What makes the Full Moon so alluring? Is it the  luminous warmth shading the Earth with an other-worldly complexion, or is it the illuminating light of the Sun impregnating the Moon with enchanting promise, or  perhaps it is the eternal round of a lunar cycle shaping the palpable presence of a sublime mystery. Whatever “it” is that catches and captivates our attention  it seems certain that the luminosity of an all knowing, all giving force of nature reflects the numinous power to give life and to take life away.

The Sun-Moon opposition in Cancer-Capricorn reflects the conflict between our indentity being dependent on the individuality of others, and our need for security dependent upon being emotionally independent. The Sun in Cancer tells us that our individuality can be receptive to the care and needs of others when we stop personalizing or internalizing their behavior as our own. The Moon in Capricorn is guiding us toward a greater emotional maturity and helping us define clearer boundaries that separate our feelings and the feelings of others.

The Sun opposing Pluto suggests that our life vitality is being sucked inside a vortex making it difficult to honor our unique individuality, and the Moon conjoined Pluto speaks of the emotional death and transformation that comes when we break free from habitual patterns of behavior. The Moon-Pluto conjunction reflects an intensity of emotions that may overwhelm us at first but with time can heal wounds from our past.

Under the luminosity of this Lunar Eclipse our emotional commitment is being tested on an unconscious level while on a conscious level we are becoming more realistic about ways in which we can accomplish our material goals.

When the Moon opposed the Sun and conjoined Pluto it was translating the light  of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Aries square Mercury in Cancer causing our impulsive actions to butt heads with our emotional reserve, which in turn, caused our perception of reality to retreat inside a shell of self-protection.  We need to be careful of not feeling sorry for ourself or wallowing in a pool of tearful regrets. The is a good time to communicate our feelings to others.

One challenge facing us is learning to  balance our emotional daring with prudent action. It is time to garner the finesse to think before we act without strapping our gut-felt- intuition inside a straight-jacket. This is not the time to retreat from the intensity of our emotions and we need to be weary of disassociating from our feelings and unwittingly view ourself and our life from the wrong end of the telescope.

This Lunar Eclipse triggers the first of a series of summer Cardinal Crosses warning us to temper our  impatience with the status quo least we risk hitting, head first, a wall of resistance. We need to modestly work behind the scene diligently learning, or teaching others, the skills necessary to improve our relationships with one another. We have entered a period of sudden and unexpected changes demanding that we set our expectations free and imagine the unimagined.

Mercury square Jupiter is the celestial signature of judgment running wildly amok. Mercury in Cancer guarantees that our thoughts and feelings will fluctuate  from one moment to the  next challenging our effort to make an emotional commitment to something we want to accomplish in our life. If we can steady our course by remaining persistent in our work and accepting of the delays that we are certain to encounter we may discover that our actions are nourishing the beginning of a new way of feeling sage and secure in life.

“As the Sun spirals its longest dance cleanse us. As nature shows bounty and fertility bless us. Let all things live with loving intent and fulfill their truest destiny.”*

In the Northern Hemisphere day is swallowing night as the Earth rotating around the Sun approaches Summer Solstice and the triumphant returning of the longest day of the year. As the dawn of Summer Solstice ascends the golden rays of the Sun illuminate our life with eternal vitality and creativity. We have reached the annual summit of our creative potential and dancing in mimetic grace with the Sun we stand poised to bring to fruition  something uniquely our own. The joyful pleasures and sensual playing of summer begin as soon as the Earth enters Cancer. When we are under the influence of Cancer we are seeking nurturing, sustaining, and protecting. Our sensitivity to being hurt is on high alert and we intuitively guard against being bruised by the outer world. When the Sun is in Cancer our instincts are hot and humid. Our life force and creative vitality is thriving and we are at the peak of our creative potential.  I find a tender pathos knowing that when we are at our most creative we feel raw and exposed.

This Summer Solstice our creativity is more vivid and electrifying than usual. Jupiter and Uranus, momentarily fused in the fiery spirit of Aries, have inflamed our desire to break free from conventional  wisdom and expand our conscious awareness beyond what feels safe and secure. Jupiter and Uranus conjoined in Aries is the celestial signature of the impulse to change. Aries garners a new beginning, Jupiter expands, magnifies, and exaggerates what it touches, and Uranus delivers sudden, unexpected, even shocking change. The cosmos is setting at our feet a golden opportunity for a radical change in our beliefs about ourself and our Universe, which can become the new foundation supporting our primal need for security.

The first aspect the Sun in Cancer makes is a square to Uranus in Aries unleashing a torrent of impulsive actions feverishly bent on breaking free from all manner of restraint that could easily backfire if we forget to first secure a balance between our needs and the needs of others. The Sun-Uranus square is softened by the Sun-Chiron trine creatively directing our impulse for sudden change toward healing a wound to our individuality. The time is ripe for us to recognize and value our individual contribution to the entirety of life. Whatever it is that we are giving birth to within our own psyche has something to do with sustaining and protecting the needs of humanity, which is why it is imperative that we become aware of our actions and the influence they have on the collective front.

At this solstice there is a blind spot in our psyche. When the Sun enters Cancer on June 21 the Moon, the source of our eternal being  and ruling deity of Cancer, is unerringly silent at the last degree of Libra. We may discover that our first impulse to act is aborted before becoming fully formed, which can become the catalyst for our self-acceptance. The Sun-Pluto opposition is telling us that our dependency on the past for nourishing and sustaining the present has left a dark hole in our heart, and that when we assume personal responsibility for our actions and what our actions are creating in life we allow the light of our creative vitality to shine forth in the world.

The Sun is in Cancer from June 21  through July 21

* an ancient Pagan blessing for Summer Solstice

“For all the boring interpretations which have been allotted the sixth house, in reality it is the single most important area of the chart, where one can materialize one’s inner worth.” * Virgo, the natural sign of the sixth house is that aspect in each of us striving for a completeness, an inner wholeness that no one else can possibly fulfill for us. The first six houses, Aries through Virgo, are houses of personal self- discovery where our impulse to “be” in Aries takes form through our possessions in Taurus, our communication in Gemini, our emotional security in Cancer, our creative self expression in Leo, and our becoming that which only we can “be” in Virgo. In the words of Jodie and Steven Forrest, “Virgo looks inward, finding some aspect of herself that can be polished brightly and offered to the world.” When we are under the influence of Virgo we are the “worker bees” of the zodiac attaining the highest, most perfected levels of our potential in service with others. The bright face of Virgo awakens our mind to the value of our inner worth, while the dark face of Virgo, our ruthless self-criticism, cripples our capacity to appreciate our inner worth and stifles our ability to creatively participate in making the life that we want.

The Moon in Virgo opposing the Sun in Pisces illuminates the time of year, the last Full Moon before the Vernal Equinox, when we can give that aspect of ourself which we have polished brightly back to the collective feelings of humanity.  It is time for us to acknowledge what we  accomplished the last eleven months and then let it go, a supreme challenge for Virgo, knowing that everything we did for our personal benefit was done in benefit for others. Pisces is that aspect in each of us intuitively knowing that all of life is interconnected, and when the Sun is in Pisces we drop our veil of autonomy and see our individuality and the individuality of others unfold together in union.

The Sun in Pisces garners a time when our creative vitality can penetrate the illusive membrane separating our rational and irrational realities. Pisces heightens our awareness of our non-material reality nourishing our yearning for the ephemeral without ever relinquishing our exquisite appreciation for the sensuality of the material world. Our heart melts under the radiant rays of the Sun in Pisces as we reach for the unspoken and the unseen. Our tendency under the influence of Pisces is too sacrifice our needs for the needs of others until we realize that the care we give to ourself mirrors the care we give to  others. Anything less  breeds illusions and self-deception. The Sun in Pisces assures us that our solar vitality needs compassionate nourishing from the inside out. To manifest  compassion in the world we must first allow our compassion to seep into the most guarded and protected aspects of ourself.

The bright face of this Full Moon reflected our inner worth, and opposing the Sun-Jupiter conjunction guaranteed that our conscious awareness is expanding beyond the familiar and known.  The work this week is to materialize our inner worth in some meaningful way that reflects our true self,  our creative self, rather than the self that we have been told by others is ours. The Full Moon in Pisces is helping us heal the subtle undermining of our inner worth wrought by self-doubting and self-negating attitudes learned long ago. We all have an inner critic ever eager to let us know exactly what we have failed to accomplish in our life, and why. We may gain great insight this week if while observing our inner critic sabotage our creativity we hear the calling to make visible the inner mystery of our Self.

The Moon 09 Virgo 58 opposing the Sun 09 Pisces 58 ::  Febraury 28, 2010

*Erin Sullivan, Saturn In Transit

The balancing scales of Libra make their earliest imprint upon  our human consciousness in the Hall of Maat, solemnly described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead as the place where the judging of a dead soul was performed. Judgement was passed by weighing one’s heart (conscience) against the feather of Maat and if the scale tipped even slightly the person was sent back to earth with the solemn responsibility of releasing the extra weight. Maat personifies the concepts of balance, truth, and justice  which were primarily conceived modeled in social relationships and remain so today visible in our contemporary understanding of the unconscious expression of Libra.  When we are under the influence of Libra we are unconsciously aware of our personal responsibility to balance our behavior while alive, which is one reason why we consciously weight in judgment the behavior of others. Libra, the aesthetic realm of Venus, is our mirror as well as our scale of conscience reflecting what we value back to us in our judgment of the values of others. One of the greatest gifts offered to us by Libra is the grace and beauty of our love reflected in the dignity of our ethics honoring justice and fairness especially when looking into the face of overwhelming difference.

Last Wednesday Mercury in Libra stationed direct, and it seems that every time our celestial messenger shifts direction in the sky we on earth shift direction in our consciousness. In all probability, Mercury delivered a direct challenge for us to become more consciously aware of how we communicate to others what we value most in our life; a challenge immediately self-evident on that same Wednesday evening during the US presidential debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. With Libra vibrantly alive that night, Mercury having stationed direct and basking in the after glow of the Aries Full Moon, is it any wonder that the majority of people watching and listening looked with disfavor at the aggressive attacking emanating from Senator McCain toward Senator Obama? I watched in stupefied fascination as Senator McCain valiantly undermined the credibility of his values with every barbed attack against the values of Senator Obama, and I thought it worth while to look  back at the debate using an astrological lens to gain insight into understanding something about ourselves.

Both candidates have Libra on the cusp of their natal eighth house, the house of other people’s resources including what they value, which suggests to me that Senator McCain and Senator Obama are equally aware of respect and fairness when considering the values of another. Senator McCain also has natal Mercury in Libra further highlighting his love of peaceful and harmonious communication thus making his aggressive attacking all the more wounding to himself. This is not surprising considering that his natal Chiron, astrology’s “wounded healer”, conjoined the Ascendant of the event chart making his self- wounding visible for all the world to see; a wounding that has something to do with him lacking self- confidence in communicating his ideas in an articulate and comprehensible manner. Senator McCain’s natal Chiron opposing his natal Jupiter is in square with his natal retrograde Saturn-Venus and Neptune opposition which creates a powerful Grand Square, a celestial signature of conflict, that sequesters an enormous amount of self-contained frustration usually released onto others. The natal Saturn-Venus opposition in his natal 1st and 7th houses suggests that Senator McCain is  expecting rejection and criticism from others, and though he stands in ready self-defense, Mars in Leo, he never the less experiences criticism as a powerful undermining of his self-worth.

Senator McCain’s obvious frustration Wednesday night was agitated, actually exaggerated by debating with Senator Obama, because his natal Grand Square conjoined the Ascendant (self) and Descendant (other) of the event chart. Not only did the world witness his wounding but they saw the rawness of his insecurities metamorphose into condescending arrogance, hostel judging, and demeaning bulling  when relating to Senator Obama which seriously questioned his ability to effectively communicate upon the complex stage of global politicking. Adding insult to injury, the transiting Moon-Mars opposition made an exact aspect with Senator McCain’s natal Uranus accentuating his emotional detachment from  any genuine participation in the debate in service of obstinately insisting upon pursuing his rhetorical commentary regardless of the consequences to himself or others.

In stark contrast, Senator Obama’s self-assurance and stately command during the debate were further enhanced by his conscious integration of Libra’s gifts of dignity, honor, and justice while communicating his values to the American people; values which are dramatically similar to those of the American culture as told by the close conjoining of his natal Venus, 01 Cancer 48, with the US Venus, 02 Cancer 43. Senator Obama’s natal Venus forms a water Grand Trine, the celestial signature for emotional harmony, and shared with Neptune and Chiron underscores his empathy for the suffering of others along with his concern to preserve and protect the family and spiritual values of the country.  A Venus-Neptune contact  bestows visionary dreams which can foster a true spiritual awakening born from the highest ideals as long as one eye is left open to the practical manifestations of the dream.

If Senator Obama allows his Grand Trine to nourish his warring avatar, natal Mars in Virgo, then he can do the practical work necessary to insure his visionary dream for the American people which he consistently outlined during the debate. One of the earliest imprinting of Virgo upon our human consciousness is embodied in the sacred work of the virgin priestesses responsible for distributing the annual harvest of grain through the winter months as the earth lie fallow threatening starvation. Social conscience and care for humanity have roots reaching back into antiquity and it is not surprising that Senator Obama values the humanitarian objectives of working together and using the common resources of everyone to make the necessary improvements that he believes will help preserve a sustainable quality of life for all.

On the evening of the debate Senator Obama’s natal Ascendant-Uranus opposition prominently conjoined the MC and IC of the event chart highlighting his humanitarianism at the top  of the chart opposing sudden change at the bottom of the chart. That night, he succinctly broadcast to the world his ideas for social change and spoke eloquently of his ambitions and goals if elected president which, in the words of his campaign, “will require building a movement for change from the bottom up”. I cannot imagine a more fitting sentiment recognizing that we the people are the change coming from the bottom up and we the people are the ones solely responsible for balancing the scales of social justice.

]]> http://laurenlesko.com/2008/10/19/weighing-our-heart/feed/ 0 laurenlesko Maat http://laurenlesko.com/2008/08/19/big-fat-reminding/ http://laurenlesko.com/2008/08/19/big-fat-reminding/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:32:43 +0000 Lauren Lesko http://laurenlesko.com/?p=309 ]]> click on the image to read about the art

On the full Moon Lunar Eclipse Mars made a Big Fat square to Pluto and we were given a Big Fat reminder to temper our willful acting. Today, Mars enters Libra and we are given the golden opportunity of acting with balance and harmony. The first aspect to Mars in Libra is an opposition from the Moon in Aries pricking our emotional impatience urging us to diligently reconsider our impulsive reactions in our relationship with others. This is a time for becoming aware that our impatience with our self and others disrupts our equilibrium in life tossing us upside down and inside out. When we act without forethought, as Mars is oft to do, we can create double work for ourselves cleaning up our mishaps.

Mars is definitely at home in the cardinal signs, Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn, the impetus of each to take action. The lesson we are learning each time Mars travels through Libra is the best time for taking action, which can be nerve wracking with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. I have Libra at my mid heaven and I never enjoyed, even as a child at the amusement park, being jolted about, however, it is worth pondering the deeper meaning of Mars in Libra exposing our awkwardness, and difficulty, in taking harmonious action.

The first aspect this LIbra Mars makes is a square to Jupiter in Capricorn challenging us not to exaggerate the imbalance of our actions, instead, to use this aspect and garner disciplined action leading to constructive results. The conjunction with Mercury and then Venus, when both are in Libra, accentuates harmony in our communication with others; and the trine to Chiron and the North Node in Aquarius provides added breath to our actions allowing them a wider circulation and greater effect within the collective. The quincunx to Uranus curbs our tendency for defiant action, the trine to Neptune softens our motives, and the sextile to Pluto stimulates creative resolution. All in all, Mars in Libra heralds a time of greater accepting and allowing for each other’s differences which can open new levels of communication bringing understanding and offering mutual benefit.

What an intense weekend following the Capricorn full Moon my spirits and others spiraling downward into an emotional abyss as we struggled to adjust our early expectations of emotional nourishment. Those of us who felt deprived of maternal nourishment when we were young may have spent this time wrestling with our internal demons taunting us with the dark face of our unworthiness and self blame for not being given the emotional care we needed, and still need, to feel safe and secure in the world. The Capricorn full Moon reflects back to us on Earth the timelessness of our primal attachment to the original source of our nourishment and the numinous power of the all for-giving, Mother Goddess who lives within our collective unconscious.

I agonized this weekend adjusting my perspective of life, seeing my capacity for self nourishment askew, I realized how deeply I harbor the wanting of nourishment from others and how quickly the shadow of neglect darkens my view of the world. I read a tenderly written post from Moonkissed by Jessica, the Sun in Cancer illuminating our tenderness, which revealed to me a similar theme of feeling un-nourished in the world which literally left her feeling creatively starved. Another friend who was born with a Cancer full Moon, the Sun in Capricorn, experienced a feeling of liberation after a life time of being unable to say no to the needs of others, another friend, intensified her life struggle to separate her needs from the needs of her mother at a time when she was unable to nourish her creative self expression, and a male friend with a stellium in Libra said he felt enormous tension leading up to the full Moon and then a sudden releasing with the Aquarius waning Moon trine his Libra stelli.

It is definitely easier to appreciate the helping hand of our Universe when we experience our pleasure and good fortune, less so, when we feel the limitation and denial of our needs, and yet, the hand is the the same guiding us to a more fully realized self. I feel certain that this full Moon reflected our ability to creatively nourish ourselves when we are able to relinquish our expectations from our past and embrace our numinous mother within. It is not always easy but the Capricorn full Moon is helping us, teaching us, how to be more emotionally mature by learning to accept, often after heart wrenching experiences, personal responsibility for the nourishing that we need without leaving us emotionally isolated or resentful. This is our time for emotional wholeness.

The voluptuous face of the Moon shines brightly impregnated with the radiant light of the Sun, and on Earth we see reflected back to us the fullness of our conscious awareness. This celestial event happens each month with the lunar phase of the Full Moon and each month we have the opportunity to face with conscious awareness some aspect of our unconscious knowing. I say “our unconscious knowing” because our unconscious has an intelligence which expresses itself indirectly in the same way that the radiance of the Sun’s harsh light is filtered through the softened glow of the Moon. On July 18 the Moon reaches fullness in Capricorn, and while a Capricorn Moon is traditionally not an easily expressed Moon because our emotions often feel as if they are being held hostage and shackled in a cold dank dungeon, the grace of a Capricorn full Moon is that the Sun is in Cancer, the sign under ruler ship of the Moon, offering us conscious illumination of a long ago hidden fear.

Capricorn has the astrological reputation for being tough and insensitive focusing our attention on self-discipline and hard work leading us toward leadership in our community and material achievement. These are not the first concerns of the Moon, that aspect in ourself which is seeking emotional containment within the cloistered walls of a protective womb. From the perspective of our Moon the external world can be cold, harsh, and indifferent to our vulnerability and because Capricorn forces our attention toward the harsher realities of life we could experience resistance to the gift being offered us from this full Moon.

When under the influence of Capricorn we are acutely aware of our personal contribution to creating the life that we are living which can be a very painful realization if we have disowned the nasty bits of ourselves and projected them onto the behavior of others. When this happens we feel that we are at the mercy of the decisions and actions of others. The gift of a Capricorn full Moon is helping us nourish our nasty bits so that we can integrate what we cut off long ago into a self- realized wholeness capable of accepting personal responsibility for our emotional needs without feeling abandoned. The feeling of emotional abandonment that many of us feel is the original abandoning of the nasty bits of ourselves that we felt for one reason or another were not lovable or worthy of care and today manifest as our fears of rejection, isolation, loneliness.

An insightful astrologer from Real Astrology pointed out this week that being a cardinal earth sign Capricorn is a receptive feminine energy sharing a common interest with the Moon; both giving form and substance to our lives. The only resistance we may have to walking arm and arm with this Capricorn Moon is our resistance to accepting responsibility for our emotional well being, which is not the same thing as rejecting our emotional well being, which is a familiar expression of a Capricorn Moon. What I am proposing is that if we work together with this Full Moon, and Capricorn loves work, then this month can bring us our much sought after emotional security and maturity knowing that we are responsible for our emotional well being and not our beloved. This Full Moon offers us a cycle of completion, both the Sun and Moon are void of course in the late degrees of Cancer and Capricorn, and it may feel that nothing is being accomplished on the outside purposefully forcing us to look at the inside.

]]> http://laurenlesko.com/2008/07/15/unconscious-knowing/feed/ 0 laurenlesko The Celtic Bestiary http://laurenlesko.com/2008/07/10/the-kind-communicator/ http://laurenlesko.com/2008/07/10/the-kind-communicator/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:34:29 +0000 Lauren Lesko http://laurenlesko.com/?p=259 ]]> click on the image to read about the art

Today, Mercury leaves a two month sojourn through Gemini, a time of accelerated mental activity when we enthusiastically communicated a cornucopia of ideas to others, to enter Cancer, a time of emotional sensitivity when we cautiously, tentatively communicate our feelings to others for fear of them being misunderstood or worst rejected. It is important not to emotionally retreat behind a mental fortress protecting ourselves from the thoughts and feelings of others even if their ideas seem harsh or unkind. When we are under the influence of Cancer we are more intuitive than usual and more in touch with our instinctual nature. Issues of security, safety, belonging are of tantamount concern and we are prone to personalizing every thing we experience in life. When Mercury enters Cancer we may spend most of our time defending what we think and feel, if only to ourselves, when we are better served defending the thoughts and feelings of others and keeping the flow of communication open. It is important to remember that Mercury in Cancer is seeking communion not isolation.

Mercury in Cancer has an intuitive understanding of how to communicate our feelings and this month can be a wonderfully cathartic time releasing attachment to our past and deepening our emotional understanding of ourselves and those closest to us. Hours before entering the sign Cancer, Mercury still in Gemini, opposed Pluto in Sagittarius challenging our ideals and encouraging us to eliminate certain long held beliefs. Mars conjoined Saturn in Virgo setting the stage for Mercury’s entrance in Cancer accentuating the necessity for us to improve our communication skills especially when expressing our emotions. Mercury in Cancer can drown our rational mind with too much self-pity, which in the final analysis alienates people through emotional manipulation. The greatest gift of Mercury in Cancer is understanding how to communicate our feelings with more care, consideration, and kindness to our self and to others.

The waxing phase of the Moon, this month in Libra, foretells a week of concerted effort on relationships and emotional security. This is not a week comfortably spent in solitude, but it may be a week spent profoundly aware of the singularity of our unique human experience; the conscious awareness of a self separate from all others hence our awareness of our solitude. I am enjoying reading The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz, a book written in 1961 alive with the spirit of life eternal speaking eloquently of the necessity for solitude if we are to become self- realized. Our capacity to live in solitude if for even the briefest of time brings us closer to ripping off our masks of illusion in order to come face to face with the truth of who we are. And because this process requires brutal self-honesty most of us prefer to remain concealed behind our masks, or worst, seek the defining of ourselves through the choices of others; the insecure manifestation of both Cancer or Libra.

Hiding is a familiar defense for both Cancer and Libra albeit for different reasons. When under the influence of Cancer we are hyper aware of our vulnerability and at the first hint of being hurt we retract within our protective shell waiting until we intuitively sense that it is safe to venture outside ourselves once again. When under the influence of Libra we are seeking harmony and balance in our relationships and so we work hard at maintaining peace in our relationships preferring to withhold what we are feeling or thinking for the sake of harmony and inadvertently deny the very people we love and care for the opportunity to experience the depth of who we are.

This coming week we want to be aware of our tendencies toward self -protection and not fall into familiar patterns which in the end subvert the very thing we are wanting; to feel safe and secure in the intimacy of partnership. Another celestial signature helping us observe our tendencies toward self-protection is the Sun in Cancer opposing Jupiter in Capricorn. Coming at the same time as the waxing Moon this celestial signature offers a cautionary warning to avoid inflating our self- importance especially in our relationship with those whom we call family, which in all likely hood derives from insecurities and uncertainties rather than self-confidence.

The best use of this waxing phase is to understand what relationships and situations in our life stimulate us to intuitively respond in self-defense. This journey of self investigation most likely will take each of us back to our earliest experiencing of live when whatever we were experiencing demanded our self-protection but now is interfering with making the choices that can create the life we want. Jupiter in Capricorn tells us we can expand beyond self imposed structures and the Sun in Cancer tells us to nourish our uniqueness in life. Together, a Cancer Sun and a Capricorn Jupiter offer us the opportunity to create new structures that nourish our unique individuality. All we need do is have faith in ourselves.

The Moon, our celestial mother, has turned her dark face to earth, a momentary abandoning, preparing to embrace the Sun in their monthly cosmic marriage; uniting light and dark, father and mother, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious, self and other. Every month we have the opportunity to renew our primordial experiencing of union with our source of origin and for a brief moment release our hold on our conscious awareness of the world of duality and separation. This new Moon, the conjunction of the Sun and Moon, is in the sign ruled by the Moon, Cancer, offering us a double dose of motherly care and directing our attention to those areas in our lives that bring us emotional security, well being, and a sense of belonging. The question we are asking our selves this month, Mercury in Gemini trine Chiron in Aquarius, is where in our life do we need emotional nourishing in order to grow in self- awareness.

I dreamt last night that a woman offered me a gift of jewelry. She showed me some very beautiful rings but I was hesitant to accept any and she suggested that I wait until someone else arrived who could help me decide. I was holding a silver ring in my hand, silver is the metal of the Moon, which I unconsciously put into my mouth and began chewing it, something I was not aware of until I began to swallow pieces of the ring and consciously awakened to what I was doing. I felt that I had done something quite unexpected, and out of the ordinary and that I had to tell the woman that I had already received my gift and eaten it. I did have a moment of anxiety thinking about how my body would digest silver but I felt that everything was well cared for.

Each of us has our own unique way of ingesting the nourishing of our unconscious and feeling well cared for what is important this month is that we accept the nourishment. Not surprising, there are a couple of cosmic signatures suggesting that we may withhold nourishment if we wait for someone other than our self to nourish our self. This month we are encouraged to grow in emotional independence without succumbing to feeling emotionally isolated. Our celestial benefactors, Jupiter and Venus, are opposed in Capricorn and Cancer suggesting that if we are expecting emotional nourishing from others we may find our selves either responding to life as if we are waking through a winter storm, our bodies bent forward protecting our hearts, or our feet feel slow and heavy on the earth barely able to hold the weight of the world on our backs. Jupiter is encouraging us to expand our individual authority and take charge of our emotional responding to life, and Venus is asking us to value our capacity to emotionally nourish our selves and others.

Mars in Virgo is approaching a conjunction to Saturn adding restriction to our desires to act life head on. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing if we understand that Saturn and Virgo are adding weight, grounding, to that aspect in our self that expresses through Mars so that we can have more fortitude in accomplishing our intended goals. Mars is that aspect of our self that impatiently acts, and reacts, without much planning but with the aid of the discriminating skills of Virgo we have the opportunity this month to put our energies toward improving some aspect of our self that we have emotionally neglected, shades of our rejecting lunar nourishing.

This is the month to take our clues from the Egyptian Earth Goddess, Nutt, and bring nourishment and sustenance to a vital aspect of our self that is demanding to be born. The Moon is that aspect in our self that can indiscriminately preserve our past, and the trine between Mercury and Chiron is offering us a portal to heal a wounding that requires expanding our perception of our past. Chiron in Aquarius is giving us the gift of an elevated world view and Mercury brings us the gift of conscious understanding. Together with the Cancer new Moon it feels certain that we can give the necessary care and consideration to the dark face of our self and become more fully conscious of who we are.