posted July 19, 2009 01:32 PM         

The eclipses are here! The eclipses are here! I feel a bit like a later day Paul Revere ~ you KNOW the eclipses are here! How could you have MISSED them? Especially with so much going on all around you!

Our week features a New Moon Eclipse on the South Node of Destiny and Karma. The South Node Eclipse releases forever comfortable and familiar childhood or nurturing patterns, situations or people that will no longer travel along our path with us. As they leave us, the New Moon seeds and begins a new cycle of creation in the midst of all the losses, farewells and so longs. Mighty powerful energy at work in the world right now!

If you‘ve been planning on making life changes ~ giving up or releasing things that comfort you but are bad for you such as drugs, alcohol, sugar, excess food or smoking ~ this is a great week to let things go. They will be gone for good. If you’ve been meaning to release a person or situation that is no longer helpful in your life but was deeply entrenched, again, this is a great week to let them or the situation go. It is a profound time of moving on and releasing.

In addition to the New Moon eclipse, our Gang of Three, Neptune, Chiron and Jupiter aspect Ceres and Pallas as does Uranus by “Get it? See it?” and “Change! Adjust yourself!” aspects. Ceres, the dwarf planet of caretaking, grain and mothering, reflects and show us how we nurture ourselves ~ in either good or bad ways. Pallas, the detached, strategic, crystal clear asteroid, allows us to see the various patterns that are underlying our lives and the situations we find in it. Expect unusual and perhaps slightly painful clarity as you notice the patterns that support how you take (or don’t take) care of yourself. It USED to work for you. It doesn’t work for you any more. It just doesn’t have that same zing.

The Sun moves into Leo this week, offering a renewal of our solar and life purpose energy right after the eclipse. First we have to release with the eclipse. Then the Sun dips into the South Node so we can lose a light or two in our lives. Then the Sun inconjuncts Pluto ~ asking us for an adjustment. And finally we have the movement of the Sun through the sign he loves best.

Mars and Mercury are both busy pointing out things to us. Mars is going to want to take you on an escape journey ~ back to bad old behaviors if you are not careful. If there has been hard won sobriety, weight loss, debt free behavior, watch carefully as the temptation to do the bad old behavior will be strong. Venus squares Saturn so you are NOT going to be feeling the love this week. That said, it IS a productive week for clearing out the old stuff you no longer need and ending situations that don’t work for you any more.

Support yourself with a light schedule, space in your calendar for YOU as well as lots of healthy foods, sleep and hugs from people who love you. It will be a hard week on planet earth regarding feeling the love ~ so you may have to hug yourself so DO SO!

You’ll watch your familiar and old nurturing patterns illuminate, brighten, expose themselves and then dissolve, change, try to expand or perhaps hurt you one last time (but only if you WANT it to hurt you one last time) as the eclipse lights your nurturing patterns up and some how manages to take them away. Or at least the eclipse OFFERS you the opportunity to release and take the old nurturing patterns away. All you have to do is stop doing what you were doing. Honest. It is THAT easy!

The thing to remember is the old nurturing patterns worked for you for a while. They fed something important in you. They NURTURED you for heaven’s sake. That is why you did those behaviors. They might have even worked for THEM for a while. They don’t work so good any more.

Give the old nurturing patterns and yourself a break and be nice to them and you. The point is, you don’t NEED to nurture them in the old pattern, manner or way any more. They don’t want you to. Or perhaps you don’t want to. They’ve changed. You changed. Or perhaps you both changed. Or perhaps you were each always this way but now you SEE IT clearly. You see the pattern. You see where their need fit into your nurturing slot and your need fit into their nurturing slot. It is kind of like a couple of interlocking cardboard puzzle pieces. Your slot matches their hole and their slot matches your hole. Or vice versa.

The cardboard puzzle pieces got left out on the picnic table in the pouring rain. They’ve now swollen up. They don’t fit together like they used to. The pieces don’t fit together like they used to! What to do?

And that is the whole purpose of life. We grow. We change. Our emotional slots and holes shift and change as we move through our lives. The problem is we don’t always LIKE to change our behaviors, particularly when their slot fit our hole so nicely. But, some how, some way, the old way doesn’t fit any more. And, unfortunately, that reality isn’t going to change. The old way isn’t going to fit like it used to. You have to adjust to the new reality. They have to adjust to the new reality. We are at that moment in time.

Now, unlike puzzle pieces warped and swollen by the rain, human beings DO manage to SquEeezZZZZe themselves or shoe horn themselves back into situations that don’t work, fit or support them. We all do it. The tendency will be to want to SquEeezZZZZe your self back into a pretzel this week and next. Especially as you will be feeling the EMOTIONAL kick of the changes. Please don’t SquEeezZZZZe your self. Just stand quietly back and look at the situation. Sit quietly. You might want a beer if you used to drink. You might want a snort if you used to snort. So go to the rooms if you need to. And sit quietly.

Look at the situation before you that is changing. It was a part of your life for a reason. It was a part of your life for a very important reason. It served or answered a very big need in your life. It used to work for you. It was a slot for your hole. You were a hole for their slot. No regrets. Now the world is spinning. The eclipses are here. The moment of change is upon each of us to embrace our destiny and move forward in love rather than in fear. There is a lyric from RENT, the musical by Jonathan Larson, that kind of sums up the eclipse energy:

The heart may freeze or it can burn
The pain will ease if I can learn
There is no future
There is no past
I live this moment as my last
There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret
Or life is yours to miss
No other road
No other way
No day but today

There's only yes
Only tonight
We must let go
To know what's right
No other course
No other way
No day but today

I can't control
My destiny
I trust my soul
My only goal is just
To be
There's only now
There's only here
Give in to love
Or live in fear
No other path
No other way
No day but today...

So trust your soul that you are right where you are supposed to be. No regrets. No fear. Just send out love to that situation that no longer works for you. Send love to yourself too. You are actually RIGHT where you are supposed to be. Your patterns, behaviors and actions got you here. You want to change where you are? You want to change that? You have to change your patterns, behaviors and actions. It is that easy.
And, guess what? In perfect harmony, the universe is right here to offer you that opportunity to change things up. Things are changing before you. You are watching the inevitability of change and how it rolls right through our lives, ready or not. So look at your patterns, your life, your slots and holes, the various puzzle pieces of your life. See how it has changed? See how it is different now? That means you’ve changed. You are ready for the next chapter of your life. They are ready too. So live in love. Don’t give into fear.

The eclipses are here! The eclipses are here!

Monday Mercury and Mars join forces to make it a terrific day to get much accomplished, prepared and ready to launch out into the world. This is a great day for wrapping up things and releasing them FOREVER into the void of your past. Save the sending out of new stuff for later in the week but you can prepare it today as you‘ll have oodles of energy to get things done. Tuesday’s closing aspect of the New Moon eclipse promises a new beginning with enormous power and resonance. Busy, busy day.

Tuesday is rocking and rolling but in a subdued and sad way.

Read the New Moon eclipse article on this site for more information. There are a passel of aspects, most of them supportive with a few difficult ones thrown in. Chiron and Jupiter ask the nurturing principle of Ceres to adjust, adjust, adjust as they poke her via a retrograde air sign to her earth energy ~ Mom is tired, tired, tired and needs to rest. Plants will need extra water. There will be more energy tomorrow once we start the New Moon’s growth phase. Sleep and rest a great deal today. Venus’ square to Saturn suggests all the good ideas in the world fall on flat surfaces. It is a bone tiredness as well as emotional clearing that is taking place below the surface of things. Hang in there. After the eclipse passes, it will feel like the energy starts to return. You will be able to move out into the world again. The eclipse takes place on the anaeretic degree of Cancer offering us an end to the tradition nurturing and a new beginning of a different kind of nurturing. This is a tough day where we realize how much we have lost or can lose.

Wednesday, Moon in Leo joins up and celebrates with the Sun entering Leo to bring a new level of life to the party after the loss or release of the past few weeks. Watch for important connections to take place OR release forever as the Sun goes into the South Node. OR both. The life force energy is changing now. Jupiter joins with Chiron so the full depth of the wounding is exposed and able to be seen. Here is where the pattern recognition and understanding of the changes in the size of your slots and holes begins to take place. Here is where consciousness rolls in. You see the patterns and understand them for what they are. Don’t go getting all down on yourself and mean to you. You NEEDED that pattern to get to where you are now. If you don’t need it any more, great. But don’t go giving yourself a hard time because you needed it. Understand what the pattern was FOR!!! Pattern 1) design: a repeated decorative design, for example, on fabric a zigzag pattern; 2) prototype: an original design or model from which exact copies can be made; 3) plan for making something: a plan or model used as a guide for making something: a knitting pattern; 4) regular form: a regular or repetitive form, order, or arrangement a predictable pattern of behavior; 5) good example: a model that is considered to be worthy of imitation; 6) regular way of doing something: a regular or standard way of moving or behaving the flight patterns of birds; 7) metallurgy model used for making a mold: a wood, plaster, or metal shape used to make a mold for casting in a foundry. The original model is often slightly oversized to allow for the contraction on cooling. 8) sewing length of fabric: a length of fabric that is enough to make a garment; 9) arms gunshots on target: marks made by shots from a gun on a target 10) arms spread of spent projectiles: the dispersal of projectiles such as artillery shells and shrapnel on the ground around a target 11) mimic: to imitate the design of something; 12) put a pattern on: to make something into, or decorate something with, a repeated decorative design.

Your job the rest of the week, starting today, is to LOOK at the pattern. Don’t judge it. Just LOOK at the pattern so you can see it clearly.

Thursday Sun is inconjunct to Pluto suggesting we can adjust our patterns once we get clear on what they are. Recipes are patterns for making things. Once you understand the basic recipe for say Risotto or Salad, you can vary it by adding new things to it. All summer long, I’ve been having adventures with Jicama, starting back with high tea with my friend Llorraine in late spring. I still haven‘t tried cooking with Jicama myself but I‘ve been eating a heck of a lot of it at restaurants all around town. I don‘t even know what a Jicama plant looks like. I do have a number of ideas about how I like to eat it having found it all over the place when I read menus and looked for it. Changing patterns is like that. You discover a new thing in an old place where you’ve been many times before. You will be discovering new things in old places. Or finding new places where your old patterns can go. Change it up. Neptune offers you an opportunity to explore how you nurture yourself. Me, I’ve been eating Jicama. You, how have you been nurturing yourself? How do you need to adjust that nurturing? Separate the nurturing from the pattern. Pull it apart. Put it in a little pile on your plate.

Friday finds Mars and Uranus having a brilliant series of conversation, probably in your dreams but possibly at the affair you find yourself at. Difficult emotional energy with the Virgo moon ~ thin skins and extra criticism. Ignore it. Venus pushes against Saturn by contraparallel so expect to NOT get what you want. Or to get it but NOT want it once you got it. Neptune fights with Pallas ~ the pattern can change only when you SEE the pattern. You have to see it and instinctively understand what the pattern is before you can change it. And like baking ~ while there are SOME ingredients you can change ~ others ~ like baking soda or baking powder ~ are ESSENTIAL to the recipe coming out right. Today you fiddle with the recipe. Don’t leave out an essential ingredient. Do tweak the story.

Saturn Uranus decides to leave the baking powder or soda out of the recipe. Have you ever done that? The baked goods don’t rise. The cookies smear all over the cookie sheet is a mass of melted chocolate and flat, flat, flat baked brown flour. The quick bread is not so quick ~ lying like a lump on the bottom of the pan. Whatever THAT change was, it was NOT a good change for the recipe of your future. HOWEVER, it is NOT the end of the world either ~ it is just a batch of bad cookies or flat quick bread. However, because you are (or the world is) SO emotional right now ~ people will be completely crazy over the flat cookies or smushy bread. Mercury is in the mood to pitch a hissy fit and will do so over something that is relatively trivial. He needs to get the emotions out of him. That said, he might be rather mean so you don’t have to stand there and listen to him complain and rant. Move on. Go shopping. Start a new batch of cookies. The world isn’t ending even if change is happening. It is just CHANGE. And Change is GOOD FOR YOU! Virgo moon wants to clean up the place and try that recipe again. At least now you KNOW why the baking soda and powder are in every recipe. Did you know that before?