New Moon Watch: Embracing The End of Time

In the 60s and 70s people blew stuff up and set buildings on fire, (some self-immolated to help emphasize their ‘message’). A few were fired on at protests and demonstrations across the country. Some people were killed. I remember going to an organized protest in Seattle recently, citizens taking a stand against California’s Prop 8 passage. But could I call it a protest? A bunch of hipsters with cell phones milling about, texting each other while a guy with a blow horn blathered on about being ‘queer’ and ‘here’ now. He looked more like someone trying to mimic an image he’d seen in a picture. Probably a JPEG on Wikipedia. Incendiary? Uhm, hardly. The image of a wet match comes to mind. No directive, no opinions clarified, no real fire — just tweeting and cellphone pics beaming out into the ether. A Samuel Goldwyn-ism came to mind: “Include me out.”

In a recent interview, Ralph Nader remarked: “This is the third television generation…They have grown up watching screens. They have not gone to rallies. Those are history now. They hear their parents and grandparents talk about marches and rallies. They have little toys and gizmos that they hold in their hands. They have no idea of any public protest or activity. It is a tapestry of passivity.”

This disconcerting disconnect from what’s virtual (seemingly real) and really real — what I call the Reality Gap — is what the just-gaining-speed Pluto in Capricorn transit will remedy in the years ahead. Capricorn, the quintessential symbol of thick, dense, leaden, undeniable, real matter is being transited by a force that’s only ‘mission’ is to purge the ways we’ve become disconnected from what’s real. Real as opposed to false. Simply put: Pluto’s impulse is to allow an organism, person or a culture to experience the style of the archetype in its purest, most raw form. No impediments. Just the pure power of the sign. Capricorn’s style is pragmatism. The Capricorn message is “Get real.” Pluto in Capricorn says “Get real — or else.”

When a zombie’s sleepwalk is disturbed, bizarre behavior — disorientation and agitation — blooms as a reaction or defense against awakening. And Pluto disturbs in the most dramatic way possible, by ushering death into the equation — always a crowd pleaser. “This isn’t working anymore. Off with its head.” Like a poultice, the Pluto impulse draws to the surface all the goo that needs to be purged, much like when a boil forms on the surface of the body. At zero degrees of Capricorn, where Pluto resides today, we can just barely make out the first glint of the surgeon’s knife. And it’s scaring the shit out us. Right-wingers, Lefters, Progressives, Regressives, God Lovers, God Deniers, Birthers, Baggers and Hipsters — everyone’s stirring, becoming unhinged — everyone is getting their freak on.

The point here is to observe in detail our disconnect. Study the structure (Capricorn) of our lives and see how we are denying the reality principle. It’s simple really. You look at what you are not doing and start doing it. If the infrastructure of our world is beginning to transform, what do we need to understand, what do we need to do to align ourselves with the process? How can we help others align as well?

We’ve some prescience with astrology, that’s for sure. We can’t predict how our world will look in the future, but we have our awareness to feel and think more clearly about where we are positioned now. And what that position implies. And really, that’s all anyone wants when she comes to an astrology session — to feel more, to understand more, to be connected in a more real way to the narrative of her life. Do this for yourself. Here’s a hint that will help:

It’s a good idea to embrace the notion of End of Days, not literally, but as a metaphor within the Zeitgeist — the spirit of the time we are experiencing. Of course the story never really ends, as Michael Mead writes in his fantastic book The World Behind the World:

“When people feel The End fast approaching, the beginning is also close at hand. The world, ever on the verge of explosion or collapse is also an eternal drama, a story being told from beginning to end, again and again. At the ‘end of the world as we know it’ the Unseen World waits to be found again.”

This is the body of time that we reside in and astrology helps delineate its climate. Each of the three transpersonal planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — the planets associated with the various ideologies, movements and trends that define time, define history, those three planets are gathered in the closing segment of the zodiac, within the three signs that represent the end of the cycle, the end of the road: Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces.

When an impulse is launched in Aries it develops and gathers substance through all of the signs proceeding Capricorn. This is why Saturn, Capricorn’s ruler, corresponds to the Tarot’s final card The World. The vision has been completed. It’s done. It exists. You can sit on it.

Aquarius and Pisces are fascinating signs, within the holistic model of the circle, because they are partially involved with reality but are actually more invested in ideas about the future (Aquarius) or the absence of time, a timeless sort of dissolution space (Pisces). Pisces, the end sign, turns everything back to mist, back to water, from which the ancients told us everything first emerged. It mirrors what Meade talks about: “The ‘ends of the earth’ secretly touch the subtle ground of the Otherworld, the hidden and indelible source of all that appears as reality in this world. In the end it is the connection with eternal things that must be found again.”

We’ve nine more months to perfect the principles of impermanence. When Uranus enters Aries, in May of 2010, the entire playing field is altered, the shit hits the fan. Uranus fires the salvo and the upcoming cosmic cross geometries start spinning. The dynamism, the force that propels the flow of reality accelerates, the matrix cracks and, well, as Yeats put it: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” So, what figure are you in the nativity scene? Sheep? Shepherd? Magi? Angel?

In the meantime, there’s still today.

This morning’s New Moon in Leo mirrors, well, something new, but also more of the same. The lunar phase is in opposition to both Jupiter and Neptune, which siphons more lunacy, deception and confusion into the atmosphere. A melange that will continue to mount in the weeks ahead. Only now it’s charged with Leonian flair, drama and chutzpah. Oy.

Mercury is at loggerheads with Uranus and telegraphs the following dispatch: Get off your ass and talk, discuss, do some intense studies to unearth facts, hold a salon, go to a town hall meeting and speak. If you’re unclear how to articulate your feelings take a cheat sheet with you. Just do it. That’s the Promethean spirit that Uranus imparts to this jam-up.

Lunations that involve a dynamic Neptune aspect, like this one’s opposition to the Sea King, indicate that we’ll emerge, at Full Moon, within two weeks, dazed and at odds with what we thought we were feeling and fumbling with now. As I wrote recently, the Jupiter Neptune conjunction in Aquarius stresses the importance of balancing visions with inspired rationality: that is the conjunction’s hallmark. As I noted too, this is why Obama is having such a difficult time gaining his bearings, as the conjunction floats across his Aquarian ascendant. He’s projecting through a fog bank. We perceive people, on a gut level, via their ascendant, and the public senses a leader speaking to them through a blur. Consequently, whilst in the dream field, Obama seems to have lost touch with his gonads. Finally, yesterday, he aligned with the power of the nexus to explain the moral implications (a key Jupiter/Neptune theme) surrounding the health care issue — this statement was aligned with reality. He mastered the moment.

I think Mr. Obama needs to rearrange his psychic furniture and take his seat, his throne, so to speak. Align with the part of his nature that will assert and rule — his fiery Leo Sun. His Gemini Moon can’t help anymore. Dynamic and thrilling on the campaign trail, his Moon showed up eloquent and informed. But in the end a Gemini Moon thinks too much about feelings. Is too lightweight and dilettantish. He’s the president now, not a candidate trying to get my vote.

And his Mars, hampered by Saturn’s long, castrating grind through Virgo, has become his Achilles’ heel. This is a fabulous Mars for people hell bent on perfection, and making everything right and proper for all parties concerned — but not a good Mars for a commander-in-chief. Grant Lewi once detailed the key to working with a natal Mars in Virgo like this: “Master detail, forget it, and then let your cleverness…go to work on more essential things. The danger of this position is narrowness of effort through inability to see the forest for the trees…” You’re a Leo Mr. President. Do your roar.

Leaders and rulers are the condensed, flesh and blood symbols of a nation’s psyche, that psyche being comprised of the heart, mind and soul of the populace. You can read the psychological health of a country by studying that country’s head of state. Consider how Bush represented the vanguard of ignorance and pugnacious hillbilly bravado that, in some way, we all abetted. As much as I couldn’t stand Bush, at the end of the day he made me feel superior, brighter and better — and wasn’t that attitude just the flip side of all the crazy jingoism that was sweeping the country post 9/11? The Bush years froze many of us into a stupor of disbelief — lack of faith. “This is what it’s come to?” we asked, “Well, fuck it.” This allowed us to stop developing our ability to think freely, cooperatively (we just took sides and screamed at each other from our tree houses). The collective sort of surrendered, stopped exploring collaboration, harmony — stopped fostering art and intelligence and inquiry. We became effete. And there was Bush: Our figurehead.

With this line of thinking it’s easy to see how Obama mirrors our current dilemma as a culture. We’re ready to wake up now, engage, experience the eloquence and beauty Obama, as a symbol, personifies. To develop a more humane relationship to our fellow human beings and the care of the environment. The health and well being of our neighbor. We voted Obama into office because we want to activate and make real those concerns, dreams and visions. Change we can not only believe in — but actually see.