Here the Sun meets arguably the highest, and most powerful expression of the sacred masculine. Shiva has been popularised through the spread of traditional yoga in the West over the 130 years as a relatively benign yogi god. However, he is much more multidimensional archetype as well as the deity who represents pure consciousness in all of manifestation. While he is ever-present, when his asteroid appears in the chart, we get access to a place of great mystery and, of multiple gifts and blessings.

He is simultaneously a supremely detached and refined yogi, a destroyer and dissolver in the death and rebirth cycle, an absolutely untameable wildman who hangs out with ghosts, spirits and wild animals, a lord of tantra and great lover of the goddess in her many forms!

When the Sun lines up with him, it shines a light on this exalted form of masculinity, confers a greater degree of detachment around life’s dramas, and refines our perception in ways that allow us to pierce through layers of denial, delusion and unconsciousness. He paradoxically represents states of individual containment and, of great internal psychological and spiritual freedom. Parts of the latter include the ability to surrender to deep transformation and, to refine the raw instinctual power of the masculine so that it may be used effectively to facilitate real change in the world.

In some ways Shiva is an Eastern, yogic form of Pluto energy, so he is clearly no lightweight SNAG!

In the broader picture then, as we’ve been unravelling old forms of increasingly redundant masculine structures, externally and internally, the appearance of Shiva offers a very different vision of masculinity for all of us.

In opposing Chiron in Aries, the Sun/Shiva combination both activates old wounds to the fiery independent energies of Aries, while giving us a different internal place of perception around our wounding. Shiva supports being able to pierce through the anaesthetisations around some of our deepest wounding, so that we don’t get sucked in by surface manifestations and projections, while simultaneously activating the awesome healer and teacher within our Chiron positions.

This can be a brilliant meeting of two forms of enlightened, masculine forms of healing and knowledge.  The authentic Chiron shares many of Shiva’s capacities.

The sextiles from the Sun and Shiva to the kundalini goddess of healing Hygeia describes this month an exceptionally healing one for many of us. Her presence also offers a different pathway, a much more feminine one, in our healing work. While Chiron’s healing approaches are masculine and piercing, Hygeia initiates spontaneous healing experiences whenever we can drop out of our heads and into our deeper emotions and bodily energy.

There is a great trine between Chiron and Hygeia meaning that we can work with both at this time with abundant support from the focused power of the Sun Shiva.

It is also very auspicious, on a tantric level, that Shiva and Hygeia are sextiling each other, as Hygeia is a Western form of Lalita Devi, the goddess of sacred sexuality, who just happens to be a luscious consort of Shiva!

When Mercury is in Scorpio, the energies of the mind and communication take on a great intensity and focus, his relatively cerebral operations diving into the emotional realms of the lower chakras. This produces a great degree of seriousness and piercing intent, to perceive behind surface manifestations. In many ways Scorpio is both the psychotherapist and the forensic scientist of the Zodiac, so Mercury takes on many of those qualities. (many of which are not that different to those of Shiva!)

His exact conjunction with Juno, the goddess of marriage, places that intense focus on our relationships, our attitudes to commitment, loyalty and fidelity, while helping to sort out the difference between our authentic relationship needs from the imprints of our parents relationship dynamics.

Juno is a queen who demands commitment, equality and mutual empowerment, and is a form of grace if she is happy and operating well. She can also turn very destructive and vengeful if she is denied or betrayed (much like Parvati, for when Shiva pisses her off, she turns into Kali!)

Less dramatically, this month is a time of important learning around our individual relationship evolution and one that can allow us to do some high-quality sorting between what’s working and what’s not in our outer relationships.

This is a month long process, as Mercury retrograde on the 14th, in a way that maintains this conjunction with this goddess of marriage throughout October.

Neptune conjunct Persephone can be a rather disturbing transit, primarily because it opens our psychic doors to a great deal of personal, ancestral, cultural and past life sources of grief, loss, sexual trauma, fear and anxiety. In the midst of this swirling psychic environment it is difficult separating out what is strictly our own personal material from that which is arising from the past and, that we are picking up in the present.

It is a transit that exaggerates our sensitivity to the collective fear and anxiety across the planet at this time, which further confuses things in our own awareness. This calls upon us to be really consistent around the different ways we can protect ourselves psychically; regular meditation, visualisations, flower essences or all of the above if you are naturally hypersensitive.

On a process level however, this transit also supports the releasing of the same material gathered in the early stages of our pasts, as a kind of mass psychic flushing that can eventually liberate us from carrying the weight of it all.

Spiritually, it talks about the potential for significant initiatory experiences, ones that open up the lower chakras, dissolve places of naivete, anaesthetisation and superficiality and, awaken the transformative and tantric power of the sacred feminine. As a potent transit for sexual healing, it’s activation of purificatory processes allows for an ever closer reuniting with our natural, organic, pure sacred sexuality.

As the two of them, energised by the Moon at the start of the month, sextile the Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto conjunction, they add greater psychic fluidity to our ability to surrender to processes of deep change. (Note that Persephone is the consort of Pluto or Hades, which is a positive reinforcement of the transformative opportunities of this time.)

Yes, this is peaking right now at the start of the month. Here is my description from last month’s newsletter to refresh your memory.

The very dark Mars/Black Moon conjunction was exact in the middle weeks of August, then backed off a little, with Mars continuing forward until he goes retrograde on the ninth. He then turns around to meet her again, exactly on the last days of the month, just in time for both to exactly square a stationary Saturn!

As I have said in the last months, this on one level is a meeting of our personal ego drives with the purifying and empowering energies of this dark face of the Great Mother. It takes a great deal of clarity, humility and integrity to be able to handle this kind of line-up, let alone be able to successfully wield its power potentials.

This is especially true when one of her agendas is to purify our destructive desires, sabotage mechanisms, abusive inner masculine, anger and more toxic rage, all of which she will tend to activate in order to flush out. Once again, we are being called to work deeply, therapeutically and spiritually with this material. At the very least, keep tweaking the pressure valves on our anger and frustration so that they do not built towards potentially dangerous critical mass!

Whereas, some people will be tempted to use this upwelling of toxic emotional power, entangle their own ego drives and unconsciousness with it and project it outwards, especially as Mars and the Black Moon lock in with Saturn exactly at the end of the month. We can expect a great deal of father issues projected in the direction of authority figures at this time as well as authentic assaults on corruption and on individuals who are misusing power. We can also expect more violence unfortunately.

Ultimately this is the time for challenging the inner tyrants, the internalised patriarchy, the excessively saturnine structures within our own psyches. And as I have raised before, working with sources of deep pain and toxic rage, whether from masculine or feminine origins.

If we step aside from the Mars/Black Moon’s confrontation with old patriarchal forms of suppression and misuse of power for a moment, we can see the Black Moon adding her deep psychosexual potency to this confluence of the archetypal couple Venus and Mars. She adds an intensity, a fierce penetration into the truth of things, and her demands for deep relationship evolution.

While she is very good at highlighting our shadow areas so that we can access and work with them, she is the kind of energy that produces big surges of growth in our patterns of relating.

Note that the three of them are in the fire signs, so we can expect the fires of passion and the fires of purification to burn with greater intensity at this time.

As we’ll see immediately below, this is one component of a much bigger dynamic.

A Kite Arrangement in Fire and Air:
Lilith and Hekate Conjunct South Node in Sagittarius, in grand trine with Venus, Mars and Black Moon, with the latter three sextiling Psyche Conjunct North Node in Gemini.

With Lilith and Hecate on the South node, we can expect the energies of these goddesses arising out of our collective and past life sources, whether appearing in our dreams or nightmares, showing up in our meditations or coming through as psychic downloads of great power and sacred knowledge.

Simply put, this is a time of reclaiming our feminist sacred warriors, medicine women and inner witches. So whatever spiritual traditions you identify with, this is a great time for practices that connect you with these multitalented, multidimensional wise women within.

In trining both ends of the Venus Mars combination, what comes through the sacred feminine here will have positive and empowering influences on our relationships, creativity and sexuality.

This will also be another source of pain, trauma, grief and loss, as Lilith and Hecate square the Neptune Persephone conjunction. Again, this is opportunity for flushing out the psychic emotional residues from the betrayal of the sacred feminine.

Now, if we imagine the grand trine and its three points, with these ancient powers and knowledge streaming through the masculine warrior and the goddess of love, what an awesome combination that is.  In turn, this energy surges towards the North Node, who has accompanied by the beautiful and refined goddess of soul union Psyche.

The North Node in Gemini speaks of translating the raw knowledge and energy of these fierce goddesses from our pasts, into contemporary language and messaging. Psyche’s input is to assist in refining the knowledge and presenting it with great sensitivity.

As for relationship evolution, Psyche represents a higher octave of the Venus/Aphrodite and stretches traditional relationships into much more soul connected unions. Whatever purification and empowerment happens for Venus and Mars this month, it clears the way for a much more heart-full availability to more refined relationships.

The transiting North Node, and anything directly connected with it, describes new visions emerging from the unconscious, new possibilities for everyone if they are prepared to do the necessary healing and spiritual work.

Go well, stay well, with great love and blessings,

Daniel