The landscape shifts like sticky mud under our feet as we try to hold our ground.  December dishes up the unexpected, as if we have been searching in the garden for a particular plant and suddenly wander through a gate to find ourselves in another garden entirely.  Reacquainting ourselves with our new environment needs to be our main focus for the next few weeks.  Who knows what wonders we’ll find there!

Yesterday’s New Moon was conjunct The Great Attractor (5), and the Full Moon on 20th is in the same channel (15).   This channel is the only one activated on 21st December 2012, and it deals with the opening of time dimensions and a re-balancing of the masculine and feminine energy.  Time both speeds up and slows down, warping space and our sense of self.  Being ‘at home’ becomes a soul journey rather than a real estate transaction.

There’s a whole pile of things going on in the chart right now.  With the Earth in Gate 35, we are able to express our emotions directly and immediately.  Usually a transit to this channel leads to emotional outbursts, but this time the planetary influences have created a deeper slower expression.

In the emotional centre, Neptune is conjunct Chiron in Gate 30.  These two have been travelling together since 2008.   In this gate they seem to be bringing up old emotional wounds to our sense of needs and wants and desires.  They are giving us a reality check on our fantasies, and in this way creating the conditions for instant manifestation.  If what we want isn’t really what we want, but just a glamourous fantasy (think Ferrari), then we will have subconscious resistance.

Feeling wounded about not getting what we want focuses our attention on this question over and over again – is that what I really want?  Or perhaps we could put it this way – if that Ferrari turned up in the driveway right now, would it make me any happier?

There’s a deep but mistaken belief here that we need to rely on others to get what we want.  And this involves manipulation of them (but muuuummmmm!!, why can’t I have it!!!!) and of ourselves as well, as we shift and twist to make ourselves the right shape to attract what we believe we need.  And because we haven’t yet quite mastered the manifestation dance, we never got to do the bit where we learn how to distinguish our true desires from our “childish” fantasies.   We are filling in the dots now.

The second emotional issue is Jupiter and Uranus in Gate 36.  There is a sense here of feeling that our emotional selves are quite mad, they just won’t listen to reason or comply nicely with our ego goals.  And they are making it difficult for us to fit in with the old concept of time.  If I feel emotional and can’t get my work done by 5pm, is that wrong of me?  Waiting for emotional clarity isn’t something we can get sorted by making to-do notes in our diary.  It’s much more receptive than that, and this is where the feminine integrative aspect of self can’t live within the prison of our current time frames.

That suppressed emotional energy is like a powerful horse that will ride in and carry you forward exactly as you desire (36.2).  But our addiction to mechanical time keeps it locked away where it can’t topple the order of our neat and tidy lives.  Without that power we find even walking is difficult (there are so many hexagrams that talk about not being able to walk just now!).  We rely instead on the false ‘horsepower’ of our imaginary Ferrari, living on fantasies where the real thing is waiting for us in an adjacent and parallel time universe.

The third highly significant event is Pluto (58) and Saturn (48) making a sandwich with Gate 18 being the delicious filling.  Gate 18 is a profound gate of DNA healing that affects us on the mental and physical levels.  Pluto (and Mercury about to retrograde) are letting us know that joy is our natural birthright.  I want to quote from 58.1 in Hilary Barrett’s excellent I Ching:

This is the promising beginning of a conversation: not mere self-expression, but the capacity to listen and respond.  You foster trust, and make mutual enrichment possible, by opening up your inner space to exchange.

The foundation for this responsive communication is autonomy and self-reliance: it means that you have something to give, and that you can create a harmonious connection that is not dominated or distorted by what people need from one another.

This is a channel that deals with our relationship to authority – tribal leaders both matriarchal and patriarchal.  There is a potential rigidity being cleared from our energetic fields as we realise that we are safe to connect with the depths of our own horsepower, our own truth and confidence (Saturn in 48.6).  Again from Hilary Barrett,

Water flows strongly into this well from underground sources.  It’s an image of effortless plenty; the water rising in the well, gathering even more as you draw from it – a constant dependable flow.

It might seem safer to cover the well.  You might want to hold yourself apart from the flow of giving and receiving for fear of losing your freedom and autonomy in the constant exchange.  Yet only when you remove the barriers and become part of the flow can you experience the true essence of the situation and tap into it’s deeper potential.

It’s hard to believe that we could be safe in a world where we can wait for the goodness and joy to surface naturally.  It’s difficult to trust that we have all we need within us to manifest what we truly desire without struggle or manipulation.   The Moon is passing over the Galactic Centre (11.5) later today and that is likely to bring new ideas that have you stepping into the next part of that journey into your new garden.