There’s one word to summarize the heaven’s predominate theme right now: Saturnine. The dictionary defines Saturnine as “sardonic or sullen.” We’re undoubtably feeling, and perhaps trying to avoid, this demand for sobriety right now. How could we not?

We’ve made it past a momentous election, and probably felt a tinge of postpartum depression after Obama‘s victory in November. And now the December holidays are winding to a close. So our last bit of respite, that tradition of putting things on ‘hold’ towards the close of a year, is about to fold up shop. And where are we positioned? Yesterday’s new moon in Saturn-ruled Capricorn was joined by Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Pluto also in the sign of the Sea-Goat. Venus and Neptune are in Aquarius (which Saturn co-rules) and this planetary pairing echoes the same Saturnian theme. There’s no where to turn or run. Simply put: Heaviness abounds. Read more

Don’t waste the clarity and prescience of today’s lunation: A new moon in Sagittarius combined with a dynamic Mars Mercury conjunction, a combination that turns up the power of prophecy. If only for a millisecond, catch a glimpse of what lies ahead for you, beyond your normal event horizon, during the upcoming year.

Dreams will be quick, cogent and hectic during the next three nights; flashing glimpses, too, of new paths, new approaches, new peers and helpmates. Take notes. Follow closely.

Be prepared for truth-telling throughout the biosphere as politicians are forced into disclosures. Meanwhile the zealots, imploding on their anger and resentment, set retaliatory moves into high gear. Red alert during your meal tonight as grandma’s wine-buzz helps her cuts loose with some inflammatory family secrets. Read more

Today’s new moon at seven degrees Libra promises to mark a significant turning point and adjustment for each of us. Although it is a new moon, it involves the old battle between light and dark forces — or better said, the forces of evolution and regression. Occuring in Libra, the dichotomy involves movement towards relating consciously or a recoiling towards isolation and self-defense.

The Sabian symbol for the new moon reads: “A woman feeding chickens and protecting them from hawks.” A new moon always initiates a kind of spiritual nourishment for the earth, but this particular lunation involves the disruption of growth by destructive influences.

Dane Rudhyar writes about the symbol this way: “The most basic “Law”…is that every release of new potentialities brings about a polarization of effects– that is, the new potentiality will be used both for construction and deconstruction. It will arouse individuals to take a series of steps which will lead some to greater success, others to deeper failure.”

The keynote is guardianship, which means: attention and management implying responsibility for well-being and safety. The chickens are getting new food, but at what price to the entire bird kingdom? You can apply this however you like — especially unnerving is what this implies for the United State’s economy right now. What exactly will 700 billion dollars worth of chicken feed wrought?

On a more personal level you can see this operating in your relationships — either with others or with yourself. You bring yourself (or your partner) a new level of truth and then you pay the price for disturbing the status quo. Understand that if one is working to awaken latent powers, talents, aspirations there will be a counter movement within the unconscious to block, thwart or distort one’s process of growth. As Rudhyar notes, it’s the “Law” of the psyche.

Libra is the odd sign out of the zodiac (a word that means “circle of animals”), being an inanimate object there’s nothing “alive” about the symbol — and it acts accordingly: assesing, judging and weighing — void of emotion, sensation or intuition. Libra represents a chilly kind of objectivity in the universe, the sort that addresses balance and adjustment without emotional coloring or tempering. Libra represents a quality of truth most of us would rather avoid; namely seeing objectively, without unconscious blinders.

Libra marks a major turning point in the zodiac. Where the six proceeding signs represent the development of personalization and individuation — Libra is the first sign of the zodiac to awaken the impulse to relate, to connect with others and step out of one’s bubble into the human community. Where Virgo, the proceeding sign, represents a kind of isolation and self-cocooning, Libra challenges us to emerge and connect and relate from truth.

Today’s new moon marks a period of struggle and the opportunity to establish balance and objectivity into our lives — but there will be a price. As Gurdjieff noted: “Humankind is third force blind.” We only see life in terms of duality; good/bad, night/day, pain/suffering. Somewhere in the middle is a reconcilling, balancing, uniting function that will neutralize the duality and bring forth a creative, vital third force. Something mysterious and unconsidered as of yet. Something new that can either uplift or, as the Sabian symbol warns, pull down and dissipate. Again, the keyword for today’s new moon is guradianship.

As the Sufis say: “Trust in Allah — but tether your camel.”

Yesterday’s new moon occurred in the eighth degree of Virgo. One of the zodiacal degrees associated with the student teacher relationship. So that’s what I’ll be writing about today. The symbol’s specific image is: “A five-year-old takes a first dancing lesson.”

In his book on the Sabian Symbols, Dane Rudhyar writes the following: “The individual can express his own individual character only according to traditional modes. He is still entirely responsible to his teacher… Yet new perspectives are now open to him.” Rudhyar also notes that this degree is associated with “the potentiality of initiation.” The number five, taken from the child’s age, represents a movement towards “conscious manhood.”

When I turned 32 I had the good fortune of finding my spiritual teachers. Actually my spiritual teachers found me, but I’ll say more about that seeming mystery as I go.

Events in my life, around the time of meeting my teachers, were difficult, both externally and psychologically. And I had exhausted whatever quantity of fuel my personality was burning to maneuver, manage and ‘design’ my life. I was literally running on empty; my mantra being a line I’d read in one of Maurice Nicoll‘s Commentaries. Quoting Ouspensky: “It’s only when you realize that life is taking you nowhere that it begins to have meaning.”

Depression was a constant. This despite the fact that I had a ‘fulfilling’ career as an artist. A parade of boyfriends. And lived in a beautiful tropical valley, recessed in the hills of Honolulu. Better yet, I was tucked away on an island, 3,000 miles away from my mother and father. Surely I was an autonomous adult, finally free from my family matrix; a condition that I’d drawn a dark curtain across after graduating high school and moving to Los Angeles in my late teens.

But then a family death opened a trapdoor and I tumbled down the rabbit hole. A hole created by what I call the “blow back” of death — a kind of astral opening where the shock of death exposes the various blinders and “buffers,” as Gurdjieff called them, that keep the deluded sense of immortality humming within oneself. Three months later I met my teachers and joined a Work school. Read more