something that might actually help us to awaken to our own patterns and behaviors and actually commit to the intention of healing from them or at least not being absorbed and thwarted by them.

So how do we regain our free will from our personal cycle of destructive patterns and behaviors? …By embracing our own darkness through both faith and shifting our philosophies and preciously guarded ideas surrounding it. 

Each of us, every one of us carry around a belief in our unworthiness - some more insistently than others, but it is there in every one of us. And to support that claim, we point to all the things we 'do wrong' - often they are habits, addictions and obsessions - behaviors that we cannot seem to control and yet spring from somewhere inside of us. We feel trapped by them and secretly fear that they say something more true about us than anything lighter that we could point to.

Ok, so embrace our darkness and make friends with it somehow and stop viewing it as proof that we suck. Sure. Good idea, but how? Well, lean into love. Lean into the way that love allows for compromise. The way that love makes room, the way it invites in even the deplorable and the hideous and the scary and unacceptable. Try to love on ourselves this way. It takes not simply forgiveness and allowance but a kind of willingness to believe in something fantastical. Love on ourselves and try to look on ourselves from the point of view of the lover - make allowances for ourselves the way a lover would and then simply listen. Listen closely to the universe and see what sounds back.

There are no coincidences. We only think we are separate from the pulsing stream of nature in all its variety and possibility. We are not. Everything is speaking to us calling to us. We need to only listen for it, but we need to listen from the place of love if we are going to manifest what needs healing. 

Let’s face it, we all know that "listening" from the places of self-criticism and self-hate only push us farther into the desire to check out and escape all the confusion and tumult and demands of our life. So what happens if we listened from a place of love? What if we tried to open wider?

I don't know quite exactly HOW to do this, but i think that this upcoming new moon coming might be a good place to start. I think that it might provide some insights if we seed intentions along those lines. I say it over and over and i will say it again - every culture, every tradition claims that you must INVITE energies in before they can take hold - whether it be angels or devils, vampires or faeries. It is part of that whole freewill thing... we have to ask for help. We have to ask for guidance. It’s not complicated; we just need to take the time to do it.

So all that just to say, i am inviting you all to circle.... to take some time and do SOMETHING - it does not matter what, big or small, verbal or non-verbal... just do something for this new moon coming up and lets just see what happens. It can't hurt and if there is some remote chance that it helps well, wouldn't that just be grand?

Hi all...

just wanted to put this out there in case you were looking for something to chant around a Winter Solstice fire....

we got a lot of planetary ju-ju out there folks... make use of it!

Blessings of Love all around.

Winter Solstice Calling

*Who are you coming through the trees

To meet myself something needs be freed*           

Strange things are happening

And stranger things will be

When I myself am coming through the trees

Who are you coming through the trees

To greet myself my light must be freed

Strange things are happening

And stranger things will be

Light breaks out, it's flying through the trees

Who are you flying through the trees

I spy a light, shining  -  yes that’s me

Strange things are happening

And stranger things will be

Reaching out, its shining through the trees

Who are you shining through the trees

I greet myself, no stranger more are we

Something has happened here

Something has been freed

A song flies out, *singing through the trees*          

(it goes)        (to the trees through me)        (to me)

Why were’re all getting squoze.

It’s easy to just point and say Pluto and Uranus have entered into a square. Everyone knows about it... ok, but what is actually happening energetically and what is the point of all of this upheaval?

Ok, a square - two big things coming together at right angles. Pluto (ruler of all our deepest unconscious rising up into our conscious) in Capricorn (energy of long haul disciplined practicality, no, the integrity that comes with judging yourself by your own measure of the step that came before, facts and stone, King Lear on the cliff and pan that horny little goat god wooing all the women into dancing naked on the hills) is squaring Uranus (ruler of change, surprises, magic, rule breaking and paradigms where paradox folds into itself making anything possible if only we dared to dream it true) in Aries (the beginning energy, the fire, the heat, the daring to reach through dark earth dreaming of spring, that thing within that reaches towards full expression of its own being). They are far away and move slowly, they separate and come back together moving in and out of this square but never leaving it, becoming exact and passing turning and again. We just had another exact pass. There is one more coming up in March. They really have not moved out of orb for the last couple years. And so everything is amping up and with each exact it’s getting zapped by their current – like being given cardio electric shock.  It is everywhere you look – within, without… high and low… left and right…. Families and nations… the cosmos and the planet.

Pluto and Uranus are in cardinal signs, so while a square there is also a kinship. There is a kind of weddedness to beginning, something new, change, willingness. At the same time Neptune has entered into Pisces. Each time in human evolution that this has happened there has also been a flowering of spiritual consciousness in the collective psyche, you see it in the art and music and religious movements. Neptune rules Pisces, so it is a homecoming. The king returns to his place of power. Pisces is the energy of letting go of self and merging with everything, dissolving. It’s like Neptune has traveled one huge turn around all the energies of the zodiac, most recently through Aquarius who is the energy of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, that crazy prophet from the wilderness of the future having gone as far out as possible and looking into beyond and coming back to try and explain that and guide. It’s like Neptune has gone round and collected every energy’s dreams and all our prayers and every inspiration and now is returning home to melt and let it all flow back into the whole. Everything then feels the effects of this melting pot elixir passing right back into us. The light and the dark of it, from throughout time, all the addictions, all the check outs, all the fog and fantasies and all the fireflies and faeries and voices that speak to us from other places than form – Pisces and Neptune rule these too.

And well, when any of this lands on a sensitive area of your natal chart, it’s like you got the volume on high. You are really tuned to that channel… or rather its tuned to you and it is just gonna squeeze until you let go of whatever you are holding onto that is keeping you from flowing where it and everything with it is going.

The thing with energy though and the miracle of human and this plane of existence is that we can direct it with our simple attention. Pure physics. We magnetize things to ourselves – we are co-creating the very universe we experience. We just have to dream it into being… Dark or light, both together… All those huge planetary energies are moving through our bodies and our consciousness and our own electromagnetic fields and we have the ability to have incredible impact on our future as a result. We have a powerful opportunity to make a conscious choice to dream a Way. It’s not like all this change isn’t gonna happen. It’s been happening and now it has arrived. What would happen if we just let go of everything and fell into ourselves fully and fell into Grace and fell into our deepest longing which is often found only by falling into our deepest fear… what dream would we then scatter before us to seed for the place we land, the place we might awaken into.

My personal grandiose presumptuous suggestion for this solstice:

Say a prayer, make a wish, imagine a dream, flow into possibility... cast it out like a seed before you. That is what this time is for - to make welcome the light. Whatever dark space you have created, let something go, it makes an emptiness for this light to fill. Welcome yourself home. Celebrate the light that you yourself carry that seeded you into existence. We can only do this for others, for the whole, to the extent that we are willing to do this for ourselves. As within, so without.

i know, i know... i have seemingly forgotten about this page... (not true!!!)

Sorry.

Look around at your life, at the lives of your friends - there is a LOT of stuff happening for folks... for me too! Promise to get a post in soon though!

So folks keep asking me about retrograde Venus and I have to admit that I have been a bit obsessed thinking about her as I find myself fully in the throes of primary relationship restructuring. It also makes me rather hesitant to say anything for whatever I do is just covered in my own projections. Though I suspect that this is perhaps always the case, so consider yourselves fairly warned dear reader!

I could throw out all the pat ideas that this time is about re-examining yourself within relational structures so that you might come to a clearer and more integrated understanding of you what you need to thrive and grow. That’s helpful isn’t it? Or how ‘bout more starkly put: this is a time when your shit is in your face and there is no avoiding it, and how other people are going to help you become painfully aware of all the ways you disconnect.  Steven Forrest bullets Venus aim as the need to build rapport or the drive to create bridges between self and other. So an easy way to look at a retrograde Venus is to think about what is necessary to first create that rapport with yourself so that you can effectively engage with other.

I had a Zen teacher who was fond of saying that 90% of everything you experience is projection and while one might find many an argument with that, it does get us thinking in the right direction in terms of learning how to activate high Venus energies. If we are to engage others effectively it is necessary to understand that within ourselves which requires the presence of someone to project upon. Where Venus lands in your chart can tell you a lot about this. Where transiting Venus hits in your chart, you are going to see those areas and ways of being vibrated upon. We all hunger to be cherished or admired or thought well of. That is kind of hardwired into the human pack animal brain. We need our tribe, our pack in order to survive. Whether this is true or not in the modern world is another topic, the bottom line is that this is a vibration we carry in our emotional and psychological DNA, and part of that is seen through our Venus. A partial result of this is that with a Venus function comes something of an ability to be a chameleon. For some folks this skill is very strong and for others it is muted, but we all do it, we all play with the different facets of ourselves, our different ways of being and we work them to create a sense of harmony with those people from whom we feel connected to or desirous of. Part of why we build bridges is because it creates a sense of safety and of belonging and of self-worth. It is a form of power. This is what this energy signature is in part about. And we all have a Venus.

Retrograde Venus I think, as one of its highest openings can be a time when we can go through this dance and watch it from the inside. It seems that our sticky patterns are incredibly self-evident as is our fundamental understanding that there is a separation between self and other that needs be navigated if we are to feel whole. Geez, what do you do with all of this information? How do you not just spin your wheels with it all and make a mess of whatever is going on for you on the relationship front? In Capricorn I think the insights we come to are going to feel very practical, very self- sustaining and very bare bones. It can be an energy that leaves us deciding to just live off rice and beans and taking a certain pride and comfort in that. A retrograde Venus in Capricorn has the feeling of cutting away the fat… of peeling aside the cushion of self-deception and fantasy that we tend to use to protect our deeper more vulnerable selves. Venus in Capricorn retrograde hitting any sensitive area of your chart is going to say “enough already! Let’s get honest about meeting my own needs on this” High Capricorn energy is always the energy of integrity between body mind and spirit and it does not feel an over compelling urge to be nice about it. It’s just factual. This can be really hard on those around us, but I think more deeply this retrograde action calls us to really see how hard it is on ourselves; as we examine what is necessary and what is not, we will inevitably come face to face with some deep pains and shadow places those needs have arisen from. We have the opportunity to look at these things again and perhaps challenge and examine our own ideas of what we believe we need and why.

As this month progresses Venus will retrace her steps taking on Mercury, then the Sun and lastly Pluto as dance partners… How lovely. She weaves a pattern: first engaging the mind and the understanding, working with energies of communication, and then allowing that to filter into consciousness and the more complicated territory of ego and ego projections, and lastly leaning into energies of power struggles and hopefully deep messy truths that are the real doorways for rebirth and regeneration. Anyone feeling retrograde Venus strongly is going to be saying WHAT?! A whole month of this?! And it sounds like it may get worse!!! Wasn’t the last week enough already?  While at the same time if you are really being honest, I’ll bet you also know that what you have brushed upon this past week will require much more than one short month to really get a handle on.

What inside of you needs to be dusted off and brought into the light? What within you needs some polishing? What needs to be sought and aimed for within yourself so that the bridges you build with people have some hope of longevity and sustainability? What needs to change so that the relationship can last? Is it possible? Are your bare bones needs being met and whose responsibility is it to meet those needs in the first place? What is your soul hungry for and how do you go about feeding it? These are complicated questions that deserve to be sifted and sat with. Try not to act rashly now. Try to let this month unfold and pay attention and keep bringing the question back down into yourself.  Low end Capricorn can get pinched off and isolated, low end Venus can blame the other and want to punish. We can turn those low end energies on ourselves as well as other people. Try to just try to be as honest as you can about your own complexity and all the wounds and strengths that go into that. Be honest with yourself about your needs and where they grow from… and what fears and shadows you might need to own truly to see that clearly. Try to bring in a lot of compassion and forgiveness. Allow yourself to be wrong or clueless or less than optimal. Try to engage yourself from a place of lover. Ask yourself this: What about my own ideas would need to change or be let go of for me to Fall In Love With Myself? Can you see yourself from the place of the lover…seeing all the sundry bits, especially those parts that you keep tucked away?

This is a really blessed time when we can bring necessary healing to lives if we so choose. That is the point. We can use this retrograde Venus in Capricorn as a time to feel fundamentally alienated and alone; we can sing that chorus of separateness, but we can also choose to use the insights that perspective might offer us to recognize the ways we need to do some inner work to heal our spirits so that we can build appropriate bridges, so that we can strengthen our bonds on fundamental levels. In order for our relationships to mature and thrive, we need to learn about our own needs and own them. Being honest is only really part of that. We must take responsibility. We cannot be honest if we have not looked deeply into our own needs and owned the responsibility for attending to them.

Is this what retrograde Venus is really about or am I just projecting my own process onto the symbols? Who knows… look at your own life and your own processes at this time and see if it holds any water. Send me your comments. I would welcome any insights!