Dear Friends,

Welcome again to another intense month, full of power, threat, opportunity and deep grace.

It doesn’t seem that the collective is going to let up on the big, challenging movements and I’m reminded of a satire I once saw on the spiritual path. The heroine is tearing around trying to make sense of her life and its challenges and decides to consult an astrologer. He tells her that things are going to be really bad for the next 30 years and in her new age hyper optimism says hopefully “and then what happens…..?”  The astrologer replies drolly “you get used to it.”

There is a kernel of truth in this but not with the same defeatism. The ratcheting up of all our processes in these last two years is not just the end of an epoch and the birthing pains of a new one but is also setting a new benchmark of how to live with our deeper energies, with greater individualisation, with sheer Eros and open-heartedness. While this will make us feel like we’re on the rack at times or having our ego’s impurities flame-thrown (all of which is very stressful!) it’s the series of initiations into living our truth, passion and soul missions.

So, get used to it, learn to ride the big swells, move aside resistance more quickly, allow excitement to break through the cracks, grab the ever-expanding possibilities, the gems in the darkness. After a while it becomes second nature and not separate from us, not some outside force pulling the strings but the deepest mysteries of the self calling us home.

Something that I want to speak of that isn’t included in the Nova article this month (partly because there was already enough intensity in the article and I didn’t want to scare people too much!) is a conjunction of Uranus with Medusa in Aries, one that will be active until January next year.

This is a volatile combination of sky god and fierce warrioress, one that is potentially dangerous but also incredibly liberating. The image of the snake-headed Gorgon who turns men to stone if they look at her is only one of her faces, a distorted and understandably enraged face, given her history. Behind this mask is a goddess of great beauty, the most accepting of love, the deepest psychological and spiritual intelligence and, a fierce protector of the mysteries and vulnerabilities of the feminine, whatever our gender.

Uranus is a great awakener, so part of his role in this dance is to liberate her from the prison of her own frozen, enraged face, something that she’s been calling for from all of us. For some this demands activating and releasing of ancient forms of anger, bitterness and toxicity accumulated from our families systems, past-life records and absorbed from 4000 years of patriarchal culture. This is why the imperative to own and work with our anger systems is so strong at the moment because not to, forces the energy to act with greater potential violence.

But oh, what an opportunity, to unload psychic-emotional material that’s been poisoning us in various ways, compromising our true potency and severely messing with our capacity for intimacy and healthy relationships.

Medusa in turn pulls the excessively detached sky god out of the clouds, out of our heads, to be more grounded and in touch with the very human, emotional consequences of his actions, thereby bringing him into relationship with the deep feminine and her own hot-blooded brand of Shakti.

And this is where it gets very exciting, as both represented different forms of magic. Uranus is a part of the wizard archetype, of the Merlin traditions, while Medusa is a sorceress, healer and sacred warrior. As a serpentine goddess, she brings the power of the deep feminine into contact with the high voltage spiritual electricity of Uranus, firing up all the chakras while, in Aries, calling for all of us to claim more of our own unique magical, creative, visionary gifts.

What a couple, and a tantric one too!

This can be, worked well and with conscious awareness, great power in action.

Go well.

With love and blessings, Daniel