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Dear Friends,

Its time for a little tough love, North Node Capricorn Lunar Eclipse style.  Let’s consider this an intervention, delivered with love and nothing but your own best interests as motivation.  Also, for the astrologically conversant among us and for the sake of full disclosure, please remember that this intervention is coming to you from a Sun/Neptune in Scorpio with a 1 degree Aries Moon conjunct Saturn opposing Venus (currently squared by Pluto and said eclipse), with Capricorn rising.  Are you ready?

You are now lying in the bed you have made yourself.

Don’t like the bed?

Do some laundry.  Buy a new bed.  Don’t have the money for a new bed?  Work harder, work more, or work smarter.  Play less, eat less. Wear rags rather than Ralph Lauren  Whatever it takes.  I have my own bed to tend to, and so does my neighbor, and so does your neighbor.

A lunar eclipse is an emotional wake up call, it brings to light what has been hidden.  These hidden issues have been developing for a lifetime, if not several, so there is nothing “new” in the equation.  Yes, your awareness might be new, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing, although better late than never.  In fact, having had these issues for so long without addressing them is exactly the problem.  Better late than never, but the pill will remain bitter.

Lets use the Gulf oil spill as an example.  Is deepwater oil drilling a fool-proof and safe method of acquiring oil?  No.  Do we do it anyway?  Yes.  Have there been other terrible oil spills in the history of oil drilling.  Yes.  Are they always disastrous consequences to the local families, communities, economies, species, and ecosystems?  Yes.  Is Sarah Palin hugely popular for coining the mantra, “Drill, baby, Drill!”  Yes.  Do we support Sarah Palin?  Regretfully,  I heard a “Yes!”  I could go on, but I have made my point.

The Miami Herald informed me this morning that Nixon was the first president to urge the American Republic to ween itself from oil dependency.  Nixon was president in 1970, right?  So we, the people, have had 40 years to take his advice, and similar advice from several other presidents.  Even I, born in 1967, can remember gas lines in the 70s with Carter.  So, the “oil crisis” is nothing new, but we, the people, have chosen not to address it, and a choice to do nothing is a choice to let someone else do everything - and anything.  And they did, to our collective disadvantage.  We wanted big cars, air conditioning, refrigerators as big as some houses in some parts of the world, lots of plastic and disposable things so we wouldn’t have to wash our own poo off of our own clothes or hands.  How’s that working for you now?

This very same oil is literally destroying the Gulf coast and fast on its way to destroying the Caribbean (”That’s not even in America!” I just heard Sarah Palin say… in my mind) and the Atlantic (yes, my dear friends, it will eventually make its way up to the beaches of Miami where I sit and write this, the Carolina beaches, the Outer Banks, Maryland, Delaware, and Cape May, the Jersey Shore, Long Island and the untouchable Hamptons.)  Don’t believe me?  You don’t need to.  The proof will come in black oil on white beaches soon enough, and then it will once again be a moot point as to whether or not you “believe” anything, whether it comes from my mouth or the mouth of Nixon.  The proof is in the pudding.

I could go on and on, and probably will at a later date, but my point is that this is nothing new.  It is the logical extension of pretending ignorance in the face of hard facts and refusing to make sacrifices for your personal, and the collective, good.  This is the message of this eclipse.  I have used the collective American experience to illustrate the point.  Take a look at your personal lives:  where have you refused to deal with something that has been problem for 40 years?  Or 20?  or 10?  How long does a problem have to threaten your safety (the Sun and Mercury are conjunct in Cancer, after all), before you take it seriously?  Oil dependence, drug dependence, alcohol dependence, any lack of independence you choose.  Self-sustaining is a good thing to be, whether the “self” is a single person, a community, or a nation.  Ask Sarah Palin what Eskimos ate 1000 years ago.  Even she knows it was whale and seal and fish, not imported and genetically modified corn and certainly not chicken and beef pumped full of hormones, sugar, and fat… and heaven only knows what else.

Ana Veciana-Suarez said it concisely in her column for the Miami Herald this morning, “Too bad it has taken such devastation to get us to this point [of realizing that we need to protect the environment].  Then again, this may finally curb our appetite for oil.”

On a personal and more emotional level, what other issues have you been hiding from, dodging responsibility, and generally behaving as though there would be no consequences?

Pluto in Capricorn is conjunct the Moon in early Capricorn at this eclipse, and lets face it, this is why this eclipse is a big deal.  Capricorn is the sign we associate with responsibility, accountability, authority and leadership.  It is also associated with guilt.  Pluto tears down whatever it touches to the bare ground, maybe even the ocean floor, maybe even deeper.  Pluto will mine as deeply as is necessary to expose the full extent of the problem.  Only once this has happened can any meaningful change be made, but Brenda Brush has always said that Pluto always leaves you better off than you were before, but that doesn’t mean the process wont be difficult.

For the sake of your own safety and happiness, as well as that of your friends and family, your community, your heritage, your culture, your state, and your country, for the sake of all of the other beings, human, animal, and plant that also share these things with you, please take some time to reflect on how your choices and the consequences they have, both large and small, affect everyone and everything around you.  When everyone around you feels safer and happier, you will too.  This is how it works, or at least how it should.

Pluto has taken us all to the underworld for this eclipse, and Mercury is the one to bring us back up.  Mercury is retrograde only in Earth signs this year, so the message is clear.  Be practical, pay attention to the details, be responsible and healthy, and be strong.

with love

m

Dear Friends,

The Summer Solstice is upon us, unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case its the Winter Solstice, so lets use a geography-neutral term and call it the Cancer Solstice!  For those of us in the US, this is an especially important event, as the US is Cancer born.  This solstice marks the entrance of the Sun into the sign of Cancer, which happens at 7:30a EST on Monday June 21st.  Every time the Sun enters a cardinal sign, we have a change of seasons:  Aries is the Spring Equinox, Cancer is the Summer Solstice, Libra is the Autumn Equinox, and Capricorn is the Winter Solstice.  Cardinal signs require action.  Cardinal signs initiate new beginnings. Cardinal signs often mark a need for change.  Figuring out how to integrate this energy in our lives brings us a step closer to manifesting our full potential for happiness and love.

I have a vision in my head of a baseball pitcher releasing his first pitch at the World Series for this Solstice.  It is the beginning of what will become a very important game.  How we respond to or work with this pitch will determine which choices we keep open for ourselves and which avenues we close for ourselves.  The entire summer will be seem to be one fateful event after another as we move from the Cancer Solstice to the Lunar Eclipse of June 26th (Cardinal), to the Solar Eclipse of July 11 (Cardinal) and the apex of the waxing Cardinal T-square between Uranus, Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn on July 26th.  There will be very little time to sit back and see how things unfold.  Events will alter our lives and we will need to respond quickly with assurance and bravery.  This is the demand of Cardinal energy.

As the Sun moves into the sign of Cancer, he is immediately challenged by Uranus and Jupiter in Aries.  Cancer is the sign of self-preservation and nurturing.  Cancer doesn’t like surprises or sudden changes.  Well, we can hardly call the changes our world is facing “sudden.”  These issues have been building for a while now, but there is usually one straw that breaks the camel’s back, and I guess a lot of camels are going to have broken backs soon.  A good example of this is the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  How many oil spills have occurred before this one: hundreds?  thousands?  I don’t know, but despite all of the oil spills that have ever occurred anywhere on this planet, it has taken a disaster of this magnitude to attract and to hold our attention.  Shame on us.  Perhaps now everyone of us in the US can admit that we have a problem: an addiction to oil that is causing us to defile our own waters and soil, to destroy our own lives in the pursuit of the oil.  It is an addiction that will destroy countless lives: human, animal, and plant, an addiction that will also radically change our children’s ability to enjoy the bounty of nature.  I am ashamed of myself for contributing to this situation.  The only possible benefit of this situation is that perhaps now we can all agree that we need to end our dependence on oil and that we need to be much better stewards of the Earth.  Admitting to the problem is the first step, and only the first step.  There is wind and solar enough to keep us all plugged in and air-conditioned.  Yes, it will be expensive to build the infrastructure, but what would you call the price of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster?

The Sun square to Uranus means that we must all make some very deep and lasting changes in the ways we sustain and protect ourselves.  Either we can do this voluntarily or we can wait until the Universe creates a situation like the Deepwater Horizon Disaster and we can respond.  In my book, sitting around and waiting for a disaster to spur me into action is not a good or safe feeling.  Cancer is concerned with safety and security.  I cannot say, as I wait for the oil to work its way through the loop current and onto the beaches less than 3 miles from my home where I sit writing this, that I feel safe.  I feel threatened, I feel scared, I feel angry.  Change is certainly necessary.  I prefer to be more proactive, to clean up before the housekeeper comes, as my dear mentor Brenda Brush says.  Why wait for the crisis to hit before we begin to prepare.  The crisis is now, and if you haven’t felt it yet, then my heart goes out to you, because that only means that your personal wake up call is going to be that much more difficult and harder to manage.

We have a challenge to overcome, a crisis to face:  How do we maintain our feelings of safety while at the same time allowing deep and lasting changes to occur?  Looking at the Solstice chart, we should consult the Moon, as it rules the sign of Cancer.  At the time of the Solstice, the Moon is at 29 Libra!  29 degrees of any sign is the sign of expiation, and the sign Libra is the sign of balance, harmony, and relationship.  The message is clear to me: we must all talk about the issues we are facing in an open, honest, and non-partisan manner.  Libra is an air sign, after all, which means that information must be exchanged in order for the process to work.  Finding the middle ground, practicing moderation and restraint, and making sure our neighbors are as safe and as happy as we want to be will ensure our own safety and happiness.

At the Solstice, The Sun is also Square to Saturn at 28 Virgo.  I have been writing for 2.5 years about the meaning of Saturn in Virgo.  Health, routines, and attention to detail are Virgo ruled issues, along with the ability to adapt to the demands of the day.  The message is once again very clear:  change and adaptation are the only way we can ensure our safety and security.  For even more clarification, we can look to Mercury, the ruler of Virgo.  Mercury is in his own sign of Gemini, the planet that rules communication and information, as well as local neighborhoods, transit and commerce, youth, and siblings.  Once again, communicating and relationships are highlighted.  We must protect and rely upon our neighbors, our brothers, and our sisters to make it through these difficult times.  New ideas, learning to talk about and to share these ideas, and injecting youth figuratively into our discourse will result in a greater sense of community, as well as the generation of new ideas which will ultimately be the source of our new security.  New ways of transacting commerce and of moving ourselves form point A to point B will be part of the solution.  Collective reasoning will bring better results than competition.  It is no secret that the banking, insurance, and energy industries (commerce) all need a makeover, nor is it breaking news that we need to develop less damaging ways of moving ourselves around this beautiful planet which we are destroying every minute of every day.  The question is:  when will we, each and every one of us, make the commitment to start this much needed revolution?

Revolution?  Yes, we need a revolution to overcome the the sloth, the greed, the indifference of our community.  Uranus in Aries is waking us up, fueling our rage, and forcing us to act.  This energy is bringing in these challenges so that we can step up and take responsibility for ourselves (Pluto is in Capricorn, after all).  How many more disasters will it take before enough people wake up and join the cause?  The ruler of Aries is Mars, who is in Virgo… Sound familiar?  Health, routine, adaptability: these are the areas where we can each one take charge and be responsible for creating healthier routines that adapt to the demands of the day.

Now is definitely the time to be the change you want to see in this world.

with love

m