Tarot University ArkLetters: NewMoon Notes: February, 2006

February 27, 2006 NewMoon
By Christine Payne-Towler

Hooray for the oddball esoteric aspects. Given the lack of major figures forming between the planets today, if it weren't for the finer fractions of 1/5, 1/7, 1/9 and 1/11, there would be precious little to talk about at all this NewMoon...

Most of the pivotal figures that stand out in this chart are tied in with either the Midheaven or the Ascendant. This makes the chart very dynamic for the Pacific Time Zone, but unfortunately that has no significance for readers in other time zones.

What this chart lacks in busy-ness it makes up for in its single most splashy aspect. The NewMoon is very closely conjunct Uranus, the planet of sudden surprises, unaccountable developments, and revelatory awakenings. Wherever Uranus lands, there the unusual is emerging. Sometimes it is given the twinned epithet "Genius and Chaos". Radical transformations happen under his reign. And this is a very close conjunction, leading to a direct identification between the Pisces dissolving process expressive of this SolLunar conjunction on the one hand, and the completely unpredictable but explosive force of Uranus on the other.

How might Uranus express himself in the context of watery Pisces? Since Uranus has been in Pisces since March 2003, we have had some time to witness his manners. What occurs to me is the steady and growing erosion of confidence that the average citizen feels in the traditional protective function of government. Think about the levies in New Orleans.

The ones that failed, it turns out, were secretly undermined by shoddy construction, which was inspected and revealed but was never fixed because the funding for the levies was drastically cut down to sub-par levels before it was even completed. Built into the fabric of the project is the eventual self-destruction of the project, brought down by intentional deficiencies hidden within it by the very "benefactors" who originally set it up. Who can fathom the cynicism it takes to pervert a project designed to be a safety net for millions of people, that it should be rendered useless by deliberate construction flaws that would predictably undermine it at the very time of the community's greatest need? This is a shameless boldness that uses the cover of trust to cheat the whole community under their very noses, leaving the consequences to fall into the future, wherever and whenever fate decrees. Such devil-may-care abuse of people's confidence could be an apt simile for the revelations this NewMoon might release.

Depending upon where this NewMoon/Uranus falls in your time zone's house structure, there is a chance that some innocent-seeming part of your long-since-settled reality package is going to sprout tentacles and gills and otherwise behave in a totally unrecognizable fashion. Imagine that an invisible enzyme or pollen that's just been released has just set off a chemical reaction that is causing heavy mutation in some part of your landscape. Nobody warned you that they were going to mutate this way, but the process is already so far along that there is no calling it back anyway. A new birth has just been delivered in the midst of your plans and expectations, which will now proceed to raise hell with the givens.

What is necessary in order to avoid being derailed by this unbidden complication is for you to allow an entirely new part of yourself to rise to the occasion. Since the situation emerging was likely unanticipated and is catching everybody by surprise, you are not obligated to perform the stock responses. Do what you can to avoid being waylaid by past considerations, as this is an entirely new development. Keep a section of your mind open to the fresh insight, the unscripted gesture. You do not know what is going to happen, so hold your punches and let the other shoe drop. Every second you can refrain from reflex action is another moment dedicated to learning something new. NewMoons signify rebirth, so allow the waters of your psyche to be cleansed by the sudden shift caused by this Uranus conjunction.

The juiciest aspect pattern I see that includes this Pisces conjunction is the biquintile to Saturn retrograde in Leo and the quintile to Pluto in Sagittarius. Unfortunately, the third side of this figure, which should be another biquintile between Saturn and Pluto, is fatally wide, too far out of orb to count as a formal aspect. Saturn is also retrograde and therefore "backing away" from the Pluto right now, so there's just no way to squeeze this into being the complete quintile triangle that we ideally want to see.

Nevertheless, quintiles and biquintiles are creative and inventive aspects that allow for a high degree of synthetic and magical thinking. They help the mind find patterns that will accentuate subtle relationships and reveal new combinations. Add this to the genius and chaos of Uranus, shake it around with Pluto's incendiary volcanism in Sagittarius, and we can see that retrograde Saturn is getting quite a hotfoot there in Leo. How will he react to the fiery currents being trained upon him?

My suggestion would be, just as we saw with the Uranus, that less action might be better action, at least in the short run. Saturn in Leo has a tendency towards an imperious and insufferable temper, mixed with a case of authority-entitlement that can feel downright odious to an uninflated, normal person. You don't want to be making an important point, only to watch it get lost in the overkill of an exaggerated delivery! There are certainly circumstances in life that can make a person's blood boil for good and sufficient reasons, but the quintiles counsel that it's better to get creative than to get vindictive.

Plus, Saturn retrograde in any sign reminds us that discretion is the better part of valor. Saturn will not show his hand unless there is a positive benefit to be gained from it, so whether you are amused or burned is not for others to know. Practice the virtue that is taught in the 12-step programs -- "Whatever you think of me is none of my business". Humor and a light touch will glide you through those tight spots where ego and huffiness will cause hang-ups or worse. There's nothing to take personally here no matter what happens, because in truth, whatever happens, it's quite likely not really about you at all. The more you understand this from the outset, the less you are likely to fall prey to petty irritations that are better ignored and left unremarked.

This Saturn does make several four-sided figure with other planets in the chart, but none of them "regular" named figures made up of matched aspects. One structure is made up of Saturn sextiling Mars in Gemini, who sends a tridecile over to Neptune in Aquarius, who squares the Jupiter in Scorpio, which then biseptiles back over to Saturn. The Mars and the Jupiter have a 5/11th between them, but the Neptune and Saturn do not share any formal aspect. Also there is another triangle formed by Pluto's interactions with Jupiter (1/10, a decile and Mars (4/9, a quadranovile), and again there is no return aspect from Pluto to Saturn. This creates the interesting mathematical entity of three mismatched triangles sharing the 5/11th as their mutual base.

(Attentive astrologers will notice how handy the 11th aspect family is for filling up holes and closing figures from multiple other aspect families. Here we having it completing figures which include deciles, sextiles, squares, septiles and noviles. I have also seen it contributing to figures that include inconjuncts and semisextiles. From the point of view of sacred geometry, it is fascinating to study the behavior of the 11th aspect in a matrix that is biased towards the divisors of 12. Due to the orb allowances that must be left for small amounts of inexactitude, even a "tight orbs" person like me gets to see aspect pictures that are slyly completed by an 11th harmonic. There is cause to think that 11ths reveal the mechanism whereby "miracles", synchronicities, and invisible interventions are enacted into the time/space world.)

Pondering for a moment on the 11th or "elf" aspect, we remember that this aspect reveals parallel realities that usually are held strictly apart from each other. It's related to the feeling of deja vu that wells up when one walks into a room that one was dreaming about only last night. Realms of consciousness that are usually never lit up at the same time become self-aware simultaneously. This is the meaning of a 1/11th, but what of a 5/11th? The fifth iteration of this aspect adds a kind of "quintile" significance to the 11th harmonic, suggesting a creative use of that deja vu feeling. Perhaps these links are made for purposes of artistic contrast, perhaps to create a cultural juxtaposition, an ironic pairing of mirroring influences that when put together make an entirely new statement and points to a deeper dimension. We should keep these ideas in mind as we read the next few paragraphs, because all three of the triangles I will be describing have this 5/11th between Mars and Jupiter at their base.

The triangle "peaked" by Saturn seems cool and dispassionate, made up as it is by a smooth functioning sextile to Mars and a karmic septile to Jupiter in Scorpio. The Saturn seems to be helping that Mars in Gemini focus itself, since Mars' desires are likely all over the map. The self-discipline which Saturn handles effortlessly even when retrograde seems to have a beneficial effect on the Mars, who otherwise might be tempted to behave in a heedless and immature manner. Meanwhile, any planet traveling through Scorpio seems to be "veiled" or somehow obscured by the murky depths of these waters, so even the usually expansive Jupiter appears to be playing his cards close to the vest right now. If the Mars is giving out signals, they seem to be more designed for distraction or superficial patter, to disguise the motives and vulnerabilities of Saturn and Jupiter, rather than function as attempts at true communication.

Perhaps this triangle indicates the proverbial iceberg that's much more deadly below the water line than it is above. At the level of global politics in this age of miscommunication and double-speak, I don't really like the feeling this triangle gives me, as if people with selfish motives are manipulating collective affairs behind closed doors. However, at the personal level, the power in that biseptile is that it links the "opportunity" planet of Jupiter to the "obligation" planet of Saturn in a way that will help us all to complete our contracts and fulfill our promises. Whether the debt is large or small, material or energetic, consider this NewMoon as an opportunity to close accounts with the past in as generous and honorable a way as you can. Release others from those old bindings of expectation and/or disappointment, and you will free yourself as well.

The triangle that peaks with Neptune, on the other hand, has some pretty fiery aspects, given that one side is a square and the other is a biquintile. One would not normally consider Neptune in Aquarius "hot", but when it's stimulated this way we might need to reconsider our stereotypes. It is easy to forget that Aquarius might not personalize experience, but it does have very strong ideals that motivate it towards fierce and passionate action when the well-being of the tribe, the health of the children, or the viability of the future are put at stake. My feeling is that we are likely to see some very clever, very trenchant responses emerging from those classified by the ruling classes as "the meek", once the consequences of our current ecological catastrophe become self-evident to everyone, as they are quickly doing. This Jupiter/Neptune square between Scorpio and Aquarius speaks to me of glaciers melting and water levels rising much faster than was expected or predicted, expressing a backlash from Nature large enough to set even the global industrialists back on their heels. There is no joy to be had in linking these phenomena to these aspects, and certainly the roots of current conditions were planted years before this chart was ever asserted by the heavens. But now is the time for the global consciousness to be yanked into focus for the sake of whatever last-minute changes that people of goodwill might be able to orchestrate in the teeth of this emerging deluge. Any awakening is good awakening.

A third triangle that hinges on the 5/11th between Jupiter and Mars peaks with Pluto. One can even see Pluto as forming a hinge or node between Jupiter and Neptune, being semisquare the first and septile the second. A quadra-novile back to Mars closes this figure, suggesting that only careful meditation and attention to between-the-lines areas will reveal the ways we might be vulnerable and help us piece together the evidence which will rescue us from our own self-created toxic wastes, if that is even possible.

This triangle suggests issues like those stemming from the inquiry into Teflon, flame-retardant chemicals in our clothes, and other "better living through chemistry" experiments that were foisted upon the unsuspecting population before the dangers of these synthetic molecules were ever examined. Now we find these chemicals all through the food chain, penetrating even supposedly pristine locations, and we are also learning that they are cancer causing and fertility impairing even at a fairly low concentrations. It has taken years of lawsuits to establish this fact! Where are the responsible parties, the ones who have known all along that this stuff was harmful?

The motto of the marketplace is "let the buyer beware", so now we pay the price of the unwary. Even those who want to feel proud because "I never used that stuff" have no legs to stand on, since one's favorite movie house snack bar, that great little restaurant around the corner, plus the grocery deli counter where we all buy our favorite lunch treats -- even the family microwave, for Pete’s sake! -- all abound in overheated plastics offgassing distorted molecules into everything we eat, drink, and use around our food. It's part of the collective karma now; we are all in this together. In the future, archaeologists will name our era "the plastic age", characterized by a layer of packing peanuts and juice bottles that blankets the planet both on land and under the sea...

As that 5/11th between Mars and Jupiter has been whispering (in the voice of Crosby, Stills and Nash), "we have all been here before". And if we don't wake up soon and remember ourselves, we will suffer the same fate as we have always experienced while asleep at the wheel -- a swift, steep plunge into the swamps to be recycled. Nature can do very well without us, but we can do just as well without Nature?

Overall, this chart is a subtle one, concentrating its drama in the Uranus conjunction with the NewMoon in Pisces. Look for a geyser to suddenly spout, or a fierce squall to send a wall of water down the gully, washing out everything that was growing there. Other things are happening too, as you can read above, but none of them will command the attention of this primary indicator. Seek higher ground and wait out the violence of the moment. Today's events will not be repeated, though they may send a wave of consequences out to the uttermost reaches of the future. To the extent that you can succeed at detaching from the particular forms that have characterized your recent past, you will handle this transition with aplomb. Try to remember that although the old arrangements of mass and matter cannot hold, the energies that have been liberated in the shift will go on to find even better forms and express even higher realizations as a result. When you have to shoot the rapids, it's the safest and least harmful if you can relax and trust the flow.

Here are a few quick remarks about the figures that are at issue here in the Pacific Northwest:

There is a structure known as a Finger of God trained upon the 25th and 26th degree of Leo (the ascendant here in PST), which extends inconjunct aspects to Leo from both the Mercury in Pisces and the Venus in Capricorn. Mercury and Venus are sextile each other in this chart, so together they can create a point of focus on this spot in Leo, causing anybody with an important planet in these degrees feel whipped around by invisible forces which have no consideration for the individuals impacted. Further, the Mercury/Leo inconjunct closes a 3-4-5 triangle with Pluto (who trines that spot in Leo and squares the Mercury). This produces a feeling like "damned if I do, damned if I don't", so one has to put special attention to managing the exquisite frustration created by this "yes but no" type of figure. People who have one of the outer planets in this spot will feel this especially deeply, but anyone to whom 26 degrees of Leo is important might want to arrange a little padding over it today, so they can muffle its tendency to attract damage and suffer injury to the ego on Pluto's, Venus' or Mercury's behalf.

There is also a T-square from Neptune to the Jupiter/MC opposition, which looks confrontational in the sense that the long-term good requires some kind of organized opposition to a traditional practice that is holding back progress. I am inclined to analogize this figure as an issue of damming (Taurus) and water management (Neptune in Aquarius, Jupiter in Scorpio). Perhaps it has relevance to the current decisions being made on behalf of the wild salmon and how they are to be managed in the light of all the hydropower dams that dot the Pacific Northwest. Headlines blare that salmon populations are plummeting, so it is good to hear that a recent court decision has forced the hand of hydropower and might lead to improvements of conditions for those last remaining wild fish stocks.

Fish and free waters are symbols of the dreamtime, the collective unconscious, and the mobile spirits that govern psychic phenomena, empathy and precognition. This struggle going on in the rivers, in the bays, and in the seas, pitting all the water-dwellers against the destructive forces hounding them from on land, is also a struggle going on within us. Between the natural forces of the body's feelings-life and the encroaching decay and effluvia emanating from the "civilized" ego, a titanic struggle is joined, and there is no way of telling which side will prevail. Hopefully the tension produced will serve as a warning to the system as a whole, reminding all who are capable of remembering that we need our wild and untrammeled places and populations, both in the environment and within our own psyches.

If you are wondering whether this figure applies to you in any way, look and see if you have planets or sensitive points at between 15 and 18 degrees of the fixed signs. If you do, then you might also be feeling this tension between the wild self and the constrained self, meaning that it's time to mediate an agreement between the two before the one decides to utterly consume or despoil the other.

blessings,

Christine

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Moon phase data:

Current Phase of Moon: New and Waxing in Pisces, Monday, February 27, late afternoon to early evening (in the USA)
2nd Quarter, Waxing Half Moon in Gemini Monday, March 6, from high noon to early afternoon.
Full Moon in late Virgo Tuesday, March 14, mid-afternoon with a lunar eclipse at mid-to-late afternoon. At this point the Moon begins to wane, or decrease.
4th Quarter, Waning Half Moon in early Capricorn, Wednesday March 22, high noon to early afternoon.
Newmoon, in Aries, Wednesday, March 29th in the wee hours of the morning.

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

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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.