Astrology of the Autumn Equinox, 23rd September 2023, 06:51 GMT
“I don’t trust my inner feelings,/ Inner feelings come and go.” (Leonard Cohen)
The future is created by who we are, how we are, here and now.
As the Sun aligns with Earth’s equator the forces of day and night are equalised across the globe. In this all earthlings are united. This is a time to honour Unity. And there is pressure to do so, as Neptune (unity consciousness) is just four degrees from exact opposition with the Sun as it approaches 0° Aries (in March 2025). Neptune dissolves separation; inundation does not discriminate between what is mine and what is yours. Neptune insists on Oneness.
Venus, the Equinox ruler, guides us towards harmony. Its path is the Path of Peace, the Beauty Way, drawing us towards love, pleasure and relationship, while Mars (ruling the Spring Equinox) asserts and defends the requirements of self. These powers need to operate together: who am I if I only yield, what am I if I am always at war? The peacemaker and the warrior need each other so that we may bond and individuate; just as what we contentiously call the feminine and the masculine within each of us want to find integration. They need to know their distinctiveness. This project of healing has been intense through the summer. You may have noticed your own inner struggles with such themes manifesting in your life. What is associated with “feminine” and “masculine” modes has received a kind of depth charge and the fallout is being released to us at a more conscious level to assimilate – through the summer Venus and Mars travelled awhile together as the Moon’s nodes entered their signs, squared by Pluto; Venus then turned retrograde from the end of July to early September.
Concepts of yin and yang from Chinese medicine may be useful to adopt instead of feminine and masculine, as they perhaps detach more easily from fraught, outworn gender notions. We have to find intelligent ways of interrogating these forces and discussing them freely, because the polarisation that exists in culture and discourse is evidence of the fact that Venus and Mars are at loggerheads within us, distorting us individually and collectively. The Moon’s nodes occupying Aries–Libra (until January 2025) stimulate a review. The next quarter encourages this tricky work (Venus in Leo disposits and sextiles Mars in Libra in the Equinox chart).
Chiron, the Wounded Healer, asks “What ails thee?” and requires us to stay close to this question. The closest aspect in the chart (always significant) is a trine, exact to the minute, between Venus and Chiron, while Mars is in a close opposition with it. Chiron itself is in a tightening conjunction (exact in February) with the Moon’s north node in Aries, indicating our collective evolutionary direction. We are exposed to the woundedness and wounding nature of yang when it overpowers yin. Yin energy provides the resourced foundation for outward activity, grounding yang; when yin is deficient, yang can be wild and unhinged, and specifically when thinking of Aries, unilateral and non-relational. Impulse is firing without regard for real requirements. Aries/Self, unmoderated by Libra/Other, results in pathological aggression. The Wounded Healer is directing our attention towards this pathology, encouraging compassionate regard for strife that is very often blamed on men (though, goodness knows, they suffer too). Chiron teaches that cleaving to the difficult, tolerating pain – feeling it –engenders wisdom. We are very much in the grip of these themes over the next year or so, but especially in the next quarter to the Winter Solstice. There is healing in remaining sensitive to and vigilant of thoughts and feelings.
Thoughts and feelings: what a playground! Thoughts give rise to feelings, which give rise to thoughts and more feelings. Layer upon layer of reaction and replication, potentised by belief and sense of self; the whole of which fogs up the lens of our perception and provides for more of the same. We can observe how other people bring themselves experiences that confirm their view of the world. It is much harder to observe ourselves.
It certainly feels like life is happening to us; that it is our luck or lack of it, our skill or lack of it, that brings this succession of situations, sublime and ridiculous, we call “life”. Our expectations arise from our conditioning, but also create outcomes. We experience our conditioning and thus confirm it, further entrenching us in the echo chamber we know as self. Now and again, life serves us a curve-ball – loss, ill health, unwarranted enmity. We awaken for a moment, often outraged! Ironically we call that “bad luck”.
These moments of awakening, as worrisome as they are, are precious. We slide temporarily off the tracks of conditioning. Discomfort of this kind is the indicator of possibility. Life’s design is to wake us up. We cannot evolve when we are running on our tracks. Uranus is the spanner in the works, derailing us, rendering life’s regular patterns subject to spasm.
It is in a grand trine with the Equinox Sun and Pluto in the chart: renegade Uranian and transformative Plutonian energies are flowing into the Sun (consciousness). This has a radical potential for change. A second grand trine involves the Moon, Mercury and Jupiter (itself in a wide conjunction with Uranus). This suggests the inflation of the kneejerk reflex of conditioning that keeps us clinging to the stale security of the known. These two trines mitigate against each other. The former is the more powerful due to the heavyweight outer planets involved. The pressure is on to wake up.
Expectations condition outcomes. Outward experience reflects inner conditions. Negativity breeds negativity; hope breeds hope; love breeds love. The future is created by who we are, how we are, here and now. These are things we choose in every moment.
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