Greetings Cosmonauts!
April is upon us and begins on lunar note with an eclipse on April 4th, which will be the shortest total lunar eclipse to occur in history, as it will last for only 5 minutes for observers in the Northern Hemisphere and will occur just before sunrise. It will be occurring through the lens of the sign Virgo as the moon will be said to orbit in the vicinity of Virgo. The virgin deals with some potent themes, namely self-possession, the implication of new systems of order (think along the lines of how the planet Earth has routinely throughout its history remade itself and established new interlocking ecological systems to adapt to changing conditions and how those systems create an elegant order), and adjustments to the pressures of a new regime. Along these lines the month begins on a footing where attending to details pays dividends and finding authenticity becomes the clarion call of a new level of adjustment.
Virgo singularly has one of the worst reputations as a sign that is seen as pedantic, rudimentary, and overly analytical this is really an unfair assessment as it is in fact an archetype of great power. Virgo may come off as overly attentive to minutiae, constantly correcting your grammar, reorganizing the closets, scrubbing the databases, and attending to the tasks that are often overlooked, but if it weren’t for this our lives would not run smoothly, and the small missed details would add up quickly into massive delays and problems down the line (for instance if city infrastructure crews did not regularly paint bridges and check them for stress fractures these small problems could accrue quickly and lead to bridge collapses, a phenomenon that has happened before).
The writing on the wall is this, eclipses represent times of transition and change and in this case what is being sought is the establishment of a new order, one that accounts for contingencies that may emerge in the future and creates a system for the smooth functioning of all the global complex systems that serves all (regardless of any defining characteristic, as in natural systems, the individual’s ability to survive is guaranteed by the optimal functioning of the entire biological system). Virgo is essentially the operating system that sets up simple rules for the entire mechanism to function, it is the rules under which all phenomena can emerge, and Virgo is the cosmological constant, the hydrological cycle, and the financial system. Given all of this it is the most powerful symbol set in the astrological lexicon which makes sense given that it is also the one with the longest ecliptic degree range (45 degrees). In summary if we are looking to make systemic changes this is a great time to initiate them.
Retroactive: Reflecting on the termination of the Uranus-Pluto Square cycle
Collectively we have come through an intense period of reckoning begun by the first Uranus Pluto conjunction cycle that defined the tumult that was the Sixties, a period of history in which the social movements have had lasting consequences right up to the age we find ourselves in. The square years represented the other shoe dropping, what was started than reached a zenith of sorts and created a new cycle where we will continue to wrestle with the repercussions of those changes. A historical view is in order to cover some ground. The period saw the conjunction occur in Virgo, and so a strong focus on systems, health, work and service became apparent here.
During this era our ecological awareness was heightened by the seminal book ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson which showed the dangers of unregulated chemical use in controlling pestilence which was wrecking environmental havoc that was swiftly causing problems to emerge in the biosphere. Ultimately this would begin in earnest in earnest in the early 1970’s the environmental movement that would sweep the world and transform our societal structures to such an extent that we would have to confront the impacts that our species was having on the planets life support systems.
Intersecting trends occurred in this decade that would also become the underlying technological and sociological foundations for a rapidly changing world to emerge in the 21st century, as the closing decades of the 20th century would prove to be pivotal times. This decade say the birth of the Computer Age, and what would become the Internet. The Green Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution) occurred during this era, which saved millions of lives by preventing starvation in the developing world and revolutionizing Agricultural in the developed world improving yields, and unintentionally leading to a food crisis we are facing in the 21st century (or will be as Climate Change disrupts the planet’s ecological systems). It also saw the technological transfer of life saving medical technologies from the developed world to the developing world, which along with Agricultural improvements also saved millions of lives, alongside this was the emergence of the polio vaccine which accelerated in use in the decades that followed. What has to be noted is that we are now dealing with the longer term implications of these small revolutions, as the synodic transits of these planets have once again put them into alignment with each other and have become the symbol for the next iteration of their transformative energies.
We take comfort in believing a collective sigh of relief can be had now that the direct squares are over and the unrelenting pressure is off, well not so fast, it is more like those stickers we see on rearview mirrors ‘Objects in mirror are closer than they appear’ , the squares may be long gone their impacts will be felt for decades to come (Keep in Mind Pluto transited Virgo from 1968-1988, the longest of any of the historic Pluto transits, meaning massive transformations to the most elementary of systems!). A laundry list of just some of the issues we’ll be facing ahead and some we confronted during these series of squares lasting from 2011-2015 include: Water Crisis as demonstrated by the California droughts of the last 4 years and the water rationing in Sao Paulo. A food Crisis which began with commodity price increase related to the economic collapse of 2008 and intensifying in 2011, and will get more intense by 2030 due to falling crop yields because of Climate Change , and a growing population all leading to a crisis in which the interconnected realities of water, food, and energy could all become the most central political bargaining chips and could decide the direction of our global society.
This unfolding crisis is of course the ongoing results of many of the practices that have transformed our global society and will continue to transform our society. It could bring out any number of hidden capacities within humanity, both terrible and enlightened and will certainly be a selective pressure that will determine our collective evolution which is the result of the vagaries of human nature when confronted by the strange, unusual, unprecedented and totally transforming. The Uranus-Pluto energy will keep echoing its siren song into our collective experience for some time as what has been begun in these transits will continue to unfold and mutate the cultural engine, humanity’s greatest evolutionary mechanism (lacking claws or fur we had to develop some other technology to ensure our species survival).
And now back to April: I have focused less on this discrete moment in time, April of 2015 because it is important that we reflect on the changes that have occurred as we will be living with them for longer than a mere month in our arbitrary calendar and it is essential a conversation be initiated in occult circles where we begin to confront these crises (it is our historic role, as participants in this stage of the evolutionary story to actualize our role in this unfolding drama), as they will shape everything about what it means to be human on the planet and that is an activity that all mystics and thoughtful people are implicate in.
Along those lines I putting less emphasis on the aspects this month and talking about larger cycles. That said a cursory overview of the month is in order:
April 5th: Sun square Pluto: It’s a feeling of intense presence like being haunted but never seeing what is persistently pursuing. It signals an obsessive need to control both personally and collectively and can be rather ominous. The increasing rate at which the dominant minority of our society keeps pursuing the surveillance state is in evidence here, it feels monolithic but ultimately it isn’t. There is a choice here we can master the energy of this tension and turn it into the ability to rip the cover off secrets and lies ala wikileaks or we can submit to its punishing overtone and claim powerlessness, for the worlds sake choose empowerment over indifference at this crucial juncture the world needs bold solutions this is a good transit to iron out a strategy.
April 6th: Sun conjunct Uranus: To touch off the intense aspects of the solar-Pluto contact, the awakener comes to shake up the status-quo. Increasingly many of us in the numerical majority are feeling a sense of alienation from the dominant culture all around us as our institutions increasingly fail to administer to reality and instead continue to promote an apparently insane narrative that is most assuredly hurtling our species headlong into a confrontation with its own extinction, or at least an end game that could see the collapse of civil society. That said, this transit awakens us to this and offers the possibility of radical departure, once the writing on the wall becomes visible we are motivated to find another way, this transit inspires such innovative and bold perceptions, roll with it. On the global level we may continue to see considerable social resistance to austerity measures and rising inequality and those perpetuating this fossil system may find they need to account.
April 7th: Mercury square Pluto: Censorship and battles over freedom of speech remain hotly contested issue all over the world and big issues in the world’s larger democracies. As evidence the Charlie Hebdo assaults, followed by the Copenhagen shootings, Canada’s recent attempt at passing an anti-terrorism bill C-51 which clearly violates the free speech rights laid out in its charter of human rights and freedoms and of course the continued threats towards Femen co-conspirator Inna Shevchenko, for freely expressing her views about sexism and its source in the Abrahamic faiths, while it can be argued that she disrespects other forms of religious sourced feminism what is not in question is her right to say it without having to be threatened with violence. This transit is symbolic of these issues remaining very pertinent issues to our time as the world begins to approach some systemic crises that our cultural lexicon has given rise to. The energy is simple our understanding of free speech is undergoing an evolutionary transition, and increasingly in an age of extremism and surveillance, our freedoms to speak are being challenged as never before, and the truth can only thrive in an environment of free inquiry and the ability to express unpopular opinions without reproach of violence, this transit reminds us of that inherent truth.
April 8th: Mercury conjunct Uranus: even as Pluto challenges the rights to free speech and demands a total transformation the awakener then conspires with the symbol of speech to once again state the radical premise that truth requires free inquiry. Bold statements and words that can change the world rapidly and through upheaval are all signified by this symbol set. The Internet will continue to be hotly debated but ultimately net neutrality will reign supreme because as the medium of communications in the 21st century it must remain free and expansive as the sky which let’s all the clouds pass. As mentioned above the desire for free speech will remain strong even as it faces violent resistance from totalitarian regimes, corporate hegemonies and entrenched religious authorities. Again it seems we are never too far from the Pluto-Uranus current as Mercury becomes the cipher that once again puts them into contact with each other. (A religious theme runs because the energies involved are moving through the mystical sign of Pisces).
April 10th: Sun Conjunct Mercury: To add to the already white-hot intensity of these debates the Sun will now add its stellar radiance to the mix turning this into a super-power configuration. These issue may find an even greater global prominence in the days and weeks ahead perhaps spurred by continued assaults by governments and other authorities to these fundamental rights, a good time as any to kick indifference out and take a stand.
April 15th: Venus Opposes Saturn: these two are the best friends of the zodiac as Venus longs to create harmony and beauty and Saturn seeks to create order and structure, when the two go into hard aspect like this, there are systemic breakdowns. The civil pact seems to go south, and gridlock ensues. Perhaps the dialogue that illustrates this best, to use a specific US based example, is that the general public supports Obamacare (the Affordable Healthcare Act), while an entrenched minority opposes it not on logical grounds but on ideological ones. Further Climate Change denialism is at its historic high with the current Congress even as the public and the executive branch clearly understand this to be a fact, continues to deny that humans are the cause (protecting their interests, and not the public). That this could intensify as the 1% becomes increasingly out of touch with the rest of us, is a moot point, what this transit offers us to see clearly is that the forces attempting to bring balance, reason and sanity to these debates (as well as an ecologic focus) are being crowded out by the crass and illogical voices of an established minority, yielding illegitimate power, telling that both of these demonstrate the symbolic praxis of Saturn in Scorpio and Venus in Taurus.
April 19th, 2015: The Sun enters Aries: and finishes its long journey through the 38 degrees of Pisces. If the fires of rebellion and independence feel particularly stoked it is because Aries is a symbol of the head-first rush into self-initiation, bold moves are on the winds and they are changing.
April 22nd, 2015: Mercury Trine Pluto and Venus Sextile Jupiter: Happy Earth Day!! Celebrating what was begun in the first Uranus-Pluto contacts, and what we have confronted in the most recent, the first Earth Day was in 1970, at the peak of the conjunction years! Given that April has an ecological focus at least in Western culture and that we have discussing free speech and Climate Change it only seems natural that the symbols would reflect these arcs. In this case however, there may be a whole new focus, it could be that the voice of the people will finally align with a groundswell of imperceptible power. Perhaps we will see a collaboration at the grassroots level based on intersectionality and shared interest, amplified by the need to bring some balance back to our media representations magnified by the global reach of communications technology and then again perhaps not. Given that Earth Day has become a global phenomenon perhaps for just one day we can address the crises of our times in the ramp up towards the major world summit on Climate happening in Paris this November?
April 26th: Mercury Sextile Uranus: If we refer back to everything mentioned April 8th, only without the high compression of the Pluto contact and focus purely on the groundbreaking aspect that is what this seems to indicate it can signal scientific breakthroughs, technological upheavals, and perhaps some unexpected resolution on these ongoing free speech debates (doubtful). In any case it may signal instead technological breakthroughs with major implications a few examples? Masdar, the world’s first true eco-city, located outside Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates completes its phase 1 of construction this year, it features many novel technologies including driverless cars, and the clincher it uses technologies that will allow it to become the world’s first zero-carbon city! In an age of Climate Change that is a radical departure. Another possible frontier is that the world’s first large scale solar updraft towers are operational this year, located on a stretch of Arizona Desert, and started by the company EnviroMission, if they prove effective it could change energy production and we could see their prevalence in the 2020’s. In any case the door opens for innovation anytime the sextile happens between the communicator and its higher octave the Awakener.
April 29th: Sun sextile Neptune: To add fuel to the clean-tech fire, the sun moves into sextile with Neptune, an outer planet that has been in Aquarius since 2011, giving us the technological wonderland and the possibility of finding inspiration in the emancipation of all humanity from fossil fuel nightmares. Hopefully the dream proves to be more than just a smoke and mirrors routine and pans out into reality, with the Sun adding some extra gravitas it very well could at least for a few days under the energetic resonance of this transit. Baring that the selective pressures are too great to not get this right so ultimately it seems we are on track and the clarion call is ‘Innovate or Die’, time will tell.
End Scene. That’s a wrap Space Cadets I will see you all next month.
Flying Punk Rock Unicorn Astrology 