The lunar first quarter at 1:24 pm EDT Sunday will find the Virgo Moon square the Gemini Sun. As with all first quarter phases, you will be able to see the square aspect yourself. Weather permitting, Luna will be visible at its highest point in the sky while at a right angle to the setting Sun. Distinguishing this particular first quarter, but not visibly, the Moon will also be conjunct the asteroid Sisyphus.

Given that the authoritative Dane Rudhyar referred to lunar quarter phases as times of crisis, and when you consider Sisyphus is named after a mythical symbol of unrelieved futility, you might feel discouraged. Let us see what we can do about that.

First and always, no aspect or set of aspects exists in a vacuum. To fully understand the astrology of any square, conjunction or combination thereof, it’s important to see things holistically.

Chiron is perhaps the single object most closely associated with holistic themes by modern astrologers. As Eric himself wrote over a decade ago, “Chiron functions as an integrating agent.” It is therefore worth noting that Sunday’s lunar first quarter will take place within hours of Chiron’s retrograde station at the same degree of Pisces that it last occupied during the final week of February in 1964.

Integrating Chiron’s turning point into a holistic perspective of the Moon’s concurrent square to the Sun and conjunction with Sisyphus, will thus integrate some lessons from history into the astrology.

For a lot of people, especially those who identified with the established order, it felt like a crisis the last time Chiron was where it is now. An outspoken young black man (who later changed his name to — gasp — Muhammad Ali) became both boxing’s heavyweight champion of the world, and the most popular American in the world outside the United States. Other Americans who prioritized errant nationalism over what is morally right found that to be very discouraging.

Looking back on the big picture now, we can see there was no reason to be discouraged that a man with a conscience should rise to dignify a largely unconscious nation. In both his courageous deeds and mellifluous words, he let us see that it was not futile, but morally correct, to resist an unconscionable war. He was not alone in how he let us see our way through that time.

By the end of February 1964, efforts by the power elite to discredit and exterminate the African-American art of rock-and-roll became a historical symbol of unrelieved futility as The Beatles returned to the UK after having conquered the USA. Yet, a holistic view of the past reveals The Beatles to be an integrating agent if ever there was one. Indeed, it is very possible that the revival of rock-and-roll redeemed the history of a discouragingly compromised nation.

After all, historical redemption goes beyond learning what not to repeat. It also teaches that how you see the present, and what you can do about it, will determine your place in posterity. It’s one thing to feel discouragement and futility, as might be the case with Sunday’s astrology. It’s another thing to succumb to it. Let us see what you can do about not succumbing this weekend, and you will have made a good start towards being part of the solution, and the future, rather than being part of the problems that will only become the past.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Jupiter opposes the core of our galaxy for the first time since June 2001, shortly before 1 am EDT Thursday. At the same time, the largest planet will complete a mutable cross without historical precedent. The Jupiter-Galactic Core axis of the grand cross indicates big things are imminent.

Unlike 2001, the immense immanence implied is more eminent than infamous — thanks to the other half of the cross configuration. That comprises an opposition from Pisces to Virgo between Salacia and Makemake, which indicates what we may yet grow to become — and where that growth must take place.

The last time Jupiter was closing its Gemini tour with an opposition to Sagittarius’s Galactic Core, infamy was at at hand. Just over two months later, the world was purloined into the impoverishment of perpetual war.

Now, as Jupiter returns to reflect the center of our celestial neighborhood, it’s an auspicious time for you to reflect as well. As Jupiter’s year in mutable air reaches its last fortnight before ingress to Cancer on June 26, to whom will the remaining years of your precious life belong? Beyond that, how will you emulate Jupiter by growing into what you must be?

In astrology, square aspects provide the opportunity for growth. A mutable cross consists of four square aspects, connecting all four of the signs that share the same quality: either cardinal, fixed or mutable. The mutable cross that Jupiter is completing now implies growing out of old patterns and into new ones.

In reality, growth is never easy. The proverbial term “growing pains” is well informed and reflects how the square aspect of astrology expresses in your life. On Earth however, the alternative is incompatible with continued existence. Even mountains, when they cease to grow, ultimately cease to exist. Implicitly, the struggle of growth is your imperative to sustain. How to attain the necessary sustenance is implied by the mutable opposition that will be precisely (to the degree) perpendicular to the axis from Jupiter to the Galactic Center.

In the Pisces corner, wearing the wet trunks, will be distant Salacia. Currently, Salacia is literally distant, half again as far away from the Sun as Pluto, which was the outer limit of the solar system for decades. Through its nominal connection with Neptune’s spouse, however, Salacia’s role in Thursday’s grand cross is to provoke you to grow so as to close the distance between your life on land and its connection with (and probable origin in) the seas, both literally and figuratively.

In the literal sense, the seas of our planet provide a good deal of the oxygen you need to live, while also absorbing a significant amount of the carbon your living produces. In a figurative sense, the oceans represent the vast and mostly unappreciated legacy of the emotions that have motivated us, the intuitions that have guided us, and the psychic potentials that represent the probable direction in which our kind will most productively grow to evolve.

Already opposing Salacia from Virgo is an even more distant object, Makemake. Named after a dominant deity from the farthest removed vestige of human culture (variously known as Easter Island, Rapa Nui and Isla de Pascua) Makemake’s symbolic place on the mutable cross is to promote a growing appreciation of neglected hemispheres, both on Earth and in your skull.

The Southern Hemisphere of our planet (where Easter Island is located) is often not given its due in the world, partially because that is where the seas are most dominant over the land. More specific to the symbolism employed by astrology, however, is how Makemake’s association with a neglected hemisphere on our planet corresponds to a neglected hemisphere of your brain.

The currently dominant paradigm of human consciousness, intrinsic to cultures of the Northern Hemisphere, favors the left hemisphere of the brain. The left brain is the seat of linear thinking and the virtues conferred upon cold, mathematical logic. Your brain’s right hemisphere, home to alternative sorts of sense-making has, in recent centuries, been as deprecated as the Southern Hemisphere of Earth. Yet both places are where there is not only room to grow, but necessity.

So that’s how Jupiter’s last days through Gemini are taking form. In the Jovian opposition to the Galactic Center is the necessity for you, and all of us together, to become as big as events, rather than shrinking from or being swallowed up by them.

In the grand mutable crossing provided by the opposition of Salacia and Makemake is nothing less than the potential you should sustain, and the direction that you should apply yourself toward. You will know you have done it if you can grow to confidently count yourself among those who are in their right minds.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.