Gateway to a Year of Transformation

Crossing the Bridge, Leaving Port                                                                                                            Catherine Al-Meten

                         Gateway to a Year of Transformation

Today as I write about the New Moon in Aquarius and the ushering in of the Chinese New Year, the Moon in Capricorn conjuncts Pluto. Our emotional being is grounded, somewhat heavily, in the transformational energy released by Pluto’s long-term transit through Capricorn.  

Our emotional nature connects us to the very real, pragmatic reality of our physical being, as five other planets (Saturn in Scorpio,  Mercury, Mars, Chiron, and Neptune in Pisces) all in water signs, make us feel awash in the emotional, inspirational, mystical, and intuitive depths our our nature.   These next few days are powerful times when we prepare to move past the threshold of the new year. 

Saturn and Pluto come into exact alignment, opposing one another in their transits through their respective signs of Scorpio and Capricorn.  Saturn, the Great Teacher and Pluto the Great Transformer, have been working in the depths of our unconscious and in the foundations of our physical, emotional, and mental lives, to give birth to and renew our basic patterns of belief, life purpose, and pathway. Each of us is at a point in our lives where we are moving into a new leg of our spiritual and physical journey (we are spiritual beings taking a physical journey).  On February 7, 2013

Aquarius reminds us to see the greater picture by gaining a greater perspective than our personal and ego-centric viewpoint might allow. The dance between personal strength and ego development and acknowledging the needs and greater good of the larger whole, is always at work in some area of our lives, but particularly when the Sun and the Moon line up in Aquarius as they do with the February New Moon on February 9 (11:00 P.M. PST)/February 10, 2:00 A.M. EST). 

The New Moon in Aquarius welcomes in the Year of the Black Water Snake and the 15-day celebration ushering in the Chinese New Year, the lunasolar new year for many cultures and spiritual traditions. It is said that Dragon (this past year) fell from the heavens and transformed into Snake, and that is why Snake is sometimes called the Little Dragon. The Year of the Black Water Snake is meant for us to make steady progress and pay attention to detail. In order to attain our goals, this is the year we discipline ourselves to focus on that which we hope to achieve. Somewhat like the energy of Taurus, the Black Water Snake time prefers quiet and predictability. It’s a year we may seek more peace and solitude. We may find that this year that we receive the grace of our past struggles and efforts. This is a year that may be full of sudden and unexpected changes, making us feel like we are on shaky ground. The Year of the Black Water Snake begins in the first month of the Chinese calendar, the Tiger month. It is said that the Dragon fell down to the earth and became the snake, and so the Snake is sometimes called the Little Dragon. What we set forth and put into motion last year, we now continue to work with on a very pragmatic, down-to-earth level. This year the New Moon in Aquarius also squares the North Node, the gateway between past and future, making this a significant time in shedding the old and entering into a more conscious surrender of what is meant to enter our lives from now on.

Chinese New Year is based on the lunisolar calendar, a calendar used in many cultures worldwide. It is based on the phases of the moon and the movement of the sun. The Hebrew, Buddhist, Hindu, Tibetan, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean calendars, to name just some, are cultures that use a lunisolar calendar. Just as Easter is based on the movement of the Sun and the Moon (Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring Equinox), the lunisolar calendar is based on different criteria than just the Earth’s rotation around the Sun.

The Chinese New Year coincides with the New Moon, and promises to be a year when the influence of Saturn in Scorpio, and  Stellenium of planets in Pisces, will bring us very beneficial and harmonious energy and support. Right now Mercury (archetype of all forms of communication), Mars (archetype of action, movement, and energy), Chiron (the Wounded Healer) and Neptune (the archetype of the Unconscious, Intuition, Imagination,at one end of the spectrum and Illusion, Hidden Enemies, and Self Deception at the other end) all line up in Pisces where they will be joined by the Sun and Moon at the next New Moon in March, to form a powerful and overwhelming influence on all things water; within and without. We will feel on the deepest levels of our being, an upwelling of emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental movement.  A general sense of feeling out of synch with both time and space limitations, our dreams, intuition, mental capacities, memories,spiritual and psychic connections to one another. You will feel drawn, nearly compelled to those with whom you have your deepest connections and needs to communicate, need to heal, resolve issues, or make deeper connections.  Such powerful influences, during a period when we are putting our dreams, desires, and decisions into action, will seem other worldly in the way experiences, unfold, dreams foreshadow, imagination becomes reality, and memories raise us to a new level of understanding. 

Our ability to live in the realm of the unconscious, allowing ourselves greater access to both inner knowledge and metaphysical  information, heightens for those who are open and consciously paying attention to what body, mind, emotions, spirit, and all levels of consciousness deliver to our awakening minds.  For those who resist or stay submerged in bondage to material and ego-driven beliefs and movement, the struggle will be much more difficult and upsetting.  When we are awash with the energies of the powerful unconscious realms of the greater Universal Source and energies, old patterns and habits that block our spiritual, emotional, and psychological growth will manifest in the physical life we struggle to maintain.  Growing in the Unconscious Ocean demands we be in conscious surrender, allowing what is meant to leave our experience leave; allowing what is coming into our experience to come in.  

Learning more about how to come into harmony with the patterns and trends in our relationships, our life paths, and our internal personal struggles to become more and more ourselves, involves the constant dance between the inner movement in coordination with the outer life and connections we make.  We may feel the boundaries, structures, and formations that have kept us feeling protected, crumbling or falling apart on some level. Harmony comes when we learn to nourish, ground, stabilize ourselves in motion, as part of the natural process of living.  Being mindful of where we are in the body, open and receptive to the spiritual connections which infuse us with all we need, and living in harmony with the rising and falling of our breath, the intake and expression of our energy, and the need to nourish, rest, amuse, release, and find ways to connect into the eternal Now of our living, is essential. Conscious surrender to what is, while being mindful of letting go of energy cords where we’ve trapped others or ourselves in places where it is not needed. Letting go to be present in whatever situation we are in, with whomever we are in relationship with, is the greatest expression of living fully and wholly.  

This is the time, the year, we learn that despite our expectation, plans, and compulsions, our lives are intricately linked through tiny threads of golden charge, to one another. We cannot know what lies ahead, yet we move with intention as if everything will come into fruition at the perfect time, in Divine time, not ours.  The lessons of Saturn’s movement through Scorpio, pull us into the deeper waters that are harmonized by the crown of planets, the Sun and the Moon all transiting Pisces over the next month, and the more long-lasting transits, over years. 

This deep, movement within each of us, is the most compelling influence, I believe, at this time, as the New Moon closes the door on the past, and opens it on the future. Last night, I dreamed I was pulling a huge door closed, and symbolically if not actually, this is what many of us have been doing and are doing with conscious intention. For others, what we all ‘circumstances,’ ‘choices,’ ‘fate,’ ‘luck’ or even progress, is the Divine movement of Creation moving us when we are not able to move ourselves.  In either case, welcome and receive the energy of the New Year of the Black Water Dragon and the New Moon in Aquarius, and look beyond blocks, beliefs, and needs to a horizon clear and open to cross the bridge into a new future where you mindful presence sustains you, and the Divine propels you.  As Emily Trinkaus, author of Virgo Magic describes it, this is a time of a Quickening...the coming of the Light, and all we need to do is to be open to receive that Light, in whatever way your traditions and practices allow you to honor and receive Divine Light.

There are so many wonderful and interesting aspects active and moving our world at this time. Read Emily Trinkaus’ Virgo Magic for some enlightening ideas about this new moon energy. And Moon Circles and Mountain Astrologer  have articles that I think you would find helpful and very interesting too.