The Solstice Gateway
[this post relates to the astrological phenomena of Uranus square Pluto that was active from 2013 to 2015. What happened then is still relevant now].
There’s a revolution underway.
Can you feel it – the pressure of forces beyond our control?
If it’s something you sense, it’s likely that the Uranus/Pluto square has laid siege to some of your personal planets…
Those with birthdays in early April, July, October and January know what I mean.
And for any of you with planets in the mid degrees of the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn), Uranus and Pluto have been playing rough on your turf too.
Pluto moves with tectonic slowness.
It unearths the deep psycho-social forces that underwrite human lives.
Its urge is to break down, to split apart the old and the outworn (ideas, behaviours, realities). Things past their use-by-date.
Not destruction merely for the sake of it, but as a necessary natural force, using this energy of entropy to generate new life. Just as soils are made fecund, and seeds are sprouted by the action of earthworms in shit and decay.
Pluto could take 20 years to move us through this elemental regeneration.
Until Uranus steps into the mix, says ‘ready or not’, lights the fuse.
Pressure builds to critical, forces beyond our control push us forward, outward, in any direction.
Even though we want this revolution, because we know it’s the fast track to that re-formation we’re craving, still we respond with fear and resistance.
It’s been going on for a while in fact. Since June 2012, the revolutionary forces have been stirring up the safety and security of position ‘normal’ (if there ever was such a thing).
Seven times they’re squaring off, over a span of years. Not that it’s been a non-stop ride since 2012 – there’ve been months of respite when we get to relax and take in the view.
Even to touch, for long moments, those potentials that we feel coming into form.
This week we’ve entered the 6th pass of Uranus square Pluto.
We approach the seventh and final gate in March 2015.
Seven is a curious and unruly number, a prime number (in other words, indivisible).
Not comforting like 6 or 8 which make perfect structures, complete unto themselves.
Apparently, when we’re asked to ‘pick a number between 1 and 10’, the majority of us choose the number 7.
The number has always seemed a little mystical to me. I once made a rather complicated contraption called the Gyromancer with seven rings, one inside the other, all about the revelatory qualities of the number 7.
Seven is the number of process.
The steps towards a goal, where each stage is a challenge that reveals a little more of what needs to be known by the seeker.
Seven is the number of initiation.
Salome removes her 7 veils of illusion, Ishtar passes through 7 gates on her descent into hell to rescue her son-lover.
(A quick aside: this holy incest is not some archaic paedophilic fantasy but rather a symbol of the mysterious and mystical union of creator and creation).
Lately, as the 6th gate approached I’ve been feeling the pressure rising again. Off kilter, out of balance, in my pushing to complete everything before I could start a new year…
While I’m in the thick of pushing to get things done, pushing through difficult moments, it just feels like I am up against an immense and resisting force. Rather like being under siege.
Until I sit back and realise that I am the resistance.
Out there fighting on the frontiers (of my own mind). Recognising that I have fallen back into old patterns. Of using work to feel deserving.
Of trying to control everything by working on it.
It’s the classic response – we cling to the old ways and habits, even if we actually can’t stand them anymore. Because at least they’re ‘comfortable’, and safe. We know them, and when we know something we can feel like we’re in control. Even if it makes us feel slightly ‘mangled’. That’s the funny thing about addictive habits.
Then this week the harmonic balancer in my car’s engine broke. Haha – how’s that for a cosmic joke – a serving of Jungian co-incidence?
The 6th gate was exact on the 15th when a crazed gunman trapped 17 people in a chocolate cafe, dubbed #SydneySiege.
A harrowing event that lead to the sudden deaths of two people in addition to the self-styled revolutionary with the shotgun.
Then days later in Cairns, eight children are inexplicably murdered – perhaps by the very woman who cared for them, in a Medea-like slaying of all that is dear to her.
The gate remains open until the Solstice on Monday the 22nd (AEDT), when there is a conflagration of cosmic events.
Uranus goes direct (the revolution goes full steam ahead).
The moon starts its new year cycle, in rare coincidence with the solstice.
And the sun basks a moment in its longest day (on our side of the world) before turning around and heading north again on its next cycle.
Hanukkah completes, Christmas looms.
All of these events are only significant from our earthly human point of view, of course.
The sun does not go round the earth, the retrograde motion of planets is only apparent to the human eye. Even the cycle of the moon is a symbolic construction.
Yet they’re also perceptible. We experience them.
We’ll notice our days getting shorter and the angle of the sun will change (my good washing days when the sun fills the whole of the back-yard are on the wan). The moon will slowly light up the night sky to it’s fullest over the next few weeks.
And the real power of any act of transformation or revolution occurs on both the perceptible and symbolic level.
Media whipped up a frenzy of fear post the Sydney Siege. Yet, people responded with so many flowers that florists sold out, and the tweet phenomena #IllRideWithYou went round the world.
It appears that still the revolution will not be televised. Only the fear of change gets air-time.
Each day we make a choice about the meaning we give to what we perceive.
To the information coming in, to the emotions we wake up with, to the events which carry us through the day.
Yesterday, I just happened to be listening to a podcast by Walter Makichen, a podcast so ancient it was from 2008 but I hadn’t heard til now. More Jungian coincidence.
I was musing on his theory of 4 levels of spiritual practice.
The first level is when we find a way to make sense and meaning from collapse and chaos – religion, or yoga (real yoga not that stretching at the gym), or meditation, etc – whatever your flavour.
Then it can become a tool for clearing out the karmic dross of psychological wounding; for calming the mind and heart.
After this we discover that spirit is in the creative act, and we begin to understand the power we have to generate our own reality, to bring things into being.
The trouble is that we can get stuck there, and forget that the source of creativity is that energy which is so much greater than ourselves.
We think we can control everything, we get caught up in hubris ( I love that word – the arrogance that challenges the Gods, to which the only antidote is humility).
Walter describes the 4th level as transcendence, the moment when we step out of trying to control everything and we just let it be.
I have an issue with the concept of transcendence – I’m sure we can still be on and of this planet without getting caught up in that particular human need to identify with what gets created, and destroyed.
Instead I prefer to think of this level as what Tosha Silver describes as ‘offering’.
It’s the handing over. It’s surrender.
Not a very appreciated quality in our culture. Suggesting loss and failure.
And so we struggle to find a way to win the revolution, not realising that we’re buying into the very mindset that we are fighting to bring down.
And, ironically, the fate of most revolutions is to replace the ousted oppressor with another form of oppression.
This morning I realised that when I surrender, the revolution is truly underway because the struggle, the resistance is over.
Blockages fall away. The wheel turns.
So this solstice I’m ready to drop another veil, to burn what needs to be burnt, to open up to the future.
I’m asking myself: what revolutionary act, or thought, or feeling, do I want to make a reality, today?
And you, what is your solstice act of release? How are you answering the challenges of the 6th gatekeeper?
