Issue 1, January 2007

   Ceres and You
   Moon Magic
   Astrology Primer

This month, the lead article by Ingrid is on the newly promoted dwarf planet, Ceres – elevated from an asteroid at the same time that Pluto was demoted from full “planethood”.  We also begin two ongoing series: a monthly look at the upcoming New and Full Moons and, for the beginner minds among you, a series of lessons on basic astrology.

Enjoy!
Ingrid and Barry.

Ceres and You

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

Ceres becomes “Une Petite Planet”!

Astronomers have long been engaged in a war of semantics around the status of Pluto, first “discovered” in 1930 as the world went to war and Plutonium obliterated the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the atom bomb indelibly scarred our planet and the collective psyche. A planet or not a planet? Now Pluto has been re-classified – the dark terrifying tyrant of the Underworld has gone, not with a bang but with a whimper… and “Plutoed” has officially entered the American lexicon – to be “Plutoed” means to be demoted, devalued.

The curtain rises. Re-enter Ceres, who has silently been orbiting between Mars and Jupiter every 4.6 years for eons.

For over 150 years Ceres was labelled an “asteroid” – star-like. The tick-in-the-box debate last year surrounding what constitutes a “planet” led to her promotion to “planet-ette” status. Under this definition, a planet is “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.” By this definition, Ceres (along with Pluto and Eris) cannot be classified as a planet, and are now classified as “dwarf planets”. So what does this mean to astrologers?  The naming of things is a favourite human activity. It brings concepts to form, to consciousness, into being, and with Ceres now given the nod, we need to look beyond semantics into what the recall of Ceres at this time in our evolution signifies.

In Roman times Ceres was a high-ranking goddess of growing plants, and all cereals were sacred to her. She embodied the powerful archetype of Mother, and her name comes from the Proto-Indo-European root, “ker” which means to grow, to create and increase.

Demeter and the Seed

To the Greeks, Ceres was known as Demeter. The initiatory story of Demeter – the primal archetypal Mother and her lovely daughter Kore, is also important here, as food is very significant in this archetypal drama. Remember, Kore willingly eats the seeds of the pomegranate when she withdraws into the Underworld. Demeter is the Dark Devouring Mother, The Frantic Mother under Threat, who searches desperately without stopping to bathe or eat in her distress at the abduction of her daughter. She knows guilt, anxiety, the pain of loss and separation.

This phase in our history, some authors say, coincided with the Agricultural Revolution, and The Seed became all important. The Seed is the vehicle of transformation in this powerful myth, and as farmers lose their seeds and we confront our personal, global, and ecological health, it is time to honour the Matrix of The Mother and deal with our addictions – consumerism, exploitation of the oceans, water and oil resources, the diminishing stock of original seed?

Does this recognition of Ceres into the heavenly pantheon of the twenty-first century reflect a shift in the collective consciousness that might become more evident as Neptune and Saturn continue their protracted formal waltz this year, as Saturn enters analytical, discerning Virgo?

High Street fashion reminisces with retro designs and the fresh innocence of flower-power hues plagiarised from the counter culture when in ’62 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring brought the world’s attention to the pollution and brutal poisoning of Gaia and kick-started the environmental movement.

Ceres as your Seed

Ceres’ journey through the signs of the zodiac varies, but she is in each sign for three to ten months. She donned the gossamer watery garb of Pisces on December 30, 2006, and will be there until March 20, 2007, when she ingresses into fiery Aries. To tap into the essence of Ceres in Pisces we need to stop and be still and listen, really listen to the call of our soul. We need to be aware of how we ache at the jingle-jangle of the world’s busyness and the fear-based illusion. We need to be conscious of our need for silence and stillness amidst the craziness we have co-created. So, where Ceres is in your birth chart is where you will find your nurturance, your seed, your creative core – what feeds you literally and symbolically. Some astrologers suggest that Ceres denotes our relationship with food and our body image, and make a connection with the sign of Virgo.

So, until Ceres moves out of Pisces in late March, allow this subtle sensitivity to flow. Be present and aware of addictive behaviour. Use the element of water to soothe and nurture. Play beautiful music; connect with the potential of  The Seed to honour the Mother-Creatrix within you. And take note that this New Year is the Chinese year of The Pig – an animal sacred to Demeter.

Moon Magic

“Slowly, Silently, now the Moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon … ”
Walter De La Mare (1873 – 1956)

“The moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the moon that pulls the tides, and the moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist.... When we describe the moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.”
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

Once upon a time, our ancestors stood in the inky blackness of the night, and sang out the names of the stars, singing into being the silvery web of connection between Heaven and Earth, all living things. They knew the song of Lunar Lore and lived their lives close to the in and out breath of the seasons, marking these eternal cyclical themes of birth, death and rebirth in bone and stone.  They knew that life emerges from darkness into light and returns once again into darkness.

Today our bare feet seldom feel the pulse of the earth; our city-bedazzled eyes cannot see through the polluted skies the diamond-spangled swirl of the star dancers or marvel at the ripeness of the primrose yellow full moon, gliding softly across the black belly of Nut as she arcs over the earth. We do know that there are times of the month when we feel out of sorts, angry or depressed. Then instead of chanting and dancing under the night skies, we busy ourselves with distractions and numb the intensity of our soul-yearning with our addictions.

The Moon changes sign every two and a half days, and as she slips into a new sign of the horoscope, we can attune to her directive to walk our daily lives in harmony with her rhythm. The Moon sign we were born under symbolizes our feminine lineage and the call of our soul, whether we inhabit a male or female body, it describes what makes us feel “at home” and what is habitual and comfortable. By working with the energy of the Moon’s 29.5-day earth, sun, light/dark cycle we can attune ourselves to our instinctual wisdom, know when to plant our gardens and when to begin something new, and when to take time just to be. 

February's Full Moon in Fiery Leo

So, this month is a time of renewal, and individuation when you need to define who you are and set new intentions. What is stirring inside that needs space to grow? What are your spiritual goals for this New Year? How will you nurture these goals?

We all have a bit of Leo in our charts and when the Full Moon illuminates our leonine energies this month, she throws a spotlight on the areas in our personalities that respond to the call of our authentic selves, our Divine Playful Inner Child. Leo is fire energy, and the 1st of February is also Brigid’s day, the Celtic Imbolc Fire Goddess. Use this energy to create ritual, a sense of drama and passion in your life, and honour the creative muse within your soul.

February's New Moon in Airy Aquarius

The New Moon in Aquarius on Saturday, February 17th brings into focus community and group dynamics. New Moons signify beginnings… time to declutter, clear your desk space, clean up your cupboards, throw out any clothes you haven’t worn for six months.  Use the “out with the old, in with the new” energy principle to bring positive change into your life, and pare down to basics. This is a time to seed new projects and ideas, keep a watchful eye open for future trends and innovative solutions.

Aquarius is a fixed Air Sign, and Aquarian energy brings our attention to the rational mind, so this is great time to focus and fine-tune, and bring gentle awareness to our mental processes and the quality of our thoughts. This is a time to home in on our intentions, and become aware of how clearly we communicate, network – are we being heard? Are we listening?

This New Moon also heralds the Chinese New Year (Ding Hai). The Chinese calendar is lunar and cyclical, so the first day of the New Year can fall anywhere between late January and the middle of February. Using the Western calendar, the date this year is February 18th – the year of the pig. If you were born in the years 1923, 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983 or 1995, you were born under the sign of the pig.  For you, 2007 will be a year to shine personally or professionally. If you're single, love could be in the air this New Year if you happen to meet compatible Rabbit or Sheep partners .

Gung Hay Fat Choy! (Happy New Year!)

Astrology Primer

You may have wondered after an astrological reading what’s behind the astrologer’s words.  Or maybe you just want to learn the basics of astrology.  That’s what this series aims to help you with.  Each article will cover some area of astrology – just enough to give you a feeling what it’s all about, and sometimes pointing to further details on our website.  So, let’s begin…

What is Astrology, anyway?

Simply put, astrology is a method of divination based on what’s occurring in the sky at a particular place and time.  While divination is often thought of as another word for “predicting the future” or “fortune-telling”, these thoughts are really only a small part of it.  More correctly, divination means entering into a sacred space to conduct a conversation with the divine.  That conversation can have many aspects: gaining a different perspective on a situation, foreseeing potential outcomes and negotiating a new approach to a current position are all part of a divination. 

Some diviners, of course, whether using astrology, Tarot, the I-Ching or other methods, do focus entirely the aspect of foreseeing the future, but this can be quite dangerous, since it can imply that a future outcome is already determined and that free will does not exist.  Here at Velanova, we take the broader view: fate and free will combine to define our future, and the moment of divination that happens in an astrological reading is an opportunity both to understand the present and to negotiate the future.

Most methods of divination, from reading tealeaves to judging a horoscope, use some form of physical object to represent the divine side of the conversation; the role of the diviner is then to interpret and mediate between the divine and the human.  The physical representation used by an astrologer is nothing less than the entire sky that overarches a particular time and place.  This representation is unique not only in its magnificence, but also in its high predictability over time.

It’s this aspect of time that makes astrology so different to most other forms of divination.  A Tarot spread, for example, can show time at a high level – e.g. past, present and future – but it’s only with astrology that one can look at precise moments of time in the past or the future and compare them with the present time.  This allows astrology to explore the evolution of a situation better than any other form of divination.

But, really, what is Astrology?

The bottom line is that for every place and time that you can imagine, there exists a unique sky above it.  In the very early days of astrology, some 4,000 years ago in Babylon, astrologers simply went out and looked up at the sky to divine its meaning.  Today, we use a map of the sky (usually computer-generated) called a horoscope as the basis of any reading.

Like any map, the horoscope uses a set of coded symbols to represent the key features of the sky as seen at that time and place.  This horoscope is associated with any and every event that occurs there and then – a meeting, a car crash, a birth or a death, a football game or a medical operation – we can look at whatever occurs at that moment and place through the horoscope.  A horoscope associated with a beginning (often called a birth or natal chart) is assigned special importance in astrology because it can stand for what was born throughout its life.  Throughout this series, we will deal exclusively with the natal charts of people, but it’s interesting to note that anything that was “born” at the same place and time as a person has the same chart, whether it’s a dog, a car or a company, and the chart must be interpreted differently depending on what birth you are looking at.  (Note that the word “horoscope” is misused in newspapers and magazines – your horoscope doesn’t change from day to day or month to month; like a pet, it’s for life!)

The other misconception we had better clear up now is this: most modern astrology is not about the stars!  So phrases like “star signs” and “what the stars say” are also misleading.  Astrology is largely about what moves against the background of the stars, namely the Sun, Moon and planets, as well as the horizon, and uses the stars as a way of tracking that movement.  It’s this information and more that’s recorded in a horoscope.

The Structure of the Horoscope

Now, let’s get down to some more detailed stuff – what does a horoscope look like and what are its parts.  There are many styles for drawing horoscopes, but here I’m using a style that helps you see all the key parts.

In the accompanying picture, the first thing to notice (after the picture of Marilyn Monroe, whose chart this is)  is the circle of the Zodiac around the outside.  The signs of the Zodiac divide the great circle (360 degrees) of the sky into 12 equal parts of 30 degrees each.  These signs are related to constellations of stars such as Aries, Taurus, Gemini and so on.  However, their actual positions in the sky do not align in most systems of astrology today, the reason for which is beyond the scope of this primer.

Inside this circle, a set of symbols represent the Sun, Moon and planets.  For ease of use, we will refer simply to “planets” as including the Sun and Moon, but we do actually understand they are different!  You can see that each planet is found in a sign of the Zodiac.  For example, the Sun (the yellow circle with a dot at the centre) is in Gemini in this chart.  Thus, Marilyn’s Sun sign is Gemini.  However, she also has a Moon (the grey crescent) sign of Aquarius, a Mercury (the orange symbol or glyphbeside the Sun) sign of Gemini again, a Venus (the pink female symbol) sign of Aries, a Mars (the red male symbol) sign of Pisces, and so on.  Each of these planet-sign combinations reveals a little bit about her character, which we’ll see as we go on in the series.  But, for now, to whet your appetite, here’s how the above four placements are interpreted in a very simple way:

• Sun and Mercury in Gemini:  Talkative, humorous, inquisitive
• Moon in Aquarius:  Somewhat cut off from her emotions
• Venus in Aries:  Flirtatious, sought relationships with powerful men
• Mars in Pisces:   Difficulty in asking for what she wanted

Next month:  More on the structure of the horoscope.