Venus has settled into the waters of Cancer after splashing in last week. Mars took flight into airy Gemini yesterday. Last night, the Moon got wet in Pisces, where it will be until Wednesday segues to Thursday. Next week will begin with a New Moon (when the Moon and Sun will share the same degree of Taurus), and Mercury’s station retrograde.

Now is a good time for you to catch up.

What you might want to envision catching up to is more than a new lunar cycle and Mercury retrograde. You should think bigger and envision more, and not just for drill.

To really capture the big picture of the astrology for the rest of this month (and probably most of June) you should make like Mercury is in the process of doing. You should slow down. You should hearken back to how the astrological year started.

For tropical astrologers, a new year initiates with the vernal equinox. It begins with the actual Sun crossing directly overhead at Earth’s equator (appearing to move North with its subsequent risings and settings), and the symbolic Sun simultaneously crossing from Pisces into Aries. It is the cycle of seasons and the cycle of the zodiac starting over together.

This year, unlike any vernal equinox going back to at least 1700, the Sun’s ingress to Aries was preceded by less than 24 hours with a New Moon and total solar eclipse in the very last degree of Pisces, on March 20.

In a way, catching up with that unprecedented solar eclipse (and its complement, the Libra Full Moon and total lunar eclipse of April 4) is what you have been doing ever since. For the most part you have been doing it through the most fundamental objects in astrology — the Sun and Moon. In all probability, you are not done. Provided that’s true for you, it’s better to continue catching up with even greater awareness than you have had up to now.   

You have been catching up through the Sun and Moon precisely because of what they represent – the two major components of your consciousness. The Sun, inseparable from day and light, corresponds to the daytime version of consciousness. Each day, as the Sun transits your personal astrology, its aspects and corresponding expressions make up part of what might be called the light in your proverbial attic. That light shines out to let the rest of us know you are with us, along with who and how you are in the world.

The Moon, on the other hand, correlates with the private sector of your consciousness that many others never get to see. Transiting lunar manifestations in relation to your personal astrology are felt more than thought. Through those expressions you grow to know yourself as surely as others get to know you through the Sun. As both the Sun and Moon transition away from a typical pair of eclipses, the nature of what came with them is gradually revealed through illumination and reflection.

For one of the fundamental things to know about a typical pair of eclipses is that it takes a while to become conscious of what happened in between them. Months later, sometimes years later, your life tends to come full circle in one way or another. Eventually, your consciousness catches up with either what initiated or what came to pass between the first eclipse and its complement.

If you think about it, that’s probably what you have been doing since the vernal equinox. While the Sun finished its traversal of the second half of Aries following the lunar eclipse of April 4, it’s very possible you had only yourself as the most dependable reference point for making sense of things. Ever since April 20, with the Sun in Taurus, it’s even more likely that you have been able to rely on your physical body for visceral guidance and intuitive information.

Since the eclipses that ushered in our current season, the Moon has also been doing its part. By cycling through new and full phases which were not eclipses, the Moon has helped you recycle. The coming and going of familiar lunar phases have corresponded with the hidden side of your consciousness finding a way to reacquaint you with yourself — both as you were before and what has emerged after ecliptic shadow.

The process is almost certainly not over for you. It would be fair to say that neither the solar nor the lunar side of your consciousness have fully caught up. It is probable that you are still in the process of becoming aware of what you wrought in collaborative alignment with the Sun, Moon and lunar nodes — as Earth and the Moon took turns in each other’s shadow.

Seen in that way, aspects of the planets this week, this month and possibly for the rest of this season may fall into place as guidelines and stepping stones for you to follow until consciousness catches up.

Challenging aspects (like squares and oppositions) might become fulcrums, which tell you it’s time to apply some pressure rather than just feel it — after which you might very well consciously evolve. More supportive aspects like sextiles and trines allow you to get your groove back.

Every conjunction (like the Taurus New Moon next week) will somehow avail consciousness of a chance to start over. Even the Mercury retrograde, with its undeserved reputation for frustration and futility might become your second and third chances to understand your place in the solar system’s continuum.

Until your consciousness catches up, take every event in your life (and its corresponding astrology) as a means rather than an end. In that way, astrology (and your life) will have the potential to be more than just one thing after another. You will give your own awareness something whole to be part of. You will gift both your solar and lunar consciousness with something more to become.

Offered In Service

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

A friend of mine recently began teaching community yoga classes after completing her yoga teacher training. I asked her how it was going, and she shared with me a story that definitely made me think, although I’ve not been able to come to any conclusions.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

The other night she decided to incorporate a “black and white breathing” technique into the class that she had learned from one of her teachers.

The trick is to simply imagine negativity in the form of thick black smoke, and to breathe it out on the exhales while bringing in pure, white light on the inhales.

She loves the simplicity of the technique and thinks it feels great.

At the end of her last class, she was asking for feedback on what others thought about it and someone said, “The breathing exercise was racist.” She was shocked, and got self-admittedly defensive once the students had left. She processed the event with several other friends, most of whom agreed that it was indeed a racist exercise, and one of whom said that he felt embarrassed for her.

I didn’t really know what to make of the story at first, and made the suggestion that she use the color green instead. Green is the color I used to use with purification breathing up until a few months ago when I found a Buddhist purification breathing technique that involves green, blue and pink breathing in addition to the black and white. It never occurred to me that there would be situations where colors would be inappropriate. I had, however, thought about the fact that the traditionally masculine color, blue, was associated with cleansing the masculine channel in the body and the pink with the feminine. I wasn’t offended by it, however.

My friend seems to have come to the conclusion that she does not want to cause harm, and therefore does not think she’ll be using the technique again in that form. Does she just instruct them to exhale negativity, in whatever color it wants to be? Does she choose different colors?

Walking away from the conversation, I began to think about depictions of the “dark goddess,” or the “Black Madonna.” Kali the destroyer is almost always shown with dark skin. The dark goddess, in my understanding at least and in her generic and specific forms, has been depicted as such just by way of contrast to the light goddesses. She is in the dark, hidden, ungraspable, mysterious, unconscious.

When did the dark goddess, or the Black Madonna, become evil? When did black become evil? These aren’t questions I pose because I need answers, really, but I’m pretty fascinated by all of this, and a little overwhelmed at how complex it all seems, and figured I’d post just these few words about it to see if we might be able to get some conversation going. There’s definitely something there about the unconscious/primitive-dark-evil continuum, but I’m curious as to what your thoughts might be.

Is it insensitive to use something like black and white breathing in a class? Is it an example of white privilege to ignore it, or to be insensitive to it even being an issue? What are the possible ramifications to ancient teachings?

I mean, I’m always harping about how religion has to adapt in order to remain relevant. I’m also clear that “masculine” and “feminine” refer to energies rather than genders. But at the same time I’m at a loss when it comes to making judgment calls about some of these things, especially when it comes to questions of race. I’ve always chosen to consider myself “human” far more so than my Swedish, Mexican and Lebanese ancestry, but I’m also aware that I was born into a level of privilege that makes that decision far easier.

So I’m a bit out of my league here, but open to learning. And I’m highly curious about what others have to say.

By Sarah Taylor

Look at the angel in The Judgment. Do you hear what she is saying to you?

“You have a choice. One way or the other. Choose to be hemmed in and enclosed, or take a risk, and leap.”

After I drew the cards today and before turning them over, I placed the first at centre, the second to its left, the third to its right, and, looking at the central card, said out loud to myself: “This the ‘pivot point’.”

Seven of Wands, Judgement, Ten of Wands from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

I am going to start with The Judgement, for she is the first and last word — or, rather, clarion call — in this reading.

Associated with Pluto in astrology, The Judgement in tarot is about the reclamation of Self through the resurrection of Spirit. The card directly before The World, The Judgement speaks of a rebirth into the light, a sweeping aside of the veils that have held you separate from your sense of who you are, from the world and from others.

The 20th card in the major arcana is also transpersonal. In other words, this is not simply about you; it concerns itself with how you and what happens to you are an indelible part of the whole. What happens to you also happens through you, and the effects both ripple out into the collective, and also return to you from the collective. The card asks you to see who you are, and what you are experiencing, from a higher perspective. You are no longer solitary and hidden. You are Neo in The Matrix. Except we are all Neo — no one more special than the other, no one more worthy of salvation than someone else.

It is only when you see that you cannot be separated, and that your coming to life has repercussions of which you are possibly unaware — and, what’s more — you see yourself as a unique part of what is inseparable — that you can heed the call to something greater. You are worthy; and so is everything else.

Looking at the cards as a whole, I am drawn by the colours that unite them: deep blue-black, purple, mauve and white. The darker side of the face of the angel in The Judgement is echoed in the darker shades of the Ten of Wands, or Oppression. It is the shadow. In this particular shadow, there seems to be the assumption of a burden for which there is an energetic price to pay.

By “energy” here, I mean life force. There is something that you have elected to do that is taking up a lot of space in your reserves — so much so, there is a feeling that you haven’t much space for anything else. Ten glass wands weigh heavily down on a naked figure enclosed in a box of stone.

What is that box? And why have you chosen to stand in it?

The Ten of Wands is the last numbered card in the Wands suit. It is like an existential migraine: a squeezing of the self through a high focus of this life-force in a concentrated area. You are in a metaphorical oven, the heat up, your back turned to the exit point.

Again: What is that box? And why have you chosen to stand in it?

Because this is very much about a choice that now feels like it has become an obligation. That obligation, however, is probably more out of direct cognition than something that is staring you in the face. This is not a tangible obligation — though it may also take that form — but a psychic one. It is a contract you have signed with yourself, perhaps without knowing you were even holding the pen. It might have happened a while ago — perhaps a long while ago. While your back was turned. And yet you are the one who is in the hot seat, still holding the reins, still taking the heat.

Maybe it’s time to step out of your cell of solitary confinement.

And so to the first and final card, the one to the left of The Judgement. Look at the colours and how they correspond differently. Here, there is a sense of lightness, echoed by the light that is received from the card on the face of the angel. There is a message in this; a white feather pointing the way.

The Seven of Wands speaks of valiantly vaulting over the abyss of the unknown and into — well, into The Judgement. Here, in the Seven, life force is liberated — as you are — to make that leap. The Wands rise up to meet and to usher you across. The light is the light of what was once dark coming into consciousness. You now know what you are able to do. The world on the other side beckons, and you ride on the emergence of a part of you that had been held down in the darkness.

And, thus, you find yourself looking into the eyes of an angel. One who knows you because you now know yourself that much better. And you know what you are not. You do not have to stand, hemmed in by a contract that is no longer being called in by anyone but you. Tear it up, throw it away, take a run-up if you need it.

She is waiting for you. The world is waiting for you. You are waiting for you.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Seven of Wands (Mars in Leo), Judgement (Pluto), Ten of Wands (Saturn in Sagittarius)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

With Mother’s Day at our threshold, I’ve scanned my notes on the week’s activity, the various politicians mucking up the works with their disparate versions of reality, and find myself echoing the line that Maggie — the little girl character that played Peter Pan’s daughter in Robin Williams’s film, Hook — threw back at her captor as she was being rescued: “You need a mother very, very badly!”

It comes as no shock that Earth Day, April 22, comes just as the Sun enters Taurus, warmed by the love of the Goddess, its signature rooted deeply in the soil and the pregnant promise of spring. Mother’s Day follows on its heels with that same kind of solid, ever-patient, nurturing energy. Gaia is the intelligence-entity of this planetary body, and we are hers much as each of us is a product of our earthly incarnational-mother this time around. Edgar Cayce said mother/child was THE bonding relationship of our lifetime — for good or ill, present or not present — and no doubt the most complex.

But, that said, the act of mothering is not necessarily about gender. It’s about care-giving, sometimes called care-taking or, even more simply, caring. Taking care of, in the best way possible. Taking care, in dealing with all the mental, emotional (and, quite often) environmental details. Giving care as in providing something essential to the good of the ones receiving. That’s not gender specific activity, nor does it necessarily refer to children. Some of the best mothers I know aren’t women, and some of the most impressive nurturers never conceived a child. As Robert Heinlein put it, “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”

Supposing that’s true, many of the political leaders of the world appear to be foundlings. Netanyahu evidently needs a mother pretty badly, someone to grab his ear and twist it hard. He finally formed a coalition government, squeaking in just under the wire that would have forced him from office. Shortly before a midnight deadline, he partnered with the nationalist Jewish Home party, hard-liners that oppose peace with Palestinians and intend to increase West Bank settlement construction.

The possibility of peace talks resuming anytime soon — or warming American relations, for that matter — seem dim. To some, that secures the traditional patriarchy of the Israeli stronghold in the Mideast. To others, who understand what a flawed and basically weak coalition this is, that means Bibi will go down in history as desperate and belligerent, while infighting makes his nation’s politics even more chaotic.

Bibi represents the tough-love, take-no-prisoners Daddy State, similar to what our conservatives represent: think George W’s “You’re either with us or against us” mentality. As counterweight, liberalism is referred to as the Mommy State — sometimes the Nanny State — which supposedly coddles its ne’er-do-wells, and is associated with Socialism. Libertards, as the rabble-right likes to call lefties, are credited with embracing the Marxist approach, which gives “to each, according to their need,” ostensibly from the community pot. This is known, with a sneer of contempt, as “redistribution.” Because Americans have gotten lazy, and depend on brief explanations and sound bites, this constitutes a flawed and narrow definition, without much substance.

Let’s try another set of sound bites. Socialism, in this country, is defined as a half-step away from Communism, the dreaded “better dead than Red” of the 1950s, marketed with a shadow of fangs and claws from historical figures like Mao and Stalin and Fidel, all authoritarian dictators. Naturally, the conservatives in charge of pushing this disinformation move the needle into the extreme zone, scaring the children. But socialism and communism are essentially only economic systems in opposition to capitalism (and enough said, from the conservative point of view — the sheer horror of it all!).

We need to acknowledge that socialism is part and parcel of the American system, reflecting FDR’s vision for a restoration of constitutional promise with his New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society push to end poverty and racism. I dislike the term “level playing field,” a catch-phrase used too often these days, but it describes FDR’s desire to restore liberty to the individual, stolen by commerce and denied by elitist corruption and influence. Socialism seeks a middle-ground, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution.” It promotes personal freedoms, religion included, while depending upon public ownership and cooperatives over privatization and plutocracy — and restoring that balance is the challenge of the hour.

While we can’t convince Elizabeth Warren to throw herself against our current cultural barbed-wire, we do have someone with an impressive voice seeking a change in the national conversation, and therefore, national consciousness. Senator Bernie Sanders, newly announced presidential candidate from the left, promoted his Democratic Socialist bona fides on Sunday pundit television last weekend by defending the highly effective Scandinavian democracy model. George Stephanopoulos grinned and said, “I can hear the Republican attack ad right now. He wants America to look more like Scandinavia,” to which Bernie responded, “That’s right, what’s wrong with that?”

Not afraid to speak up, this week Bernie wrote an op-ed urging the government to break up big banks, using his growing public megaphone to inform citizens that the banks that were ‘too big to fail’ when the economy crashed in late 2007 are now 80 percent larger than they were then. 80 PERCENT! Bernie says if they’re too big to fail, then they’re too big to exist.

If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, do you know what he would say? He would say break ’em up. And he would be right. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.

A bill that I’ve written would require financial regulators within one year to identify and break-up huge financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley so that they can never again cause another financial crisis like the one that happened in 2008.

Never fear, citizen. This isn’t fantasy, this is populism with a bullet. Once you get past the smokescreen of the culture war topics (racism, sexism, abortion) and the PowerPoint presentations of the lobbying class (factory farms, big pharma, corporate welfare), Sanders speaks to the concerns of the average American — right AND left — who hasn’t seen a raise in income since the 1970s. Perhaps it’s possible to make it clear to a corporately-dominated nation that reasonable checks and balances on the capitalism model create a stable economy for the socialist strategy required to rebuild the failing middle class.

As examples, look at what Utah, with religious roots in communalism, has done with its homeless population. Look at the successful placement of homeless vets in New Orleans. Is there any doubt that these people would be considered disposable, even criminalized, under a purely oligarchic system? That without the compassionate — and eminently practical — intervention of the determined and visionary, they would wither and die?

And although Hillary (former FLOTUS and national Mommy, Nancy Reagan notwithstanding) is beginning to “fashion a progressive agenda,” as lefty New York major de Blasio announced this week, Bernie’s got her beat on most counts. Not that he has either the backing or the visibility to win this race, I’d assume, especially not with Hil projecting a couple of billion to keep the race going. But he DOES have the agenda to shift the conversation soundly to the left, especially since six presidential debates were scheduled this week by the Dems. Perhaps destined to never reside in the Oval, Sanders — seems to me — is the most powerful voice in this race to date.

This is Goddess energy we’re talking about. Can you hear it when it’s spoken? Can you feel it when it vibrates? We discuss the polarity issues between political philosophies endlessly, but it is the compassion issue that resonates with those on the left, and a growing number on the right, who have an awakened awareness of not just commonality with others but a sense of duty, even privilege, to nurture the larger community and not leave anyone behind.

That may be called Nanny, called give-away, called liberalism, but essentially, much like core Christianity, it’s actually a kind of conservatism, turned on its head by those who have captured “the flag,” and constantly challenged. Taking responsibility to protect what we have with sound stewardship, making way for what’s new by improving the traditional values of common good and shared liberty, kindness and empathy VOID of financial gain? What’s wrong with that, Bernie Sanders would ask? So would I.

Caring about one another is what we learn, if we’re lucky, at our mother’s knee, or, if we learned the opposite, it’s something we must take responsibility for nurturing within ourselves, refusing to pass along learned dysfunction, mindlessly. Taking care of someone or something that needs our attention is not a burden but an opportunity to get out of ourselves, widen our vision and enlarge our heart. Caring for one another is precisely why we came.

So it’s soon Mother’s Day, a day of recollection for some of us, remembrance and appreciation for all of us — and a time to look around to see what Goddess has in mind for us, as we try to come to balance. Our poster child for Goddess energy this week is our neighbor to the North, Alberta Canada.

Heartiest congratulations to Alberta for breaking a 44-year hold of conservative leadership to elect the New Democratic Party. The win, considered a long shot, was met with cyber-celebration including several pictures of pigs flying and a couple of succinct tweets, such as “Imagine if a political party made up of Chris Hayes, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren swept into power in Texas and Mississippi,” and another that said, “The last time I was this excited to see an empire fall there were Ewoks dancing!”

What prompts this glee? Alberta is known as the Texas of Canada, exploited by the Big Oil concerns long-favored among the Tories, a prime hub for exporting tar sands. Some 78 percent of Canada’s oil comes out of Alberta, much of it tar sands, and the province’s newly elected premier from the liberal New Democratic Party (NDP), Rachel Notley, is a foe of the XL Pipeline. On Tuesday, voters approved forcing the gas and oil industries to pay their fair share of taxes and royalties, phasing out coal and cutting back pipeline projects. And — sea change on the Hill — Notley has pledged to cut all money used to lobby Congress for the pipeline. Happy Mother’s Day, Gaia!

This is a major blow to the oil industry, even if there is question about the ability of this newly elected party to effect change. Nonetheless, this changing of the guard must bring attention to the situation and quite possibly reverse the blanket acceptance of tar sands — its extraction always considered a problematic operation — as a viable resource. Could little Alberta be the place where things begin to shift? Could the New Democratic Party be the David to Big Oil’s Goliath? Thank you, Alberta, for hitting the target.

What we nurture, what we care for, must be reflected in our value system. It’s incumbent upon us, in this time of social and political upheaval, to review what we DO find valuable, what we DO want to conserve and tend for future generations. Like it or not, we are responsible for the future. While others appear to have all the power, we play a vital part in the creation of tomorrow.

All of us have mothers, some of us are mothers and, without exception, we are all capable of mothering some creative project into existence. As we nurture and create, we mother. We tend and care for, simultaneously, our personal dreams and responsibilities; the outgrown agenda of our inner child, that occasionally peeks out from behind the shadows, asking for attention and healing; the shape of our tomorrows, and those of our world. For all that, Mother’s Day is a day for reflection on what we value and how.

And while we will, hopefully, find just the right thing to do for our own mother or her memory, let’s also note that the original Mother’s Day had its roots in a day of remembrance for the 650,000 souls lost in the Civil War, with mothers of the North and South coming together over the unspeakable loss of so many beloved sons. The original Mother’s Day was, essentially, a protest against the uselessness of war, the childishness of pride and ambition, and the tragedy of unnecessary death. We can honor our mother no more powerfully today than to continue that enlightened work, seeking an end to the mentality of warfare. In this, as in everything, may love lead the way.