Grit, Resilience and finding Willy Wonka - Full Moon January 10th, 2020
Well I’ve been talking about this for so long I am finding it hard to believe we are now in 2020, with a Full Moon on January 10th, and a lunar eclipse as well to kick it off. Eclipses are like lunations on steroids, with the effects of lunar eclipses tending to be more emotional than their solar counterpart. And this Full Moon is in one of the signs most associated with our emotions – Cancer – where the Moon is fully at home expressing how she feels.
This Moon is within one degree of the Moon’s position in the UK chart – the Moon in the chart of a country represents the people. So how exactly are the people feeling right now? It’s less than a month since we had a general election, Christmas and the New Year are in the past and January is usually a pretty flat month. But, in the UK we have our own new era almost upon us as we prepare to leave the EU. Cancer is a cardinal or a ‘doing/action’ sign and whichever side of the fence you sit I think the British people are looking forward to a time when life can go forward without being dominated by the endless bickering about Brexit.
This eclipse also hits many of the charts of the royals, including the Queen. The Queen’s Ascendant (perceptions)/Descendant (significant others) is being particularly hit right now. She is Capricorn rising with Saturn (duty) as the most elevated planet in her chart – she is duty personified. Philip was recently hospitalized – perhaps the car accident not so long ago had more of an effect than we have been told. And just as I send this out Harry and Megan announce they are stepping back from being senior royals – an encore of an abdication involving an American actress.
The Moon in the birth chart represents our inner emotions, women, the mother, the family – and the Moon will always seek to protect what she cares for. And what a Capricorn line up this Full Moon is facing – such a lot of ‘action and happening’ energy in this chart. With Jupiter in the mix we can fly high but only if we accept we are a reality checkpoint. Remember Full Moons are our harvest times. We can look over our harvest and see what we want to keep and where we might wish to plant new seeds at the next New Moon. And this is no ordinary Full Moon – it is an eclipse.
As Uranus ends his retrograde period all planets are now in forward motion – so no more backtracking – finally we can get into action mode. South Node, Jupiter and then a tightly packed Sun, Mercury, Ceres Saturn and Pluto are all in Capricorn – this for sure is not a line up of sweet little jelly babies left over from the Christmas stocking. Mercury is so close to the Sun he is literally on his lap. He is what we call astrologically ‘cazimi’. In this position he’s a bit like MI5’s top agent with his ear to the ground, his focus strong and realistic.
Capricorn and Saturn very much represent the Earth and at this Full Moon we still have Ceres, Goddess of the Harvest, closely in the mix. So there really is a spotlight on environmental issues and the realization that the state of Mother Earth is at a critical point. The situation in Australia is catastrophic. 500 million animals are said to have perished and that is not counting the ones who are injured. Firefighters have also lost their lives and homes and ways of life have been destroyed. We really do need to wake up to a new way of thinking (Uranus) and perhaps the new way of thinking could be to reconnect with the ancient wisdom. Yes it’s extremely hot right now but the indigenous aboriginal population would use selective burning to encourage native grasses to regenerate and to reduce scrub and fuel to prevent intense bushfires. Following World War2 the indigenous population lost control of their lands and their traditional culture of ‘cool’ burns which gave wildlife time to escape and self-extinguished as soon as the grass was burned was no longer applied in many areas. The traditional people could ‘read’ the land and how to protect the sacred canopy of the trees. Saturn/Pluto highlights mismanagement and nowadays there is too much build up of fuel for the fires in a land where there will always be bushfires. Additionally fire trails, which allowed fire-fighters to penetrate deeper into the forest areas, were left unmanaged and overgrown.
In mythology Gaia, the Earth, gave birth to Uranus, the Sky, first. Uranus and Gaia then mated, but Uranus found his children ugly and pushed them back inside Gaia. Saturn, an earlier child, came to Gaia’s aid and in a fine #metoomoment castrated Uranus. Saturn in the meantime feared that one of his children, Zeus (Jupiter), would supplant him, so he tried to stop this happening by swallowing them as they were born. Zeus (Jupiter) managed to escape being swallowed and Saturn was drugged to make him vomit up the rest of his swallowed children. (And there you were thinking you had a dysfunctional family!!) The moral here though is about power, fear, control, time and age – all very Capricorn issues. No matter how much we try to control through use of power or fear of being powerless, we will all age and die, eventually to be supplanted by a new generation.
You may remember that I spoke earlier about an energy field that radiates outside our body from our hearts, which has the power to connect us to each other and to influence the fields of others. I think sometimes we forget what a miracle our body really is. It’s hard to believe that we randomly evolved from a single cell into something so perfect and so inextricably linked with nature and the cosmos. We are wired for self-healing, as is our Earth but everything has its limits and has to be cared for (Saturn) before the tipping point is reached and it all breaks. This Full Moon is asking us to face realities and find our own grit and resilience before it is too late.
Capricorn and Saturn represent what connects us in terms of the bones and skin of our body– all that anchors everything together and protects and defends our vital organs, such as our hearts and our brains. This Full Moon line up represents our whole body – emotional and physical, spiritual and tangible.
Since the dawn of time we have chosen to embrace different genres of spiritual and religious beliefs – Animism, Polytheism, Monotheism and finally I have to add science. Animism is the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism considers everything – animals, plants, rocks, rivers and weather systems – as animated and alive and that there is a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe. This reflected a harmony and sense of co-operation between all things – just as the workings of our bodies are a perfect example of harmony and co-operation. The Scientific Revolution meant that we had to find an explainable reason for everything. Darwin debunked the theory of co-operation, with his view that we live in a ‘dog eat dog’ world where only the strong survive and grow even more powerful. Despite everything, however, flickers of the ancient wisdom have survived. A knowledge of astrology favours the animistic world where there are clear cycles and a sense of perfect mathematics that governs planets, nature and people. And now quantum physics confirms that everything is energy.
The human body is a perfect example of harmony in nature. Our bodies depend upon a perfect balance between our organs, between the respiratory system, the endocrine system, the vascular system, the digestive system and the nervous system. There is an interdependence between all these systems for good health. When a part of our body breaks down in a way that we can’t explain we call it autoimmune disease, and that’s what it feels like we have in our world right now. The big question is though – is this auto-immune disease terminal or can we get back to homeostasis? Our bodies and nature are designed for self-healing. We cut ourselves and we heal, we get sick and generally we heal even if sometimes we might need an expert (Saturn) to help us; areas of nature can be ravaged by fire and give it a few years it all grows back. We have been on this earth for thousands and thousand of years, adapting to changing conditions, changing environments and changing climate. Can we now adapt to our current challenges?
Big-hearted Jupiter is in the Capricorn fray, ramping up the volume. In Capricorn Jupiter can achieve great success but only if we get down to ground zero and face reality. It’s the darkness of reality that awakens us and allows us to grow and expand. I spoke recently about the perfect storm of various crises that will hit the fan before long and we will sorely need the wisdom of a grounded Jupiter.
Reality check 1 – we have trashed our planet and need to mend our ways because it is our planet that supports and sustains us. The planet will survive us but we will destroy ourselves.
Reality check 2 – institutions, governments, banks and big corporates are all breaking down. In the main they haven’t been allowed to naturally wax and wane, or naturally expand and contract. Everything has been about expansion and waxing – we have put in artificial props such as global debt and cloaked everything in smoke, sand, mirrors and lies, but eventually reality will reflect back to us in the mirror.
Reality check 3 – our climate is changing. Can we influence it? I don’t know – all I do know is that our climate has been cyclical forever, so if we want to survive we had better find ways of adapting and managing the land rather than waste years arguing about whose fault it is. We need to stop trashing our ‘garden’ and we need to find new sustainable forms of energy and agriculture that can support us in a new way.
Reality Check 4 – We are about to leave the EU and the EU itself needs to get real. They are losing their second largest economy together with around 10% of its income and 10% of its population. They thought Britain would ‘see sense” and I’m not sure they have a Plan B.
Reality Check 5 – anxiety and aggression. Levels of anxiety are on the up, particularly with our young people, alongside aggression and violence. This Capricorn line up could equally be symbolising that we are facing war or some kind of strong hand if we can’t find solutions.
In myth Saturn was the ‘master of the threshold’ holding the door to our higher consciousness, which could only be reached by acting out the positive qualities of Saturn. Pluto sitting with Saturn right now suggests that we must become self-aware and do deep work on ourselves, our psyches and how we think. Saturn as the lawgiver and lawmaker was the great ‘civiliser’ of society. As mankind grew from being the caveman of the Stone Age, he learned that he could achieve so much more if he lived in a society or community. Gradually civilisations grew, only to eventually be destroyed by violence, greed or a failure to adapt to changing conditions of climate or weather. We can see all those ingredients in front of our very eyes right now. So the question is will we come together, face up to the ‘karma’ that has been created and do what is necessary to save us from ourselves? Are the upcoming new cycles indicators of small gradual changes in our lives or might they be as big as the beginnings of a whole new type of civilization and way of life?
The Moon in Cancer is demonstrating our sub conscious beliefs that have been learned through our life times, mainly in childhood. These show up in our habitual behavior patterns. The basic essence of astrology is to understand the conscious expression of our ego identity together with our instinctive and unconscious reactions and behavioural patterns, which, once learned, form perceptions about ourselves, that we subconsciously hang on to. These sub-conscious belief systems play through our heads on a continuous loop, influencing our behavior patterns, even into old age if we don’t do something about it. The scary thing though is that we run 95% of our lives on autopilot. That means most of our life is lived according to our subconscious patterning. This is why even though we know things on a conscious level and we want to be different, it is just so hard to rid ourselves of this hard wired loop in our heads – simply because it functions as an autopilot. The sub conscious mind is totally habitual and is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind – it is our primary driver.
Saturn is fear and many of our sub conscious beliefs have been created by fear – fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of the control or power of others, fear of missing out, fear of not being beautiful. At this Full Moon the Sun (our ego identity) and our minds (Mercury) are so intrinsically intertwined that we hold some power to be able to face the fears that influence our perceptions and our subconscious belief systems and deal with them in an structured and disciplined way.
So, whilst the body is designed to self heal, our minds have been conditioned by our perceptions and our mind is not designed to self heal in the same way as our body. This Full Moon is pointing to the fact that we have to prepare for the reality of our situation and consciously try to alter our sub conscious patterning. We need to develop the grit and resilience that some of our earlier generations had in bucketloads. ‘Doing’ Saturn really is the key to everything here and Saturn demonstrates the principle of alchemy. The old alchemists tried to find connections between substances, philosophies, beliefs, minds, magic and astrology. If they could understand one then they believed they could understand another and that in the end they could really turn a base substance into gold – so this is abut being able to turn ourselves alchemically into gold.
The trouble is that ‘doing’ Saturn sounds like doing everything that is boring. Saturn represents self-control, caution, restriction, hard work, self-denial, delays, disappointments, fear and guilt. But we really do need him – he is the teacher and he is wisdom, especially wisdom learned through the ages. It is through restrictions, the taking away, the denial and the hard work that we are meant to go through an inner psychological process that will enable us to grow and unfold. Saturn represents taking responsibility, hard work and effort, all of which are needed if we are to produce a good harvest. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow and if life came easy we just wouldn’t appreciate our successes. The bottom line is that we just don’t learn to change our behaviours during the good times.
In 2020 we have some big new planetary cycles. And if we have new cycles, that means old cycles and ways of behaving are ending. A new Saturn/Pluto cycle signifies that globally we are suffering from autoimmune disease – the body is no longer in harmony and we need the discipline to recognise this and root out what is causing this. The beginning of a new Jupiter/Pluto cycle is demonstrating how greed and a sense of entitlement has led to huge wealth being in the hands of the few who hold a powerful ability to control world events and world behaviour. And Jupiter and Saturn begin a big new dance at the end of 2020 – a new cycle of time and behaviour and a new socio economic cycle.
Life doesn’t work by having a box of Quality Street containing only your favourites. This Christmas you could do that in one of the big stores. And what a surprise it was to find that other people loved the centres I loathe with a passion. That not only highlighted how we all bring something different to the table, it also demonstrated ‘co-operation’, as we each have our own strength. There’s always someone who loves what you personally hate. It also demonstrated to me that real life is not a box of favourites, it’s a journey of both hard centres and lovely times, as well as centres that you have to chew through nuts to get through. But sometimes there is that ray of sunshine when you get the one that just hits the spot. We have new chapters ahead as we enter 2020. We just have to suck up the fact that we need to find grit and resilience in the face of reality and we might just have our Willy Wonka moment and find the one chocolate wrapped in gold?