HD transits 17 to 23 May 2023

Committing to your weird self

Pluto is the ringleader this week, not-so-subtly supporting us to be more grounded even as we are being pushed into situations we would rather avoid. There is a mutative pulse of our weirdness, our uniqueness, our Individuality. These are aspects of self we’ve keep safely out of sight (and possibly out of mind as well!). Jupiter gives us a gentle landing place, connecting us with people who bring out the best in us.

The most exciting days this week are 18 and 19 May. On 18 May Jupiter squares Pluto and Sun trines Neptune, so pretty much everything gets lit up. Including Sedna in Gate 8, which is also hit by a trine from that Jupiter-Pluto combo in the Channel of Mutation. AND is the place we experience the New Moon on 19 May.

I wrote last week about all the dwarf planets activated by Pluto right now.

It’s time to think about what the HD concept of the Individual really means to you. Because this week the Individual Circuitry is lit up.

Trusting we are all here doing this together

There’s a lot here about commitment, not something we usually associate with Individuality. But of course, Individuality requires commitment to yourself, your own unique expression. And that’s what this week is about. The New Moon is in Gates 8 and 14 – taking the pressure off what you, as an individual, believe you should be achieving and instead focusing on mastering your own skill set, finding where you fit in.

It sounds simple enough, but this New Moon calls on you to combine the skills of a tightrope walker and a trapeze artist. You have to be fully committed to your own path, and there is a danger of falling into what the I Ching calls The Abyss. Which is the place where your self-belief falters and you lose your focus and balance.

This week its important to trust that your people are waiting on the other side. I’m pushing the metaphor a bit, but half way across the tightrope you will have to leap, not out of fear, but out of commitment to your own self-expression. You will have to trust you will be caught in the arms of people who really GET you.

Gate 14 carries a little trap here, working in with Saturn in Gate 37, activating old loyalties, having us believe we need to take responsibility for things that aren’t ours to care about anymore. Called Possession in Great Measure, Gate 14 carries the freedom-slavery energy, and this week its letting us know where we are wasting our creative skills and talents. If it feels like you are slaving away for no good reason, you probably are.

There are three reasons why this is all going to work out for you.

Firstly, the timing is right. Secondly, you’ve done the groundwork. Thirdly, you have learnt to focus on each step, so you aren’t trying to keep control of everything all at once.

And lastly (huh, see what I did there?) there are people who are just waiting to catch you, because they have been waiting for you, just as you have been waiting for them.

Don’t Look Down

Down on the ground, way below the tightrope, it may look like things are falling apart. I’ve been a big fan of noticing what’s really going on in the world lately, making ourselves look and really see, not dissociating into our happy spiritual place. But this week the whole message is DON”T LOOK DOWN! Give your entire commitment to your stepping. Looking down leads to a loss of heart, and resistance from others (you want to do what??). It keeps you stuck in the old energy, which seems so, well, so real. And it has been real, but now it’s a dead end and we need to leap beyond it.

We are creating a new world, and the small perfections of your stepping will eventually lead to a huge flow of novel and innovative ways of moving forward. It can be lonely to start, but the future will recognise and value your contribution.

Pay attention to where you feel correct. Don’t spend time with people if you don’t feel connected and committed. Find people you have things in common with, and who make you feel like anything is possible for you.

Despite the challenges, this is a highly positive energy. It’s just a matter of time and everything will work out.

There’s a lovely piece of advice in the I Ching that goes something like this – there comes a point in the cycle of change where darkness has nothing to feed on but itself, and then it starves to death. That’s where we are right now. For a while it was important to find the reflections of darkness within us. But now, we just have to stop feeding it and focus on our own inner processes and the creative impulses that are emerging.

Nourishment and Self-Reliance.

And speaking of feeding ourselves.

Sometimes in the transits a planet will sit in one place for much longer than usual. The Nodes are spending 10 weeks in one place. They really want us to get the message!

The North Node in 27.3 talks about blocking nourishment, but it’s not limited to food. The people we spend time with, what we read, watch on television, all of this and more shapes who we are becoming. I call it our personal ecosystem. We have choices here. One choice is to take in everything the algorithm feeds us. Another choice is to get to a new level of noticing how things feel when we take them in. Do they nourish us? Or leave us stranded in a cycle of desire and gratification that depletes our energy and dulls our brilliance?

The South Node in 28.3 speaks of blocking out whatever disturbs our comfort zone. Even as we approach a dead end we tend to avoid valuable advice, new ideas, unusual situations. Better the devil you know, so many say. There is healing of trauma here – where we are so accustomed to feeling victimised, so acclimatised to giving up everything and failing yet again, that we can’t even see our way free of it all.

Right now there is hope of renewal. Strange and unexpected events arrive on your doorstep. Alliances with new people bring fresh approaches and a life you hadn’t considered till now. As we learn how to simultaneously nourish ourselves, becoming more self-reliant, we uncover the paradox of a new level of inter-dependency.

Mars and Pluto = soul passion

On the New Moon, Mars will be in the Gate of Travelling (56.4), opposite Pluto in the Gate of Limitation (60).

You can view the Taraka New Moon chart here: https://taraka.io/transit_charts/52337

We can’t have everything, so we need to choose. It’s that question again – as a unique individual, what do you want to commit to? There’s a kind of self-restraint here. You settle for less, and yet somehow it turns out to be much more.

Mars is opposite Pluto; they are re-framing their relationship. Where’s your passion? How do you carry it with you, even when things get tough? How can you be more self-reliant? But also, so importantly, where can you let go of old defensiveness because of your newfound ability (thanks Neptune in Gate 36) to hold true to yourself? And if you are not using that energy in defending yourself, how much more energy do you have for nourishing your brilliance?

We can be at home here

Each one of us is at a personal crossroads. We might be peering into the distance, trying to see our destination, but it’s not quite visible yet. We can be at home here, in this liminal space of not quite knowing who we are. We don’t need to be conquering, succeeding – you know your circumstances don’t define you.

Hilary Barrett describes the hexagram for Gate 56 like this: you leave home behind and carry your small uniqueness out into the larger world.

We have graduated to a larger space in the world, but as yet we only have the embers of what came before to fan our hope of a new flame to light our way. This is a time of huge potential, and great challenge. It requires your commitment to that unique spark inside of you, the place you had lost hope of ever birthing into the world.