Summer Solstice 21st June 2023 14:59 GMT
The Sun is at the height of its powers! Illuminating all, it asks us to see with clarity. This is difficult for human beings for we see things not as they are, but as we are. We cannot see at all except through the lens of our own perception. What calls our attention, what matters to us, what activates us in the world is what resonates with that which is within us. Life is a medium through which we experience ourselves. Acknowledging this, we receive a gift: the opportunity to become more conscious.
Receiving the world’s reflections we may grow more livingly aware of whom we are. In astrology, the Sun is the source of consciousness and identity. It is our potential: the path of becoming. The Sun’s soulful enterprise is to summon us to our Selves. It lights the way, it warms the heart, it oversees growth in the world of soul just as it does in the green world. The Sun ever beckons us towards this purposeful process of Selfhood.
In our bodies the Sun governs vision, the heart and the spine: our ability to see clearly, our libidinous love-fuelled impulse for life and our integrated alignment. Humans are the only creatures with an upright orientation. Our spines hold us in an undulating line, upright between Heaven and Earth. The body’s energy centres are arranged around the spine, nourished by the subtle energies carried by sunlight (called, for example, prana in Hindu tradition, qi in Chinese tradition and nwyfre in Celtic tradition). We conduct cosmic energies into the Earth and earthly energies into the cosmos through our bodies: we are the agents of a particular kind of interchange between Above and Below, which is not possible without us.
Not that humans are the only beings involved in this interchange but we play our part, nested within the web of relationship that includes all of life – Wholeness. Like the honey bee, we do our ‘singular tasks within a multiplicity of being’; as particles of the One Life, the Creative, of the beams of the Great Sun.*
There is Unity in all things. Edward Bach, pioneer of vibrational medicine and maker of flower remedies native to the British Isles, writes that there are only two fundamental errors:- failure to honour the dictates of the Soul; and, acting against Unity. At this time of Summer Solstice both our soul forces and the forces of Unity are strengthened. We can virtually feel the ‘green fuse’ of growth fizzing through our bodies. We are at a peak in our perennial process of being and becoming, responding to the exertion of evolutionary pressure that is called ‘life’. There is not a separation between our lives and the lives of planets and stars: we are part of the same phenomenon of Creation, which is a resonance field. What happens in the heavens resonates within us, as the Whole resonates within each part, in synchrony. We are part of a co-arising, cosmic and mundane.
Astrology is the language describing this co-arising and, as such, is a great healer of the apparent breach between our human lives and the whole of creation. And so, let us look to the heavens and see what is unfolding for earthlings at this cardinal gateway of the year.
Pluto is seesawing – slowly and exactingly – between Capricorn and Aquarius over the next 18 months. Throughout this time it is occupying a range of less than six degrees of the zodiac (27° Capricorn to 2° Aquarius). (The Sun covers this ground in less than a week; the Moon in less than 12 hours.) Pluto’s slowness is a measure of its impact; its effects are profound and ineluctable, as it dredges the seabed of our unconsciousness, individually and collectively.
This dredging brings things to light, where they have to be consciously regarded and assimilated. The integration of content previously excluded from consciousness is both challenging and healing. Life requires that nothing be excluded; it moves us ever towards wholeness, and this means looking at the ugly stuff and integrating the exiled parts.
Since 2008 we have been looking at the ugly stuff pertaining to Capricorn: the rottenness of government and institutions of the State, as Pluto has urged us to interrogate fundamental notions of authority and responsibility. From now until 2043 we will be feeling into the seamy side of our relationship with technology, including AI, the noise around which seems to have amped up since the beginning of 2023 heralding Pluto’s first passage into Aquarius. It will be intensifying our awareness of all things Aquarian (which include groups, group consciousness, progressivism, revolution, innovation, science, humanitarianism, community and grassroots organisations, charities, etc.), especially drawing our attention to their problematic aspects. A great potential of Pluto’s transit through Aquarius is a deep reconsideration of human potential and the positive empowerment of human beings.
Pluto is activating the final three degrees of the Cardinal signs and the first two degrees of the Fixed signs. People with placements in these degrees are in the grips of transformational processes. There is a clear collective dimension to Pluto’s activity at this time as it is squaring the nodes of the Moon, which indicate the evolutionary journey we are making together (more on the nodes in a moment).
Here are the dates for Pluto’s hokey cokey:-
And here it will then stay until March 2043.
Moving even more slowly than Pluto at this time, Neptune is in the final three degrees of Pisces, moving inexorably towards the zero point of the zodiac, 0° Aries, which it enters ten days after the 2025 Spring Equinox (when the Sun enters 0° Aries). This draws to a close its journey around the zodiac which began in 1861. Neptune represents the unified field of consciousness, quite at odds with the differentiated individuality that is the hallmark of Aries, which feels overwhelmed by nebulous Neptune. Feeling embattled, allergic and combative is the typical Arien reaction to having its will stymied. It is necessary now to raise the vibration of the personal will, so that it is not deployed to satisfy me, me, me; but rather can be inspired by, and act on behalf of, Unity. The final five degrees of the Mutable signs and the first three degrees of the Cardinals are activated. Check your charts!
At the Solstice, Mars and Venus are conjunct in Leo (disposited by the Solstice Sun). In mid-July the Moon’s nodes move into Aries (north) and Libra (south), highlighting collective expressions of these signs, ruled by Mars (the impulse to defend) and Venus (the impulse to bond). We are certainly engaged in refining Aries! If it is not to be a thug, the warrior needs to have noble ideals and values, and to act in defence of them; discipline, integrity and clarity help us focus Mars usefully. Mars is the fuel in the tank, the fire in the belly; it energises us to become who we truly are. Venus is the path of peace and beauty that allows us to come into relationship with others and to love the ways in which we are connected to all our relations: the One Life that Neptune guides us towards.
Venus and Mars in Leo at the Solstice emphasise the Sun’s energy of authentic self-expression. I am reminded of the famous verse from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas:
awen astrology 