New Moon Solar Eclipse in Virgo
9:53 am HST, 12:53 pm PDT, 3:53 pm EDT, 8:53 pm BST
This is one of the most amazingly intense charts that I have seen in a long while. Just looking at the angles in the chart and the aspects that they make is powerful and fascinating at the same time. But the fact that it is taking place just less than 24 hours before Equinox is even more important. And it’s an eclipse! This chart is definitely a significant portal.
This Virgo New Moon Eclipse is the “bookend” chart of the last Virgo New Moon on August 21, which began the Virgo season at 0˚. This one takes place at 29˚. Why is this significant? Both charts are “doorway charts,” in that their power conveys a sense of importance, a kind of preparation energetically for what is to come. We are being prepared. It’s time to get to work, seek knowledge, and be of service to others (Virgo themes).
The information in these charts brings us closer to understanding these chaotic times from a larger perspective. The last Virgo New Moon was asking us to take a look at how we use our mind, our rational capacities, and to rediscover that our bodies and our inner sensings are just as important, if not more, than our thoughts and beliefs. We can easily deceive ourselves with our thoughts, which become reality to us, as they are filters through which we look at the world around us. Awareness of our physical bodies, which are the gateway to the archetypal Feminine in all of us, helps to balance out the world’s over-emphasis upon rationality, which is not the same as wisdom. So much information is held in our bodies, often relegated to our unconscious.
This chart, with all of its complexity has a few central themes that speak volumes.
The T-Square
First of all, there is the T-square to Pluto, which includes Mars in a square to Pluto, opposing Chiron (and Eris)[1]which also squares Pluto. This is especially critical as Mars is just about to enter Scorpio just 12 hours after this New Moon, forming an even more exact square to Pluto. Mars in Scorpio is about emotional intensity, and can be vengeful, bringing up old resentments and grudges. This is clearly about the subjects of war, aggression, and the wounds (Chiron) of generational traumas that are so activated now in the world consciousness, and are in desperate need of healing. Even more so now we need to engage our inner peacemaker in situations that may be tense and troublesome.
At an eclipse we are always looking at the dark, shadowy aspects, which are so blatant in our faces nowadays, with minute to minute coverage via the world’s media and internet. Mars squaring Pluto in an eclipse chart asks us to look again at the daily barrage of violence in our world, seeing how it reinforces a lack of faith and despair. Pluto asks us to look inside ourselves for the violence in our thoughts, our projections outward of “those” people, of revenge, not only in our day to day lives, but on the screens we watch, as the plethora of violent imagery is projected by a movie industry that banks on the reactivity of our lower brains. Are we not creating with these programs a kind of meditation on what we don’t want? Does not the brain take in these images and store them, perhaps becoming so used to them that they are unconsciously adding to our own potential for reactivity and impulsivity?
Grand Trine Kite
Then we have the Grand Trine Kite formation. The eclipse (Sun and Moon conjoined) is the focal point of one of the most powerful planetary configurations known to astrologers. The three points of the equilateral triangle form a complete and congruent energetic container around the Earth (blue lines in chart). (Remember that the Earth is always at the center of the astrology chart). The other two points in the triangle are Pluto and Uranus, two powerful higher octave outer planetary energies that reflect to us generational and long-term trends and emphases of consciousness. Transformation (Pluto) and revolution (Uranus) are in the air, as sure as Equinox is coming.
This helpful triangular container is in air signs, the air element governing our beliefs and how we perceive the world around us through the interpretation of our reason and thinking. This trine also includes Mercury, in the peacemaking sign of Libra. This is an important detail, as Mercury is a very personal planet, which represents our reasoning and perceptive abilities. A peacemaker works to see how opposite viewpoints can have something in common, a framework for healing.
What is offered here from the gods to us is a key to our understanding of how to frame and perceive the jaw-dropping historical events we are witnessing. The long-term awareness of two slow-moving outer planets that represent higher or transcendent values awaken us to solutions that we could not have perceived possible years ago. In order for systems to change, we must awaken to these values of wholeness, of compassion, of caring for one another, as well as becoming aware of the reactionary and fascist ways that these core values are being attacked.
This is the Great Turning.
Propelling and energetically activating the Grand Trine[2], pulling opposite from the Solar Eclipse, is the Saturn and Neptune conjunction. Both are retrograde (turning us inward) and pushing us to be dealing with the results of the karma created by generations of war and violence, specifically of a capitalistic paradigm that only serves the profit of a few, rather than a system that is geared toward serving all people on planet Earth.
Saturn asks us to change our laws, Neptune asks us to change our beliefs and our dreams of what life could be about. If there are actually enough resources for all people on Earth, then why do we need to hoard and stockpile? As the Warren Beatty character said in the movie Reds “profits”. War and capitalism are ultimately about profits, encouraging scarcity and discouraging sharing. This is the paradigm of how we’ve been operating in our past, and what is now breaking down.
Eclipses take place at either the South or North Node of the Moon, which astrologically defines the focus of the shadow work involved. This eclipse at the South Node brings us deep into looking into our past. The three outer planets, those governors of our inner worlds and our changing world view, are all retrograde, asking us, what is it in our past, both personal and global, that we must reckon with, that we must admit to ourselves that we made mistakes, that we did wrong, that we were greedy, that we projected our fears onto others, thinking that they were the cause of our misfortune, when in reality the web of life’s meaning and karma are so much larger.
Each of us in some way have been a part of the picture of genocide and slavery and rape and gun killings. But how is that? If we take into consideration that this lifetime is a culmination of the experiences of many lifetimes lived, or even if you don’t believe in reincarnation, each of us is a culmination of the DNA of our ancestors, in which is embedded the held experiences of our ancestors, then all of us have experienced pretty much the gamut of human experience in one way or another. Each lifetime is a gift to undo and not perpetuate the lineage of pain and suffering that we’ve inherited.
Saturn and Neptune conjoined together in the sign of Aries has not happened since 1703[3]. Where we are now is a kind of replay of that karmic signature, since Saturn rules karma. Neptune signifies the collective unconscious of humanity, the dreams, hopes, fantasies about living on the Earth plane, but it is also the gateway to Spirit, or the awareness of All That Is, God, the Creator, the Divine. Looking at the broad picture of where humanity is in its development, we are at a nadir in our awareness of how important the Divine is in our lives. At the opposite polarity is our overwhelming and soul-killing need for our egos to control reality, stemming from a basic mistrust of the Universe around us. Hence a world in which whoever has the most money “wins”. Money is presently our collective spirituality.
Saturn and Neptune are presently retrograde but when they go direct next year, they will conjoin in Aries, the sign of new beginnings. This will happen in February. And then not again for another nearly 40 years. Each time they conjoin, a new cycle of the regeneration of our values begins. The last time they conjoined was 1989, when the two were in Capricorn, which was the year that commercial internet service providers first emerged, bringing us the beginning glimmers of our global connectivity.
Now that we are pretty much a global community, we have created the wiring on the physical plane, but what about the wiring in our psyches, in our hearts, in our consciousness? Are we able to face the diversity of so many different ways of living, of believing, that Planet Earth holds? Again, what we have in common is our bridge to understanding the vast differences in our experiences worldwide.
I believe this cycle initiates a brand new era of the eventual development of global consciousness. Out of the darkness of greed, rapaciousness, and violence must emerge the deep truth of our Oneness, the awareness that we share each others’ breath and Life. Cooperation is what Life is built upon. Our biology proves that, the ecosphere, when left to itself, is self-balancing, with species that are interdependent. The strength and importance of the Virgo energy points us toward the work that needs to be done to bring humanity in line with our true nature: collaboration, support and teamwork.
[1] Chiron is the wounded healer archetype and Eris is the goddess of strife and discord.
[2] Grand Trines tend to be self-contained and tend toward complacency but the opposition to one or more of the points acts as an arrow to ignite the energy within, pushing us to take action.
[3] This was a time that began a period of the intensification of the genocide of Native peoples in what is now the US, with many European colonies waging war and political battles over land and resources. We are much in the same place now with war being a battle over the dwindling resources of an already overcrowded planet.
While not an astrologer or particularly adept, as a spiritual seeker and teacher for decades, and Wounded Healer archetype on my ascendant --I resonated deeply with your rendering wisdom from your forecasting for the immediate future. YES: as a species, as souls, we are Called to find the Bigger Picture of how we successfully embrace one another, and live in harmony with all living beings. We've a long way to go, but our evolving is also our destiny. Let's enVision what we DO want to manifest, and anticipate the signs, daily, of those blessings arrived.
Thank you... so much.