posted May 03, 2010 03:37 PM
Interesting article by Eric Francis, and his take on the changes coming up for the collective. With Uranus and Jupiter meeting on the Aries Point, the new cycle starts, and it's going to be big.What does the conjunction hit in your chart? It hits my Eros...!! 
Cosmic Equinox, or the Anti-Sixties?
April 29, 2010 by Eric Francis
Originally published March 19, 2010
We’re about to experience a spring season like no other. It has an ordinary beginning, more or less. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, spring begins when the Sun’s rays square the equator, just past noon in the Eastern U.S. zone on Saturday, March 20. We’re currently in that brief phase where night and day are equal around the world. In the midst of this, the Sun enters the sign Aries and the new astronomical year begins. There are a few extra planets in Aries — at the moment, Venus and Mercury, and of course, ultra-longtime tenant Eris.
Aries is a cardinal sign, which means if all goes well enough, it arrives with strength, determination and initiative. Think of all the energy rising out of the ground: seeds bursting into bloom, trees creating tens of thousands of new leaves to harvest the newly-available rays of the Sun, animals birthing and even people taking a moment to feel alive.
Part of our spring cleaning/revival is that Mars stationed direct on March 10. Mars is the ruler of Aries and the energy of the sky is now focused here. Despite a brief Mercury retrograde coming in a few weeks, and the fact that we will need to use some of that Mars direct energy cleaning up the mess made by Mars retrograde events, we are on solid ground. The thing to watch for is oppositions: you will have to do your part to sidestep needless contention and controversy. Keep your encounters real; choose well.
I say this recognizing how challenging life is for how many people right now, even the ones with homes and jobs and health insurance. The relentless 2012 quality of “everything, all at once” is still influencing our lives, and will be for a while — particularly as the energy picks up over the next two months and everyone of every psychic shape and vibration responds their own special way to the conditioning forces that surround us.
The Second Equinox
In addition to the usual fire-surge of spring, this particular season contains a planetary event that takes this energy to a cosmic scale. On June 8 there is a second equinox, where two of the largest and also most influential planets align exactly in the first degree of Aries — the Aries Point. Think of that degree as a kind of amplifier that makes an astrological event impossible to miss, resonating through the inner and outer worlds as if they were one thing, which of course they are.
The planets involved are Jupiter (wisdom, expansion, culture, pleasure, exotic) and Uranus (spontaneous, disruptive, revolution, ingenious, forward-thinking). They meet up every 14 years, in a different sign (the last time was Aquarius, in February 1997). This is a conjunction that is often around for mysterious confluences of great breakthroughs in human progress: psychoanalysis, quantum theory and the Moon landing; and in much earlier eras, some of the greatest work by Kepler and Galileo — all of which happens at the time of other great discoveries, as documented by Rick Tarnas in his book Cosmos and Psyche.
And each comes with a distinct social environment, which feels like existence lighting up (and that light can throw a few shadows, too). Though any moment of astrology is unique in the world, it’s possible to make some comparisons to past events. If you’re old enough to remember 1969, you’ve felt something like this. The Jupiter-Uranus conjunction happened that year, in very early Libra — precisely opposite of where it happens in the spring of 2010.
It was the year that opposition to the American war in Vietnam reached its peak. While 600,000 people marched on Washington to protest the war, another 100,000 demonstrated simultaneously in San Francisco. I’ve mentioned the Moon landing, which was in July — the first time that humans touched the surface of another planet. By some miracle, this was followed a few weeks later by the Woodstock Festival in August, which was like life on Earth turning into life on another planet. One aspect of the technology of the mid-to-late Sixties (and in particular Woodstock) was the wide-scale availability of LSD, a drug that leads people to be mellow, introspective and loving toward one another.
The year was not all jubilance. Nixon became president that January. Manson murders happened that summer. The Beatles broke up and went their separate ways. Yet every event had a quality of being personally significant, affecting many people. These were not abstract news items; they were palpable experiences that we cared about, and that came crashing into our living rooms. They have all left many visual impressions in our minds. It was a mythic time in history, larger than life, yet also in the flow of life.
There are odd little technology details from 1969. The Boeing 747 and Concorde made their first flights. A lot of nasty information came out about Vietnam, including the fact of an illegal war in Laos (Cambodia was the next year). A grief-stricken Sen. Ted Kennedy drove his car off of Dyke Bridge, killing a former campaign worker. All of this happened in a few short seasons; most of it focused on the summer.
What Time It Is
To understand a confluence of events that significant, it helps to look to astrology. There’s unlikely to be an explanation in conventional history or sociology, or not one that’s spiritually satisfying. Astrology is a matter of what time it is, and both the planets and world events help us see that. By 1969 it was time for people to get together; it was time for awareness of global issues to amount to something.
In Libra style, there were three massive peace gatherings — the two antiwar protests and the historic pro-peace protest we think of as Woodstock. I have always considered Woodstock one of the most moving, poignant statements by the public against Vietnam; it’s always seemed like the best protest ever. I thought I would ask Michael Lang, the creator of the festival, if he agreed.
“The war was definitely at the center,” Lang said in a March 11 email. “Everyone’s thinking was focused on stop the war.”
What’s different about the astrology of ‘10 as compared to ‘69 is that the setup is a mirror image. For example, we are now in two Vietnam-like wars (they serve no actual purpose, they are expensive and we’re caught in tactical, political and ethical quagmires) but hardly anyone says a word. These wars, destroying the lives of many and causing incalculable grief, are nowhere near the center of public consciousness. They barely make the news. We are not paying attention, and when we look back and try to figure out how this happened, let the record reflect that on the day of the there was barely a conversation on the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
Where a conjunction occurs tells you something about how it’s going to feel, and how many people it will affect. In 1969, the conjunction took place in Libra, a sign that’s mellow on the exterior but with a lot of mojo coming out from deep inside. The themes of Libra include art, balance, beauty and relationship.
In 2010, the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction takes place in the more impetuous sign Aries, a fire sign and the first sign of the zodiac. Aries tends to be self-centered and lacks the balance of Libra. It comes with a raw, unrefined and fiery quality. The two conjunctions have one thing in common, which is that they appear in the very early degrees of what are called cardinal signs — the signs that start the seasons.
That puts them in aspect to something called the Aries Point. When you think of the Aries Point, the summer of 1969 is a great example of the energy. Even though two enormous planets were opposite the Aries Point that summer, it worked just fine to stir up the full effect of that degree: what I describe as the personal is political.
The conjunction of 2010, which takes place in early June, will have a different flavor, a different-feeling tone. Aries not only lacks any sense of balance; it’s the opposite of balance: Aries is a surge of energy. By definition it is self-centered rather than other-centered. The energy is emotional (fiery, Aries) rather than mental (airy, Libra).
By 1969, the peak of Sixties astrology had already passed — the extremely rare Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1965-1966. Currently we are approaching the next peak of that cycle, which is the essence of 2012 — the Uranus-Pluto square. The energy of this square is now building; it hasn’t happened yet, but we are starting to feel the vibes. We have quite a few surprises in store, and they begin right about now.
The Anti-Sixties?
In some ways this spring looks like an anti-Sixties moment rather than any kind of replay of the Sixties. The outspoken activists of our day are conservatives. There is kind of a contra-hippie movement known as the Teabaggers. Their name pertains to anti-tax protests (the original Boston Tea Party of yore), but (in perfect anti-Sixties spirit) also refers to a sexual act that few of them seem to have heard of.
Though they claim to be in favor of individual rights most of them are against a woman’s rights, and sex education, and the rights of gay people. So it’s an “individual rights for us, not for you” movement. Most Teabaggers are against government spending but in favor of war. But if you don’t cut the military budget, that leaves the relatively small portion of the budget spent on actual social programs to cut.
There is lots of subtle, festering anger, yet little in the way of expression and no corresponding spirit of celebration. In fact, though it’s taken me about 15 years to figure it out, there seems to be a perpetual retreat among many who have something to offer or share, unless they are convinced that it’s going to be absolutely nonthreatening to their neighbors or the authorities. It seems dangerous or foolish to care too much. Somebody might notice you.
There’s lots of talk about coming out and doing something together, then it seems like a big deal to have a drum circle. Clearly, many people are insecure, but many are riveted to their computers and iPods and that is the way they see the world: as an experience they observe remotely rather than participate in.
Injustice after injustice happens, and not only is there not a pushback, you barely hear a peep. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, women were gaining rights and recognition. Today that process is running in reverse. In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert on March 8 signed a law that makes it a crime for a woman or a girl to have a miscarriage. The law reads: “A woman is not guilty of criminal homicide of her own unborn child if the death of her unborn child…is not caused by an intentional or knowing act of the woman.” Sorting out that convoluted language, if a pregnant woman falls down the stairs and loses her child, she can be put on trial for criminal homicide. The way the law is written sounds like she’s guilty until whatever happened is determined to have happened unintentionally.
I’m just wondering why the only place I’ve heard about this is from my news-scouring editorial assistant. This issue is not registering in public awareness. In another era, women would have been in the streets protesting. Now it’s high fashion to say, “That’s too bad, but what can I do about it?” — that is, if you’ve even heard about it.
Many people who identify as liberal have set up so many strict rules for themselves that it would be comical to describe them as liberated. Many seem terrified to so much as talk about sex. Spirituality imposes as many dictates as the pope, as does the mandate of having the perfect image. These conceptual structures, which to me feel like keeping oneself in a cage, are going to come under a lot of stress when this conjunction happens. It absolutely bursts with human potential — with the ‘I Am’ energy of Aries.
Reaching for Human Potential
Human potential and self-awareness are something we could do with a lot more of right now. I keep hearing people ask when everyone is going to wake up; this aspect looks a lot like an awakening. I would be more optimistic if I heard people ask about when they are going to wake up.
I have a few concerns about this conjunction. Aries is a militant sign, and we live in an era when militants get most of the attention. It’s ruled by Mars, the ancient god of war. In the Sixties activists would put flowers into guns. Here in the anti-Sixties, “activists” carry guns. The modern equivalent of the back to the land movement is: start a militia.
This conjunction has a lot of Mars to it, and we’ve just come through a long, challenging Mars retrograde that covered the entire winter through March 10. This came with plenty of frustrated will and desire, still working itself out. However, over the next two months as we approach the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, the energy shifts in the direction of expression, of self-awareness and of some new kind of liberation, particularly for our era.
Here is the issue I’m having, if it’s not clear yet. It seems like the people who feel the most comfortable speaking up and claiming their space are the ones who would hold others down. My concern is that this conjunction is going to embolden them more than it’s going to speak to the people who wish they could stand up, express themselves and be free for its own sake. I understand that it can feel dangerous to do this, but I’m wondering how far into the basement, the closet or the corner we’re willing to be pushed before we push back or just take our space.
True, push doesn’t need to come to shove. It’s possible to simply be free, but I think that the fear of a confrontation, and the fear of being seen as different, is precisely what keeps many, many people locked in their house, typing on the Internet under a fake handle that can’t be traced back to them.
Here’s the silver lining. Clearly, we need more group consciousness in our culture; we’ve done just about everything we can do alone, from going bowling to imaginary sex to a DVD exercise program. Anything significant that we need to do as a society will take the combined efforts of many. Most of the really fun things we want to do, we do with others.
Yet groups are groups of individuals. A collection of people who are not individuals is a mass and not a group. A mass has completely different dynamics, such as the sum total of everyone who drinks Diet Pepsi, or the mentality of a mob.
A conjunction this strong in the first degree of Aries has individuality written all over it. The thing about this kind of individuality is that it calls on us to really be who we are, to say what we believe and express the energy and potential we contain. That, in turn, is an invitation to grow and change in obvious, expressive ways — in ways we might be seen and noticed. As of today, that is supposedly as scary as it gets.
Let’s see about tomorrow.
http://sasstrology.com/2010/04/cosmic-equinox-or-the-anti-sixtie.html
Lindaland
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posted May 03, 2010 03:37 PM
