Today, Friday, February 9, 2024, a new lunar month begins with the union of the sun and moon at 20 degrees Aquarius 40 minutes at 2:59 pm PST (5:59 EST). An Aquarius moon in the 8th house is like being in exile, it is in the blind spot of itself with Cancer rising and the Lot of Fortune in Cancer 1st house on the Ascendant of the moment of the new moon. This lunar month may have some feeling like they are in the dark, increased disillusionment and suspicious (Saturn in Pisces is the co-ruler of Aquarius with Uranus). Our instincts are on alert, engaging our intuition seeking insights and information to better understand something that is in the shadows. Add in the unexpected and sudden event or eruptions coming from Taurus (money, assets, values) we have a perplexing period to navigate to discover what we are working to bring together which seems to be against all odds. The Sabian symbol for this new moon is Aquarius 21: A woman disappointed and disillusioned. This new moon is also exactly opposite the Venus Star Point of 2023 20 degrees Leo 28 minutes retrograde that we are still navigating the waves of that activated in Venus’ last retrograde cycle in Leo (August 13, 2023) because of the conflict that we are all witnessing and speaking out extensively (in effort to change what has been happening) and is unfolding between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. To put it bluntly we are witnessing dominating yang energy and oppress yin energy. We are collectively at the bottom of a deep well trying to resuscitate our collective yin and empowerment as a group to end suffering. Humans are suffering and we have to find our courage to take action to end it, but also to create space where it does not ever need to return to that again in our collective experience. We are learning, slowly, perhaps how the coin may flip and where one collective group’s trauma and shadow may play out. This is both Aquarian and Leo. How may we return to our hearts and understand our collective humanity.
This new moon in Aquarius has an abundance of Aquarian energy with the moon and sun at 20 degrees 40 minutes, Mercury at 7 degrees 25 minutes, and Pluto at 0 degrees 38 minutes. From the quadrant Placidus house system and in the Tri-Cities, Washington and the west coast Mercury and Pluto fall in the 7th house of relationships, our experience of others from our perceptions, from a Cancer rising Ascendant. We may individually look at our collective beliefs and thought patterns from wherever we are personally at this moment. Those who are in a period of release and loss will be navigating the grief of loss, while overlapping finding new energy in life to renew their empowerment which will then feed their outward action. The inner feminine has great power. Even though Aquarius is a Yang energy sign, I am drawn to explore the Yin counterpoint with the co-rulers Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Pisces (both rulers currently in feminine signs). Sometimes we forget that in a world dominated by outward action, it takes time to release old conditioned ways of operating in a world where our feminine empowerment has been suppressed. Feminine energy principles are about our ability to magnetize something at our core, from our heart and then the energy comes (divine timing when you look at your own nativity). There can be overlaps and bridges, but the feminine is at work at a new depths level within us all since Venus retrograde last summer in Leo. Consider one storyline that is rich with symbolism of the feminine suppression and the counterbalance awakening with singer songwriter Taylor Swift and her presence at masculine sport of American football and the increase in daughters watching and playing football with their fathers, the conversations amongst men about this perplexing scenario on their sacred ground. I do not follow or watch football, but I have thought it rather ironic that daughters and women fans have wanted to join in the experience with their fathers, uncles, and brothers simply because someone they adore for what she symbolizes to them (an empowered woman) is present and showing support for someone she is in a relationship with. At the same time we collectively know the damage to the body that is happening to players with the condition of CTE and we still engage in this sport. What a paradox of a situation. What a perplexing combination we are observing and engaging of yin and yang. I observe so much of life from the lens of astrology that I find myself increasingly curious about the undercurrents of anything in life that is teaching me how archetypal energies are expressing and playing out in our world.
While the moon is the ruler of the Ascendant in this new moon lunation (from TC and west coast) it describes themes of feeling exiled, but also one of feeling out of touch with the place of expression into the world. Where we have deep transformations happening and potentially strong opposition from a strategic and enduring Mars. You want Mars on your team if you need endurance and courage, in the sign of Capricorn Mars has strategic endurance to run the marathon and then some. For an east coast perspective note the chart below for Washington D.C. with Uranus on the midheaven of the new moon chart, quite significant for this month around money and values themes that will be more disruptive.
Interesting also is Venus in Capricorn at 21 degrees 42 minutes is closing the gap with Mars as they near their ingress to Aquarius (Mars enters Aquarius February 13th, and Venus enters Aquarius February 16th, and they both start a new synodic cycle on February 21st at 6 degrees Aquarius). This new moon chart Mars and Venus are in the balsamic phase of endings, and within Capricorn may have a lasting imprint about resourcefulness, an old paradigm, personal milestones, energy to pursue passions and understanding personal empowerment that attracts.
Long enduring relationships are going through considerable changes, both from Pluto in Aquarius (squaring or opposing the other fixed signs), but also the need to be authentic to our individual voices from the group. Mercury is fixed in Aquarius and long held ideas have a stubborn stronghold. Look around and observe where we have obstacles around certain fixed ideas, the desire for change is real, and yet there’s a feeling that looms that feels rather stagnant, giving us the thought that it won’t budge. And yet…there are four or five things on the way in our cosmic planetary transits to dislodge that fixed energy.
First, Pluto is burning down our fixed ideas that block our connection from heart and mind that are Aquarian in their natures, so we may rebuild them. If you haven’t read or listened to the news of the mass layoffs in the tech industry you know there are massive transitions for many souls for their steps toward new chapters in their lives (especially on their public persona = 10th house professional lives), but there is a palpable energetic shifting in beliefs that appear to be emerging from this round. I have been in the tech industry for the past 29 years, I have been through three or four periods of time where layoffs were really significant and I experienced them as well. For many years many have held their identities tightly entangled to their career and jobs. Our beliefs have been hard fixed (conditioned) for many in this context and frame.
I recall when I was leaving a major software company from a selected layoff in 2004 with a choice to take the offered severance rather than find an alternative position internally. I chose to take a leap and go outside the known. I remember how my colleagues who held fast to their identity with the company and image wondered how I was managing outside that identity in reshaping my professional image on the outside! I thought it was so interesting that there was this thought about feeling ‘less than’ for being outside that corporate brand identity, it was framed in a way that seemed to be filled with judgment, yet more framed from a sense of self worth that was tied to holding onto that image. Ironically, in my exit and release of that one identity I was able to grow exponentially in that one decision to move on and find another opportunity, which I did. I started as an individual contributor and grew quickly into a manager role within three months and then promoted one more time to the highest role I’ve held in my career. Sometimes the big leaps of faith we make for ourselves actually bring the biggest bounce for new growth. Collectively I wonder about our culture with so much conditioning about career image within groups and personas that is now hitting hard on so many in this great shifting moment, for which I also think is deepening our compassion with one another.
We have found for many decades some sense of our identity and security in the companies where we have worked and shaped so much of our identity entangled with theirs in the idea of an exchange that would be balanced. In truth, people are realizing they have been the source of creative solutions to problems, but it doesn’t always equate to a fair exchange. It is not a reciprocal relationship of exchange, of trust and integrity between the people and the faceless corporate brand. Pluto will be revealing what has been hidden from us for a long time, that many are manipulated for the benefit of a few and technology is part of that manipulation equation. Perhaps some people realize this relationship, but I don’t think most people really understand the extent to how the information the data is used and impacts them every day. Laws are being created to take back more privacy from an invasive overreach of technology that impacts our well being. Many companies do not operate with a heart or empathy for the people, in this round of layoffs many are realizing the cold approach (email announcements of layoffs or leaders who did not face them in that communication) and they were so easily dismissed in the layoff process even when they were successful in their achievements and the company was profitable.
The shadow side of Aquarius is visible in these recent layoffs revealing the detached Aquarius where some stories show the lack of compassion, the indifference part of the sign, while some while having a similar layoff experience felt saddened to leave their connection to their co-workers which offered them a sense of community. When Pluto first appears in a sign it reveals the shadow, the undercurrent of what has been operating for some time and the time has come to alter it forever. Many experienced layoffs during our collective global COVID19 pandemic crisis and many experienced financial losses during that time. Then as some people found work and resettled they were facing another fall-out within a short window of time. COVID19 revealed our paradigm shift to working from home, which offered many like mothers and parents the ability to be closer to family situations and still earn their living. In 2023 and now 2024 there has been a hard authority driven drive to return employees back into commute times and physical offices. Many professionals rebel at the idea of returning and seeing how wasteful of time and resources it is for them. Now comes the deeper experience of the shadow for healing.
We have 20 years of Pluto in Aquarius, to learn about our collective connection and deepen our compassionate engagement with each other, so the shadow will continue to reveal more exactly where that will be, just as Pluto revealed the breakdowns of corrupt and outdated systems and authority while transiting Capricorn 2008-2023/24. The ‘idea’ that it is suitable to create even greater profits with the stroke of the pen (or one click of a widely distributed mass email) laying off people and not considering their livelihoods, or making the choice to re-train or regroup for new advancing technologies, a lack of consideration for the impact on communities and that the human capital, aka the PEOPLE who are the minds, the creative workers and extension of shared energy that did the collective work to be successful there is a great portion that are losing interest in this model of an economy. When the company profit gains do not collectively help the whole that created them and only a few get the cream, well there will be a fall-out that industries and companies may not be able to predict and that is individuals not returning to these companies instead selecting a new path. Perhaps the Great Resignation and these layoffs are us observing ourselves disrupting the old paradigm, some consciously and some unconsciously. Paradigm shifts rarely come in like a lamb.
Beliefs are changing now for many about professional relationships that have been employed for a decade and longer in the tech industry, which will have an interesting butterfly effect of waves of individuals that will try to find what will work in a shrinking pool of right fitting opportunities. Many may add to their knowledge of emerging technology that they did not have time for prior to their layoff, and then perhaps in this layoff new pioneers will emerge. We will see a new wave of individuals passionate in their pursuit of something that only may have arisen because of the space to think deeply on something of their expertise will be the birth of a new beginning. Pluto will also reveal the shadow of other Aquarius themes such as we are seeing in these layoffs that even though we are individuals and have something uniquely we offer in service to the world, we are human and our experiences are similar and connect us.
Astrologer Colin Bedell wrote in A Little Bit of Astrology, “With determined intellect, Aquarius is obligated to pierce through the idea of separate specialness among the collective and help us all realize we’re just like everyone else. Through an array of media like storytelling, song, or anything highly cerebral – the best work of Aquarius points the way to the point in your mind that you have in common with mine. The stories you think are so specific to you are ones we all have in common. With Aquarius’ demonstration, humanity realizes its shared connectivity and is then likely to make the Golden Rule the bottom line. Because if we do, then we set ourselves free.”
Second, Jupiter and Uranus make their conjunction at 22 Taurus April 20th (7:27 pm PDT) which starts a new synodic cycle. I have observed something online across hundreds and hundreds (thousands) of unemployed professionals who are showing up each week sharing their stories of being laid off, some are terrible and most ask for help, and a photo of their family or the single parent with their children, and in every post like this there is a swarm of people to hold space, to give hope, to remind them to stay strong, or someone shares links to jobs in their focus area. In the dust of chaos there is community, a sobering realization that it isn’t anyone’s fault and realizations that things are not in equilibrium and yet a striving at the same time to seek a new opportunity to re-balance themselves. The world turned upside down, and yet at the same time a deepening of compassion is flowing in the current. I sense more each day that individuals who are having a brighter day supporting others who have recently found themselves in the same boat. There are kind words in strings of comments sharing support, some offering referrals in their network, or tagging a colleague within a post of a recently opened position. So while we hear the larger story of job losses and unemployment that may bring fear and sad news, I am witnessing a growing community with visible heartfelt kindness that is growing in the ashes of a wake of blazing (Pluto) transformation from job losses with little sprigs of life revealing the coming ‘spring’ of a community, one that appears to be showing signs of a new compassionate potential emerging.
Thirdly, the coming eclipse on April 8th which will be significant for anyone in North America for its path of totality. This eclipse in Aries at 19 degrees 24 minutes has Chiron the wounded healer conjunct exactly (degree and minute) with the moon, and sun. Cazimi Chiron in this solar eclipse. The wonder healer in the chariot precisely at the eclipse, what symbolism! The dark moon eclipsing the powerful Aries sun with the wounded healer so present. And Mercury will be retrograde at 24 degrees 47 minutes to immediately within days transit again this precise degree, what will we be collectively re-imagining to express with such boldness? Framed by a lunar eclipse at the south node in Libra at 5 degrees just two weeks prior on March 25th.
This spring the eclipses are powerful in changing dynamics and altering our paths of how we engage our instinctual nature of ourselves as our Aries’ individual instincts and impulses, and how our intuition has the power to lead us in pioneering innovative directions. The energy of Aries getting disarmed and snipped by a jolt from the sun being totally obscured. Loss of power of individuality by some action or decision that jolts us from our collective daze to take action with frustrated and angered voices. The solar eclipse occurs in the Venus Star Point from April 8, 1969 and activates the head of their Venus Star Point quite dramatically for souls born between April 8, 1969 and January 24, 1970. This is my Venus Star Point (head) and this unique moment has me pondering the powerful mix of planetary archetypes activated from the eclipse, Chiron in Aries, and this collective group of souls born during these months in 1969. The solar eclipse this year on April 8, 2024 is a real pattern (frequency) disruptor. It is breaking the pattern across time and space. For some hints, I like to explore the Sabian symbol for the degree which is Aries 20: A young girl feeding birds in winter. Blain Bovee describes the symbolism with this phrase, “How pain dies: forgive yourself; forgive others.” Here is a more complete description of Aries 20 Sabian Symbol:
Aries 20: A young girl feeding birds on winter
So much energy is needed to maintain the ego’s place in the story of one’s life… extraordinary energy really.
So much energy goes into our stories that just being present, like a meditator sitting in quiet stillness, mindfully aware of the breath, seems far too boring.
“Where is the energy, the intensity?” Where indeed? Where does all that energy go when one returns to the breath to be present, simply, naturally?
The key word for Aries 20 “A young girl feeding birds in winter” and its companion Libra symbol “A Jewish Rabbi”, is acquittal.
‘Acquittal’ means to discharge from blame or responsibility the way an accusation of a crime is dropped from the accused. It means to bring peace and quiescence to a matter.
Like a gesture of compassion… like playing dead in a child’s game… like forgiving oneself and others… it seems the steepest task of all.
And yet it is simple. Let yourself off the hook.
Let others off the hook.
Every story has holes in it. One can pass through the holes is a gesture of acquittal.
Or you can choose the high drama of the story and perpetuate pain and blame.
Blain Bovee
Given the Sabian Symbol it brings me to the thought that the Aries Point from April 8, 1969, and this year’s solar eclipse offer a space for deeper healing. However, we may only find it within our inner plane and not what we see at first on the outer plane. For others born earlier and later within the pattern of the Venus Star Point there are groups that will be activated by one of the hands or one of the feet of their Venus Star Point. Also anyone who has a Venus Star Point in Aries within 7 degrees of Aries 20 has a unique opportunity to observe in their own Venus patterns of their life. This is a really significant moment for souls that bring a unique Venus expression to this moment, from their intuitive mind, their gift to give the world or where they will receive from the world in relation to their Venus placement and sign. You can learn more about the most recent activated Venus Star Point through this teaching by Julija Simas. You can also read Arielle Guttman’s blogs and her books for all things Venus Star Point. The next Venus Star Point occurs on June 4, 2024, at 14 degrees 29 minutes Direct of Gemini. This eclipse on my Venus Star Point has already activated me into focusing my studies in this topic this year and asking new questions within my studies about the unique moments where eclipses sever past patterns and ‘reboot’ an energetic expression. I wonder to myself, Is the eclipse offering wounded healers, (Chiron) the space to release and heal in order to liberate them from a wound that they embodied (via the feminine archetype of Venus) to carry in their individual evolution journey and that also has been important collectively as that has been playing out for our part in our evolution?
I am pondering a humanitarian or subdued yet potentially angered Mars in Pisces conjunct Saturn (solitude/ active mastered or restricted emotions) of the moment of the eclipse in the archetypal symbolism. I cannot help but ponder with deep curiosity the bigger picture of what actions, or humanitarian activity changes our course so impactfully at this moment, especially as it relates to healers activated, who are feminine warriors? Venus in Aries at the eclipse moment, Venus in resonance with Mars in Pisces (Venus sign of exaltation) conjunct Saturn. What instincts are activated within us as limits and frustrations flow through an inward focus active, even abrasive Mercury (thoughts/communication)? Whatever is awakened also activates 12 days later the Jupiter-Uranus in Taurus conjunction, like the Minotaur finding freedom from the labyrinth. I highly recommend Jason Holley’s webinar on Uranus in Taurus – Freeing the Minotaur.
At this new moon in Aquarius I hope I have highlighted important arenas of our collective humanity that are in great flux and worth exploring. I hope it ignites your interest in the archetypal energies at play in the planetary transits and an interest in your own astrology. Your path is unique, and yet your story and life is beautifully entangled with others around the globe. What does this unique moment have you pondering about your unique role on the stage of life? Namaste. Bless this moment.
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