Tarot University ArkLetters: New Moon Notes, July 2005

Hello Tarot fans --

This month's NewMoon happens at almost exactly 15 degrees of the sign of Cancer. This conjunction is exact just before the Moon and Sun rise together on July 6th (which means, in the wee hours of Pacific Daylight Time, and just after 8:00 am EDT.) So along with the natural emphasis on Cancerian energies, we also want to take into account the energy of rising, dawning, and awakening to a new day.

Cancer has been since deep antiquity the sign through which human souls were birthed into this world from their interstellar origins. This is the shaping force that grants us bodies suitable for this time-space-bound planet, where we live out our incarnations as women and men. Therefore, a rising NewMoon in Cancer represents a rebirth, a new cycle, a fresh start replete with untapped potentials. As Cancer symbolizes the great womb of life on our oceanic planet, this New Moon pulls new dreams and visions of ourselves up out of the fathomless deep, allowing us to rethink our adaptive strategies and be moved by new motives and attractions if we would like.

However, the Sun and Moon are not the only influences here, because Saturn is still present in the last few degrees of Cancer, still savoring his 2 1/2 year transit here and finishing up his business. Specifically, in this case, Saturn is helping us remove all traces of childishness and immaturity from our image of ourselves and of others. His work is always focused on stabilization, ripening, firming up and solidifying the lessons from the past, whether personal or collective. It is Saturn who saves us from having to reinvent the wheel for every new generation, because he retains what went before and recalls lessons learned from those adventures. Some see Saturn as stern, punishing, and heavy, but in Cancer he is better described as protective, conservative, and fatherly. Saturn guards the boundary, removes predators and clears the ground of obstacles, so the young ones can play safely in a garden free of danger.

From this mix of influences (New Moon in Cancer rising with Saturn) can be derived a poignant lesson, especially for the so-called "baby boomers" who came of age in a time of intense idealism. We are being advised to reframe some of our credulousness, rethink our willingness to trust before verifying, and remind ourselves of how many ways we have been taken advantage of by those we had assumed had our best interests in mind. This is not to counsel cynicism or hard-heartedness, because of course Cancer influences are known to be motivated by considerations of the heart, aware as they are of the world of feelings, intuitions, and sensitivities. (For example, this water sign bestows empathy and compassion upon the new mother while she learns to care for the infant who cannot yet speak.) Yet the force of maturity that Saturn brings to bear does not allow any room for sentimentality, weakness of will or misplaced priorities. Saturn says that it is imperative that the mature soul learn the discrimination required to separate the healthy influences from the unhealthy, the evolutionary influences from the devolutionary. This skill is necessary not only for the sake of those who are not yet ready to be exposed to the full blast of life's paradoxes, but also for the sake of the tender, new, tentative parts of our own selves that are only now finding their courage to grow and express themselves in the world.

Another more subtle manifestation of this same idea in this chart is the fact that the South Node of the Moon is moving backwards through the sign of Libra, therefore gradually crossing each baby-boomer's natal Neptune and bringing into perspective how both inspired and deluded we were as a generation. Neptune is thought to symbolize mystical influences emanating "from the deep", at work shaping the collective consciousness through the dreamtime, blending fantasy and illusion into ordinary reality to create fantastic visions of alternative realities.

Neptunian forces are often felt to occupy the borderland between spiritual illumination and delusion. With the South Node -- who awakens us to our illusions and pushes our noses into our unfinished business -- working its way back across the Neptune-in-Libra generation's defining degrees, we again are admonished to awaken from our fantasies of "what if" and become fully present for "what is", even if the contours of reality have moved away from that once-bright field of promise and become muddied from compromise with the world's undertow.

All in all, we are put on notice that the world and everything/everyone in it are interwoven with duality. Things are not only as good as we fondly believe them to be, but are also, simultaneously, just as bad as they can possibly get away with being! Every coin has two sides, and every ego has its healthy and unhealthy, regenerate and unregenerate faces -- especially and including ourselves! Our cultural programming might incline us to feature the optimistic self-assessment or the pessimistic one, and our own personal preferences most often are to look in directions where our expectations will be affirmed, rather than probing into our shadows where we might encounter a bogey. Nevertheless the make-up of our individual selves and everything else in this world of reality is strictly and/and rather than either/or. We cannot escape the "dark side", our own or anybody else's.

The situation is truly as the shamans have told us from antiquity -- anything that can happen, will happen. We must be prepared for a very mixed bag, and not everything we encounter will be explainable by logic. Therefore we must cease being hurt by the deficiencies of others, just as surely as we must cease being over-impressed with our own supposed virtues. If every person is a mix of influences, and that mix is potentially fluxing with outer changes of conditions and situation, then we must withdraw our attachment to seeing any person in terms of either good or bad, and this is true whether said individual performs the way we would like them to or not. There are no saints who lack their facet of mediocrity, and there are no sinners who are not sometimes touched by genius. The only thing that each of us can do is strive to evolve ourselves, from where we stand, even knowing that we too are riven with contradictory forces. Accepting our own two-sided natures (accepting the ambivalence that makes up the bulk of our experience) allows us to let go of our reactivity when we run into the split that exists in others. Suddenly, there is serenity where there used to be the turbulence of thwarted expectations. We can begin to forgive the world for being a mess even though we can't change it, and there is healing in that understanding.

I might add that to the extent that vision and perception are so powerfully governed by what has been seen and perceived previously, there is a strong warning about falling into foregone conclusions, which comes along with Saturn, wherever he is. To the extent that it seems rational to view oneself as impacted by outer forces and circumstances to which one feels forced to react, this Saturn/NewMoon cohabitation in Cancer will rub that viewpoint in. But then again, if one is wishing to confront and challenge such self-identifications, Saturn can help by speaking truth to power, refusing to yield to pre-programmed urges, and asserting a permanent adjustment in the old unquestioned belief system. Saturn suggests that taking personal responsibility for every experience one has, starting with one's own unconscious assumptions and unspoken inner dialogue, can return the soul to its seat of power and unhook the ego from its blame-frame and excuse-making. Brisk as it is, the act of making oneself accountable for what happens in one's life goes a long way towards dispelling immature reactivity!

One of the opportunities one has with Saturn is to deploy the power of repetition, of sheer habit. The tiny, unobserved physical and emotional/psychological rituals we enact all day long grant us a tremendous engine of potential change strong enough to redirect the trend line of our whole lives. Once we can observe, isolate, and adjust those rituals such that they more consciously serve our larger goals, holding ourselves to the adjustment until it becomes routine, then we can proceed calmly, secure that our long-term well being is improving automatically despite the contingencies of fate and nature. This is the "magic of compound interest"; only the currency that Saturn uses is time and repetition as much as it is money. So let us each examine the little things, the small time and energy investments we make every day, and learn how we can be more appropriate, more effective, and more surely attuned to the Greater Good as we go about our business. By so doing, Saturn can be made into our staunch ally, and the excellent side effect is that we will become more trustworthy allies of our loved ones in the process.

Moving beyond the Sun bundle now, the next objects in the sky along the path of the Zodiac are Venus and Mercury sharing the exact same degree of Leo. To my mind this looks like a magical flash of intense creativity. Venus is the traditional artist's muse, and Mercury is the inventive shape-shifter who can move between cultures, currencies, and costumes with ease.

Together they promise a convergence of talents that could bring about a fertile and unexpected "aha experience" for those who are tuned to this frequency. Due to the placement on the Eastern side of the chart as a whole, the insight will most likely be a private experience of internal illumination, at least at the moment it hits. However, because the conjunction is in Leo, there will probably turn out to be an outward, more public venue wherein (eventually) the results of your bolt of genius can be experienced and appreciated by others. Make sure you are properly appreciating the infinite newness of your own imagination, as this is the place where the inspiration from this conjunction is most likely to appear first.

There are no traditional planets in Virgo right now, but in Libra we find our good friend and traditional benefic Jupiter having completed his retrograde and marching forwards again. Finally! Since February Jupiter has been in the grips of a retrograde, which dragged his visible image from 18-plus degrees of Libra all the way back to 9 degrees. That means that communications and agreements we thought we had completed and confirmed over last winter were all called into question through the first half of this year. We have been challenged to go back through our assumptions and re-check what we thought were givens, unearthing our mixed messages, mangled translations, and missed signals in the process. We have been confronted with the Freudian slips, blind spots, and self-serving rationalizations that have injured our loved ones and dragged down our communications. Now we can be much clearer about the mechanisms that get us in trouble with others (even though we can still fool ourselves that our motives are high and our actions blameless).

This retrograde cycle has been a great motivator for that "fearless moral inventory" advised by 12-step programs everywhere! To the extent that we were disguising our egotistic agendas in a cloak of "I'm only doing it for you, dear", we have been busted. But paradoxically, it feels better to have it all out in the open now, and the growth that has been stimulated by this period of unveiling will serve us all in good stead till Jupiter finally leaves Libra at the end of October. With all of our important relationships aired out and (temporarily) free of exaggeration and artifice, this is a great time to restore trust and solidify bonds with those people who matter the most. Only take heed! Promises made or assumed right now must be properly acknowledged and appropriately fulfilled. No exceptions can be allowed, or you will totally defeat all the work you have just gone through while trying to square away the mess from spring's Jupiter challenges. When Jupiter rolls over into Scorpio, the emotional stakes will be *much* higher, and there will be a retrograde period for Jupiter then as well. Your best defense is to not offend in the first place, if you can manage it.

Let us note that the sweet little sextile between the Venus/Mercury and Jupiter at the bottom of this chart is not as innocent as it looks. This foundation provides a platform for the Uranus in Pisces to stage a Finger of God convergence at the top of this chart exactly coincident with this NewMoon. This type of pattern consists of two inconjuncts (150-degree aspects, fraction 5/12) converging on Uranus, with a sextile bridging their opposite ends in Leo and Libra. Where one inconjunct provides us with a paradox, two converging inconjuncts lands us directly into the "jaws of Fate". It is a powerful smack upside the head by the Wheel of Fortune.

Nobody can predict how such a destabilizing aspect will express itself at the level of the nightly news or the personal chart (especially with Uranus at the peak of the action!)
Nevertheless I suggest that one harvest the impetus of this powerful collective time by grounding oneself in one's Leo and Libra arenas. These two signs are where the "feet" of the aspect-pattern fall, and so if we are properly handling the energies and effects of the Venus/Mercury pair and the Jupiter adjustment, then we will be in the best possible position to channel the lightning and electrical storms of Uranus as they crackle down those two very-exact inconjuncts and sizzle into our synapses. Even if Uranus is in the positively boggy and soggy sign of Pisces, we should still expect that the energies expressed would be fairly intense. Therefore, prepare to forgive yourself in advance if some dynamic (and possibly repressed) feelings should suddenly start boiling over and spilling out onto the landscape unexpectedly. There are times when there is simply no other possible response. Indeed, if it could be allowed to happen, some might find themselves arriving at a deeper level of self-understanding once those things are finally on the table and out of the limbo of denial.

The next planet in the sequence is Pluto in Sagittarius, and no doubt everybody is feeling this as a quiet rumble underlying all the more superficial movements going on at this time. In previous NewMoon notes, I have given Pluto a goodly amount of attention, so I won't repeat myself too much here. But what's interesting about this month's Pluto action is that at the moment of exactitude, Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto line up together in a very tight quintile/biquintile triangle, giving each other a boost in the "imaginal" plane. (That's the visionary realm wherein the possible future makes inroads into ordinary reality, from which inspiration can emerge and, ideally, change the world.) The feeling I'm getting is that through addressing the Jupiter and Saturn issues -- gaining emotional maturity by outgrowing our need to be flattered as "special" -- we can finally find the inspiration to turn back to the *real* work, which is to improve the world here and now. Pluto is reminding us to live simply, that others might simply live. By harnessing both Saturn (our limits) and Jupiter (our opportunities) to the "Mutate or Die" planet Pluto, this chart is offering us a catalyst which, used correctly, will help us put our egos, with all their needs and preferences, into better perspective. Since most of the people who will be reading these words are products of Western Civilization (I am guessing), this Pluto offers an antidote to our relentless and even pathological sense of first-world entitlement. May he manage to penetrate each of our thick heads with just the medicine we each need to set about healing our self-aggrandizement and endless appetites for "more and better".

The last few influences left to mention are the Neptune in Aquarius and the Mars in Aries. Fascinatingly enough, these two are linked up with the NewMoon through a mini-version of a 3-4-5 triangle, the mathematical figure that was mystically revered by the ancient Pythagoreans. In this case, Neptune sextiles the Mars in Aries, Mars squares the NewMoon in Cancer, and the NewMoon sends an inconjunct back to the Neptune in Aquarius. These kinds of triangles (also expressed as a square/trine/inconjunct figure) harness both challenging energies (the square) and harmonious energies (the sextile or trine) to try and resolve the paradox presented by the inconjunct.

The heaviest planet in the triangle is as usually the slowest-moving one, Neptune, since that's the planet which will hold this position the longest, thus keeping the results of this figure preserved in the collective psyche until Neptune re-crosses this spot when it unwinds its current retrograde in late October. My guess is that the Mars/NewMoon square presents another impulse towards "me first" egotism, which runs at cross-purposes to the nurturing and generous maternal spirit of Cancer. Neptune provides the corrective force from Aquarius, where we are reminded that Nature is no respecter of individuals, not matter how important they might feel or seem within their own cultural context.

The final fact is, in the great sweep of time and history, my sense of self-importance fades into insignificance, and rightly so. Neptune "understands" the egotism of an Aries Mars (the relationship is a sextile between them), but at the point that unchecked me-ism is allowed to prey upon the tender new shoots of the future (the Cancer NewMoon), then Neptune has to move in and reinforce the larger truth that nobody shall be rendered immune from making the necessary sacrifices that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. Forget all idealized visions of living in a meritocracy, a democracy, or any other kind of -ocracy. All that is artificial, imposed by people to control the probabilities in their favor. The frosty, Aquarian placement of Neptune (also throwing a slow trine back to the birth placement of the boomer's Neptunes!) simply states, "Practice what you have preached. Take your self-esteem from how much you can give and how much service you can render to those whose lives are not as lush as your own. S/he who would be first must be served last. "

Those utopian expectations we cut our teeth on are now coming home to roost, and our own lives now demand the critique we were once so bold as to hammer previous generations with. As we stare down the barrel of global climate change, the AIDS crisis, and gross inequity in the disbursal of our planet's resources, these issues can no longer be pushed off into the indefinite future. That future is now! Are we making ourselves worthy of claiming a space on this overburdened planet, or are we part of the disease process that is steadily consuming the necessary ingredients for future generations' well being? Are we making our decisions based upon what will happen "unto the seventh generation"? That is the question Neptune is posing, and I hope we can each make the modifications that will put us in right relationship to the trends of our times.

blessings,

Christine

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*Christine Payne-Towler*
Research: Esoteric Tarot, Literature and Practice;
Bishop, Gnostic Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Founder: Tarot University;
Author: The Underground Stream;
Author, Divinatory Text at Tarot.com

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The Tarot ArkLetters are a publication of Christine Payne-Towler, founder of Tarot University Online. Christine offers classes, readings, and private sessions.