Articles by our astrologers

Sun in Leo

by Phil Reckard

Sun in Leo, July 22 - August 22, 2008 (All times EDT)

Fearlessness is the exalted nature of Leo the Lion, and it might just be true after all that the secret of life is to know no fear. "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself," said then US President Franklin D Roosevelt more than seventy years ago at the height of the Great Depression. Similar times calls for similar wisdom.

Stop! Imagine for a second that you fear nothing - not one single thing. That brief here-and-now moment just proved that fearlessness is possible to achieve at any time and in any place, where fear doesn't stand a chance to bother us.

However, Leo's shadow side can remind us of an incomplete mind due to an overactive ego. Brave is as brave does with a lion's rulership of the jungle, but it's also way too true that an individual's pride can go before the biblical proverb of destruction.

Please don't go there.

This Sun in Leo provides a powerful eclipse cycle (yay!) that we'd be wise to take advantage of. It's all about the nature of life itself and why we're all living here-and-now at this pivotal moment in human history. But first a word from our sponsors - our past-lives. All of them want us to pay especial attention to the energetics of this month.

In some of our past-lives, we actually believed that the Moon was being swallowed-up by a cosmic serpent at a Lunar eclipse, and that the Sun was being eaten by the Moon at a Solar eclipse. Snicker if you want to with even a basic knowledge of astrophysics, but for our predecessors an eclipse was a sure sign that death was imminent for someone nearby. Imagine that same level of fear, and then quickly let it go.

This same fear mechanism of the eclipse/death energetic (borne of ignorance) is subconsciously triggered even today when science and knowledge are arrogantly dismissed due to an unacknowledged pride (Leo's shadow side), or worse, when science and knowledge are intentionally left unlearned. The unholy marriage of ignorance and arrogance is arguably the root cause of every human-created misery throughout all of history, so isn't it finally time to let it all go?

The Death card of the tarot is turned over for this month and it certainly doesn't mean that anyone nearby needs to die. This eclipse cycle is much more about a symbolic passing away and burial, specifically for belief systems that contain elements of ignorance (fear) and/or arrogance (pride). Further stated, the energetics of this month are far more disturbingly relevant if either ignorance and/or arrogance serve as the foundation for anyone's belief system. Them puppies are ultimately doomed for a meltdown in the next few years.

In all actuality, the Death card in a tarot reading rarely if ever signifies a literal death for anyone, much in the same way an eclipse wouldn't. The Death card simply means that one or more situations are necessarily going away, or that something significant needs a final resolution. This exact point will be playing out astrologically this month, showing us the obsolete nature of fear-based paradigms. Our mantra this month can be "Don't get mad, get fearless."

August 1 is the total Solar eclipse, a New Moon on steroids at 10° Leo. The Sabian* imagery beautifully illustrates an awakening from the symbolic death of sleep; "Early morning dew sparkles as sunlight floods the fields." This is the Death card energetic in it's most exalted depiction, but only if we're being fully aware that the flip-side of death (symbolic or otherwise) is always rebirth, as surely as awakening from our sleep does and as certainly as the Sun always defeats the darkness of the night.

And the word "fields" is significant to note for two main reasons. First, agricultural fields are wide open spaces clear of trees and other obstructions and these fields are where almost everything we need for nourishment grows. Secondly, the plurality of "fields" indicates that there are a multitude of open spaces to choose from, and being "open" to the possibilities of new ways of thinking is where it all sparkles.

The potency laden fulfillment of this total Solar eclipse can be seen with the Sun and Moon at the Full Moon of August 16, "only" a partial Lunar eclipse. The Sabian image for the Sun as our life source (the anchor of the eclipse at 25° Leo) states a somewhat painful fact of life; "A large camel is seen crossing a vast and forbidding desert." This picture exemplifies the self-reliance and self-sufficiency we need in order to simply survive through life in the hopes that we'll eventually arrive at a destination of some sort, somewhere "out there." Life can sometimes (or often) seem like an arduous trek across barren expanses but keep in mind that this camel is large and in charge (fearless!) and especially remember that the meaning of life isn't about the destination - it's all about the journey.

As always with a Full Moon or Lunar eclipse, the counter-balancing answer or resolution is lying 180° degrees away. In this case the Moon at 25° Aquarius shows a somewhat perplexing image of "A butterfly with the right wing more perfectly formed." This poor little critter is destined to live a life of flying around in circles - getting nowhere fast - unless it learns to evolve it's left wing. While this might sound like a socially and politically progressive call to action (as it actually does), it more immediately speaks of the ensuing imbalance incurred when we don't fully grow and evolve the way our souls have impelled and compelled us to. This relates to the karmic law that we absolutely need to grow and evolve, otherwise the whole purpose of living our lives would have no meaning.

It would therefore behoove us to know what is needed in order to become more whole and more complete. The keywords of this Lunar eclipse "A transmutation of emotional energies" poignantly provides the necessary answers. "Transmutation" simply involves our willingness and abilities to evolve toward something better, higher - further - and "emotional energies" tells of the emotional attachments we've held near and dear, the ones that keep us from getting from here to there.

Driving these points home on August 16 is the eclipsed Moon less than two degrees away from a retrograde Neptune, and six degrees away from both Chiron and the collective (true) North Node. This is a clear indication that the emotional attachments that need to go away are of a spiritual (Neptune) nature, specifically wounded (Chiron) spiritual beliefs that need healing (Chiron again) - and on the global (North Node) level no less.

Of course, this necessary Universal spiritual healing can never take place without it first happening within each and everyone's heart, mind and soul, so this eclipse cycle can therefore either be a wonderful new beginning toward living a fearless life, or it can be a powerful and blessed affirmation.

While this eclipse cycle is powerfully significant, a more profound shift is well underway, the make or break shift that is preparing us for the next few years in the lead-up to 2012. Just a few days after the August 1 total Solar eclipse, Saturn reaches a point where he's becoming more closely opposed to Prometheus (Uranus) than he is to Neptune, and the energies behind this shift will only intensify as the weeks move on.

In other words, the weirdness of the past few years (during the Saturn/Neptune oppositions) will officially and inexorably switch to the weirdness of the next few years (during the Saturn/Prometheus oppositions).

However, if we're living the fearless life, Saturn's teaching methods can turn all of the upcoming weirdness into the most exhilarating, creative and inventive phase of our entire lives. While no one has a firm lock on what awaits us in 2012 at the end of the Mayan calendar, Saturn as the Good Professor is clearly admonishing us to be fearless about the upcoming changes.

And right on cue, Saturn moves out of his retrograde shadow at nine degrees Virgo, almost exactly midway between these two eclipses. Saturn stopped to move retrograde this past December, beginning a roughly eight month process of reviewing the areas of the collective psyche that have needed an extreme makeover, or perhaps more accurately, a makeover of the extremes.

The extremes are where ignorance and arrogance rule - two outmoded paradigms whose sole existence fights diligently every day to keep us living in fear. The Good Professor Saturn has provided many obvious examples of the nature of what those extremes are all about, so if we live in fear, the ignorance/arrogance paradigm wins and continues to own us.

Please don't go there.

As previously mentioned, Saturn has moved out of his retrograde shadow in the middle of this eclipse cycle. The Sabian imagery for 9° Virgo literally illustrates what Saturn has been trying to teach us these past eight months; "An expressionist painter at work." In other words, it's an image of an artist using their imagination and creativity to convey how he/she is looking at some thing or event through their emotional lens, instead of through a camera's lens. Although expressionist painting is considered old-hat these days, it was all the rage when the Sabian symbols were first imagined in 1925. Utilizing our imaginations (our emotional lenses) is super-critical for moving with, and working correctly with the energetics of the next few years.

It's significant to keep the time-frame of the 1920's in mind when thinking about the immediate future, simply because everything old is new again. Very few of us alive can remember the 1920's, but our past-lives certainly know. Similar memories and energetics are also being recycled regarding the Sixties and early Seventies for reasons that are much more accessible for us now. For instance, have you noticed how the music from the '60's and '70's are making a huge comeback?

In the Twenties (as well as the Sixties), every art-form in every medium was rebelling against the tired old-school approaches to their crafts. The "mirror" function of artistry was busy evolving into that of a "hammer." In the '20's, artists were rebelling against European monarchies and their imperialistic natures, old and tired paradigms that necessarily needed to go away. And fall apart they did during and after World War One, the "War to end all wars" as it was known at the time. If only...

Coincidentally (sure!), World War One ended just as Saturn was beginning his first of five exact oppositions with Prometheus, concluding with Saturn in Virgo and Prometheus in Pisces, exactly where they both are today, and where they will be exactly opposing each other again in November for their first of five exact oppositions. The last of the upcoming five Saturn/Prometheus oppositions will be reverberating well into 2012 - at the end of the Mayan calendar - and whatever that means for all of humanity.

(A correction from last month's forecast. Oy, I should have stated that the last time a Saturn/Prometheus opposition started off in the Virgo [Saturn] Pisces [Prometheus] axis was indeed in 1418 - 1420, at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, but it wasn't the last time Saturn and Prometheus lit up the Virgo/Pisces axis. The last three of five exact Saturn/Prometheus oppositions in the Virgo/Pisces axis happened in early 1920, but those oppositions started off in the Leo [Saturn] Aquarius [Prometheus] axis. A big "whoops" goes out to the purists!)

Regardless, the differences between now and the 20's (and the 60's for that matter) are somewhat meaningless, yet they are all quite the same. The Saturn/Prometheus oppositions of the Twenties "only" helped to launch the League of Nations, the Roaring Twenties, the birth of jazz, and the radio as a massive sea change in how mass communication was being utilized and manipulated.

Anyone alive and participatory during the Sixties can fully appreciate how inventive and revolutionary those days were, yet those times of forty-plus years ago are very different from now and our immediate future because Saturn was also opposing both Prometheus and Pluto together in Virgo back then, producing a nasty side-effect of the self-destructive element.

Meanwhile, Saturn was in spacy Pisces in the mid 60's, perhaps unsure of what his like, "professorial gig" was all about, like man, he just wasn't sure, dig? Like, do your own thing and hope for the best, okay?

At least the idea and nature of karma was reintroduced to the Western world, due in large part to the Beatle's journey to India, a journey financed largely by us, their fans. This particular aspect of the nature and laws of karma shouldn't be underestimated or ignored. We made it happen, through the Liverpudlian mop-tops in their own evolution, and into the maze of our own evolution. I dare anyone to explain it differently.

Everything old is new again though, so we don't necessarily need to reinvent anything, only to transmute the emotional energies of stuff that no longer works for us - the old ways that have no relevance to the here and now.

Back to the Lunar eclipse of August 16. Of interest for the future-minded among us is the fact that spiritual healing will be the signature for mid 2009 when Chiron and Neptune finally meet in the same two degrees of radical Aquarius. Ramping up the need for spiritual healing will be Jupiter joining Neptune and Chiron in these same two degrees for much of May through to July!

For a past clue about what this might mean for us, I looked at each (25?) Chiron/Neptune conjunctions in the last 2,000 years to see if Jupiter had joined them in the same degree. If my research is correct, I only found three times that were even close, the most recent of which was the second and third week of September 1945, with Jupiter and Neptune at six degrees Libra, and the as yet undiscovered Chiron in eight degrees Libra.

This is fascinating because Chiron and Neptune were both in six degrees Libra on the very day (September 2) that Japan surrendered to the world, effectively ending World War Two (Jupiter was at 2° Libra). Talk about spiritual healing! The Sabian symbol for 6° Libra is "A man watches his ideals taking a concrete form before his inner vision" with the keynote "The need to visualize clearly one's dreams or ideals in order to make them truly effectual."

Certainly everyone involved in World War Two was visualizing the end of it, and there on the deck of the battleship Missouri was where it all became concrete. And then everyone involved began visualizing what to do next.

In their wisdom, General MacArthur and others began convincing US foreign policy makers to allow Japan to retain their Emperor, the spiritual head of the defeated nation. Also around that time, the Marshall Plan was being formulated to help rebuild Europe, and the United Nations was being formed. Surely these massively positive developments were made for reasons beyond the necessary spiritual healing but that was the overriding fuel for beginning the healing process, thanks in large (Jupiter) part to Neptune and Chiron's unity/conjunction.

(Interestingly in September 1945, this Chiron/Neptune conjunction at six degrees Libra [and later Jupiter/Neptune] was the focus of a T-square to the 6° Cancer/Capricorn Nodes, allowing for clarity as to what needed to happen, and in somehow forcing the issue for the benefit of everyone. Oy, remember when the US had enlightened leadership?)

Prior to 1945, the previous Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune close-call came in 1599 and 1600, which remarkably coincides with Queen Elizabeth's reign in Renaissance England. All three planets were within ten degrees of each other in (surprise!) royal Leo.

Prior to 1600, another Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune confluence occurred in 1255 within about four degrees of each other in Cancer. While I can't link this one to any specific event or spiritually healing zeitgeist (perhaps someone out there can), it might be significant to consider the lack of interest in pursuing the Crusade mentality. Perhaps President Obama will end our current Crusade, or will McCain get his way with his version of the next Hundred Year War?

In trying to figure out what these past events hold for our immediate future, it would help to point out that Aquarius is an Air sign, the element that rules our intellect and imaginations. Further, it is significant that the planetary agent of Prometheus rules inventive Aquarius where the confluence will be taking place.

And then there are the Sabian images for the two degrees they'll all meet up in, first at 27° Aquarius the last two weeks of May next year. All three will then station retrograde and meet up again in 26° Aquarius for portions of June and July. The Sabian image for 27° is "An ancient pottery bowl filled with fresh violets." The words "ancient" and "fresh" speaks volumes about refreshing ancient memories, perhaps past-life memories of when we humans lived in tune with the natural world? Many among us have already investigated ancient spiritual paths, the ones our distant ancestors honored before things turned so horribly wrong. Rudhyar even hints at the Divine Feminine in his commentary for this image. No doubt.

The Sabian symbol for 26° Aquarius may seem quaint and old-fashioned but remember that this astrological system was first conceived in 1925; "A garage man testing a battery with a hydrometer." Cars had only been around for about twenty years at that time, so this was pretty much their definition of high tech. The keynote however applies to any time "Skill in applying knowledge of natural laws to the solution of everyday problems resulting from life in our technological society."

Could those "everyday problems" be transferable to our current malaise in over-reliance of fossil fuels for instance?

Putting these two images together, along with the energetics of the three planets involved, might go something like this; Global spiritual healing can be achieved by channeling our ancient past-lives, our distant ancestors who honored and revered the natural world as their best teachers. Their combined Magick, along with the minds of the greatest inventors, teachers and healers from the past and present can help co-create a new spiritual paradigm that can pave the way for 100% renewable energy for everyone in the world. The Earth will then be able to heal itself physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally.

Just imagine - fearlessly.

A huge thanks goes out to George Carlin for his brilliant and incite-full insights. Your life's work was a job well done, dude. Many thanks again.

(*The Sabian symbols are from Dane Rudhyar's "An Astrological Mandala," 1972.)

Phil can be reached at globalpsychics.com.