Sun in Sagittarius - 2008
by Phil Reckard
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Sun in Sagittarius, November 21 - December 21, 2008 (All times EST)
First off, it must be known by now that hundreds of millions (if not a billion or more) souls around the world were praying for we American voters to do the right thing on November 4. Imagine how many deities were being prayed to on that day - the positive spirit of "yes we can" ringing true for people of faith all around the world regardless of nationality or creed. Even a casual "I hope Obama wins" conversation among atheists across any foreign dinner table would constitute a prayer.
Let's please acknowledge and honor that sense of global community - we're going to need it during the upcoming shifts.
The electric intensity of the first exact Saturn/Uranus opposition of November 4 is waning just a bit but this next month promises different kinds of busy joyrides with a very significant visual treat to put things into greater perspective. I'll be imploring everyone to go outside and watch the sunset on December 1 in order to get all of our hearts and minds back together on the same page. Even if we can't see it, the aware among us will know that it is taking place.
The first two components are already there with Venus closing in on Jupiter - those are the two bright objects in the early evening sky these days. The crescent Moon will be joining them in a (hopefully) cloudless sky on December 1 just above the Western horizon no matter where we live. Venus and Jupiter get together on average once a year but the Moon has always been elsewhere the past ten years. This time will be very different, just how different and rare this event will be and what it means for all of us are discussed later.
The Star card of the tarot is up for this month, acting much like a second (solar) wind for all of us. The significance and meaning of The Star will depend upon how open we as individuals are to Universal wisdom and inspiration that comes from divine hope and enthusiasm, unconditional love and self-less (collective) self-esteem. The Star card working for us also depends on any remaining fears that keep us stuck in old patterns that no longer work for us, fears that keep us from becoming stars - not Hollywood or rock-'n'-roll stars - but beacons of light in the ever-present yet continually breaking darkness. This same "star power" can be made real in the world by giving as much light, hope and divine optimism as we receive, with karmic bonus points awarded to us by sending out more light than we can ever possibly get in return.
Our theme song for this month can be "Everybody is a Star," written and performed by Sly and the Family Stone shortly after the conclusion of the previous Saturn/Uranus oppositions in the Sixties. This month won't necessarily be a modern-day "love-in" so much as it needs to be a global "fear-out." Wearing flowers in our hair will therefore be optional.
The Sun moves into Sagittarius November 21, already full of the necessary fearless crucible fire required to burn off the slag of outworn paradigms. Sagittarius reaches out to the intriguing unknown - out to the strange and wonderful things just slightly ahead of our current level of understanding - initially fearful yet determined to learn and appreciate what might be waiting for us right around the corner.
Also on November 21 is the final (of five) exact Jupiter/Saturn trines, concluding a twenty month-long process of knowing that our big-time needs and desires (Jupiter) will be met if we've been listening to our inner and outer Universal wisdom (Saturn) throughout the whole process. It's really quite that simple but it's also equally that profound. (A trine aspect is formed when two planets are separated by 120°, dividing the Universe into thirds. The number three is a sacred number in most of the world's spiritual traditions and a trine is also two-thirds of an equilateral triangle, a sacred geometry best represented by a pyramid.)
2007 - 2008 has been a banner couple of years for gaining true wisdom in regard to the much bigger picture, some of which goes back to the bigger historical and karmic picture of our past-lives, especially any past-lives we've shared 500 or even 2,000 years ago. It's too complex to get into here but those specific eras involve Saturn's oppositions to the outer planets in very similar ways that they've been repeating themselves the past eight years and the past forty-three years. This final exact Jupiter/Saturn trine also concludes a cycle which began in 1993 (remember peace and prosperity?), the last time Jupiter trined Saturn.
In short, Jupiter "wants" us to experience joy and prosperity by whatever he touches by transit or aspect, while the Good Professor Saturn "wants" us to take responsibility for putting that same joy and prosperity into proper context. Therefore these trines have ideally been teaching us how to go about becoming prosperous in ways that transcend mere money. For example, being spiritually and emotionally happier by living with less is perhaps the most pressing issue coming out of these trines, considering the inconvenient truth of global warming and all that necessary stuff about sustainability. Since 1993, the Good Professor Saturn's mystery school of advanced wisdom has taken us through a series of Saturn oppositions to Pluto (2001 - 2003), Neptune (2006 - 2007) and now Uranus for the next couple of years.
Even an amateur historian will know what lessons we as a species should have been learning since 1993 - financially abundant times should be tempered by knowing that greed is one of the seven deadly sins (and getting deadlier by the minute), wars must be avoided at all costs, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, religious extremism is a (literal) dead-end, etc. Saturn's mystery school now takes us into the very nature of change (Uranus) itself courtesy of the Jupiter/Saturn trines as an eighteen-year set of Saturnian bookends.
Back to the present, ruler of our intellect and imaginations Mercury moves into the crucible fire of Sagittarius November 23, right behind our life source the Sun helping us with the necessary thought processes to make sense of it all. We'll need clear and creative minds as Pluto moves into Capricorn for good (until 2024) on November 26 for the first time since the late 1700's. Don't worry, nothing too important happened back then with Pluto in Capricorn, just the French and American Revolutions as well as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Pluto has already been in Capricorn recently from January 2008 to this past June (due to Pluto's own retrograde cycle) offering a preview of what awaits us in the next sixteen years.
Yup, this Pluto in Capricorn ingress has been a part of our current global economic mess but it's certainly not the whole story. The rest of the story has yet to be written by enlightened leaders with Saturn's wisdom imprinted in the contracts of their karmic responsibilities - so long as we as individuals consistently remind them to stay on task - we've each got our own karmic responsibilities to deal with. Just remember the wisdom of "when the people lead, the leaders will follow."
What synchronistically follows Pluto into Capricorn is the New Moon of November 27 (at 6° Sagittarius) with the Sabian* imagery of "A game of cricket," perhaps the most convoluted team sport ever devised by humankind. In symbolic terms, no one outside of the former British Empire fully understands the rules of cricket, and no one person seems to know the rules for how to get us out of the global financial crisis we're in. In the end however, they are both very complicated games, with the emphasis on them simply being "games." Treating them both as games can really help in enjoying our current times - they're only games unless we have a personal stake in the outcome - and I seriously doubt that anyone reading this is a multi-billionaire.
This seems to play into the mindset of what the greatest "masters" throughout history have been trying to tell us - of the importance of becoming spectators, being in the world but not of the world, becoming as passers-by, learning how to become simultaneously compassionate yet dispassionate about human suffering, etc. The missing piece in this line of thought is what happens when injustices occur and we feel the karmic (Saturnian) responsibility to do something about it. For instance, I know that a lot of us over the past eight years have been wanting to stand up and scream "Never again!!!" to what the Cheney/Rove administration has been up to. Those voices have been originating from our combined past-lives - make no mistake about it..
Also coming to mind from the collective karmic past are great "community organizers" (a profession demonized by Republicans lately) like Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Christ et al - extraordinary souls who reclaimed their spiritual birthrights and stood tall to change the rules - their karmic energetics have returned to us these days as reminders of what is possible. Changing the rules has been a key constituent of Phase One of Saturn's mystery school into advanced wisdom by opposing the revolutionary Uranus (exact on November 4) for the first time since 1967. The election of Barack Obama as the "leader of the free world" being the main example of changing the rules but it certainly wasn't the end-all-to-be-all. Huge as it has been, it was only the beginning of the really heavy lifting. From here on, the necessary changes in the rules can be shaped and formed by enlightened individuals who welcome the nature of change - and not by those who would simply let the waves of change roll over them.
The New Moon of November 27 coincides with Uranus moving direct from its' retrograde cycle of the past six months, essentially ushering-in Phase Two of the Saturn/Uranus oppositions (exact on February 9, 2009 with Saturn retrograde) to teach us new lessons about the nature of change. That's a story for another forecast, knowing that the opportunities for positive social, spiritual and cultural change can start to be taken to the next level at the New Moon of November 27.
Five hours after this New Moon is exact, the Moon quickly moves over Mercury and Mars, a very rare event happening in such a short span of time. The Moon over Mercury symbolizes a spark of imagination in how to make an emotional attachment to the overriding sense of positive change still in effect from Phase One of the Saturn/Uranus oppositions. The Moon over Mars is less significant because Mars is on the other side of the Sun, his warrior-like energetic largely dissipated by that distance. If anything, more people can take advantage of whatever endeavors we may have had in mind (Mercury) to initiate action (Mars) in our own arena of the very complex game going on in the world.
This is the backdrop for the previously mentioned sunset of December 1, when the Moon, Venus and Jupiter will all meet in the same degree of the zodiac, one three-hundred-and-sixtieth piece of the whole sky. Very simply put, such a combustion represents our collective peace-loving sensibilities for what we value and for what truly matters (Venus), expanding (Jupiter) those potentials to the limit, and becoming emotionally (Moon) attached to making such potentials real. What makes this event rare is that the Moon, Venus and Jupiter meeting in the same degree (at 23° Capricorn this time) has only happened five times in all of the last century (4/23/98, 2/4/62, 1/31/38, 8/25/22 and 1/25/14, relatively times of peace and general prosperity. Our European and West African friends will get to see them all in the same degree at sunset while we in the Americas will unmistakably see the crescent Moon slightly ahead - to the left - of Venus and Jupiter, three or four degrees separated from exact.)
The Sabian image for 23° Capricorn speaks to every one of us who worked hard for a successful outcome of Phase One of the Saturn/Uranus oppositions on November 4 (the Obama victory); "A soldier receiving two awards for bravery in combat, the reward offered by society for the fulfillment of individual responsibility." Dane Rudhyar's commentary includes this thought; "What is implied here is a constant give-and-take between society and the individual person. Each one should be able to trust the other." The word "trust" here cannot be taken lightly - trust has been the Divine cornerstone for this karmically soft revolution.
Taken further, it is obvious that the combat is already over and it's now a momentary time to pat ourselves on the back. However, a person's responsibility to society doesn't end there - we still have a long way to go - the process of change is a give-and-take thing. In a lot of ways, our karmic responsibilities have only just begun - it's now time to roll up our sleeves and help to create the better future we intuitively know is the reason why we're all back here-and-now at this pivotal moment in history. Taking this point home (and to the bank), November 4 was only the first of five such phases with Phase Five of the Saturn/Uranus oppositions stretching well into 2010.
A cautionary word here, the sunset of December 1 is also where a lot of things can fall apart as well. Some soul-starved individuals might be seeing women, or the softer side of a male's fragile ego (Venus), blown too far out of proportion (Jupiter) from a debilitated place of emotional attachments (Moon) to their Capricornian (overly conservative) pains. Please be careful around such shaky people (mostly male) the first couple of weeks in December who can't possibly deal with the positive nature of peace, love, harmony and balance (Venus) expanding (Jupiter) their emotional (Moon) Capricornian (ruled by authoritarian Saturn, debilitated for them in opposition to Uranus) wounds. They're out there, just gunning for anyone who doesn't share their shame-based, fearful and terror-filled lives.
Allaying that sense of fearfulness a bit for we fearless, on December 2 Saturn moves into the 22nd degree of Virgo where the Good Professor will be staying until January 29, 2009, stationing retrograde on New Year's Eve to fulfill his tutorial role in Phase Two of his opposition to Uranus. The Sabian imagery for Saturn's almost two-month syllabus into true Universal wisdom is "A royal coat of arms enriched with precious stones, the certification of aristocratic status, at whatever level 'nobility' expresses itself in cultural eminence."
Hmmm... I wonder which individual has earned the rank of "nobility" lately, running a highly noble campaign against huge odds the past couple of years? Remember that our theme song for this month is "Everybody is a Star" - it's not only one person doing the heavy lifting here - every Star is being called upon. Saturn will be asking each and every one of us of good faith to invoke nobility during this ever-expanding process of change in the lead-up to 2012 and whatever awaits us at the end of the Mayan calendar. The word "fear" needs to be replaced by "noble" in our inner dictionaries.
Never a dull moment with this Sun in Sagittarius, the Moon moves on and passes over the collective North Node, Wounded Healer Chiron and Neptune - all on December 3. This highlights the "rapidly" approaching Saturn/Neptune inconjunction, an uncomfortable aspect between these two giants where the Good Professor Saturn tries to force us to come to "wisdom terms" with the nature of all things spiritual (Neptune). Throw Chiron into the mix and this necessary work takes on a need to heal any remaining wounded spirits. Add the collective North Node to this bouillabaisse and we see that such healing needs to be global in scope. If anyone still feels the need to do some serious soul-searching, this Saturn/Neptune inconjunct will be in effect off and on over the next couple of years while Saturn simultaneously continues to oppose Uranus off and on.
Oy, this soul-searching should have already taken place during the Saturn/Neptune oppositions of 2006 - 2007, but it's never too late to accept a fundamental change in our spiritual world-view. It would simply be much less painful to do it voluntarily rather than to have such issues forced upon us.
(It strikes me as painfully humorous that the Republican Party is going through their own version of "soul-searching" these days following their very significant defeats, as if the NeoCon agenda ever had a soul to begin with. I haven't heard much commentary about how the US election results of November 4 was a repudiation of the ugliness and divisiveness of the Evangelical Right Wing - I'm guessing that no one wants to touch that political third rail. Go ahead guys - pander to this increasingly marginalized minority and throw another socially conservative Neanderthal like Palin at us in 2012! In the meantime, just sit back and watch how a real government works.)
During this Moon on Chiron/North Node/Neptune melee, the Evening Star Venus and Jupiter share harmonious aspects trine Saturn and sextile Uranus, clearly showing us how to maneuver the Saturn/Uranus oppositions and the Saturn/Neptune inconjunction correctly. It's all about expanding (Jupiter) our love and peacemaking (Venus) efforts to make a wise and harmonious transition into the further upcoming changes (the future Saturn/Uranus oppositions) by being on the correct side of history (past Saturn/Uranus oppositions).
Helping us to make it all personal, the Sun, Mercury and Mars each take turns moving in and out of a T-square focus to the Saturn/Uranus opposition throughout December. In the meantime, the Moon moves over Uranus on December 6, reminding us of why change is not only necessary, but inevitable. Venus then moves into inventive Aquarius on December 7 where She'll be meeting up with the Chiron/North Node/Neptune mix a week after the Winter Solstice. This alone should be prompting a lot of people into making New Year's resolutions involving peaceful (Venus) spiritual (Neptune) healing (Chiron) in the world (North Node) a very real possibility. Such a theme will be echoed in the astrological event of mid 2009 as Jupiter meets up with Chiron and Neptune in the same degrees - a monumental time for expanding global spiritual healing - details of which will be offered in upcoming forecasts.
And then there's the Gemini Full Moon of December 12, a highly complex mix where alienation will be seeking a sense of community. The Sun and Mars focus of the T-square to the Saturn/Uranus opposition finds the Full Moon as the forth leg of a "Grand Cross," a potentially conflicted configuration that requires fuller attention be paid to the collective (community) well-being. The Sabian image for this Full Moon fits in with the seasonal changes implied in "Dancing couples at a harvest festival," the implications of which are largely lost in our modern culture.
Simply put, this picture places us within a framework in which the harvest is safely put into stores and a country village celebrates by coming together - farming spouses, fiancees and close friends - all dancing, fulfilled and happy with their year-long endeavors. They probably wouldn't be dancing if the harvest had failed - failure is not an option when you live so closely in-tune with the land.
This image can also stir up melancholy, a moment to consider what has been lost in the process, for instance the Spring, Summer and Autumn months have passed in anticipation of the inevitable changes that an oncoming Winter promises, knowing that a new growing season is only a few months away. It can also be seen in what we've lost as an urbanized society, cut off from the rhythms of the natural world and a more tightly knit community like those farmers live in.
What these dancing couples know (and what we have perhaps forgotten) is that changes like the seasons are inevitable - they know that there's nothing they can do to stop them so there's nothing left to do but prepare for the inevitable changes and honor when those same inevitable changes occur. A community harvest festival like this is therefore simplified into a tacit acknowledgment that "we're all in this harvest-thing together, the crops are in (good or poor), and come what may we're still going to dance to the music!"
Taken to a higher (more Universal) level, we can all hopefully say to everyone all over the world that "we're all in this thing called 'life' together" and maybe we should all find some ground for common consideration, cooperation and celebration? At the risk of Republican ridicule, what's so wrong about a communal "Kumbaya moment" like this? I mean, wasn't divisiveness the biggest loser on November 4?
One final bit about The Star card, there has been a lot of astrological debate about what the "Star of Bethlehem" was, and what prompted the Magi, the biblical "Three Wise Men," to follow it. Those three were learned men who came out of a University system at a time when astronomy and astrology were indistinguishable from each other. They saw something in the night sky that made them think that something super-significant was in store for all of humanity, maybe a Messianic figure was being born, a "Prince of Peace" perhaps.
The "Star of Bethlehem" (The Star card of the tarot for all of us) could have been either a comet, a supernova or a highly significant planetary conjunction like a Jupiter/Saturn get-together in a significant sign over a fixed (non-planetary) star adopted by a city such as Bethlehem as their "lucky star." A Jupiter/Saturn conjunction might have presaged a handing-over of power from father/King (Saturn) to son/Prince (Jupiter) or just perhaps - just maybe - it was a Jupiter/Venus/Moon conjunction much like the one we'll be seeing on December 1. This might have been an indication to them that the Prince (Jupiter) of Peace (Venus) was arriving in the world.
Is it really too much of a stretch to think of Obama as a "Prince of Peace"? He certainly cut a Messianic figure on the campaign trail, much to the chagrin of the Religious Right, no? This train of thought was ridden hard by an African-American preacher who recently remarked to his congregation "Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey (the symbol of Democrats) - not on an elephant (the symbol of Republicans)."
Well, we certainly don't need another martyr or crucifixion - it's already been done way too many times before - perhaps what we really need is a revised definition of what a "Prince of Peace" might be, such as any and all of us who have ever worked for unity, harmony, love, hope, understanding, cooperation, justice, and/or of course for peace. A vote for Obama would apply in this context - and let's assume that "Prince" is gender-neutral.
The next word to redefine would be "Christ" as not simply being an individual also named Jesus who walked the walk 2,000 years ago. "Christ" can (and should be) redefined as being a consciousness - a paradigm that wants us all to live in peace and harmony as spelled-out in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount - far removed from the hateful, fearful and divisive nature that many so-called adherents of Jesus currently espouse. Obama's message of hope and unity, and his style of Christianity is the spiritual breath of fresh air we've been waiting for, no?
"The kingdom of heaven is inside you" was the true message delivered almost two thousand years ago by one person know as "the Christ," but if we consider Christ to be a consciousness, we can immediately identify many other "masters" throughout history who invoked this same consciousness, and many who continue to do so. The "kingdom of heaven" being inside each of us relates to the hermetic Law of Correspondences which states: "as above, so below," the same "law" that rules astrology. Each of us has a peace-making Venus inside of us as surely as we all have an inner Prince/Princess like Jupiter. They'll be getting together on December 1 "up there" so that we can all bring them together "down here" within each of us - the Prince of Peace consciousness will have arrived.
Peace out, you Magi's,
(* The Sabian symbols are from Dane Rudhyar's "An Astrological Mandala." 1972.)
Phil can be reached at globalpsychics.com.
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