Issue 12, April 2008

   Moon Magic
   Astrology Primer
  

Hello everybody,

If it seems like only a couple of weeks since you received the last copy of LifeTimes, that’s because it is! We’re planning a short trip to the Languedoc in early April, visiting among other places the (in)famous Rennes-le-Chateau. So we thought we should get the April issue out before we go... in case we don’t come back.

The theme for Ingrid’s regular feature on Full and New Moons this month is fire and water: the Aries New Moon and the following Full Moon in Scorpio. Meanwhile, Barry covers the last six astrological houses in depth in this month's Astrology Primer.

Enjoy!

Ingrid and Barry.

Moon Magic

Beannacht / Blessing

“When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.”

John O'Donohue, Irish philosopher, poet & mystic, died 5^th January 2008.

“As above,so below.
As within, so without.
As the universe, so the soul.”

The motif this month is Fire and Water, Passion and Intensity, Yin and Yang.

New Moon in Aries

On Sunday 6^th April, the neophyte New Moon flames out to dance with Venus and Mercury in the sign of Aries today, symbolising brave new beginnings and a new lunar cycle.

In the tarot, Aries is associated with The Emperor, card number four. The Emperor suggests a drive to assert our willpower, to initiate, to use head over heart, rather than an emotional response, to be self reliant, take action, go to war, compete, campaign. The Emperor can embody the best of the masculine principle: objectivity, rational thought, tough decision making, and a need to claim your own authority in a situation or in a relationship. If we follow the law of correspondences, and are aware that nothing is outside ourselves. But when we suppress or deny what is within or project it onto other people, the larger the disruptions in our lives become.

This month, let us use the planetary energies to midwife new life lessons. Aries energy initiates, so let us pick a corner, and take a stand. Let us choose to take responsibility for our own feelings and actions, and make a conscious effort to let go of the fears that bind us, and accept our life lessons in whatever form they manifest. The impetus of this fiery New Moon is to take action—learn to be courageous. Move through those obstacles in our lives that block our way. At this New Moon time we might feel the need to re-new, re-vision, tackle those things that need to be bravely confronted—the pyramid of ironing in the laundry basket, unopened e-mails, unspoken fears that grip and strangle our life-force and ensnare us in low energy, contaminating our relationships. The clearing-out can be cathartic, as we surrender and cross the threshold of our fears. Take time today to spiritually reconstitute your live by making space for prayer and meditation so that you can embrace the new Moon energy with courage and fortitude. Use the impetus of the instinctual Aries Moon to rise above banality, and see Life in all its Technicolor rainbow splendour.

April days lengthen. Still the rain unstrings like shimmering pearls across the meadows of Mead, and the wind blows shrill and cold. Resolutely, the guardians of the sacred land stand in stoic protest at the desecration of our fecund Boyne River Valley. Courageously, they brave the wild winds and the dark sucking mud, as tarmac and cement scrape away the ancient earth, stones, and bones. Black, White and Red. This is Aries energy—a passionate statement of conviction, a fearless act of courage to espouse a cause greater than one’s own.

Progress. Convenience. Head over Heart. The deed is done. Money exchanged. Papers signed. Yet the scarlet thread of passion and crusading spirit of the Save Tara protestors means that there are people who care enough to espouse a cause and raise their voices, to ask WHY? Why this road through our rings of stone, our river lands, our bloodline, our ancient ancestral song, the Valley of our Kings?

So, as the raindrops glisten gold and sparkle silver on the greening branches, and the rainbow arches, a brilliant promise of hope across the valley, we ask ourselves, where do we need to evoke the courage of our convictions? Where do we need to draw a line in the sand and say: no more! Where do we need to draw deeply from the well of Passion to move onwards to the next adventure?

The Emperor Card featured this month depicts Cernunnos is the Celtic Lord of Animals. His name means “the Horned One”. He was one of the major Gods worshipped by the Celts, and representations of Him are found all throughout Europe. His image appears on stone carvings and artifacts from the Iron Age, and he often appears seated in a meditative position, and crowned with stag’s antlers, surrounded by wild animals.

He is associated with Derg Corra, the “Man in the Tree” or Herne the Hunter, in British folk lore. The Romans associated Cernnunos with the god Mercury, and he was re-invented as the Christian Devil.

This artwork is by Thalia Took who was known as Mary Crane. www.thaliatook.com

“You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?”

Almustafa in The Prophet

Full Moon in Scorpio

Scorpio energy is about making the unconscious conscious, with unflinching intense honesty and self awareness. It is about opening our hearts in Trust and soul naked intimacy with another. So just for today, surrender. Do not judge. Take the emotionally higher ground by asking that “Thy will be done”.

Pray to see the Truth in your relationships with others and with yourself – not our own truth but a Greater Truth so we will stretch and grow and reveal the darkness so that Love may take root and blossom.

Astrology Primer

As promised last month, our aim this month is to delve into the meanings of the seventh to twelfth houses. The first six houses deal with rather intimate and personal areas of our lives, how we grow to know, value and understand ourselves and our immediate circle. As we move to the second half of the wheel, the focus moves ever outward, from our personal relationships to the world at large, and the meanings of the houses themselves become expansive and existential.

When looking at the seventh and subsequent houses, it is often useful to consider them as paired with the houses that diametrically oppose them across the chart: seventh to first, eighth to second and so on. The houses can be seen as pairs, with the internal and personal view expressed in the first half of the wheel going out into the wider world to be experienced in a more objective way.

Seventh House: how we relate to and contract with others

Associated with: Libra and Venus

With its cusp on the Descendant, this is the house of “not-self”. Traditionally, the 7^th house is known as the house of marriage and open enemies. Although some marriages may end in open enmity, the common concept that operates here is that of one-on-one, committed relationship. Relationship with a purpose and some form of contract, for good or for ill. In this house, we begin to learn the significant role that others play in our lives, and the nature and conditions of the relationships we form with them. The 7^th house is also where we find those parts of ourselves with which we are least comfortable and project on to significant others in the most unconscious ways.

Eighth House: where we hold jointly, share or let go

Associated with: Scorpio and Pluto (and traditionally Mars)

What we can never possess and/or must perforce share is the matter of the 8^th house. Our partners’ money we must learn to share, the money we must share with the state (taxation) and indeed other peoples’ goods and money in general all fall in this house. At the deepest level, all that is shared with our partner emotionally and sexually emerges here. What we share, we must also let go of, and death is the most archetypal letting go. The ego must die in order to be reborn in true communion. The 8^th house feels dark and dangerous, but it is here that we truly merge with another to die and be reborn anew.

Ninth House: where we seek justice, faith and freedom

Associated with: Sagittarius and Jupiter

The 8^th house is associated with all manner of expansion. At its most mundane, it’s travel to distant places and journeys of exploration, expanding our outlook on life. But that exploration extends far beyond the physical world. Expansion of the mind—the higher mind—through further education is also a subject of this house, together with philosophy and religion as means by which we look beyond our mundane view of the world. The 8^th house is where we find meaning. Here, also, we seek justice, not in the letter of the law but in the blind faith that it will be done. This is the house of prophets and visionaries; the house of yet to come.

Tenth House: how we become the most we can be

Associated with: Capricorn and Saturn

The 10^th house cusp is the Midheaven, the highest point of the chart, the fourth and last of the angles. This house represents our status in the world and all that contributes to it, our ambition and our urge for recognition. This is where we shine forth and manifest our dreams and desires. Traditionally, this house denotes career or vocation, what we’d like to be remembered for and the nature of our contribution to the world. All aspects of status appear here. Although the contractual side of marriage is in the 7^th, the change of status that marriage brings connects it to the 10^th too. Traditionally, the father and our relationship with figures of authority are found in the 10^th house, although some astrologers prefer to associate this house with the mother, as the shaping parent.

Eleventh House: how we identify with peers and society

Associated with: Aquarius and Uranus (and traditionally Saturn)

It’s in the 11^th house that we find our friends, peers and our relationship with society in general. Ultimately, this house stands for our attempt to identify with something bigger than ourselves, to move beyond ego-identity and into group consciousness. The social groups we join in the 11^th say much about where we find acknowledgement of who we have become, but they also are our way of expressing our ideals of who we wish to become and how we think society should be.

Twelfth House: where we merge into the cosmos

Associated with: Pisces and Neptune (and traditionally Jupiter)

The 12^th house is where the ego surrenders its identity to merge back into the cosmic oneness of creation. This loss of self leads directly to one of the traditional names for this house—self-undoing. In a mundane sense, the 12^th is associated with prisons, hospitals and similar institutions where we surrender to the collective consciousness, both inmates and those who work in them. As ego dissolves in order to rejoin the cosmos or spirit, we come face to face with all that we have hidden from our conscious sight, our past, personal, in utero and that of our culture, unconscious feelings and compulsions as well as latent potentials. Traditionally, we meet our “secret enemies” here—although today we can see that these enemies are as likely to be within as without.

Next month: astrological cycles