Autumn Equinox
22nd September 2020, 13:32 GMT
Just as the ocean always tastes of salt the truth always tastes of freedom. (Buddha)
We are summoned into being and becoming by the dance between Earth and Sun, reflected in the equinoxes and solstices. Marked by the Sun’s entry into the cardinal signs of the zodiac (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn), they are created by the great circle of the Sun’s apparent path as it intersects the great circle of the Earth’s equator extended out into space. They define our experience of the natural year and help give us roots in that reality. Through these gateways of the year pour the energies of initiation, inaugurating new patterns and new possibilities for human consciousness. These pivotal moments hold the potential for recalibration and repay our deep consideration.
What a harvest we have to contemplate this year. Major new planetary cycles have begun in Capricorn (Saturn/Pluto, Jupiter/Pluto) exacerbating fracture lines in our systems of organisation and governance. These lines of fracture are not injuries, though they may reveal pathology; they are openings to an insurgency of new energies that will flow/is flowing as obsolete structures crumble. We’re in crisis, it’s absolutely clear, and crisis brings reorientation. We’re all part of that reorientation. The future can only be woven out of our deeds and consciousness (thoughts, feelings and awareness). We all have creative power to bring forth intent from which the future can be made. Equally, we all have fear, anxiety, anger and inertia, from which the future will also be spawned.
The equinox energies underscore opposition (as shown by a cardinal t-square: Mercury in Libra opposes Mars, in its dignity in Aries; both planets are closely squared by Saturn and Pluto conjunct in Capricorn). We are witnessing various stand-offs between alienated positions. Crunch time. Oppositional thinking (right/wrong; good/bad; pro/anti; me/you, etc.) is not only wasteful of energy, but is also an exercise in disowning aspects of ourselves and projecting them on to others. Judgements made on this basis cannot be helpful. We are in oppositional times and are divided as never before, behind our masks and in our bubbles. We are at great risk of separation and disconnection from each other, our rights and freedoms heavily and increasingly circumscribed. The painfulness of this is expressed by the equinox Sun’s opposition to the Wounded Healer, Chiron, in Aries, the sign of self and self-isolation. Chiron brings the potential for wisdom to arise from this experience of being locked in the prison of Fortress Self: the honouring of all relationship, and the realisation that it is only in our connection with other beings that we exist at all. We are not to be found outside of relationship. United we stand, divided we fall. Disconnection creates fertile ground for polarisation. Inflamed by confusion, anxiety and fear, the current experience of separation from one another readily becomes estrangement.
The old order is coming down around our ears. This is particularly acute now as Saturn (order, security, authority) moves through the last few degrees of Capricorn in conjunction with Pluto, intensifying our experience of restriction and clampdown. It transits into Aquarius finally on 17th December where it will make its hopeful conjunction with Jupiter just over eight hours after the Winter Solstice moment. The current acclimatisation to authoritarian control asks us to exercise discernment (for example, to ask ourselves, “What makes sense and what does not?”) There is a vital need for us to engage in bringing in new ways of being and doing, but we are still labouring under the spell of the old order. “The King is dead! Long live the King!”
What is authoritative to you? To what, to whom and for whom are you responsible? What is power/powerful in your life? To what or to whom do you bow?
Things look bleak, yes, but doubt and despair shut down the creative power of life, which needs our hope, open minds and hearts to work its magic in the world of experience. We can’t judge things by appearances, “for the way of the cosmos is zig-zag and subtle.”[i] Our human weakness for thinking the worst creates oppressive ideas and false beliefs that inhibit the power of the cosmos to flow into us, leading to exhaustion and depression. There is surely a better use for our amazing imaginations. If we are pulled out of shape it may be that we are labouring under false apprehensions and need to bring them to the surface and break their spell, in order to be in a state of greater truthfulness and freedom. The Buddha’s words (above) may guide us in discerning truth from falsehood.
For example, there are so many different positions people take on Covid: the challenge it brings is unique to each of us, depending on the reality we inhabit. The truth of the situation is, I suggest, impossible to discern on the basis of information. Truth, actually, may be different for each of us. So there is a need to cultivate openness of mind. How do we discern what is real and truthful? Information and leaning heavily on the rational mind can only take us so far. Its harvest cannot satisfy our whole beings.
At present we are experiencing a crisis of disconnection from each other: as families, as colleagues, constituencies and communities of people in all their many and various forms. The effects of this, we may come to see, are far more serious than any infection we’re trying to control. The autumn equinox is marked by the Sun’s entry into Libra, sign of right relationship between I and Thou. The current “social distancing” of I and Thou cultivates separation, disconnection, judgement and suspicion. Oppositional thinking in turn foments conflict and polarisation. Libra is always alerting us as to what unifies us, intent on healing the breach of all that divides. Libra’s work is to identify the razor-edge path that exists between extremes: the Middle Way. To walk this path integrates and resolves polarities, encouraging the emergence of a balanced relationship between I and Thou. Ultimately, we need to find ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves, withdrawing projections and reclaiming our wholeness. In this way we can enter into the truth of our lives and our connections. The work of integration is definingly human, for it is our species that walks upright between the poles of Heaven and Earth, their crucial means of energetic relationship.
Libra’s love of justice and harmony may really serve us at this time if we choose to use it, encouraging us to keep reaching out, building bridges of human warmth and empathy when so much is breaking those bridges down. We need each other; not just because we are social creatures, but because the evolution of the human project is towards group consciousness: we need our groups, tribes and circles, to give ourselves essential developmental experiences. It has been a necessary stage in evolution but we need now to move away from the thraldom of sovereign individuality and build alliances, kinships and communities of shared endeavour. Keeping apart from each other (whether in fear, out of misplaced courtesy or from simply towing the line in a compliance culture) can only takes us in one direction – backwards, and fast.
Venus (ruler of the autumn equinox) and the Sun occupy each other’s signs, strengthening conscious awareness of the present injunction to work creatively with the I/Thou relationship, to sense the path of integration that becomes visible when we balance the energy of the warrior and the peacemaker, self and other, Aries and Libra. There is much fire in the equinox chart; a fiery drive is at work that could easily mitigate against harmony and co-operation. This drive asks us to hold our intent with clarity and to deal with our own emotional reactions soberly. Failure to steer the will may result in explosions of aggression. In this way, the need for harmony and balance are increasingly brought into our conscious experience. We only know what balance is because we go in and out of it.
At times when circumstances hold us apart, let’s break the spell of separative consciousness.[ii] We’re so readily forgetful that we belong to each other and to all life. Hence the need for some recalibration, which is certainly what we’re getting this equinox, with no fewer than six planets retrograde (Mars, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). This feeling of stewing in our own juices dissipates somewhat as the planets begin to turn direct (beginning with Saturn on 29th September), but it continues to mark our experience until the Winter Solstice when a lighter, less entrenched mood is created by Saturn’s arrival in Aquarius. A chance exists now to take a good look at where we’re at; it isn’t comfortable but it’s certainly useful in doing the work that’s needed to locate and orient towards the Middle Way.
“Fortunately, we have our communities and lives of our own to honour and enjoy. If we will only look away from the news and the headlines, and focus upon our own lives and our own direct experiences, we will see … human kindness and goodness … and from this place inside ourselves create a new reality to live in, not at some remote future time, but now”.[iii]
[i] Carol K. Anthony, A Guide to the I Ching, 215
[ii] Separative consciousness might be defined as identification with the personality conditions and the seeming separateness between living beings. Astrologer, David Matthews has offered the analogy that the soul takes on a personality (for the purpose of gaining experience and developing consciousness) as an actor takes on a role; separative consciousness holds sway when we identify with the role/personality as our truth, forgetful of the spiritual reality of our soul forces.
[iii] Suzanne Rough, Letter of the Month: August 2020, www.dkfoundation.co.uk Emphasis mine.
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