Issue 10, January 2008

   Moon Magic
   Astrology Primer
  

Happy New Year %1%!

As we're sure you know, the New Year celebrated by most of us in the Western world has little astrological or ancient meaning. So, as we go through 2008, we will remind you of some of the older feasts and their origins and meanings. These days, known as Quarter Days and Cross-Quarter Days divide the astrological year into eighths, and so correspond to the hard series of aspects.

The beginning of February (1^st or 2^nd) corresponds to the first Cross-Quarter Day following the Winter Solstice. Ingrid's regular feature on the upcoming Full and New Moons introduces us to Imbolc and its link with the Celtic Goddess Brigit as well as the Solar Eclipse on February 7^th. Barry describes rulership of the signs of the Zodiac in this month's Astrology Primer.

 Enjoy!

Ingrid and Barry.

Moon Magic

“The time has come to turn your heart
Into a temple of fire.
Your essence is gold hidden in dust.
To reveal its splendour
You need to burn in the fire of love.”

Rumi

January is a cold, dark month. Putrefying leaves lie wetly on saturated soil and a shrill, shrewish wind spitefully spits raindrops at the windows. Like lovers’ tears they glisten on the glass with desperate yearning for the warm kiss of spring. Yet, if you take a moment to look outside, you may see a pristine pirouette of snowdrops or the first thrust of a crocus through a mossy embankment. Since the winter solstice, the birth of the New Year, the Earth has been shrouded in mists and cruel frosts. Now she quickens, pregnant with the first promise of new life.

Full Moon in Leo

If the skies are crisp and clear on January 22^nd, you will see the dramatic dance of the full Moon in passionate Leo—the expressive showgirl, seeking to be seen, blazes spontaneously into the heavens to dance with the cool rational Aquarius Sun. Leo energy is about creative self-expression, courage and generous gifts from the heart. The impulse of the lunar energy this month is an impassioned YES to LIFE—use affirmations, re-read “The Secret”, banish despair, pettiness and inhibition, and fearlessly celebrate all you have co-created in your life. Gratitude is one of the most profoundly energising emotional vitamins we can feed into our energy systems. Being thankful for what we are, and what we have enables us to go beyond our limitations and self-imposed fears. Be brave! Stop scaring yourself. Stop judging yourself. Be gentle, patient and kind to yourself. Do something special tonight to celebrate your life.

Candle rituals set intention. By lighting a candle tonight, you are tending a flame of hope and love within your heart. Rose Quartz is good for opening the heart, and if your heart has been bruised, and longs to burn in the fire of love once more, wear Rose Quartz close to your heart or place a piece under your pillow so that the loving energy fills your whole body. Leo is a fixed fire sign, so emotionally, those of us with a Leo Moon in our birth charts will feel nurtured if we are adored, admired, made feel special. So, take some time to nurture yourself at this Leo Moon time by recognising your own worthiness and value.

Crystal Wisdom: Use Fuchsite to aid self-nurturing and self-love, and allow the creative light to shine forth into the darkness of this month of January. Mercury is retrograde from January 28^th till February 18^th, marking a time of going within, re-doing, so pause and go back over familiar territory and be conscious of how you listen, how you hear.

“I know there's something
in the wake of your smile
I get a notion from
the look in your eyes, yea
You've built a love
but that love falls apart
Your little piece of heaven
turns too dark

Listen to your heart
when he's calling for you
Listen to your heart,
there's nothing else you can do
I don't know where you're going
and I don't know why
but listen to your heart
before you tell him goodbye ”

Listen to Your Heart, Roxette

Art Copyright Lisa Hunt used with permission www.lisahuntart.com

Imbolc

The motif for the early part of February is balance between heart and intellect. February 2^nd is a time of tending the flame of hope, love and compassion within our hearts. So breathe your passion into your cupped hands, and place your palms against your heart. Imagine pink heart-light repairing the tears and purple bruises, and feel the warmth of Love filling your whole being. Visualise what you desire and feel it glow within your heart.

In the Cycle of the Year, Imbolc (also written Imbolg), or Candlemas, the Feast of Lights, is when we celebrate with fire our power as passionate men and women. Here in Ireland, Brigit is honoured as one of the great Triple Goddesses. Sanitised and sanctified by the church as Saint Brigit, her feast day, Lá Fhéile Bríde, is February 1^st. Her Eternal Flame still burns brightly at Solas Bhríde in Kildare and her sacred holy wells are still places of peace and pilgrimage. Brigit was once a solar goddess. Her origins are obscure, but she is goddess of the hearth, goddess of water and of fire. She has dominion over poetry, healing, herbal lore and midwifery, the smithies and hand-worked crafts. She was also a warrior goddess, and is often referred to as “The Flaming One” or “Bright Arrow” as she is said to have been born at sunrise.

Light a candle today, or write out your heart felt intentions on a piece of paper and burn them in the fire, allowing the smoke to carry your hopes and dreams into the air, back to Source.

New Moon / Solar Eclipse in Aquarius

The light of the Aquarius Sun is eclipsed on February 6th or 7th, depending on where in the world you are living. This month's eclipse is actually an Annular Eclipse as shown on the left, so even at its maximum, the Sun's light is not fully doused. Eclipses act as potent catalysts in our birth charts, triggering planetary energies, setting energy in motion. Pre-natal solar and lunar eclipse degrees in our birth charts mark times of the ongoing gestation in utero and indicate experiences which mark our lives as we grow into adulthood. Transits to pre-natal eclipses will be very sensitive.

So today, reason, intellect and the ego is obscured; solar energy is partially masked. In astrology the sun means life force, and is the centre of the personality, the focal point of the mind. Today, take some time to go within, and use the energy of the new Aquarius Moon to consider your own Truth. How impeccable are you with your words? Do you speak your Truth at all times?

Aquarius is an air sign, depicted by a pair of wavy lines which are serpents of knowledge. Aquarius symbolism pertains to truth and integrity. To individuality and to the hive mentality or blinkered fundamentalism. Today is the day to be conscious of thought and word and scrupulousness of our intentions. Honour your word with all your heartfelt intention.

Crystal Wisdom: Holding a Labradorite crystal during meditation can boost your intuition and link in to universal consciousness. Eclipsed and weakened intellect and ego are supplemented by intuitive wisdom, dispelling illusions and transforming your personal mental growth to a new, more integrative approach.

Imbolg: In Gaelic, literally "in the belly", a reference to the seeds sown at the Winter Solstice. What seeds are you incubating? What dreams grow within?

What does 2008 hold for you? Contact Ingrid and Barry for your personal birth chart analysis.

Astrology Primer

Planets and signs are inseparably linked together in most astrologers’ minds. Mention Aries and one immediately thinks of Mars. The Sun and one sees Leo. And so on…

This month’s topic is rulership. And if it were so simple, it would be a short topic indeed. However, there’s a lot more to it than a straightforward noting that a certain planetary energy is similar to the filter of a particular sign. And when fully understood, the rulership of a sign by a planet adds significant depth to the interpretation of both sign and planet.

In traditional or classical astrology, rulership (or domicile) is one of the five essential dignities of the planets. Essential dignity measures the inherent strength of a planet based solely on its position in the Zodiac by both sign and degree within sign. Rulership is perhaps one of the simplest of the dignities, insofar as it relates only to sign.

The other four dignities are exaltation, triplicity, term and face. There are also two debilities—the opposite of dignities, which denote a planet’s weakness—detriment and fall. We won’t deal with any of these topics here. A good introduction to them can be found in “Astrology: Understanding the Birth Chart (A Comprehensive Guide to Classical Interpretation” by Kevin Burk.

Rulership defined

Classical rulership was assigned to planets in a largely geometrical manner according to Ptolemy. The Sun and Moon, or the Lights, were assigned to the signs of the Zodiac associated with the hottest and brightest time of year—Cancer and Leo. The Moon got Cancer, a feminine sign, and the Sun Leo as the masculine sign. There being only seven classical planets to be assigned rulership of 12 signs, each of the remaining planets took rulership of two signs, moving both clockwise and anticlockwise around the Zodiac in the order of the planetary speeds, equivalent, of course, to their distance from the Sun. Saturn as the slowest and coldest planet received Capricorn and Aquarius, the signs associated with the northern hemisphere winter. This is illustrated in the figure on the right.

This scheme was shaken up significantly, as might be expected, by the discovery of Uranus in 1781, and subsequently Neptune and Pluto. Modern astrology has assigned rulerships to these three outer planets, displacing their classical rulers—Uranus got Aquarius, Neptune Pisces and Pluto took Scorpio as shown to the left. The basis of these assignments is best described as the affinity between the planet and sign in question. Uranus was given Aquarius, for example, because of the Aquarian tendency to be revolutionary and unconventional, typical Uranian energies. These assignments remain the subject of widespread debate and further raise the question of the remaining dual rulerships (Mercury of both Gemini and Virgo; and Venus of both Taurus and Libra). However, many modern astrologers consider both the traditional and modern rulers of Scorpio, Aquarius and Pisces when interpreting a chart.

The Meaning of Rulership

When first learning astrology, the association between a sign and its ruler often provides significant insight into the basic nature of the sign and the way it works. As described in the two previous primer articles, the fundamental nature of a sign can be understood from its combination of element (Fire, Earth, Air, Water) and mode (Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable). Thus, Cancer as cardinal water can be seen to be emotional and intuitive by nature and is creative and motivated to act in response to its feelings. Knowing that the Moon rules Cancer reinforces this image, adding the strongly maternal archetype of the Moon as a very typical expression of the creative, emotional energy of the sign.

In addition, the ruler of a sign brings with it a rich and varied mythology associated with the planet’s God or Goddess. Returning again to Cancer and its ruler, the Moon, our understanding of the sign is vastly enriched by the myriad of Lunar Goddess myths available from all cultures throughout the ages. In the Greek pantheon alone, there are at least five Goddesses associated with the Moon—Artemis, Hecate, Phoebe, Selene and Rhea—with a range of myths covering themes from virgin, whore, mother, crone all the way to destroyer. Indeed, much of the lunar myth has found its way into the Christian figure of the Virgin Mother of God. Our understanding of Cancer is thus expanded and deepened by the associated lunar mythology.

As we progress in our understanding of astrology, the principal use of rulership (and its opposite debility, detriment) is in evaluating the strength of a planet in a horoscope.

When a planet is in the sign of its rulership, it is in its greatest strength. You can think of a planet in rulership as an actor playing his most famous role, the role that suits him perfectly and for which he became a star. Such a star doesn’t have to answer to anyone or anything, and can do whatever he wants, be it clever or stupid, caring or self-centred, sensible or destructive. And we often see our movie stars behaving foolishly, selfishly or dangerously.

The same is true of a planet in rulership. It may be wonderful for the planet to be so powerful, but it’s not necessarily the best for the individual concerned. Just because the planet is strong doesn’t mean that its energy is always used to the best effect. Mars in Aries can turn self-assertion into unbounded and senseless aggression. Venus in Taurus may take sensual magnetism to the extreme of slothful acquisitiveness.

Such warnings aside, planets in rulership operate in a very pure way, able to easily express their true nature and highest purpose. It the individual chooses to use them to their full and pure expression, these energies can be powerful creative forces for growth and personal evolution.

Let’s take a quick look at the exact opposite of rulership—detriment. A planet is in detriment when in the sign exactly opposite that which it rules. Thus the Sun rules Leo, therefore, it is in detriment in Aquarius. Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo, so it is in detriment in Sagittarius and Pisces. A planet in detriment is not really weak as you might expect. It is quite strong, but in a most inappropriate way. As a result, a planet in detriment is in poor condition, but because of its own way of behaving. Using the movie star analogy, this is a powerful star who insists on playing a totally unsuitable role and comes to grief as a result.

Comparing the Sun in rulership and detriment shows how this works. The Sun rules Leo, and when there gets to shine its brightest, to be its most creative and to be the biggest and greatest expression of who it is. It may be prone to attacks of prima donna behaviour, but generally, the individual with Sun in Leo gets to shine more than most, for good or for bad. 180 degrees across the Zodiac, Aquarius is the sign of detriment for the Sun. Here the Sun struggles to shine in a sign that focuses on group consciousness and equality. The airy concept of “first among equals” may inspire this Sun, but the reality of expressing it may lead to a haughty intolerance for all those equals who don’t quite measure up to the first!

Next month: Once more around the Houses