Sun in Virgo - 2008
by Phil Reckard
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Sun in Virgo, August 22 - September 22, 2008 (All times EDT)
The Harmonic Convergence of August 17, 1987 saw an unprecedented global meditation for world peace and aligning our individual and collective souls with a higher order. While world peace is still eluding us, the "New Age" movement found a lot of us embarking on and aligning ourselves with many different metaphysical and spiritual paths, all the while aiming for that higher order.
While many of us have been evolving along these lines, arriving at different levels of understanding at different places and in different times, the search for the true meaning of everything has continued since then. So what if a lot of those spiritual paths turned out to be illusionary dead-ends? When everything else is said and done, we're only spiritual beings having human experiences, with very real physical, emotional and cognitive limitations. Let's all give ourselves a break and a simultaneous pat on the back for trying to make it all real since 1987.
The good news is that we'll all be getting a bit of a cosmic do-over this month, so let's all please endeavor to find the right balance in order to make it real this time. If you weren't around twenty-one years ago, it wouldn't hurt to listen to some of us older folks who know all too well where those dead-ends are located.
Other than the significance of the Mayan calendar, the key astrological event of the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 was a rare unification of our inner planets, the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars in Leo - all within five degrees of each other. Mercury, Venus and Mars are about to replicate a lot of that same global energetic, with an important differentiation to be made as to which sign it occurred in back then, and where it will be happening this month.
A major reason why a lot of spiritual dead-ends ensued from 1987 can be found in Leo's shadow side of an over-inflated ego, which is always the biggest stumbling block along any and every spiritual path. For instance, as soon as our egos believe we've gotten everything figured out, our higher selves will always find a way of showing us that our "castles in the clouds" have some pretty shaky and untenable foundations.
September 2008 sees Mercury, Venus and Mars working together again within five degrees of each other, this time in balance-seeking Libra, soon again to replicate the desire to align our collective lives with something better and higher. Of primary importance is to know that the Goddess of love, harmony, cooperation, justice and (yes) balance Venus rules Libra the Cardinal Air sign. Her attributes are so woefully lacking in the world and this month we'll be asked to make it all real, in a more tangible way than in 1987. I mean, did anyone really understand any of the New Age promises of "raising our higher vibrational octaves to the seventh ray in the sixth level" (or whatever) - stuff that has no real practical applications for anything of true value? It is clearly time to evolve that New Age paradigm into that of the "Now Age," well before 2012 rolls around. Just try to avoid Libra's shadow side of indecisiveness - Mercury (our imaginations) in particular will be helpful in this regard.
Meanwhile, the Sun - our personal, collective and real-time life-source - fully underway in Virgo overtakes the Good Professor Saturn also on September 3, unveiling the true meaning of the Temperance card of the tarot as the syllabus for our monthly seminar. To translate, the first week of September is an overwhelming signal for us to put a lot of the disparate pieces of our lives together, perhaps in some of those life-lines that may have become unraveled during last month's eclipse cycle. September can be the perfect time to reestablish our individual and collective balancing acts, so hang in there, find the necessary time to meditate, and try to get a grip of everything and put it all together. The sense of urgency will be palpable for many vital reasons.
Temperance refers to the various aspects of our lives that might not seem to be related or connected with each other, while other bits and pieces might even seem diametrically opposed to each other. Whatever effects us is a part of us, no matter how enjoyable or unpleasant it might all seem. Imagine those African butterflies kicking up enough dust that will eventually become an Atlantic hurricane. If we know that everything is connected we'll be all set, but if we're still aligning ourselves with one extreme or another, we're basically screwed.
First and foremost it would be really helpful to know what planets you might have in your natal Libra because whatever is there will be spotlighted and either tested to the limits or graced with unparalleled blessings, depending on how much work you've put into your own personal growth and evolution. These are either areas of our lives where our greatest imbalances might expose themselves for what they truly are, or where our greatest balance-seeking beacons can become our guiding lights. The choices are truly ours and ours alone, depending on how far we're allowing our free-wills to take matters into our own hands.
This September 3 is the exact day when Mercury, Venus and Mars will all begin working together with each other again - all within five degrees of each other - for seventeen straight days in a row for the first time since very early in 1994. New Year's day 1994 was an event however that might very well be termed the "Harmonic Discordance" for reasons I'll explain in the PS at the end of this forecast. In other words, such a close union of our collective cognition (Mercury) with our innermost essential and vital polarities (Venus/Mars) has not occurred since 1994, and previous to then was the Harmonic Convergence of 1987. To take matters so much further, so much of the future depends on which side of the 1987/1994 divide we're banking on.
The Good Professor Saturn, together with our life source Sun on September 3, implores us to remember what was going on for us as individuals and in the world around New Year's Day 1994, during the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 and even the events of 9/11 for reasons I'll get to. While those three times may very well seem incongruous with each other, the Temperance card of this month is especially telling us all to put those specific pieces together, along with just about everything else. There's even a clue to be found in the number seven - the seven-year intervals significantly involved here.
On superficial levels, this five-degree mergence of Mercury, Venus and Mars in Libra for seventeen straight days might sound like a good time for everyone to think (Mercury) about what makes women (Venus) and men (Mars) get together in the first place, and romance may indeed be in the air for some of us but so too are the possibilities for relationship break-ups, depending on how in-tune or imbalanced we may be with our significant others.
However, because this is such a rare event happening for everyone, it may actually be much more about thinking (Mercury) about the very nature of war (Mars) and peace (Venus), and how we can all use our imaginations (Mercury) to reach the necessary compromises and mediations (balance/Libra) between these extremes. Regardless, we'll all be seeing examples of who would rather fight than make peace, hate versus love, lying versus telling the truth, and separation versus unity. A hint for the clueful: make love, not war.
A major suggestion for how to be working correctly with this second coming of the Harmonic Convergence can be found in which planet will be leading this essentially beneficial parade, as they'll each be taking their turns. It's a bit complex but well worth knowing about, in order to understand the whole process of everything going on. Don't worry too much, it's only all about why we're all here experiencing life in 2008
First, there's a somewhat afflicted Mars, debilitated through no fault of his own, already in Libra who banged a low gong by passing over Saturn in mid July, telling us it was high time to listen seriously to our inner teachers, whether we needed to take further lessons or not. Mercury overtook Venus on August 20 and enters Libra August 28 while Venus moves into Her ruling sign Libra on August 30. Again, Venus begins moving into conjunction with both Mercury and Mars, within five degrees of each other, on September 3, the "official" start of this second coming of this beneficial Harmonic Convergence Part Two.
Mercury then overtakes Mars on September 8, asking us to correctly identify the areas of our personal and collective selves where our anger points are, and to stop beating ourselves up about those touchy places - the essential starting point for finding balance in our personal lives - as well as in world affairs. Mercury, Venus and Mars are all within two degrees of each other from September 8 to 15, an ideal week to withdraw and go deeply, recuperate, and seek out those "here and now" moments where greater clarity for the healing process can be found.
Venus finally overtakes Mars at 16° Libra on September 11, the seventh anniversary of you-know-what. The Sabian* images for 16° Libra speak of the destruction of a man-made structure, symbolically reminiscent of the toppled World Trade Center, that hideous monument to the strictly human-created concept of dualism that absolutely needed to be removed from everyone's individual and collective skylines. I'll always mourn for the loss of the thousands who perished that day but the commentary however speaks of a very different structure (a destroyed boat landing) that necessarily requires reconstruction, and the distinctions to be made between the twin towers and a boat landing are enormous and absolutely critical.
A boat landing is a singular structure - our jumping-off point - that helps us connect with whatever lies beyond the horizon, across the wide-open expanse of the oceans ruled by spiritual Neptune. The commentary alludes to how it was a "psychotic" storm that destroyed the boat landing, eerily echoing the events of 9/11. Mercury, Venus and Mars, so compactly conjunct each other this September 11, is screaming out to us that we don't need to reconstruct the past, the failed paradigms of separation and dualism - it's all about using our imaginations (Mercury) to reunite our fractured selves and polarities (Venus/Mars) in order to rebuild a singular and unified structure, beginning with our individual selves first, in order to make it real into the world at large. A tall order for sure, but this is what our souls have signed us up for.
Mercury leading this parade is short-lived as it begins to slow down to stop and move retrograde on September 24. Mercury will then retrace the steps of this inner planetary confluence just in case we've missed anything. (See next month's "Sun in Libra" forecast for details.)
In the meantime, Venus pulls out of Her five degree connection with Mars on September 20 and from Mercury the next day, further evolving into Her role as the "evening star," a guiding light as the Goddess of peace, love, harmony, balance, justice and cooperation we'd be wise to adopt as our lucky star. There are no accidents while these developments are leading us right up to the Autumnal Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere) on September 22, the very day of seeking the symbolic balance between our polarities.
For further clues about Temperance amid everything else going on, the New Moon of August 30 (8° Virgo) shows us another example of the Good Professor Saturn's teaching methods, with Saturn moving less than four degrees away from this New Moon. The Sabian image for the New Moon, "A five-year-old child takes a first dancing lesson," shows a youngster finding for perhaps the first time a teacher of any sort other than their parents, in this case it's a teacher who will teach us how to dance.
No matter how seriously responsible (Saturn) it may seem to make this "Harmonic Convergence Part Two" work for us, the Sun, Moon and Saturn are in fact reminding us that life itself is a dance. An appropriate image can be seen in the first dance at a wedding reception, a symbolic statement where the bride and groom are telling the world that "we have chosen to perform the dance of life together," and then the rest of us join in to bless their statement. Some show-offs exhibit dancing skills that tell us they've taken a few lessons from a teacher of the dance, while the rest of us flounder around like drunken rhinos. It's still considered dancing, no matter if we're self-taught or skillfully educated.
The Pisces Full Moon of September 15 however takes us to the next level with a sense of things to come. Saturn had been involved with the New Moon of August 30 (learning the dance of life) while Prometheus (Uranus) is less than three degrees away from the Full Moon of September 15 at exact, opposing the Sun within those same three degrees. This is the basic region of the Virgo/Pisces polarity where much of the upcoming Saturn/Prometheus oppositions will be playing out, so this Full Moon can be considered a preview of the next three years - the playground of us futurists!
Briefly, the Sabian imageries speak of taming (balancing) our vital energies in order to achieve our life's destinies (Sun at 23° Virgo) and then to substantiate our lives - to make it all real - by producing concrete results (Moon at 23° Virgo). In other words, it's one thing to sit at home and meditate on all of the imbalances in the world, and it's quite another matter altogether to go out into the world and try to do something about them, providing impetus to evolve from the New Age to the Now Age. However, if we're busy checking off the list on the back-side of the Temperance card (use your imaginations to see it!) we'll be finding out what we can do to become agents for positive change. Again, we'll be going through a retrograde Mercury cycle when it's all over, picking up the pieces just in case we've missed anything.
And as for the number seven, it takes Prometheus seven years to move through each sign, hence the superstition of "seven-years of bad luck" and the very real "seven-year itch." Every seven years Prometheus moves on to form different aspects to the natal location of Prometheus in everyone's birth charts, creating new senses to change something about our lives every seven years. For instance, at the age of seven we're moving through our "age of accountability" where we first realize that our actions have consequences to them. At fourteen there's puberty to deal with and at twenty-one we're officially sanctioned as adults, and far too many kids at this age start making babies of their own. Please wait people! Twenty-eight is a far more adequate age for such responsibilities!
At thirty-five we're "supposed" to be fully underway in our chosen professions when the dreaded mid-life crises of age 40 - 42 comes around, when Prometheus opposes the location of our natal Prometheus. No matter how old we are the Temperance card of the tarot is here this month to put all of those various life-transitions together as well. They're all a part of us, so it might be handy to consider those ages as if they were our past-lives.
And basically - let's all admit it - we can all intuitively sense it in our bones that late 2008 is when we absolutely need to put it all together, so let's make the most of it!
(* The Sabian symbols are courtesy of Dane Rudhyar's "An Astrological Mandala," 1972)
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PS for fellow astro-geeks and political junkies: the "Harmonic Disturbance" of 1994, with a prediction for the upcoming US elections.
As mentioned above, the Harmonic Convergence of August 1987 saw the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars all working together within five degrees of each other, for an eight day stretch. There has only been one such confluence since then, from December 26, 1993 to January 7, 1994, a time when there was also a Cancer Full Moon opposing all four on December 28 - a modern-day Dark Age if there ever was one.
In the middle of that rare twelve-day event was the natal chart for 1994, a snapshot of the potentials for the then upcoming year. This chart saw the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars all within seven-to-eleven degrees Capricorn, with spiritual Neptune conjunct radical Uranus nearby at twenty-one and twenty-two degrees Capricorn respectively. Pluto in his rulership of fearful Scorpio (for the unaware, read: most Americans) was the focus of a T-square to an emotionally naive Saturn/Moon opposition, with the Saturn/Pluto square being exact to within three minutes of one degree. To make matters even more challenging, the Moon in Leo (in the waning influence of Her crabby Cancer Full Moon) was in a very tight inconjunct/quincunx to both Uranus and Neptune. Yikes!
This was of course the perfect storm for the ensuing Trojan horse "Contract With America," the ultra (Uranus) conservative (six planets in constrictive Saturn-ruled Capricorn) agenda of Newt Gingrich and the fundamentalist Religious Right (Uranus conjunct Neptune in Capricorn), fueled by the prolonged discomfort of the Saturn/Pluto square. Republicans took over both houses of Congress that November (during a Venus retrograde no less) led by the fear-mongering "entertainment" media of Rush Limbaugh and the soon to be unleashed Rupert Murdoch tabloid-style Faux News and Moonie-owned UPI and Washington Times.
How the Republicans have managed to do this (and continue to) was to successfully frame the public debate (Mercury) on issues that divide us and by redefining who we really are, particularly along the lines of the Venus/Mars polarity due in large part to the fact that Mars was arguably the "most comfortable" of the five planets in Capricorn at the time, not including the Sun. These developments, along with increasingly conservative corporate-owned news and entertainment industries, has eventually led us into two "Presidential" terms of the initial-who-must-not-be-named, and I challenge anyone to explain our current malaise(s) otherwise.
However, the upcoming inner planetary confluence will be happening in Venus-ruled Libra with Venus leading the parade at the end, further evolving into Her "evening star" phase in the process. And all of the outer planets are of course in different signs, presenting less Cardinal (intense) drama than the ones that were presenting themselves fourteen years ago. While Mercury, Venus and Mars will all be square (within 8°) Jupiter in Cardinal Capricorn at the beginning (September 3), all three will also be sextile Earth Mother Ceres within four degrees. All three inner planets will then evolve into loose trines with spiritually healing Neptune and Chiron in inventive Aquarius by the end of their confluence (September 20).
Also at the end of it, all three will take turns forming inconjuncts to Uranus. While this alone might cause some folks to mutter "we fear change," all three will also begin forming sextiles to Pluto - led by Venus - signaling a bit of a grim determination to plow through the collective fearfulness.
Back to the beginning of the inner planetary confluence, the Sun overtakes the Good Professor Saturn on September 3 at 12° Virgo with the Sabian* symbol showing us the culturally formalized uniting of the male/female polarity, which coincides quite synchronistically as Venus moves into her five degree conjunction with Mars (and Mercury) the same day. It's far less about an X rating and so much more about the symbology behind such a union of polarities, on many different levels.
Of more profound (?) significance, station-direct Jupiter is tightly trine Saturn in the feminine polarity Earth signs throughout, concluding with Saturn only a little more than six degrees away from exact opposition to Uranus, closing-in to be exact precisely on Election Day.
(Primary and caucus voters were sensing that a change was in the air this past November through February, as the Saturn/Uranus opposition was less than ten degrees from exact, before Saturn began his retrograde cycle. Saturn then stationed-direct, opposing Neptune within ten degrees from March to June, which has seen a faint bump for McCain, but it's an unsustainable "surge.")
Toward the end of this Libra inner planetary confluence, Mercury at 23° starts it's retrograde cycle wholly within Libra, moving out of it's retrograde shadow on Samhain (Halloween) when "the veil" is said to be at it's thinnest - Election Day less than a week away. The Sabian symbol for 23° Libra is "Chanticleer's (a rooster's) voice herald's sunrise, a creative and joyous response to life processes." A retrograde Mercury wholly in Libra should force rational minds to seek out areas in their lives that require Libra's keywords of harmony, cooperation, justice and balance - the necessary things that make us complete human beings - trumping the divisiveness of the past eight and fourteen years in the process.
Speaking of the number fourteen, due to Prometheus' seven-year stay in each sign, changeable stuff just happens for everyone depending on what aspects he makes in a natal chart. Specifically for the US every seven years sees shifts largely depending on what sector of each sign Prometheus is moving through. For instance, from 0° - 10° of each sign Prometheus will be making aspects with Venus, Ceres, Jupiter, Chiron and itself in the birth chart of the US, the so called Sibly chart of July 4, 1776. From 10° to 20° of each sign, Prometheus makes aspects to the US' Sun, Ascendant and Saturn, and from 20° - 30° of each sign our national natal Moon, Mercury, Mars, Neptune and Pluto.
Prometheus is currently on the cusp of the latter two groupings, hovering around 20° Pisces making a square to the US' Mars, trine Mercury, opposing Neptune and loosely sextile Pluto. The upcoming Saturn/Prometheus oppositions will be happening with Saturn all over the US' Neptune and Midheaven with Prometheus moving through an otherwise empty Pisces and Aries. So far, Prometheus opposing the US' Neptune has been showing us the dangers of religious (Neptune) extremism (Prometheus), moving the extremes into narrower splintered corners while more people are seeking the common ground of what unites us. It's been taking its time to get there but with the help of the recently concluded Saturn/Neptune oppositions - still reverberating in the collective subconscious - the movement will increase to marginalize the extremes where they truly belong.
Seven years ago Saturn was opposed Pluto on the US' natal Ascendant (Pluto) with Saturn on the US' Descendant, Prometheus and Mars, virtually guaranteeing changes of some sort, it just would have been nice to have had responsible and enlightened leadership in the aftermath of 9/11. Saturn on the US' Prometheus should have been about making responsible (Saturn) changes (Prometheus), particularly in foreign policy. And Saturn on the US' Mars should have been about the responsible (Saturn) usage of the military (Mars) but apparently not with this reckless mob in charge of the only weapons of mass destruction in sight.
Seven years previous to 2001 saw the Harmonic Disturbance outlined above with Prometheus and Neptune opposing the US' natal Sun and retrograde Mercury, squaring Saturn and moving in unison toward the US' Pluto - dangerous times for an unenlightened electorate.
1987 saw the Harmonic Convergence but sadly wasn't an election year. 1980 (a non Venus/Mars conjunction year) saw the election of Reagan and the beginning of a new breed of Republicans. Prometheus was moving into a square with the US' Moon, Pluto became the focus of a T-square involving the US' natal Pluto/Mercury opposition, and Neptune was opposing the US' Mars, another difficult period for rational thought.
Seven years previously, 1973 saw the beginning of the end for Nixon and the war in Vietnam. Prometheus had just concluded a transit of the US' Saturn and Juno while moving into a square with the US' Pluto, and trines to the Moon and Mars.
Seven years previous was 1967 and the most recent of the Saturn/Prometheus oppositions, with Prometheus on the US' Neptune, effectively 180° from where Prometheus is today.
Speaking of the US' Saturn and Juno (Goddess of Partnerships), the upcoming Mercury/Venus/Mars convergence will be happening all over them, promoting a responsible (Saturn) look at the partnerships we Americans share, with all three inner planets lighting up the US' natal Saturn/Prometheus trine. Feel free to call me an optimist!
Phil Reckard can be contacted at globalpsychics.com.
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