The Source of Our Origin

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“My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak. I call you – are you there? I have returned. I am here again. I have shaken the dust off all lands from my feet, and I have come to you. I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again.  Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced and drunk in? Or do you want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life.” * Recent events in my life have turned my head around and I now find myself walking forward looking backward reflecting on the life I lived fourteen years ago. At that time Saturn was transiting my natal fourth house, now in 2010, perky in my tenth and approaching a second Saturn return, Saturn challenges me to consider more deeply the  source of my origin.

2010 promises to return us to the source of all that we have ever been and will ever be.  The New Year arrived under the  auspicious reflection of a Lunar Eclipse with the Moon in Cancer opposing the Sun in Capricorn and both luminaries approaching the Moon’s Nodes.  The Moon’s Nodes are our celestial pathway from whence we have been to where we are going, which is one reason why eclipses are so significant to astrologers. The Moon as the keeper of our personal and collective unconscious is the shrine and tomb of every thought, feeling, and action of human consciousness. For this reason many astrologers consider the Moon to be the embodiment of our eternal self, our soul.

This Lunar Eclipse is taking us deeper into our unconscious motives by shifting our focus from external to internal reality. The opposition of the Moon in Cancer and the Sun in Capricorn is bringing tension to those aspects of ourself that need to be integrated inwardly rather than projected outwardly. When we are under the opposing forces of Capricorn and Cancer we hear the rattling bones of our ancestors calling us home. Capricorn defines. Cancer binds. And without a deepened self-awareness we are vulnerable to the traditional tribalism of family, community, and culture dictating how we live this life.

Cancer is the universal principle of caring, healing, and nurturing ourself and others. The shadow side of Cancer  is our fear of difference and diversity pushing us to congregate with those of like mind and heart forgetting that at the deepest level of human relating difference and diversity nourish the infinite possibilities of being human. This year we are going to reach into the bowels of our humanity, the joys and sufferings alike, and grow more human.  Our inner work in 2010 is to soften the hardened shell of self-protection and self- defense shielding our vulnerability and preventing our sharing  with each other all that life has to offer because of our fears.

Neither Cancer nor Capricorn encourage change and our task ahead is adopting a tenacious persistence  and self- determination to reach our goal, which is nothing less than caring, healing, and nurturing all of life in spite of our fear. We have inherited  so many fears from sources that have nothing to do with our authentic self that with conscious awareness and mindful actions we can change our perception of  fear.  In order for this to happen we must be willing to journey to the source of our origin and wrestle with our shadow selves; those nasty aspects of our self that we gleefully project onto others.

At the time of the Lunar Eclipse Mercury in Capricorn was retrograde and close to the Moon’s Nodes insuring serious introspection that challenges the traditional structures in our life that we  are dependent upon to give our individuality shape and substance.  Mercury is the universal principle of the mind and guardian of all forms of communication, and when retrograde in Capricorn Mercury is helping us re-construct our thoughts and feelings into new forms. We can expect 2010 to add a serious tone to our communication, as well as, a self -disciplined commitment to make constructive changes in how we live this life. The Lunar Eclipse has pushed us down a rabbit hole forcing us to re-examine the distortions in our life that we have personally created because of our fears.

* C.G. Jung, The Red Book,  1913, Liber Primus