Happy New Year

Well,

It's been a while since I posted.  The end of last year really filled up my days and I could not seem to find the right subject or the right time to write at length or regularly.  I started writing a beginning astrology series that I do want to continue this year and entries on mid-life transits.  I'm currently weathering my Uranus Opposition and Neptune Square, two transits people born between 1967 and 1970 will be experiencing until 2012.  I'm looking in the direction of my Saturn Opposition as my next mid-life entry.  I guess my new year's resolution, like many bloggers, is to try to write regularly and on topics of mutual interest to myself and my followers.  And hopefully I will pick up more followers.  Maybe I should plan a "Year in Review" entry that can coincide with significant transits and progressions.  That should definitely be a blog entry for this week or next.

But today I want to write about a fantastic opportunity that started my new year.  Back in December of 2005 I was ordained as a Priest of the Order of Melchizedek.  I chose this Order because the Priests and Priestesses are all of unique and, for the most part, self-designed faiths and practices.  At the height of my excitement I created a website for my priesthood which outlines my beliefs and practices.  One role I am able to perform, but, until January 1, 2011, had not performed is a marriage.  This past week, while trying to arrange a visit to my friends Adam and Anne, they asked me if I could marry two friends of theirs (Anna and Zachary).  I, of course, said, "yes, absolutely."  Our family traveled down to see them on New Year's Eve and we planned the wedding for New Year's Day.  The ceremony was very simple, by a pond, in the woods behind Adam/Anne and Zachary/Anna's houses.  It was such a fantastic way to start my new year.

2011 looks to be quite different from 2010 and the upcoming 2012.  I like to describe it as a lull between storm fronts, a time to prepare.  The storm has not cleared and the real thrust of it has not yet arrived; that will be the energetic work of 2012 to 2015, when Uranus (in Aries) squares Pluto (in Capricorn) and Neptune and Chiron permanently enter Pisces.  We will really feel the New Age with Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto all in new signs.  But for this year, a time to gather your friends around you, save money, pay down debt, meditate, organize, ... prepare.  I'll be advising all my clients to prepare!  And that will mean different actions for different clients.  For myself I am trying to manifest my family closer to me, increased savings, more work, and continued good health.  I'm not looking to expand as much as I am looking to have enough and save my extra :-).  I still have a spiritual awakening journey to complete and I have one current hurdle that should help me start to see the downward slide.  2010 was a humdinger ... and my spiritual ears are still ringing ;-).  But I'm also still standing, and looking better in the pocket than Brett Farve ... who coincidentally is getting his Uranus Opposition at this time!

All in all, I want to wish everyone reading this blog a Happiest of New Years and appreciate your interest in my words.  Hopefully I will have plenty of brilliant ones for you this new year!

Philip

A Great Time of Transition: 2008 to 2015

The most powerful constant in the universe is change.  The second most powerful constants are various cycles. Some are large, like the 25,800 year cycle of the Earth's "wobble" (on its axis) that causes the precession of signs, which has lead to the split between Tropical and Sidereal astrology.  In Tropical astrology, if you are born between March 21 and April 21, you have an Aries Sun sign.  Thanks to precession (since 600BCE), when Tropical astrology was calculated on the 0 point of Aries, if you were born between March 11 and April 18 (in 2007), your Sun Sign would actually be Pisces.  Some are small, like your birthday.  All occur in linear, forward moving time in a constant state of change.  There is no permanence, just change ... in various shapes and sizes and intensities.  We are currently living in a period of intense change.  Human and planetary history is filled with easily identifiable intense periods of change, whether we are looking at World War I or the Ice Age, the Discovery of Penicillin or Volcanic Eruptions and Earthquakes, or a host of other significant events.

Human history has entered another period of significant change and transition, beginning with the Great Recession at the start of 2008.  In recent history, the 20th Century, we can mark the great periods of transition with inventions (cars, planes, space flight, the Internet), wars, social upheavals (the 1960s), and so on.  In all those cases we can find key transitions occurring between Energy Points in the sky as part of large and small recurring cycles.  One of the most profound relationships in astrology occurs when Uranus and Pluto transition at significant angles with one another.  The last such significant transition occurred in the 1960s when they were conjunct and their energies merged in the sign of Virgo (Tropical) and Leo (Sidereal).  Today they are in a square relationship, which will be exact 7 times between 2012 and 2015 and involve the signs of Capricorn/Aries (Tropical) and Sagittarius/Pisces (Sidereal).  As with all situations involving large and complex energy, the impact of the energy can be felt and active outside the "ground zero" time frame.

For this reason, we are still "heading towards" the reckoning of and repercussions of the exact squaring that will occur between 2012 and 2015.  The "aftermath" will likely last well into 2020, when Pluto begins to end its travels through Capricorn (T)/Sagittarius (S).  For most of the world, this will continue to be a time of great instability, which is not particularly comfortable, but very necessary for growth and/or readjustment.  In fact, spiritually, humanity is likely to experience spiritual growth through a readjustment to physical limitations.  The lesson of cycles is the lesson of living within a closed system.  Closed System thinking is radically different from Frontier/Constant Growth thinking.  A Closed System reality can appear to be a Frontier System if the participants in the system are unable to see the boundaries of the system as a whole.  In the current vernacular a phrase that is gaining ground is "the End Game."   And a word is growing in use: Austerity. Within a large closed system, small skirmishes occur that reveal to various members of the system the closed nature of the system (species extinction, contamination of water supplies, destruction of usable land, global warming).  But in all of human history, the overall boundaries of the system has not been reached or breached at the whole level.  We are living the age when we can finally begin to see the boundaries of the whole system and how close we are getting to them.

Breaching the whole boundary system would be catastrophic for humanity, no so much for insects.  The breach may occur without human activity in an Ice Age way, but even with Global Warming reaching high levels, its unlikely that we are yet in a position to break the ecosystem in an apocalyptic way.  Though it is certainly within our power and ability (think Wall-E).  During this next major transition we are very likely to have to face readjustment to consumption/resource uses as more of the world wants between 70 and 80 degree homes in the winter and summer.  The financial crisis is a "shot across the bow" of the ship, and let's hope its not the one named Titanic!  Though, that story is an apt metaphor.  People did survive the sinking of the ship ... a much smaller number than would have survived if precautions had been taken, warnings heeded, and safety protocols followed.

Big transitions have a common earmark; they reach into the common levels of human experience.  Not just one group feels the impact, but members of all groups while certain groups especially feel the impact  across almost all members (usually the poor or lower classes).  While many of the rich are getting richer during this process, quite a few have also lost everything and quite a few are experiencing economic decline.  Granted their total assets may now be worth 900 Million instead of 2 Billion, but loss is loss.  I went to a job interview recently and one of the other people interviewing said something interesting, "being early is the new on time."  I have to wonder if this transition will be the one that nakedly reveals that we do have limited resources that we are using as if they are unlimited, which is really the behavior bugaboo we need desperately to overcome and reverse.  Its fine to think of solar power as unlimited energy, wind and water as renewable, but not oil and gas.  This transition period is likely to be marked by the outside world exerting pressure on behavior change internally at a mass scale.  Much in the same way the Great Depression or American/French Revolution time periods exerted change.

We are all, definitely, in it together.

Jupiter in Station, Turning to Go Direct

Did anyone else begin to feel it today ... the energy of Jupiter stopping its retrograde motion to begin moving forward again tomorrow?  I certainly did.  Yesterday, I was talking to Betsy, my partner, about feeling a shift, a positive one.  And today the feeling just grew stronger.  Astrology is all about motion - cycles, approaching and separating energies, Lunation phases, ingress from sign to sign, and retrograde/stationary/direct.  What has made this time in life so very profound and interesting is convergence of many kinds of motion.  Alone any one of these patterns holds significance, but when they converge, big shifts happen.

This December will hold especial power as all the energy points, at two different spans of time, will be direct.  Unfortunately no major legislation or meaningful global/state/local decisions will be made.  But we should have some very positive feelings around the holidays.  It will be a good time to think out "next steps."  What do you want your next steps to be and can you chart a positive route to achieving them.  There's still a number of big cosmic storms on the horizon and the largest of all will be Pluto in Capricorn squaring Uranus in Aries for 3 years between 2012 and 2015.  From every level, it will be good for all us to use 2011 as a time to save, rest, and prepare ... not only in terms of the most obvious financial crisis, but in terms of spiritual development.  We have not seen the last of the Tea Party negativity or protectionist thinking.  These energies will be amassing for the 2012 election cycle.

They must be challenged, but not in the same vein as they present.  We must challenge them in our daily lives by being caring, helpful, and supportive of our community, family, and fellow human beings.  We must show by example that we understand the kinds of fundamental changes in behavior that we all need to make with regard to our use of resources and what each of us rightfully deserves to take from the earth to meet our needs.  I encourage everyone to fully enjoy the tremendous amount of positive energy that will flow once Chiron and Neptune (the last two energy points still retrograde) go direct (even in the face of a Mercury retrograde through the middle of December).  Mercury will retrograde in December, but it is always the same meaning ... slow down, reassess, review, and rest.  

I urge all of us to spend deep time thinking of New Year's resolutions to put forth on January 1 and to reassert on March 21, the first day of Spring.  2012 will be tumultuous and how we prepare in 2011 will be essential.