The Cosmic Story: Leo SuperMoon Lunar Eclipse 2018

The Cosmic Story: Leo SuperMoon Lunar Eclipse 2018

Imbolc 2018: Brigid’s Fire of Creative Vision is Love

Total Lunar Eclipse

This week is still all about change. On Wednesday morning there’s a SuperMoon Lunar Eclipse and then on Friday, we turn the Wheel of the Year once more to see that we’ve arrived at Imbolc – the festival of returning light. Or as we commemorate it, Groundhog Day.

While the lunar eclipse comes first in time, let’s jump ahead to Imbolc for a minute to set the tone of this season’s eclipses, because there is also a solar eclipse on February 15^th.

Imbolc: St. Brighid’s Day: Candlemas

The second gateway of the Wheel of the Year is called Imbolc in the Celtic tradition. It means 'ewe's milk' because this is the time when spring lambs are born and the mother ewe's milk comes in. The lamb's birth promises returning life and light to the world, despite the snow and frost that still linger in the land. It is also called Candlemas by Christians, who get their candles blessed for the coming year. 

Helena Nelson Reed

 

Imbolc or St. Brighid’s Day is an important holiday because its message is "hold on, there is hope...the bitter days of winter are near their end." It marks the midway point between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, a time when hope begins to stir with a longing for the return of spring. It is one of the 4 Celtic Fire Festivals on the cross-quarter holidays between the Solstices and Equinoxes.

The first signs of spring's approach can be seen, if only we look closely. Our Groundhog Day come from the Scottish celebration of this tradition for Candlemas. The tradition is if any animal comes out from their underground hibernation on this day and sees his shadow, there will be 6 more weeks of winter—they even call it the second winter. And you’ll notice the days getting longer more quickly now as the Sun starts to rise up from the southern hemisphere, getting closer to the equator.

St. Brighid was a Celtic Sun Goddess and while the Catholic Church made her a saint because the Irish wouldn’t give her up, she is still honored and remembered as a goddess. It is said that she has two sisters who are also named Brighid. Together, they were called the 'Three Mothers', 'Three Sisters', or simply the Goddess Brighid.

Three Brighids ~ Patricia Banker

Brighid, the 'Fire of Inspiration', is the muse of poetry, song, history and the protector of all cultural learning.

Brighid, the 'Fire of the Hearth', is the goddess of fertility, family, childbirth and healing.

Brighid, the '"Fire of the Forge', is like the Greek goddess Athena, a patroness of the crafts (especially weaving, embroidery, and metalsmithing), and a goddess who was concerned with justice and law and order.

We honor Brighid as the goddess of poetry, healing waters and smithcraft. She is a goddess of Fire and Water. As Rumi says, “Love is the Water of Life. And a Lover is a Soul of Fire. The Universe turns differently when Fire Loves Water.” Brighid brings this different perspective to her creativity. We have to love to truly create.

Creativity and vision are the primary gifts of this season. Like the groundhog or snake, it’s time to come out of our hibernation and look to the future – what do we want to manifest this year. We journey into the imagination to see what our souls are ready to manifest. We bring back that vision and start to work it, like a smith or a poet, seeing where we need to heal ourselves, to acknowledge our gifts so we can get on with the life that’s coming as spring and summer approach. This is a time of preparation, a time to plant seeds that will sprout and grow in the coming months and years.

It’s important for women to discover these ancient powers that the Divine Feminine energizes. As we pull away from our identification with all things masculine, we get to reclaim our ancient feminine powers and use them to better our personal as well as our collective lives. 

Emily Balivet ~ Brigit of the Fires

 

This is the time of the return of the Goddess, for it is the divine Feminine spirit which births a new age. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing around the world. The second Women’s March, along with Oprah’s Golden Globe speech, along with all the other ‘metoo#’ movements, are a sign of the time – women are on the rise and we will change the world for the better.

So this Brighid’s Day, light a candle and visualize what you intend to create this coming year. Or even better, gather your community and create a ritual that will energize the seeds you’re planting for this year and the coming 3 years while Saturn travels through Capricorn.

Leo Lunar Eclipse, January 31, 2018

This lunar eclipse is also a superMoon, meaning that the Moon is at its closest orbit to Earth, so it appears bigger. The news is calling it a ‘blue moon’ because it’s the 2^nd Full Moon in January (there won’t even be a full Moon in February this year). But as I’ve mentioned before, a true ‘blue Moon’ has nothing to do with our calendar but when there are two full Moons in an astrological sign, since it shifts the lunar cycle. There are also other ways to describe ‘blue moons’.

This Leo/Aquarius Lunar Eclipse occurs on January 31, 2018 at 5:27am PST/ 8:27am EST/1:27pm GMT. It will be visible in the western US through through the Pacific, Asia, India, eastern Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe. 

 

The Sabian Symbol for the Moon at 12* Leo is: A dragon circling a fantastic tree from which a singe golden apple is hanging. I love this image! Dragons are protectors of wisdom and treasures – our inner skills and gifts. Fantastic trees make life amazing, since they are the axis between worlds. The golden apple is Love – and that’s what Aphrodite/Venus, as she starts her new cycle, wants to nourish us with. Let’s all eat the apple! A new Garden of Eden story, in which eating the golden apple might just get us back to the Garden. Let us taste divine knowledge and live. This symbol speaks to the incarnation of spirit in flesh. Like the solar eclipse symbol of a mermaid taking on human form. This is how we do it.

The Moon comes first because this is what we have to integrate. When we let go of our shadow Leo pride, our insecurities, our inability to let ourselves love, we open ourselves to the power to co-create our life. We get the golden apple and fly high with the dragons.

The Sabian Symbol for the Sun at 12* Aquarius is: Life’s broad stairway, each landing a new grade of life. This symbol speaks to us of the many levels we move through as we grow up and grow old, as we become conscious and then wise. It speaks of leadership, of bringing your talents into the world, of seeing the big picture. I also see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing up and down this stairway to heaven, showing us how it’s done. Stay light on your feet, feel the rhythm and move!

While in ancient times, many cultures worshipped the Sun as feminine (Brighid, Sekhmet, etc.) and the Moon as masculine (Sin, the Man in the Moon) – today we honor the Sun as the divine masculine and the Moon as the divine feminine. An eclipse is a meeting of these two energies with the Earth as mediator. The Sun and Moon are furthest apart, and the Earth travels on their plane to show them how they affect us here on Earth. The Earth is the child of these two lights, and their blessings flow more easily during eclipses.

Usually eclipses accelerate things, helping us release old shadows and unconscious wounds and patterns that not longer serve us at the lunar eclipses and helping us birth new patterns at the solar eclipses.

These next two eclipses resonate with the eclipses from last August, 2017 when there was a partial lunar eclipse at 15*Aquarius/Leo and a total solar eclipse at 29* Leo. Thursday’s total lunar eclipse at 12* Leo/Aquarius is about finishing up old business that we didn’t release last August. On February 15^th, there is a partial solar eclipse at 28* Aquarius that is opposite the total solar eclipse of August 21^st, grounding in the new seeds we planted then, showing us our next steps.

Those eclipses helped us open to love in all its forms. Or shut off our hearts to those who need love and help. It looks like our leaders haven’t learned this lesson, but those of us in the Resistance are doing so. We are learning to face our own shadows, our sexism and racism and stuck beliefs and we are wrestling them into the Light.

Think back to what you felt and desired last August, and see if you are beginning to shift into a new heart/mindset that is based in your heart rather than in collective consciousness. It’s time to come back to our original blessings of life and love.

Both eclipse seasons invite us to discover our own unique heart skills which we can contribute to our collective culture. Love is supposed to lead the way for all of us. Women are especially called to add our voices and imaginations to help heal our cultural wounds, while men are called to defend what is true, beautiful and good in the world.

Our world is so out of balance that it has to descend into chaos to get remade. All honorable people want to re-make the world with a more balanced, life-giving energy, which gives equal value to the feminine gifts of imagination, emotional intelligence and compassion as well as the masculine gifts of clarity, reason and justice. We can remake our world in ways that will honor life rather than focus on death – as opposed to western capitalism, Judaic, Christian and Islamic fundamentalism and corporate globalism, which seem intent on death and domination.

Watching politics play out, watching the hidden hatreds, religious hypocrisy and greed finally being unmasked is a harsh way to learn, but it’s necessary. Americans and the West have bullied the rest of the world over the years rather then stepping up in true leadership. My image of entitled America comes from the Disney movie, Pinocchio. It’s the scene where Pinocchio goes with the bully boys to pleasure island – a playground where they can have anything they want. Unfortunately, this turns them into asses. And that’s what our culture is doing to us. We need to escape and dive into the belly of the whale to rediscover our freedom.

The Moon and Ceres join with the North Node in Leo, which is a collective directive to each of us to express our unique creativity. The Moon and Ceres, the Roman fertility and mother goddess, are both energies that help us access our unconscious (Moon) feelings of being un-loved (Ceres). We all deserve to be loved just for ourselves and so many of us weren’t loved in that way. Ceres asks us to let her mother us, to let ourselves be and feel loved. The Moon mother shows us our old beliefs about our worthiness and helps us release those old ‘sins’. Like Matthew Fox says, it’s time to consider our original blessings instead of our ‘original sins’.

Who would we have become if we were allowed to follow our soul’s longings in life? Would we even have an economy which wants to be our center rather than being just a tool for living? Who would we be if we knew we all came into this world to create it together? Who would we be if we all felt, down in our bones, that we are worthy of love? Not because we have money or are smart or good at our jobs, but just because we are alive?

If we can think these kinds of thoughts, and open our hearts to our original blessings and hopes, what would we do? Who would we be? What would our world look like?

The South Node in Aquarius is our collective directive to stop being part of a mob mentality, stuck in unreasonable rationality and start seeing that it is our heart’s hope that we must contribute to our collective consciousness. We have to stop protecting our hearts – there’s nothing ever wrong with loving. We have to release old ideals about love and community and goals that separate us. We are all in this together, aren’t we?

The Sun, Venus and Juno, the goddess of relationships, are conjunct the South Node in Aquarius. It’s time to renew our ideals about Venus’ love – that there are no boundaries to love. We have to renew our ideals about Juno’s partnerships – all of us are equal and deserve to be heard, respected and loved. We have to reset our Sun’s identities to realise we are all interconnected rather than individuals who have to fight to survive. We are all in this together! It’s time to Evolve!

Jupiter in Scorpio squares the Nodes, accelerating our ability to face our shadows and our fears of rejection, abandonment and loneliness.

This eclipse can expose our distortions – our personal ‘fake news’ – so we have to work at accessing our imaginations (Neptune in Pisces) consciously and stop using it in negative ways, such as worry, which is the negative use of the imagination.

Let’s use these energies to start a new story based in Love. Imagine!

Walk with the Earth, dance with the Sun, Moon and Stars,

Cathy

(The Revised Sabian Symbols, Steven D. Eardley)

WELCOMING LOVE
Gather together my loves,
at Hestia’s Hearth where I tend to the Soul Fire, the Inner Sun of my Radiant Self.

I am here now.

This intention, attention and action,
spirals, illuminates and activates,
ALL THAT IS around me
in this reciprocal dance of call and response.

Back to the basics of Sacred Practices,
tuning into the celestial-terrestrial rhythms,
surrendering into what is asking to emerge
through me, this perfectly imperfect container
of universes of possibilities.

I am co-creating from my center
and playing with the shifting coastline of the known and unknown.

I am improvising and liberating myself from
the trances of survival-conditioned responses
for the revival of my spirit.

As storyteller and storymaker,
as the shaper and the shaped,
my Response-ability is to nurture
the soil of my stories with the waters
of Love, Compassion, Wonder and Delight.

Everything breathes together.
Everything is moving and changing.
I am holding sacred space.
I am being held in sacred hands.
I behold circles, spirals and fractals,
as I walk in faith, trust and joy,
hand in hand with the Great Mystery.

I bless the space between us,
healing any hurts, bridging any separation.
Welcoming Love,
let us proclaim our rebirth
into Love, from Love, as Love.

We are here now.

Tee Ming Ooi

The Cosmic Story: Capricorn New Moon 2018

The Cosmic Story: Capricorn New Moon: Time to Build Our Vision.

Capricorn and Saturn

Capricorn’s symbol is the Sea-Goat, a magical being that doesn’t often fit with our modern understanding of Capricorn. We talk about Capricorn and it’s ruling planet, Saturn, in terms of discipline, hard work, authority, responsibility; with the patriarchal structure of hierarchy and its fear-inducing dominator mindset. Saturn rules time and like Father Time, we often see him as a harsh taskmaster. And yet, there’s much more to Capricorn and Saturn than we give them credit for.

Capricorn’s energy starts at the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. It marks the death of the old year. But it also cradles the re-birth of the Light. So like Janus, the two-headed god of January, who looks backwards and forwards, Capricorn is a time to let go of the old and embrace the new.

Now about that Sea-Goat. The constellation Capricornus was represented as a hybrid of a goat and a fish about 6,000 years ago. It represented the ancient Sumerian god Enki, the god of water, intelligence, knowledge, crafts, magic, mischief and creation, who sent help to awaken the goddess Inanna from her death in Erishkegil’s Underworld. He was the keeper of divine powers (the ME, the gifts of civilization), which he was later tricked into giving to Inanna.

So here we have two different energies combined in this mythical being. The fish tail symbolizes our watery depths, where we feel passion, open to our spirituality and connect to our soul. The goat symbolizes our intelligence, determination and ambition because goats are steady and can climb to the highest mountains – step by step seeking higher ground. So we can see how this symbol shows us the power and depth of Capricorn: when we ground ourselves in our soul’s purpose, we can fulfill our highest aspirations. To say it another way, it’s when we truly believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience that we prosper, not only for ourselves but for the world.

Another way we can approach Capricorn is to see that it is the sign of our dharma, when we live in accord with the cosmic laws of life, and our karma, the consequences of our choices and actions.

And as Shamanic astrologer Daniel Giamario sees it, Capricorn is the sign of the Council of Grandmothers. This beautiful image gives Capricorn another image of wisdom, the feminine wisdom of how to live in harmony with the Earth and each other. 

Council of 13 Grandmothers 

With Saturn at home in Capricorn, it’s time to get real. Saturn entered Capricorn on December 19^th for the first time in 30 years (1988). The best way to work with Saturn here is to leave the past behind because we are being given a new birth. With Saturn in Capricorn, we can begin to manifest the vision we’ve been working on while he was transiting through Sagittarius (2015-17), the sign of belief, truth and cosmic laws. Saturn is about authority, and once we take back our own authority, we become the authors of our own story.

Saturn rules time, so take it slow. That’s hard to do in our crazy, social media obsessed society. Turn off the computer and tune out for awhile. Saturn loves to hermitize. Take time to decide what you really want and believe in that possibility. And then work on it every day.

Then these next few years can be a very fertile time if you hold to your vision and are willing to do the work. Both Saturn and Capricorn are master builders of form and structure. And now that Pluto has taken his wrecking ball to those Capricorn institutions of government and finance, there is room to grow a new society, a new civilization based on feminine principles of unity, peace and prosperity that have nothing to do with our present capitalistic economy.

Life should be at the center of our society with the economy, education, the Arts and Sciences as tools for a better life. 

Father Time

Saturn in Capricorn is all about slow and steady growth. We have to begin to live from the inside out, rather than just on the surface with lots of repressed energies bubbling away within us. It’s time to face our fears (the negative energy of Saturn). This year is a good time to root out those fears while Jupiter transits through Scorpio. Looking your Shadows in the eye can transform them into new energy that you can use for creativity and growth.

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. (Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14)

With our collective Shadows running amok, we each need to face our personal Shadows and bring them into the Light. With Jupiter in Scorpio helping us dive deep, we need to see where we are afraid, where we fall back into old unconscious reactions and projections, and let them go. Once we understand how our Shadows keep us from our true Self, we can use our self-awareness to break free from these old patterns (Karma) and actually choose our life. We have been given free will, but it truly comes into play when we break free of our unconscious compulsions and choose our heart’s hope.

What’s your new dream? How do you get there?

Capricorn New Moon

With 6 planets in Capricorn, the cosmos is telling us to get our goat on. Are you preparing diligently for your next move? With Saturn in Capricorn for the next 3 years, we’ll have time to prepare ourselves. Stay focused, disciplined and become the author(ity) of your own life.

The Capricorn New Moon occurs on January 16^th - 17^th, 2018 at 6:17pm PST/ 9:17pm EST/ 2:17am GMT.

The Sabian symbol for this New Moon at 27* Capricorn is: Pilgrims climbing the steep steps leading to a mountain shrine. This symbol indicates that if we plant this New Moon seed with self-awareness, we can develop the mystical consciousness that can co-create reality. Like the Capricorn goat, we have to climb slowly and steadily, with determination and discipline.

Both Venus and Pluto bracket this New Moon. We have to evolve our understanding of the Sacred Feminine and Her Wisdom, and so this energy is part of the New Moon. That means we have to begin to listen to her gifts of Imagination, Emotional Intelligence and Vision.

The Sabian symbol for Pluto at 20* Capricorn is: A hidden choir is singing during a religious service. This image calls on us to participate in a community that is aligned with the music of the spheres. When we band together in this state of group harmony (which is sorely needed now), we are filled with the spirit of Life. And we see this happening. Groups of like-minded people are gathering on the internet and in our communities. We are stronger when we work with a group. Pluto want us to evolve out of the patriarchal belief of individualism, which has become selfishness, into a group of individuals that can help each other grow.

The Sabian symbol for Venus at 29* Capricorn is: A woman reading tea leaves. For too long, patriarchy has rejected the imaginative, intuitive wisdom of opening ourselves to Nature and the Anima Mundi. We have to reclaim our ability to see the hidden meaning in life. This is the power of the new Feminine.

For a moment, let’s return to the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. The Sabian symbol for the eclipse degree, 29* Leo, is: A mermaid emerges from the ocean waves ready for rebirth in human form.

Something new is emerging in our collective consciousness. It is a feminine vision of life. And we see this idea repeated by the conjunction of Venus, Sun and Pluto on January 8^th – 9^th. 

 Woman Clothed with the Sun

The New Feminine, birthed back in 1969, when we all first saw Earth from the surface of the Moon, has been in exile since the late 80’s – the last time Saturn was in Capricorn. Publishers stopped publishing books on the Goddess, we had reactions to the feminist movement and it seems the Goddess was exiled to the desert for awhile. But there She developed her Eagle wings and now She’s ready to fly.

And this time, She is here to stay. It’s synchronistic that Oprah gave her marvelous speech at the Golden Globes just before this conjunction. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.

This New Feminine spirit is different from the women’s movement back in the 60s. Back then, women wanted outer e quality with men, which we never really achieved. We took on the masculine attitudes of rationality, hierarchy, competition, action and individualism. Now women are banding together to express our own power, different from men’s power. But equal to it. It’s time we reclaimed the feminine powers of emotional intelligence (not emotional overwhelm like Trump), intuition, introversion, compassion, vision, connection and wisdom. Which our intellect and individuality will support and nurture.

This Venus superior conjunction (out beyond the Sun) occurred with Pluto, taking this new evolutionary phase of the Sacred Feminine into a bigger arena. Adam Gainburg, in his book The Light of Venus, calls this phase of the Venus cycle before she emerges as the Evening Star of wisdom, the transmutation phase of the Venus cycle, when ‘The Queen of Heaven dissolved into the very fabric of the kosmos and becomes re-conceived as the forthcoming Queen of Heaven & Earth.’ It is a time of ‘forging a foundation of open-hearted power and contributing it to a transformed society’. Adam says the ‘transmutation is essentially a feminine mode of transformation’, one that begins inside, forcing us to serve who we are becoming rather than who we’ve been.

Having been born in this phase of Venus, I can say that it is a path of great interior growth and consciousness, often accompanied by great loss and loneliness, but which results in a new paradigm of feminine power. It’s gift to me was my book, Wisdom’s Daughters: How Women Can Change the World.

This Capricorn New Moon, seeded in the dark and cold of winter, is cradled in the watery arms of Jupiter and Mars in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces. Jupiter in Scorpio can accelerate the recognition, acceptance and integration of our Shadows. Mars supports the New Feminine being birthed, just as men as supporting this new women's movement.  Neptune in Pisces opens us to the collective unconscious, the realm of the Anima Mundi – The World Soul. It is here that we connect to the creative imagination or the quantum field. Out of these cosmic waters,we can water this New Moon seed and create our vision, if our imagination is strong enough and our love and passion powerful enough.

All new life needs a spark of divine fire to quicken its life and the seeds of this powerful Capricorn New Moon get that from its square to Uranus in Aries, re-animating the ongoing Uranus in Aries/Pluto in Capricorn waxing square of 2012-2015. So stay open to unexpected insights and happenings. Hopefully, we’ve connected to our archetypal purpose during Uranus’ transit of Aries, especially since Uranus moves into Taurus this May for a few months until it decides to stay there in 2019.

Look at your dream and see what might be blocking you from co-creating it. If it’s fear, set yourself free of it. Otherwise, Uranus will blow it up. Follow your heart’s hope. Release what keeps you from the bigger vision.

We need to know who we are (Aries) before we can build what we came here to build (Taurus). Remember The Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come.

The energies of 2018 are aligned with the Divine Feminine. When Uranus goes into Taurus in late May, all the outer planets will be in Earth and Water signs. (Uranus in Taurus, Jupiter in Scorpio, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn and Neptune in Pisces). The cosmos is ready to help us. The world is ready to accept our abilities and skills. But we need the sacred Feminine as our foundation, so our sacred Masculine energy can build our vision.

It’s time to face your reality. Be honest with yourself and evaluate your life. Do you make the most of your life and your time? Are you concentrating on the old patriarchal fears of lack and loss? This can be a year where you make quantum leaps in your spiritual maturity if you let your inner life of the soul come out to play.

It’s time and past time to acknowledge your own Light and let it shine out into the world. What you radiate will come back to you – so open your heart and let your love shine out!

Walk in beauty, love and wisdom,

Cathy

Send Your Love Into the Future ~ Sting

Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand
And holding infinities in the palm of your hand
And Heaven's realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower
And eternities in the space of a single hour

Send your love into the future
Send your love into the distant dawn

Inside your mind is a relay station
A mission probe into the unknowing
We send a seed to a distant future
Then we can watch the galaxies growing

This ain't no time for doubting your power
This ain't no time for hiding your care
You're climbing down from an ivory tower
You've got a stake in the world we ought to share

You see the stars are moving so slowly
But still the earth is moving so fast
Can't you see the moon is so lonely
She's still trapped in the pain of the past

This is the time of the worlds colliding
This is the time of kingdoms falling
This is the time of the worlds dividing
Time to heed your call

Send your love into the future
Send your precious love into some distant time
And fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing
Send your love
Send your love

There's no religion but sex and music
There's no religion but sound and dancing
There's no religion but line and color
There's no religion but sacred trance

There's no religion but the endless ocean
There's no religion but the moon and stars
There's no religion but time and motion
There's no religion, just tribal scars

Throw a pebble in and watch the ocean
See the ripples vanish in the distance
It's just the same with all the emotions
It's just the same in every instance

There's no religion but the joys of rhythm
There's no religion but the rites of Spring
There's no religion in the path of hate
No prayer but the one I sing

Send your love into the future
Send your precious love into some distant time
And fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing
Send your love
Send your love

There's no religion but sex and music
There's no religion that's right or winning
There's no religion in the path of hatred
Ain't no prayer but the one I'm singing

Send your love
Send your love

Sting

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© Copyright 2018 ~CATHY PAGANO  All Rights Reserved