Summer Solstice 2015

‘At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.’

(from T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’ II, The Four Quartets)

Except for the still point, there would be no dance… The summer dance is a full-swung thing. We are drawn towards flowering and fruiting and activity; teased and extended into opening and revealing all that was seeded in the chill stillness of the winter solstice’s midnight moment. Midsummer is the zenith, a time of burgeoning growth, as the Sun reaches the peak of its powers. Its light and building warmth call us to wakefulness and vividness. Come alive!

Under the all-seeing eye of the solstice Sun there are no hiding places; it is a time of reckoning. The great poet of the natural world, Kathleen Raine writes, ‘the sun shows the world to the world’.¹ Are we able to see, to bear witness and be with all that is shown by the light of the Sun? In her poem ‘To the Sun’, Raine calls the Sun, ‘great giver of all that is’, and now – at this still point, this moment of grace – is the time to meditate upon that truth.

The midsummer solstice is marked by the Sun’s entry into Cancer. Here in the northern hemisphere we experience the longest day as the Sun reaches its zenith in its journey through the wheel of the year. The Sun is the central organiser of the individual’s life force just as it is the centre of our solar system: around it all forces of our realm are constellated.  In the birth chart the Sun represents consciousness, authenticity, personal power, purpose and purposeful activity.  It is our source, our star and, to this extent, our deity.  The stellar level pertains to the spiritual forces of soul or the higher self.  The Sun, in the chart, is the lens through which the soul focuses its intention, showing where and how it intends to gain experience through the form life (personality, body and physical conditions) in the present incarnation.  The Sun enlivens soul activity: it seeks to swing us into our true line. This can feel both challenging and rewarding. If we have not, in our lives, established our centre of gravity in the solar energy we tend to be existentially disorganised and unintegrated, as it is the Sun that focuses force and makes conscious sense of life for us. Seeking to align ourselves with solar energy is essential to our well-being; it is key to the contribution we, as individuals, need to make to humanity and to Gaia in the development of planetary consciousness.  This is the effort we need to make for the whole: to give our individual selves fully to life, and to the world.  And right now we are provided with a greater opportunity and encouragement to do that.

As the ruler of Cancer (sign of the solstice), the Moon’s condition at the moment of the solstice helps to describe what this ‘still point’ or portal is opening to us. The solstice occurs at 16:39 GMT on 21^st June 2015. At this time the Moon is occupying 29° Leo, the unstable degree where the energy oscillates between the antithetical forces of Leo and Virgo, calling to both the childlike joy in simply being (Leo) and the dutiful urge to attend to tasks (Virgo). How to marry the energies of joyful being and dutiful doing? Willingness and Sun-infused joyful giving of our ability to work, applying ourselves to tasks with purpose and authenticity, are the way forward at this time. There is a fluid interaction between the luminaries right now as they are in mutual reception (occupying each other’s signs), which is a real opportunity to discern between the authentic reality of the life-giving Sun and the seeming-real glamour of the Moon, which is merely a reflector, a mirror of vitality, a memory of something past. The Sun is illuminating what is real; the time asks us to know the difference between the real and its many reflections.

The solstice Moon is in an exact square with retrograde Saturn on 29° Scorpio. The Moon and Saturn, the veil of the past, thus uncomfortably in league, call us to account: finish the clearing that was undertaken, fully address the shadow stuff that has emerged over recent months. There is deep work still to be done, things to bring to completion. This involves breaking out of some of our conditioned, knee-jerk reactions. The Moon in Leo needs discipline and sober Saturn provides it; with this square it feels like the brakes are on: depressing, frustrating and stultifying. Emotional reactions are being challenged. We are changing.

The Moon is in its Crescent phase at the solstice, encouraging us to overcome past conditions and see clearly the opportunity of NOW, which is perhaps to apply ourselves authentically to completing our inner work. The New Moon occurs on 16^th June in conjunction with Mars, giving zeal and momentum and a strong urge to just get on with it! This carries on into the solstice moment. This drive needs to be engaged purposefully in the work of completion, or inflammation, anger and frustration will result. Some discipline and creativity are required as we do the work of resolution and integration. Mars is the spur here, its frustration points to where we want to be, but its energy must first be focused and held, recruited to the task in hand: to help us break through conditioning rather than just break loose.

The midsummer solstice weaves together the seed held in the frozen earth at the time of contraction (midwinter) and the new seed forming in the green of the flourishing plant at this time of expansion. Dream and fulfilment are being woven together through our beings. Is summer the dream of the sleeping earth, or the waking fulfilment of winter’s dream? Maybe both are true, as we move between inwardness and outwardness, expansion and contraction, dream and reality, sleep and wakefulness. At this time of solstice, we recognise that the still point is the turning point – this is the moment when the balance tilts once more towards winter, and, traditionally, the holly king overwhelms the oak king. Winter is with us at midsummer. Living is in dying, as dying is in living.

Finally, Neptune as the esoteric ruler of Cancer, adds a further layer of description to the solstice moment, as it retrogrades on 9° Pisces exactly squaring Mercury in Gemini. Neptune is infusing our rational minds and communication with unworldly inspiration and imaginings. This download of spiritual inspiration is a lot for young Mercury to take. It can’t really cope and is somewhat stupefied, resulting in confusion, mental fog, hallucination, lies and delusion. The rational mind has to creak open under the eroding pressure of Neptune as the spiritual seeks expression. Do we have a spiritual context, a context of meaning adequate to what we are experiencing? Neptune is issuing a call for Unity, to see the connectedness of all things and all beings, and to have this vision glimpsed by the rational mind. This disrupts rationality and impairs judgement, but the vision is beautiful, inspiring and redemptive. Our task is ever to cultivate discernment.

A solstice of paradoxes: energy, drive and inspiration on one side, countered by holding and frustration of impulse on the other. The impeding force of Saturn may be difficult but it is reaching towards a new maturity, which is unlocked when Saturn resumes its direct motion on 2^nd August (Lughnasadh). It leaves the sign of Scorpio (not to return until 2041), entering Sagittarius mid-September in time for the autumn equinox, at which point we will be harvesting the fruits of Saturn’s sojourn through Scorpio and finding relief and release into a very different mood.

‘Ancestral sun, do you remember us,

Children of light, who behold you with living eyes?

Are we as you, are you as we? It seems

As if you look down on us with living face:

Who am I who see your light but the light I see,

Held for a moment in the form I wear, your beams.’

(from ‘To the Sun’, Kathleen Raine)

1 From ‘Far-darting Apollo’.

Spring Equinox 2015

We move from stillness into flux and back, wave upon wave of unfolding ourselves; wave upon wave of becoming what we are: as individuals, communities, soul groups, eco-systems, as shards of the whole Gaia. We move towards authenticity and evolution and we move away from it, into involution. This movement towards and away allows us to become conscious of ourselves; it is an awakening oscillation.

We can feel this potential in our experience of the seasons and the festivals, which are like portals or moments of seeing through into a greater or different reality where greater or different possibilities exist. There are other such portals, allowing us to glimpse new landscapes, urging us to move, develop and adapt. Major aspects between transiting planets create portals. The great and mysterious eclipse cycles that describe the interweaving of Sun, Moon and Earth also create portals.

The Spring Equinox this year is marked by being preceded only hours before by a total solar eclipse and accompanied by the conclusion of a series of seven exact squares between the major heavyweights of our solar system, Uranus and Pluto, that began at Midsummer 2012. The seventh square is exact on 17^th March, and Uranus and Pluto occupy the same degree of their signs (Aries and Capricorn respectively) between 12^th and 29^th March.

This Uranus-Pluto square forms the energetic backdrop to the Equinox. The square arises between the signs of Aries and Capricorn (two arms of the Cardinal cross, which deals with inauguration and initiation): we have the energy of the Spring Equinox grinding against that of the Winter Solstice. The impulsive yang charge of Aries (the will-to-be) is held in tension with the dark, slow restraining yin force of Capricorn. The urge to move, to will, to vent one’s strength is governed and held in check by the unshakable power of stillness.

This energetic tension is echoed by the planets themselves. Uranus is highly active, super-refined and unpredictable: it seeks to liberate energy by breaking up, breaking out, breaking through obsolete patterns of being. It is the Ambassador of the Soul quickening and calling us towards freedom and the right direction for the liberation of soul forces. Working through Aries, Uranus is seeking to liberate, through disruption, the energy of the will-to-be, the very impulse that brings us into earthly existence. Uranus cuts our moorings and launches us towards the future that was our original intention, caring not one jot for our feelings of wellbeing or security, which are often very threatened by the changes and revelations wrought by its activity.

Being in a square to Pluto, the more powerful body, the impulse of Uranus is held, checked and thwarted. In this thwarting there is the possibility of reflection and maturation: when I am released I know exactly what I need to do. Conversely, it can give rise to anger and the venting of strength for its own sake: wasted energy. Pluto’s action is to descend, to penetrate to the very depths and from the depths to purify by expelling, boil-like, all corruption and rottenness. As it is in Capricorn, sign of the Father and authority, it is relentlessly exposing and expunging the rottenness of ‘the System’: social forms, from the family to the state and the Establishment. We are pinned and held by the unflinching gaze of Pluto; it is a time of exposure and truth-telling. We can rage against it, swear that we didn’t know what was going on on our watch, deny all charges; or we can roll with the punches, allow our darkness to emerge into the light of day and, thus be cleansed and regenerated. Pluto processes are ultimately regenerative, like a boil or a volcano or a forest fire: they set the conditions for health and growth. They are thorough-going transpersonal processes and we can feel stripped and laid bare; fascination, glamour, disgust and shame are never far away when Pluto is active. We are urged towards a relationship with the reality that lies beneath appearances. The current tension between Uranus and Pluto is creating a revelatory and exhausting time; our assumptions are disrupted and we have to see where it is that we are truly at. This can feel wonderful and terrible. I believe that the Uranus-Pluto portal is an initiation for humanity and for Gaia: an awakening, a call to GET REAL – to root ourselves in the Real!

At 9:46 on 20^th March we have a total solar eclipse on the last degree of Pisces (an unstable degree that tends to call to the extremes of both Pisces and Aries, which might be symbolised by the martyr-soldier). During a solar or lunar eclipse the Earth (Gaia and humanity) is separated from the rays of the life-giving Sun by the obstruction in space that is the Moon. The Moon is a reflector of light, a mirror. It is not in itself a source of anything. The Sun is a star. The contrast is easy to comprehend. It is the Sun around which our planetary system is constellated; it is the representative of a higher level of being, the source of light, life and love in our world. Human beings bring stellar and planetary vibrations into the body of planet Earth by acting as receivers; we transmit those energies combined with Gaia’s force back out into the cosmos. We are designed to do this most effectively through an alignment with Sun energy; we are heliotropic. This cosmic exchange is interrupted and threatened by eclipses, when we are deprived of the life-giving light and warmth of our star.

Eclipses then are portals marked by “difficulty–opportunity”. Unresolved emotional issues and associated snarled-up instinctual energies tend to arise when we are in shadow. When owned and embraced with healing intent, these energies can guide and help us. During eclipses we are challenged to carry the light of the Sun – and in particular of our own unique constellation of solar force represented in our birth charts – strongly within our own beings, to transform conditions and so assist ourselves, humanity and Gaia in journeying through the portal into a new level of evolution. The Sun rules the heart and the heart’s qualities are courage and joy. An eclipse can be a spectacular opportunity for the courage and joy of the open human heart to do their work in the world.

The Sun enters Aries (marking the Equinox), a mere 13 hours after this total solar eclipse, at 22:46 on 20^th March, inaugurating a new cycle of birth, growth, activity and awareness. It is a time of renewal and innovation and outward movement, particularly so this year as its ruling planet, Mars, is in its own sign of Aries, producing a powerful impulse to get moving, to spring into action, to do the work we long to do. This triple-whammy portal event is followed at 12:01 on 4^th April by the lunar eclipse in Libra, which squares both Uranus and Pluto, making a t-square with the Uranus-Pluto square. The period between these two eclipses brings a resurgence of repressed energies, and the lunar eclipse demands an adjustment to new circumstances – a strengthening of intention, perhaps, to take hold of our energies and perceptions with will, willingness and wisdom.

All in all, we are being pressed to move forwards and outwards, while also being held back. This can bring burn-out, anger and destructiveness or, conversely, insight and intention. Imagination and discernment are invited to engage with the Shadow and all the self-limiting stories we tell ourselves to deal with shame and difficulty. The gap opens between the stories and reality. I see this time as a call to awaken to reality. Enrich life with presence. Be real, be here and now, present to reality as it exists beneath glamour and virtuality: embodied, troubled and interesting. Full of potential. Plant the seed now.