This month’s chart is the best I’ve seen in many months and I suspect that for many people this is a relief. It’s not as though the intensity of speeded up transformation is not there, it’s that we have so much powerful support for all of our processes.
With the grand trine between the Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Cancer and Neptune in Pisces it is very much a gift to the mystic, the artist, the visionary inside each of us. And alongside the more dramatic processes this one allows us to gently unfold more and more of our essential sensitivity, psychospiritual gifts, including psychic intuitive ones, and for reclaiming our capacity to perceive the magical, the luminous not just in our spiritual practices but in our moment to moment daily reality.
Those of you who are early risers will be enjoying the clarity of the Jupiter/Venus/Mars conjunction rising before the sun. If we had super telescopes we would also be able to see the Hygeia asteroid travelling with the benevolent Jupiter. This is a very gracious multiple conjunction and one of the reasons why our India tour was so successful.
Jupiter together with Hygeia in Virgo is a very exciting combination for the twin processes of healing and transformation, particularly since both are in a trine with Pluto and in opposition with Chiron. A Jupiter/Hygeia/Pluto linkup is a Western version of Ganesh, Lalita, Shiva and Kali in brilliant relationship, one joining the lord of grace and remover of obstacles with the healing goddess of erotic spirituality, the highest expression of the sacred masculine, all in union with the dark goddess of radical liberation and awakening! Even the opposition to Chiron, normally a piercing thrust of healing energy that can be very painful, is assisted by more grace and flow as we get challenged around our relationship dynamics and our sexuality.
Any link between Hygeia and Chiron, whatever the aspect, ups the ante on our healing processes and can produce some exceptional shifts ranging from the incredibly subtle to the dramatic, including the awakening of kundalini or at least movement of the serpent power through our chakras. So adding the expansive Jupiter and the empowering Pluto to the recipe makes this an extraordinary time of healing.
It’s a very interesting time for relationships as well. Traditionally Venus and Mars together is a passionate, energising and erotic combination. Obviously this is tempered and to a certain extent more focused by being positioned in Virgo, a situation that is brilliant for directing creative juice into any endeavour.
Related to this is another grand trine, with Mercury conjunct Eros in late Libra, trining Shiva in Aquarius and the ongoing conjunction of Psyche and Parvati in Gemini. For Tantrikas and lovers of the Shiva Shakti relationship this is a dream connection, engaging two great archetypal couples in the form of Eros and Psyche with Shiva and Parvati. This offers opportunity to stretch our conscious awareness and our availability to refine our expressions of love and sacred erotic energies. And whether that is available in our outer lives or not, it stretches our hearts by connecting is more deeply to our longing for soul connections within and without. There is nothing like the experience of that longing to encourage us to deal with our relationship baggage, while opening to the sacred masculine and feminine within.
It’s not all a dream run though. The Venus Mars conjunction is squaring Psyche and Parvati which can be seen as a challenging dynamic between the earthy and contained expression of desire with those of the higher octaves of our spirit. The nature of squares is not about either or but about working towards a creative relationship between both and certainly Jupiter will help with the creation of this.
Juno opposite Uranus/Persephone, square Pluto
The other challenge is that Juno the traditional goddess of marriage is in a tough place in mid Libra, opposing the conjunction of Uranus and Persephone in Aries while squaring Pluto in Capricorn. The former talks about radical separations that are simultaneously painful, even deathlike but also liberating from the restrictions of relationship and marriage conditioning. The latter represents a similar process but on a deeper more bedrock level within our psyches. Both draw us into the primal layers of being, for purification and empowerment.
I see this as another big push in the long-term transformation of our relationship dynamics and experience since 2012, a revolution towards relationships of greater authenticity, equality, Tantric passion and individual freedom. This all sounds great but is accompanied by a necessary series of psychic deaths and painful separations as a part of the preparation for the individual and collective rebirth that the same symbols represent.
The Saturn Neptune Square
This is one of the trickiest of aspects, one that goes exact at the end of the month but which is also a signature aspects embedded in the first six months of 2016. While Saturn represents internal structures within each of us he also reflects the structures we create an outside world.
When Saturn is squared by Neptune those structures go wobbly as the Neptune urge for greater psychic openness, for re-sensitisation, the empowerment of our creativity and intuition, and greater internal fluidity, involves temporarily at least the dissolving of old ego structures, conditioning and the kind of scaffolding that we have all needed to prop ourselves up with while we seek our own authenticity and deeper psychic core. In this Neptune also challenges places where we have excessively masculinised and ridden roughshod over our inner feminine, our sensitivity and our capacity for vulnerability and intimacy.
Internally this can produce some unusual and unsettling experiences, including being spaced out, havung difficulty with focusing, free-floating anxiety and feelings of disillusionment as we discover that some of the structures in our world don’t match our visions, dreams and ideals. As Neptune also dissolves the defences we have around early experiences, unreleased emotions and absorbed psychic material, these can also get released. This is obviously great in the long run but in the immediate adds this to the already internal messiness.
This is one of those times when it is really good to be very disciplined around meditation and other spiritual practices both to enhance the releasing and opening aspects of the process but also to avoid the trap of falling into the pit of despair, disillusionment or helplessness.
As for Saturn squaring Neptune this represents a fundamental challenge to anyone who wants to live a spiritually or creatively inspired life, one in which the outer structures of our world are in sync with our visions beliefs and soul expressions. Saturn here can be equally tough, not just because he needs to shatter our delusions but because, despite his reputation as a dream stealer, he actually wants us to get our shit together!
He is the antidote to flaky new-age thinking, magical thinking more from the child than healthy adult ego, and to our lack of discipline and vigour with validating, empowering and manifesting the visions for our individual worlds. This includes the healthy use of left brain functions in sync with right brain gifts, to do the necessary groundwork whether in creating external structures that support us and taking responsibility for deeper layers of our own wounding.
This includes the necessary examination of issues to do with the use and misuse of power, the subconscious use of our clients for our own needs, for calling ourselves transformers when we’ve only done half of the Persephone journey and for getting greater clarification around our interpersonal boundaries which includes psychic and sexual ones.
So we have our work cut out for us but ultimately the Saturn Neptune Square is an alchemical relationship that seeks greater unity between vision and structure that allows us to become better manifestors and co-creators of our external reality.
We may not like the process but it has tremendous importance for all of us and we will eventually be grateful for the lessons learned.