We also enter the month with an exceptional Moon transit, one that creates and activates a Grand Sextile or Star of David constellation that draws in all the water and earth signs. There is a great deal of transformational potency and opportunities for great psychic, spiritual and creative openings in this dynamic pattern filled with sextiles, trines and oppositions.

This Sun position lights up the goddess of love, beauty and creativity, giving her greater potency and luminosity, while drawing her into the deeper emotional and spiritual realms of Pisces. In the language of old astrology, Venus is considered “exalted” in the sign, as her absolute best, as this goddess position opens us up to the highest expressions of love, into the mystical, devotional and ecstatic realms of unconditional, selfless and compassionate love. This is the very essence of “Spiritual Love”.

But before we get carried away with this potential, it must be acknowledged that Pisces is also a place of poor boundaries, spiritual bypassing and other forms of escapism, and where, as the great Liz Greene has pointed out, the chaotic world of Kali threatens from beneath the surface.

However, the Sun serves to illuminate both the light and the shadow of whatever it accesses, so we have chances to experience ecstatic love that takes us beyond our ego limitations while recognising the unconscious forces behind our ability to give and receive love in all its forms.

On a more human level, it puts relationships front and centre for the duration of the month as Venus travels in conjunction with the Sun for the whole period. It can be a deeply loving, and highly creative time for us and, if you don’t fall into the above traps and are able to dive into the naturally tantric layers of Kali, we can have some extraordinary, grounded and mystical experiences of love and sexuality.

This will be particularly heightened when the Sun and Venus joins Neptune in the second and third weeks of the month.

While not technically conjunct at the start of the month, the Sun lines up perfectly with Neptune on Thursday the 11th. Subsequently the second and third weeks of the month will be quiet a nebulous, psychically fluid and spiritually significant time.

Neptune is a planet of mysticism, psychic and spiritual openings, a transformer who works through dissolving old structures and who is also associated with self-delusion, escapism, addictive behaviour and the gaslighting of self and others.

As a purifier, Neptune also serves to flush out old psychic emotional debris from deep within us, a necessary process that can put us in great psychic flux and produce some rather unusual energy experiences in our physical and emotional bodies. So, you never quite know what you going to get when Neptune is active. Like Uranus he can create a great deal of chaos that similarly can open us up to some expanded states of consciousness, which in turn can lead to some awesome awakenings, powerful psychic downloads and the activation of the visionary parts of self.

What is tricky though with Neptune, is that identifying the difference between super accurate psychic insight and self-delusion is often not easy. Another place to watch out for is about becoming so psychically sensitive, another action of Neptune, is to over-expose us to whatever is in the psychic environment. This can make us easily overwhelmed and compromised in our ability to act with clarity and decisiveness in the world.

If you are at a loss, feeling unclear and awash during this time, the encouragement is to not push from your ego to make things happen, to make regular and consistent use of your psychic protection practices (especially those of you who are practitioners or on the front lines) and, to meditate! Irrespective of how much external chaos gets created during this time, Neptune will always support deep inner practices and exploration. And the kind of creativity that comes from opening to higher planes of awareness.

In fact, Neptune, like Venus this month, can also open us up to some ecstatic spiritual and creative breakthroughs.

Moon in Virgo in Grand Sextile

The Grand Sextile is an overlay of two grand trines; Moon, Mars, Pluto and Kali in one and, Neptune, Medusa and Shiva in the other, to form the Star of David pattern. Each point of the star has sextiles to the closest others, which wrap around the entire chart, while each grand trine is bisected by a challenging opposition.

It is by far the most integrated of the great aspect patterns because it links so many parts of the chart predominantly by trines and sextiles, while the oppositions stir the pattern so that it does not become too passive with all that positive flow. Basically, every point is interconnected with every other, which is why such an exceptional situation.

Interpreting what it means is quite a challenge, so we will take a look at some of the subplots in this story.

This is a wildly transformative combination, especially if you see Pluto as a Western version of Shiva. The slower Pluto gets radicalised by Kali’s explosive Shakti. When Shiva and Kali come together, then deep change, wild breakthroughs and naturally tantric sex can occur spontaneously!

Pluto and Kali trining Mars provides the actions of the warrior God with a great deal of power for making effective change and building new structures.

In opposing Medusa in Cancer, they can activate major power struggles but serve to purify some of the darker distortions to Medusa energy, while seeking to bring the fiery yet often repressed Gorgon in from her isolation. Her and Kali have a lot to share!

Any Moon/Neptune combination has some similar effects to the Sun joining Neptune but with obviously a much deeper emotional tone to it. Neptune dramatically sensitises us emotionally in ways that are great for emotional release work, for psychic flushing and for deep meditations especially those that connect us to the sacred feminine.

In terms of our inner emotional processes, reflecting in some of our relationships, this can be initially very messy because when our normal psychic boundaries with others are temporarily dissolved, then sorting out the difference between what is our own emotional material from, what we are picking up and absorbing from others.

Fortunately, the Moon trines both the Kali Pluto conjunction and Mars in Taurus in ways that create a degree of earthy ballast when other parts of us are in great emotional flux. And while a Moon/ Neptune combination can have us feel less than adequate and empowered in dealing with the world, these same trines talk about the availability of some serious earthy emotional potency. This kind of holding is also reflected by sextiles to both Shiva and Medusa

If we stand face our emotional challenges at this time, instead of succumbing to withdrawal, we can not only do some significant emotional transformation but also feel more empowered to act in the world, through Mars in Taurus, once the Moon moves past this particular trigger point.

This is also a very mystical and yet simultaneously tantric combination. While medusa is being worked on by Kali and Pluto, Neptune aspecting both positively lubricates the big wheels of deep karmic change, while softening the underbelly of Medusa in ways that support her to drop more deeply into the maternal waters of Cancer and the beautiful and profoundly loving power of her own inner feminine.

Neptune trining Shiva is a fabulous double teaming as they share both symbolism and practices. The image of the trident found in both is a much more ancient symbol then Neptune’s weapon, representing Shiva’s rulership over three levels of reality.

Both are associated with meditation and other spiritual practices and there is simultaneously a stillness in the depths of each with an untameable wildness of spirit.

The combination can support our efforts to access more of the sacred masculine within ourselves.

The alternation between positivity and negativity bedevilling many of us in this last month continues but this Mercury transit is a last grab from this difficult dynamic. Mercury, the ruler of our minds is once again sandwiched in the middle of these two rather contradictory and yet complimentary characters.

If we have been doing well with these two, we have been able to move forward in our worlds with some increasing confidence tempered by the healthy realism of Saturn, in ways that let us get things done, despite the periodic bumps. Jupiter were now quickly move away from Saturn and even by the end of the first week the Jupiter Saturn conjunction will be formally finished.

Synchronistically, the now forward motion Mercury catches up with Jupiter perfectly on Friday the fifth, just as the separation from Saturn is complete! We can expect some significant movements in our general mindsets, with more Jupiterian optimism and positivity available to us.

There is still some serious work for both Mercury and Jupiter at the very start of the month, as they both square the Black Moon in Taurus. In doing so these two masculine and mindful energies meet up against the psychological might, the psychospiritual distortions and the profound Shakti of this face of the Dark Mother. These are the distorted energies that can produce experiences of depression and despair, locking individuals in some very dark inner spaces.

However, Jupiter has already been on the job in the last two weeks of February to shine in his very expansive and liberating light on this mysterious part of ourselves, which can feel so threatening, but if worked with well spiritually and often therapeutically, then we get to see more of the dark grace and the universal maternal love of the Great Mother.

After all we have been through in this last 18 months, all I can say at this point is “Go Jupiter!”

With love and blessings,
Daniel