New Moon ~ Fear of the Flow

New Moon:  3rd February UT 2.30am.

Well there’s no need to read a transit blog to find out that this is one doozy of a New Moon.  We have a monster cyclone in Australia – and for once that’s not media hype, a volcano erupting in Japan, mammoth snow storms pounding the US.

We also have major unrest in Egypt that threatens the fragile stability of the Middle East, the oil industry and the global economy.

They have one thing in common at least.  Their effect is more widespread than we would normally expect.  Yasi is likely to contine beyond the coast for many hundreds of miles, and the US snow storms are cutting a swathe through the midwest.

As I suggested in my Short Take on 30th January – this New Moon has been building on the Sun, Mars and Ceres energy in the Root Centre in Gate 19, prior to the Sun shifting to the Ji Centre in Gate 13.  The potent combination of the two gates has created a bridge between our personal emotional world and the greater collective, between our personal survival and our desire to be part of the collective heart.

It is asking us to look at some specific issues – how we use our power (Sun), how we apply our will (Mars), a deep need for intimate emotional connection (Moon), and how we can become neurotic when we don’t get it (Ceres).  These are all clear messages that fit neatly into the category of environmentalism.   I’ve seen many descriptions on twitter of Cyclone Yasi as a ‘bitch’ – our disconnection from mother earth, and her angry response to this callous disregard.

I’ve watching television coverage from Queensland as I write and David Koche has just described the situation with Cyclone Yasi as akin to a war on terror, but “it’s a war on nature”.

And it’s not just an earth thing.  The Great Attractor, until recently considered the biggest thing known in the universe, is involved (in Gate 5.3, sextile the New Moon and creating a channel with the South Node) no doubt adding to the immense size and scope of these two extreme weather events.

But there is something much, much deeper going on here, and it’s happening within you.  It’s the war we all carry on against our own nature.  This New Moon is itself a stepping stone to the new energies that are becoming available to us in 2011.  It brings a chance to be compassionate, open and accepting of our full natural selves, and an opportunity to see our own warrior nature and allow it to champion our own cause in alignment with the ultimate good.

And the war is also between the structures we have built up to keep us safe (and feeling nurtured and nourished) and our true nature.  Roads, homes, schools, ports, island resorts – are preventing the free flow of wild energy that is a natural part of life on earth.  It’s not that we have to do without structure, it just needs to be more in tune with nature, more flexible and less likely to be destroyed.  Saturn (structure) will continue to be conjunct Haumea (healthy relationship with the earth) in the Spleen  Centre (physical realm) till October 2011, so this is a long term project!

Pluto in the Root Centre in the Gate of Joy is acting as a transformer to the Kuiper Belt, stepping us up to the energy of creation, and the chance to restructure our experience of death and transformation.

The structures are internal as well, held in place by our own unconscious beliefs about what’s required for our safety and survival.  We reject what nature offers and make do instead with an inferior version, something more ‘civilised’.  Ophelia and Zeus in Gate 48 are playing a role, with Ophelia representing the way in which we experience having strong emotions ignored.

You may want to hold yourself apart from the flow of receiving and giving for fear of losing your freedom and autonomy.  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.

Hilary Barrett

This is the addictive and delusional basis of our modern culture and psyche unravelling.

As always these days, I’m struggling to know where to start, what approach to take to cover the energy of the New Moon.  There are so many options.   Let’s look at the Sun and Moon.  They will be in Gate 13 line 1.

Inside the walls is the familiar village; outside, a bigger world where more can be gained or lost.  Those who think of venturing out naturally gather here at the gate – a little band of potential fellow travellers, united by their willingness to explore.  Gradually you come to the gate and gather courage to brave the unknown.  You may be concerned about what lies beyond the walls, but you’re going in the right direction.

Hilary Barrett

As we nervously peek out through the crack in the gate, our old reality is being washed away.  Poseidon, Decaulion (the Greek version of Noah) and Ceto (a terrifying deep sea creature) are still in place in Gate 44.  They were triggered by the Full Moon on Quaoar in Gate 26, causing the major flooding in Queensland 2 weeks ago.

Mars will be in Gate 13 line 2.   Ceres is holding the bridge, back in Gate 19 line 6.  She hasn’t finished there with our need to see where we reject nurturing.  A positive relationship between the two brings a feeling of acting on behalf of our own successful outcomes.  The negative issues include a subconscious grief and incapacitating loss arising from the rage of the mother directed our way.  The fear, sense of abandonment and loss of nurturing intimate connection were like a death experience when we were children.

Mars in Gate 13 line 2 has something very interesting to say.  We are not here to be safe and secure, and sometimes we just need to let go and see what happens.   Even our spiritual beliefs may become too small a space, because any rigid adherence to security eventually becomes a prison.  And a rigid adherence to security is very, very imporant to a small child who cannot rely on his or her parents for safety!  This immensely deep and painful wound is being healed on a global scale.  In this sense, the ice in the Northern Hemisphere represents the cold aloofness and the tropical cyclone in the Southern Hemisphere represents the rage and destructive fury, both disowned by us and projected out onto parent figures, mother earth, father sky, god and the universe.

Just one more point I want to make.  I’ve used the word ‘neurotic’ a few times in regard to Ceres.  It’s a word I have taken from the description by Demetra George in her book Asteroid Goddesses.  I believe this word holds the key to this New Moon.  Increasingly it seems difficult to understand what is going on in our lives, even to make sense of our own behaviour.  We naturally tend to think that we are wrong, that our reactions are neurotic.  This tendency comes from our experiences of being cut off from our natural selves.  I watch parents do this to children all the time.  “Don’t cry, there’s nothing to be sad about.”  or this “It’s okay, that didn’t really hurt.”  or try this one “Go to your room and I never want to see you behave like that again.”  Complete invalidation of the child’s reality means that our truthful and natural responses are quashed and rendered ‘neurotic’.  As a result we cultivate inauthenticity.

We are being asked to own our athentic wildness.  We are being given the opportunity to see that our willfulness is not destructive, as we believed when we were small children and it appear to destroy our security.  We are reclaiming our so-called neurotic selves.  We are being allowed to find a balance between flow and stability, a new type of security that holds us safe in the collective heart of humanity and the cosmos.

I suggest that if you feel a sense of being overpowered just now – whether it be a political revolution, a cyclone, a blizzard or just your own emotional overwhelm – you practice gradually and carefully allowing yourself to experience the flow of that energy rather than trying to keep yourself energetically ‘safe’.