Summer Solstice 2012

‘News You Can Use’

I hope you readers will celebrate June 20th with people you love and enjoy.  We’ve been invited to join with a group of kindred souls sharing a potluck meal and creating a drumming circle afterwards.  Everyone can join in to celebrate the great circle of life that is both within and without.

The first day of summer arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on June 20th this year.  South of the equator it will be the first day of winter.  This 0 degrees of Cancer brings us to that pivotal point in time where, here in the North, we have the longest day of the year.  For eons of time this day was celebrated with dancing, music, and plenty of food, and well it should be.  Turning point days in the year bring awareness of the imperceptible shifts that are always happening as our earth spins around our central sun.  Astrology brings meaning into these cycles by helping us to be aware of the natural rhythms in life.  In our modern technological age it’s easy to get lost in the maze of pressures to survive in a rat race world where money and related success has become the major ‘god’.  Thank goodness many still honor the ancient traditions that keep us in synch with earth and sky.

Let’s now look at the chart for this turning point. This chart tells us what to look for in the next quarter period of the year.  Sometimes it’s good to just feel into the chart; a very appropriate thing to do with Sun in Cancer.  I always color code my charts in order to visually get a feeling for the energy patterns as well.  Looking at this ingress chart the over-all feeling is a bit disjointed for me. There are a lot of red-flag lines crossing and dissecting the over-all pattern.  These square aspects hit every planetary energy in the entire pattern.  Please observe that one!  My eye goes right to that opposition of Pluto in Capricorn to both the Sun and Moon in Cancer.  Pluto feels oppressive to the tenderness of a New Moon in Cancer trying to get a hold on security and safe places to nurture and be nurtured.  That Pluto in Capricorn leads out into an open space, and in the Washington DC location shows a decided thrust to dominate through even more controls in the 1st house.  This certainly looks to be a rough three month period ahead.

Though I’ve written many times about Pluto in Capricorn, I’d like to clarify its function one more time.  Pluto is representative of power, yes, but also of purging and purifying whatever it touches.  Pluto in Capricorn is the underground process of purging Capricorn institutions, traditions, and structures that need to be purified.  So these structures that we find oppressive are going through powerful transformation until 2023 AD.

Pluto square Uranus nearly exact shows the tension that is building.  It’s really been building since 2008, but is now reaching the first of 7 exact confrontations between these two transpersonal planets over the next three years.  2014 will certainly be the BIG year for this conflict between Uranus’ bid for individual freedom and rights versus Pluto’s iron grip of old systems control.  Both energies are strongly continuing to impact the Sun at 0 Cancer exacerbating the sense of vulnerability that hovers within the feelings of most of us.

Neptune and Chiron in Pisces to the rescue!  At least there is a flowing current, evidenced by the blue lines to and from the Sun, from the universal solvent, Neptune, and the healing bridge of Chiron.  The principle of unification is at work bringing people together for the common good and helping to dissolve away the old structures that no longer serve the whole.  That’s a positive way to look at it for sure.  The negative side with Neptune is always deception and illusion, so awareness is needed to discern who is saying what during this election year in the USA.  There are plenty of squares between these two and Jupiter, South Node, and Venus in Gemini to warrant caution.  Who are you going to believe?  Who can you trust?  The key is to keep your eye on the money/Venus.  The trail of money leads to the truth when discerning political motivations.

Jupiter in Gemini has just begun on June 11th for one year.  In this chart it is less than 30 degrees behind the Sun.  By next Summer Solstice it will be conjoining the Sun at the tail end of Gemini.  We’ve recently had an amazing surge of Gemini energy and with Venus still Retrograde in Gemini near the South Node and on-coming Jupiter, not to mention the Venus transit of the Sun we witnessed on June 6th, we have plenty of special feminine energy communicating something important right now.  One synchronicity to watch are the female nuns visiting the Vatican as they make effort to champion women’s rights within the male-dominated ‘holy seat’ of power.  Will beliefs change?  Let’s hope so.

Jupiter in Gemini is sure to keep things interesting as variety and insatiable appetites for new ideas pop up here, there, and everywhere.  The Gemini ‘kid in the candy store’ is going to go bonkers with Jupiter for awhile.  I love this quote from Mark Douglas and Marcia Moore’s book, Astrology, The Divine Science, “Since Jupiter is in detriment in Gemini, difficulty can arise in joining the expansiveness of the planet with the capacity for minutiae of the sign.  Like large and small gears in a machine, they perform different functions.  Yet if the gears can be meshed, power and precision combine through the turning of many wheels.”

So that’s our goal in the next year:  meshing all those various wheels so that positive change will occur.  And that means THINKING FOR YOURSELF and not buying in to the garbage that is trying to control and manipulate your mind.  I simply can not emphasize this point enough.  Turn off the TV.  Don’t watch all that propaganda designed to keep you hostage to a global system now run by a very few individuals who control most of the money systems with the exception of perhaps China.  If you want to dive deeper into ‘the rabbit hole’ read Robert Gover’s latest book Time and Money, The Economy and the Planets.  This book will definitely give you food for thought, which is exactly what our Cancer energy needs right now.

Continuing to sort through all the myriad aspects to our lead-in Sun in Cancer I see that there is an ‘out-of-sign’ aspect in place, depending on how large an orb you want to use.  Sun square to Mars in Virgo (7 degrees) indicates a drive to get things done without waste of energy.  The exact sextile of Mars to Mercury indicates thinking smart and being precise.  It’s that ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick’ kind of thinking on your feet that is needed in the months ahead.  Virgo and Cancer are by nature quite compatible together which helps alleviate the tension of the square aspect.  And, finally, there’s an 8 degree trine aspect from Saturn in Libra to the Sun.  Perhaps some gains are occurring with the common people, the regular folk of the world.   Even so, the Moon and Mercury are in square aspect which indicates that justice still has a long ways to go as illustrated by all the racial profiling going on in NYC which is creating a huge stir amongst African-Americans, Latinos, and Civil Rights advocates.  Justice for all is not yet a reality in this land of the brave and home of the so-called free.  Money and links to the status-quo still hold the most weight it would seem.

Of course I could go on and on dissecting this portal chart, but have a go at it yourselves!  See over the next three months what strikes you as valid in this imprint.  See where it may have relevance in your own life.  Right now in my small study group here in the Grass Valley/Nevada City area of California I’m trying to help my students to read the symbols in terms of real life application.  How does your own life mirror and reflect these symbolic patterns in the sky?  Keep asking yourselves these questions.  Answers will come.  Yes, answers will come.