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TRANSFORMATIONAL ASTROLOGY

May 2013

Henry Seltzer

The Astrology of May features Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto and two eclipses. Mercury runs through Taurus during the first part of May, being conjunct to the May 9^th Solar Eclipse taking place in the 20^th degree of that sign, which also conjuncts the South Node of the Moon and makes a quintile aspect to idealistic Neptune. Mercury then enters Gemini, the sign of its rulership, on the 15^th, just in time to host the Sun for the powerful Gemini-Sagittarius Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse of May 24^th, the third eclipse in just this one thirty-day period, encouraging us to think as well as feel our way through. Eclipses are more intense lunations – as recent headlines also indicate – making these transformative times that we are currently managing to live through even more poignant and accelerating the drum beat of change.

The big news this month is the converging of Uranus and Pluto for their third encounter of the close kind. This happens on May 20^th. There were two previous exact hits last year of their revolutionary and pressure-packed square, out of a total of seven, with reverberations echoing down to the final years of these “Turbulent Teens.” We are, all of us, caught up in the vice of change and we might as well acknowledge this simple and straightforward fact. No one will emerge in the same condition as they started. The culture itself will undergo massive and radical transformation before we are finished, or else we are finished in quite another sense of the word. We must hang together now in collective action that is both local and ultimately global, or we will dangle separately.

Not only is Uranus in Aries amped up, bringing unique ideas and out-of-the-box strategies to bear, but also Pluto is emphasized in Capricorn, representing societal structure, which indicates that the very bedrock of our individual as well as our collective lives must transform. What is dysfunctional and outmoded in our approach will have to be pruned away. This is also the sign of Saturn’s rulership, and as this two-month period unfolds, Saturn in fading sextile to Pluto begins to make an increasingly close trine aspect to Neptune. We can dream big during this period, and we can also see our dreams come crashing down to a more practical level. When that happens the recommendation is that we do not despair. It is rather – having utmost faith in the universe, whether termed Spirit, or higher Self, or angel guidance – that we choose to rebuild as necessary.

The otherworldly Neptunian archetype is not only aspected by the May 9^th New Moon eclipse but also is extremely activated by the May 24^th event, when the Sun and Moon in exact opposition make a T-square to Neptune. This is a time when idealism holds sway, and when this can and will be confused with illusion, potentially tinged with self-deception or even outright deception that we might encounter on th part of others. The upside of all this Neptune energy is that we can more fully appreciate that we live in a magical and multi-dimensional world, where everything that we see and hear tells only a small part of the story. As the poet William Blake reminds us, “How do you know but every bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?” And we ourselves are like those birds, when we can suspend disbelief and open our minds to the parts of ourselves that allow us to dream.

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Are you using knowledge, or is knowledge using you?

by don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

I began my apprenticeship into my family’s tradition in San Diego, California, when I was fourteen years old. My seventy-nine-year-old grandmother, Madre Sarita, was my teacher and the spiritual head of our family. She was a curandera, a faith healer who helped people in her small temple in Barrio Logan, a neighborhood in San Diego, with the power of her faith in God and love. Since my father was a medical doctor, the juxtaposition of the two forms of healing allowed me to see our tradition through different points of view.

Though she spoke no English, my grandmother gave sermons and lectures across the country. My apprenticeship began with translating my grandmother’s lectures from Spanish to English. For many years, I awkwardly stumbled over her words, and my grandmother would just look at me and laugh.

One day, she asked me if I knew why I stumbled. I had all sorts of answers: you are speaking too quickly, you don’t give me a chance to catch up, some words don’t have a direct translation. . . . She just looked at me silently for a few moments and then asked, “Are you using knowledge, or is knowledge using you?”

I looked at her blankly. She continued, “When you translate, you try to express my words through what you already know, what you think is true. You do not hear me; you hear yourself. Imagine doing the same thing every single moment in life. If you are looking through life and translating it as it goes along, you will miss out on living it. But if you learn to listen to life, you will always be able to express the words as they come. Your knowledge has to become a tool that you will use to guide you through life but that can also be put aside,. Do not let knowledge translate everything you experience.”

Living a More Conscious Life

One realizes that all of existence is a manifestation of consciousness; that ultimately everything is made out of consciousness.

—A.H. Almaas

When you’re living a more conscious life, you’re being with yourself and for yourself deeply, moment by moment. No matter how attractive quick and easy solutions seem, lasting change can’t happen in the time it takes to deliver a pizza. It takes time, attention, and commitment to address and heal the layers of who we are and grow in consciousness.

So, what is conscious living?

To be conscious means to observe what’s present, and implies being awake or awakening to your deeper truth, an inner realization, or circumstance. Living a conscious life means having the willingness, curiosity, and courage to stay present to your thoughts and feelings, to the meeting point of body, emotion, mind, and spirit. It means staying present to the impact you have on others and your environment, as well as the choices available to you. To live a conscious life—to be awake and aware—is to be gloriously alive!

We experience life in degrees. You can choose where to place your attention and intention, creating a life that feels better than it does now. You can grow, change, and deepen your ability to navigate life. You can expand and illuminate your experience of consciousness. You can mature toward greater integration and wholeness.

From the deepest sense of ourselves, our inner life longs to be experienced, understood, and validated. It’s rich with nuance and complexity, and meant to be sipped and savored. It’s not meant to be swallowed a week at a time, controlled by our past programming and endless “to do” lists. Slow down, take a deep breath, and truly feel life. Every moment, even a painful one, contains gifts of wisdom and joy if we’re willing to remain conscious.

Living consciously includes uncovering, grieving, and working through your historical childhood difficulties, along with the programming they created. It’s your job to return to your blocks, those stubborn problems that keep you from experiencing your wholeness and embracing your potentials. As you identify and heal them you create change. This opens the door to the emergence of your real self.

The Seasons of Self

April: Awakening to the Miraculous

by Lynn Woodland

The Spring Equinox, the official beginning of spring, happened in the third month of March, marking the point where, for the first time in six months, light and darkness are equal. We’ve entered the season where light is on the rise, growing stronger every day, and it can’t help but touch us all and get our energy moving, even if we don’t consider ourselves terribly attuned to nature, even if we never garden, even if it’s still Minnesota-cold out (as it is where I live). When light is rising, we know it in our bones. At the very least, we find we don’t need our Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps as often and notice our houseplants going wild. Every year this time, the presence of light awakens us in any number of obvious as well as deep, primal ways.

Of course, the true rebirth of light happened at the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. Yet, winter light is a quiet power, both dormant and pregnant, like the time after conception but before birth. Spring, on the other hand, is for “hatching.” Easter brings with it a riot of candy eggs, baby animals, and Jesus rising from the dead, as Christian symbolism blends with earlier, earth-based, traditions of the solar sun being on the rise.

This energy of birth and beginnings is exciting, fresh, and a bit fragile. There’s an openness and child-like innocence to it; a sense of the world being new and that anything is possible. What better time to consciously cultivate this energy of excitement, fresh perspective, and willing suspension of disbelief, not as a naive first step on the way to a painful crash, but as a creative force? What better time to open ourselves to miracles?

If the pure presence of spring isn’t enough to open your jaded mind to the possibility of miracles, try wading into some of the mind-boggling findings of relativity theory and quantum physics over the last century. Science is now showing us a remarkable new definition of reality in which time and space aren’t fixed, matter isn’t solid and the very nature of matter changes according to the expectations of those observing it. We’re seeing that consciousness in and of itself has the power to affect the physical realm and that minds are joined beyond the limits of time and space. To quote one of the pioneers of quantum physics, Erwin Schrodinger, on the nature of consciousness, “the overall number of minds is just one.” (A good starter book on new science is Taking the Quantum Leap, by Fred Alan Wolf.)

But this article isn’t just about the mysteries of time, space and matter. It’s an opportunity to explore and experience these mysteries first hand. It’s an invitation to suspend disbelief, allow your mind to be boggled and take a leap out of the box of what you think you know because what follows is an exercise in miracle-making.

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