I Love Springtime in a Paradigm Shift

Though every moment in time is new, and every breaking day is as well, there are some times when new is even newer. Springtime is an example of extra newness. So is the beginning of a new age.

On March 23, 2023, just days past the spring equinox, powerful Pluto moves into Aquarius where it will stay until it retrogrades back into Capricorn for the summer, and then back for good by the fall.  Pluto will continue traveling in Aquarius until the year 2043!

History itself can become new through the eyes of foresight. The last time Pluto traveled through Aquarius was at the end of the ‘long 18th century’ better known as the Enlightenment. Scientific discovery was yielding so much exciting truth, it filled the atmosphere with questions. Both the French and American Revolutions occurred at this time. There was an unprecedented atmosphere of ‘thinking for oneself’. For their salvation no longer was in the church, but somewhere else.

This period gave way to the Romantic era of the 19th century, which pushed back against the Scientific reductionist view. Poets such as Wordsworth and Blake insisted on the ‘aliveness’ of nature; a potency beyond the measurable world. The only way of knowing this potency was through one’s private viewpoint; thus the spirit of individualism carried its way deep into the heart of the artist, which is everyone’s birthright.

Over 200 years later, we find ourselves in a new atmosphere that demands a new kind of “thinking for ourselves”. It used to be that physical space and imaginal dream space were the only spaces in which we could move about. Now, digital space is such a part of life that it has one questioning the nature of reality in a new way. We know we want connection, but we also know that connection is not a game of numbers. What is it that we seek? New ideas and old ideas are more accessible than ever. Less accessible are the instincts of nature that we are not only born with but born for. We were meant to perfect these natural powers of creativity and productivity and carry them to new heights and depths.

We navigate the digital space everyday amidst a sea of screaming salesmen wielding a thumbs up. The paradoxical freedom and alienation of a digital age is similar to the freedom and alienation of the Enlightenment. People were free of the church’s authority, yet alienated from a familiar and secure worldview. 

But the alienation is productive. It drives one towards a stricter grasp of what is meaningful and towards what is real. Some very interesting modern physicists argue that time is the realist thing in the universe.

Time’s arrow moves forward. Within every emerging moment is the spirited reality of newness. 

The question becomes not ‘what is life’ but rather: how do you want to live in a world that is, in essence, a continual Springtime?

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Weekly Astrology Metaphorcast 10/5-11, 2020

Into the middle of Libra Season, the sign that celebrates the middle itself.  The riddle of the middle, balancing extremes, that quantum pinpoint between reality and dreams. 

Libra’s sword divides the mind, separating the hemispheres to create more awareness.  In the creation of new awareness life strives onward and upward to better understand itself.  Libra is romantic reality, the relational nature of consciousness itself.

Writer philosopher Owen Barfield sees consciousness evolving with a shift from the outside to the inside.  Primitive man’s thoughts were, as he called it an “original participation”, an immediate experience inside the world’s unity, where as we are now outside of it.  When we think now, we think about something, and the very definition of about is “to be outside of”.

Libra and her liberty thrives on this outsidedness- from here she is free to find new connections and form new thoughts.  Yet, ever the romantic, there is a longing.  A longing to be embedded once again with nature.  A longing to return to the world’s unity.  Barfield saw this only to be possible through metaphor.  What was once the “principal of living unity” now lives in the poetic vision of the individual, with all it’s romantic yearning.

As the poet Yeats said, “Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.”

As Mercury moves through the powerful currents of Scorpio, the mind is aware of the power that comes from synthesis.  The rebirth of new life into the present moment from the synthesis of memory, sensation, thought and reflection.  The wealth of memory in your bank, from which vital currents can emerge, as new, as powerful, as magic?

Venus, the Seasonal planet in Virgo, the sign of the scientist.  In the Season of relational synthesis, she sees herself as incomplete, and yearns to unite her science with art.  As Einstein said,  “After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well.”

Mars still retrograde in the late degrees of Aries and coming into a square with Pluto later this week.  As Libra weighs her options Mars finds a way.  With subterranean pressure, explosive outbursts may occur- Unite your science with your art, and transcend any despair, find the facts of your heart and the love in the air.  With such balance, you’ll find a way. 

Jupiter Direct along with Saturn in Capricorn- inspiration and ambition moving forward in the sign of natural law.  A further look into the nature of human evolution, with it’s own laws.  Laws that by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s definition are anti-entropic.  These laws march uphill, with the aid of the Sun’s energy, producing increased variety and a higher degree of organization.  At this advanced state, awareness becomes the most important characteristic of life.  

Uranus in Taurus- awareness at the heart of evolution.

Neptune in Pisces- the growing value of what is within.

The Moon 

The Moon begins the week waning gibbous in Taurus, the sign of Earth beauty.  A mood of holding, a craving of attainment.  Put that wallet away, the only bank you need is that of your memory! To synthesize with sensation, and lovingly attain a dose of new awareness.  

Tuesday and Wednesday host a Gemini Moon, with Mercury opposing Uranus.  Quaking trickster energy, like the bubbling up of a laugh.  Follow your silly side during these two days, it just might lead you to your genius.  As Libra-extradinaire Arthur Rimbaud said, “Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”

By Thursday midday we cozy up to a Cancer Moon that sails us into her last quarter by Saturday.  A family Moon, a memory Moon, formative with the magnetic pull of the past.  A living water that loves to be reshaped.  An anchor made of water.  Changeable, electric, healing and refreshing.  With Libra’s joy of choice, how will you reshape this water into matter, that is, moments that matter?

By Saturday night a Leo Moon wanes on, illuminating the power of the affirmative.  In Libra’s power of choice she structures an an ultimate attitude, that follows her like a love-struck atmosphere.  Will she look for the way, or be weighed down by dismay?  Will she be alive in the striving, or just passively surviving?  

Once a part of the apple, she had to go ahead and bite it. Once on the inside looking out, she is now on the outside looking in- deep deep within- to that uncharted terrain- of the imagination. 

As always, happy astro pondering!  

https://www.happyastropondering.com/

Weekly Astrology Metaphorcast 9/21-27, 2020

Sealed with a kiss, it is time to say goodbye to the summer.  Tuesday marks the first day of fall. The Sun goes into Libra the lover, with all the mystery of the other.  The equinox brings the phenomenon of equal day and night- will you try to stand an egg?  9:30 am is the official time for here in the  Eastern part of the US, if you care to give it a go.  Only during the equinox is the Earth’s axis not tilting toward or away from the Sun.  It is very bizarre to think of this only coming down to two moments of each passing year.  Egg or not it’s worth a pause of receptivity.  What will you notice during this rare World event?  Every other moment we stand upon a tilted Earth.  In her style of leaning, she blesses us with the Seasons!  In her spirit of duality she is leaning.  Instead of perfection there is a striving.

Fall has begun!  That “Second Spring” in the words of Albert Camus, “where every leaf is a flower.”  People are drawn from all over to get a literal peep.  Better get out those sweaters, and favor those flavors, of cinnamon, clove, apple and spice!  After all the primordial apple is wrapped up in the Fall- be it the fall of gravity on Newton’s dozing head, or the fall of innocence in a paradise garden.  Snow white took a fall when she bit her apple, into a deep slumber, only to be awakened by true loves kiss.  The crisp snap of an apple is the bold outline of Romantic Reality.  To acknowledge a Fall, and rise from it.  Falling down on the ground?  Well you must rise up again.  Falling asleep?  Well you must rise in the morning.  Falling in love?  Well, you must rise to cultivate that love and help it grow.  To Fall is to anticipate a rise.  Choose a course of action.  Make distinctions about what will and won’t work. This is the esoteric root of Libra’s freedom in decision-making.  Decision which means to “cut off” one route from another.  Perhaps that’s why King Arthur’s sword Excalibur was forged in Avalon, the island of apples.

Mercury the planet of perception in it’s final week of Libra- the apple of the eye used to mean the pupil; the zero-index blackness of in-drawing images.  A place where the world is translated upside-down. Cutting-edge and romantic.  Apples have always had a knack for being cutting edge, whether of the eye or the iphone.  As Cezanne declared, “give me an apple, and I will astonish Paris!”

Venus, the love Goddess, who makes pretty pentagrams in the sky, like the ones found in apples.  Wouldn’t it be she who took the first forbidden bite.  Now in Leo, the sign of the Sun, she imitates as a Morning Star. Rising like a true Romantic, who first had to acknowledge a fall.

Mars, the red hot planet in red hot aries and retrograde.  Fire.  The terror and the power.  Days of hazy skies.  The fire behind our appled eyes.  The principal of action, behind every moment of perception.   

Jupiter, the planet of heights, stationed direc in Capricorn, the sign of the world.  Serious-Saturn and Metamorphosis-Pluto also in Capricorn, its easy to feel as though the world really is upside-down.  Good thing the Fall favors Romance, which lives on heights, and chooses hope in spite of despair.  As Abraham Lincoln said, “Teach hope to all, despair to none.”

Uranus, the most leaning of all planets, in bountiful Taurus.  Leaning with awareness, and learning from the seasons of your own life.

Neptune in Pisces, the low-dose poison in the center of the apple rendering its beauty all the more sublime.

The Moon

The Moon will be in Scorpio for half of Monday the last day of Summer, sprinkling some last bit of secrets into the wide open air.  Look for mist and nature winking back at you.

By 3:30 and through most of Wednesday she will be waxing crescent in Sagittarius- the high flying horse.  Fond of apples, the Horsey Moon welcomes in the Autumn Equinox on Tuesday and the air contains the potential for major lift off.  Lift off of spirits that is, if the right perspective is gleaned.  Fall, with all of it’s associations with melancholy challenge our powers of optimism.  As Emerson said “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

By 7pm Wednesday and a new Season in full swing, the Moon waxes into it’s first quarter in Capricorn through Friday.  Learn to love those bold outlines of your life.  Those boundaries that allow you to create more freedom.  The crisp snap of apple otherness– that keeps you from sinking into too much subjective seawater! 

The weekend hosts a waxing gibbous Aquarius Moon, always potent for breakthrough as it is the sign of the times.  Strong winds are likely- crescendoing the song of the trees.  Changing in color, escalating in song, what can trees tell us that we’ve known all along, about our true nature, as artist and seer, evolving this way to be ever more freer.

As always, happy astro pondering!

https://www.happyastropondering.com/