Note: Standing in for Amanda Moreno’s regular column today is her essay for Cosmophilia, in which she reflects on the experience of editing the featured articles in Cosmophilia: You Belong Here, and on the perspective she has gained over the past year. — Amanda P.

by Amanda Moreno

Being immersed in the “You Belong Here” theme for the past several months, I have a heart that is bursting with gratitude. My experiences with the authors I’ve gotten to work with and their incredible stories and hearts have been humbling and inspirational. There are so many of us in the world trying to engage our lives more consciously, and while that path might feel isolating at times, we are not alone in our efforts.

Collage by Amanda Moreno.

My own reflections on the past year have given me perspective about the incredible shifts we’ve experienced, not just in 2014 but throughout the Uranus-Pluto square, about to make its final exact contact in March.

I’m filled with a sense of awe and hope — and quite a bit of exhaustion as well. I’m hoping we might soon begin to integrate and synthesize our collective journey into the underworld.

I’m not trying to be delusional, here. I am in no way saying that the final Uranus-Pluto square symbolizes an end to the need for change, for paradigm-busting (or bridging), for revolution, and for continued emphasis on increased awareness. I still feel that persistent sense of urgency, reminding me of how much still needs to be done to shift our culture to a more sustainable model. We are not out of the woods.

With that in mind, I’m becoming even more aware of just how much we have to do, now that the lightning bolts have hit and the underworld has turned itself inside-out. We have so much work to do to assimilate what we’ve learned, re-imagine our personal and collective roles, and then build the necessary bridges to bring these visions to reality.

As Saturn has shifted into Sagittarius, I’m discovering something magical and yet anxiety-provoking. It seems that so many of us have gone through such substantial rebirth we are left without narratives that help us to make sense of our lives. What a magical and harrowing thing, to be on the precipice of such great change. The process of rebirth provides strong medicine for the soul, yet there is hesitance in stepping out of the shadows.

The magic lies in that we get to really rebuild our collective and personal stories, reevaluate and restructure our beliefs. We’re returning from the underworld and the ground is ripe for planting. But my, oh my, how tempting it can be to cling to those old scripts, or let them take over when we face the feelings of emptiness that can follow transformation!

There is still wisdom in those old stories, however. The stories shared in these pages, for example. Stories of human beings dancing, laughing, fumbling, bumbling and trudging through life, making their own sense of things and using their experiences to guide them.

It’s an incredible journey we’re on, being alive at this moment in time. Communities of like-minded folks are important for many reasons, one of which is to allow space for despair and disillusionment, some members holding the vision when others just can’t see the light. I wonder sometimes about my own attachment to being an outsider, and what it would take to let go of that identity. Perhaps belonging to a community of outsiders? Time will tell. But I’m looking forward to figuring it out.

Amanda Moreno is an astrologer and general fan of practical woo and paradigm-busting. She can be found in the virtual world at aquarianspirals.com.

By Sarah Taylor

You do the same thing, over and over; or you change.

This phrase came to me as soon as I had drawn the three cards. Or, rather, as soon as the three cards drew themselves: there they were, left on the table after the fifth shuffle of my deck, the exact number I needed. And a perfect combination.

Two of Disks, The Fool, Five of Cups from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

You do the same thing, over and over; or you change. This is Psych 101: the repetition of the very things that hurt and — here — disappoint us tends to be our default setting. It is an unconscious process that only comes to light after the play has finished, the lights go up, and you are hit with the realisation that you’ve seen it before. Many times. Your life as the play. All the world’s a stage.

Which means that the large, dense, looming cube in the Five of Cups may also seem familiar to you. It embodies that experience when the road is blocked by something that frustratingly prevents you from getting where you feel you want to go. More than that, though, is that sinking feeling that you know this cube very well. You’re practically on first-name terms with it — if it were interested in engaging you in conversation. But it is not.

Its job is to be where it is. In front of you. And, because we are dealing with cups, what it will bring up in you is something feeling-based. It may be accompanied by thoughts, but primarily it is the emotion attached to meeting that obstacle that prevails.

Imagine yourself in this position. You might not need to imagine this; it could be that this is something you are facing down at this moment. Now, here’s the thing: Stop. Stop, and feel. Stop and move, not along that road — which is not, or no longer, available to you — but into your feelings about that road and what you have met on your way to where you were heading.

Feel. Disappointment is the route in, but what lies beneath that might be altogether more raw. Grief, pain, loss. These are the feelings associated with how the Five of Cups appears in your life, hinted at in the card:

“unexpected disruptions,” “Lost balance,” “problematic Relationship.”

What formative experiences have generally taught us to do is to avoid these feelings. When we were younger, we probably couldn’t afford to dwell on them; our very survival was at stake. Now that we are older, however, that pattern has been ingrained. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Don’t feel. Don’t go there. And what happens? Unacknowledged, unmet and unfelt pain, pushed back down into the recesses of our psyches, which then creates the very circumstances to bring them to the surface again. Not to punish us — but so that we have another opportunity to acknowledge, meet, and feel them.

You are not being punished. You are getting a chance to do what you didn’t do last time. You are getting the opportunity to stop, in that moment where you would shut your eyes and refuse to see; instead you can stop, sit down, and sit with that cube. That sum of all of your disappointments as they are meeting you today.

The paradox, when looking at this particular version of the Five of Cups, is that the only way out is through. Not “through” measured by progress in your physical reality but by moving through the internal terrain of your heart.

Become a Fool. Be prepared to step into the unknown. Not-knowing allows The Fool to come into play — and it is here as a central archetype whose potential is activating at this moment. The Fool is calling you into your own Fool’s Journey, which here begins with opening your heart to what wounded you profoundly some time back.

That heart-opening is the agent for the change that appears to the left of The Fool. Unlike the Five of Cups — associated as it is with what lies within — this change is one that manifests in your outer life, as you, The Fool, are able to hold open the space for it, while also admitting the full emotional extent of what the term “disappointment” means for you.

The change is not something enacted consciously; it happens as a result of playing The Fool and being wholly prepared to step into the abyss of your blocked heart. That is the route to the great opening, where a landscape lies ready to reveal itself. Where you lie ready to reveal yourself — both to yourself and to others. And it is beautiful!

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Two of Disks (Jupiter in Capricorn), The Fool (Uranus), Five of Cups (Mars in Scorpio)

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

It’s been a ride on the tilt-a-whirl this week: up, down and spun all around. Eric’s warning early in the week not to believe anything you hear and only half of what you see was prescient. Blizzard was coming, then it didn’t (in New York, anyhow). Mitt was running, now he’s not (suggesting donor exhaustion, likely Koch inspired). Republicans win everything in sight in 2014 because they insist they “have a mandate from the people,” and less than two months later, Obama’s approval numbers are up 22 points.

It appears that we’ve been let off the leash, somehow, finally free to break the bonds of former decisions and agreements. We’re backing up, doing over, reconsidering. A pro-life Ohio Rep of the Dem persuasion has changed his mind and joined the pro-choice because he “talked to women.” Novel idea, eh? Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee proclaimed women who use profanity in the workplace “trashy,” which was a bridge too far for big-haired blonde FOX News hostess, Megyn Kelly, who doesn’t seem to realize she’s simply supposed to support all male commentary while looking hot. She suggested that swearing wasn’t the only thing real women were up to, much to the Huck’s horror.

Cranky old John McPoopyPants, traditionally a gentleman, protected a stolid and complacent Henry Kissinger from accusations of war crimes by a handful of fearless Code Pink women protestors, calling them ‘low-life scum’ as the Capital police hustled them away. While not a complete back-track, McCain is usually more solicitous with the ladies and patient with the process. Consider what he tolerated in Sarah Palin. I presume, given Pink’s liberal bona fides, Huckabee would approve that level of trash talk.

Do note that a couple of Baggers in Arizona are getting their mojo ready to challenge McCain in 2016 because he’s just so darned liberal. Maybe that’s what’s got him snippy. I mean, it’s not like Kissinger hasn’t heard accusations that he’s a war criminal on a regular basis for most of forty years. These things have a shelf life of their own. Jane Fonda had to apologize for that picture on a Viet Cong tank that earned her the handle Hanoi Jane again this week, and what’s politically correct on that issue has changed too many times to count.

In world news, the internal Saudi reconstruction has solidified into a more moderate configuration than under Abdullah, tumbling political camps like pawns on the board. The change signals problems for Egypt’s president who had counted on a cash infusion from the Saudi piggy bank, and a boon for relations with Turkey, which had been on the outs and looks to be back in. This has everyone scrambling for position internally, as well as internationally, although the ancient grievances against Iran remains unchanged.

And here at home, John Boehner remains unapologetic for having tread on Obama’s toes, inviting a Netanyahu speech to influence U.S. policy on Iran, endangering continued talks on securing nuclear materials. The dust-up that’s ensued in these last few days has everyone scrambling, except for our tight-lipped president, who has refused to meet with Bibi. The Israeli Ambassador had no qualms in quickly blaming any lack of protocol on the Speaker, and most everyone is taking a closer look at this breach to see if it was calculated or another of Boehner’s self-confessed “stumbles.” It’s an embarrassment for all parties and shouldn’t have happened, even if Netanyahu badly needed to shore up flagging support in the U.S.

Least surprising — but most distressing, this week, and thanks to eight Blue Dog Dem Senators (mine included) — the Keystone XL Pipeline vote passed through the Senate, readying a bill for veto on the President’s desk. This, despite a truly disturbing history of pipeline ruptures and leaks that is being ignored by those interested in seeing this Koch project put through. Obama’s veto is a sure thing, and ultimate disapproval for this project looks like a lock, but who knows. The proposal to create protections in ANWR early in the week was followed by a proposal to allow drilling in the Atlantic: one hand giveth, the other taketh away.

There’s a kind of ‘either/or,’ ‘maybe/maybe not’ quality in decision-making going on. Mercury slowed us down just in time to examine it this week in a kind of peculiar slow-mo fashion. Nowhere is this wobble more evident than in our long struggle with how we will deal with resources in this nation. Larry Summers told Charlie Rose this week that we’re poised on becoming the “new Saudi Arabia” in terms of natural gas production. He thinks the pipeline should be approved quickly, so that fuel products are no longer being hauled on trucks and trains, exploding, even killing, on a regular basis.

Better to just spill and contaminate via a pipeline that does not even enrich the American piggy bank, I presume, jeopardizing our water table and fouling the environment. The wheel is spinning: round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows. We take our eye off renewables at our own peril!

Attempting to achieve some balance, the Prez has decided that a stabilized economy should result in the end of sequestration, so his new budget proposal will include an $80 billion increase in discretionary spending, which has the Pubs, who thought they had the pesky liberals cornered, owl-eyed and perplexed. With an inordinate amount of good humor, Obama continues to act with the confidence those of us on the left love to see, especially in defiance of the myth that the last two “lame duck” years of a presidency come to little (historically disproven, by the way). This attitude is no doubt being carefully scrutinized by a couple of Libertarian brothers who — along with their friends, the Wal-Mart heirs — own the world.

The Kochs, David and Charles, have pledged most of a billion dollars to buy the next election, which makes them America’s third, and probably most persuasive, political party. If you’re having trouble figuring out how much a billion is, this graphic (thanks to Digby) will help. And if you don’t know who the Kochs are, Mark Morford’s description leaves little to the imagination:

“What would you get if you crossed a ruthless drug kingpin, a mafia crime lord, the willful blindness of the NRA, the combined CEO’s of Monsanto, Exxon and RJ Reynolds and a couple of scared old wolverines with God complex and a penchant for contaminating the world?”

Ah, yes. A Koch and a smile. Makes me wonder what Justice Kennedy — whose swing vote opened the Pandora’s Box that enabled the worst instincts of a resurrected Ayn Rand in the Citizens United ruling — thinks about it now. Just ‘free speech,’ is it? All that purchasing power, all that corrupting influence? It was Kennedy’s vote that tipped the balance in killing off the McCain-Feingold Act that established spending limits on political contribution. Does he ever think back on the dissenting opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote, “A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.”

Bought and sold they are, of course, because influence peddling and politics are synonymous. In the last decade, somewhere in the neighborhood of three to four billion dollars each year has been spent on lobbying efforts, much of it by Big Pharma, the military industrial complex, pro-Israel groups including AIPAC, the NRA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This is money that can be tracked, following the trail of nearly 12,000 professional lobbyists who descend on our elected officials like a blight of locusts, offering perks and peddling their wares.

‘Dark money’ that is funneled into Political Action Committees by 501(c) non-profit groups can’t be broken down by donor or tracked so readily, which has made the Kochs’ life easier, since anything that beats back taxing and regulation is their primary goal. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, over the last three election cycles, “spending by organizations that do not disclose their donors has increased from less than $5.2 million in 2006 to well over $300 million in the 2012 election.” These organizations count as destination for at least part of the Kochs’ plan to triple that amount next year.

So many months out from the election, with only a speculative list of candidates, can the awareness that we’re facing an onslaught of influence from huge money impact the way we see our political future? The public is getting wake-ups on so many levels, some even subliminal, which is beginning to change the political equation, but we have yet to conclude that we are, collectively, powerful.

It’s all about money, of course, and the love of it. Money is simply an exchange medium for the energy put out to secure it. Money, of itself, is neutral but the NEED of it, for instance, can be the difference between life and death while the LOVE of it — which the Bible named the root of all evil — infamously creates personalities as elitist, insular, jaded. I remember a family member who got a pretty good job, pre-recession, telling me he was voting Republican because he wanted to keep his money. I presume he did vote to the right, at least once, but he didn’t keep his money OR his job for long.

Our relationship with money — as opposed to our relationship with Source — needs to be looked at carefully, especially at this point in history when everything either has a price, or threatens to be privatized because of some Randian wet dream that such a plan “lifts all boats.” Money must not be our master — or our god — if we are to create a new and ethical era.

We can’t stand by and watch as democracy is bought and sold without even a whimper. Not when over a million dollars a day is estimated to be spent securing America for the Libertarian cause — day in, day out — until the November AFTER next. That kind of complacency is madness.

The minimum we can do to inoculate ourselves from this pending glut of money is explain to everyone willing to listen that the vote is being hacked by buying influence as surely as if it were being converted in a Diebold machine.

Here’s an Annie Leonard YouTube to share with people who may not know about Citizens United, how it came about and what it means. Leonard is responsible for the (brilliant, imho) “Story of Stuff” from last decade. For other suggestions, check out Move to Amend, an activist group I like. Or visit over at Cenk Uyger’s Wolf PAC, both doing vital work to repeal Citizens United, and pass the information around.

We do not need to become zealots in the cause of liberty, breathing fire and defensive at every right-wing assault, in order to further the cause of equality and democracy. We must simply seize the day, as Robin suggested to his young men in “The Dead Poets Society,” whenever the opportunity presents. We can use our voice to educate, encourage and support those who are new to the idea that furthering democracy is part of their bundle.

Until the money issue is dealt with in this nation — until elections can no longer be bought or politicians compromised by the continual need for campaign funding — the average citizen has no voice that can shout louder than a greenback. Until then, that wheel is still in play and where she stops, nobody knows. It’s up to us to stop the game.

Meaning is not in things but in between them.
— Norman O. Brown

Assuming the late Professor Brown was correct, there will be significant meaning for you to find in between now and the Leo Full Moon taking place on Tuesday just before 6:09 pm EST (23:09 UTC). Hence, this advance notice — so that your own capacity to accommodate increased meaning will have time to grow apace with the waxing Moon.

Like all oppositions of the luminaries (Sun and Moon), Tuesday’s Full Moon in Leo will find Earth between Luna and the Sun (in this case, an Aquarius Sun). Also, as with all fully lit Moons, Tuesday will find you, and everybody else at the same time, precisely in between lunar conjunctions with the Sun (also known as New Moons).

Therefore, any meaning to be derived from (or discovered on the way to) Tuesday’s Leo Full Moon will be neither distant nor elusive. It will be directly under your feet and in the moment — of that, you may be assured.

You may also be assured however, that the meaning to be found between now and the Moon’s next maximum illumination will be more manifold than usual.

That’s because the Aquarius Sun opposing Tuesday’s Leo Full Moon will itself be rather precisely (to the degree) between seasons. While the Sun reaches the middle of Aquarius once a year just like clockwork, halfway between the Capricorn solstice and Aries equinox, the luminaries are rarely in opposition on the same day.

Additionally (as explored here earlier this week), at the time of Tuesday’s Leo Full Moon Mercury and Jupiter will both be in between their respective retrograde and direct stations.

Finally, just at the moment of Tuesday’s luminary opposition, the Leo Full Moon will be in between Uranus (in its Aries lair) and the Sagittarius conjunction of asteroid 2 Pallas with the Great Attractor. All together that forms a very tight grand fire trine overflowing as much with mystery as meaning.

At the same time, the Aquarius Sun will find itself at the midpoint of not only a season but also a sublime and nuanced sextile from Chiron (in Pisces) to Pluto (in Capricorn).

Whew! That’s a lot of in-between for one Full Moon, and implicitly a lot of meaning either to be found, confronted with, or caught up in.

So that you will be able to work your way up to accommodating all the meaning Tuesday’s Leo Full Moon might offer (as opposed to being overwhelmed all at once), what now follows are some temporal milestones. In between now and then, they might help you to expand your capacity to reflect the occasion even as the Moon expands in luminosity.

At about 6 pm EST later this evening (Thursday), the Gemini Moon will be in between an opposition to the Sagittarius conjunction of Pallas with the Great Attractor and a sextile to Uranus in Aries. This will be a good time to think about that fire trine the Moon will form when it reaches Leo.

Think about how flow (which trines represent, among other things) can make things easier but also sweep you away, depending on your relationship with it. Think also about how symbolic fire relates to both presence and consumption.

Overnight between today and tomorrow (Friday), the waxing Gemini Moon forms a tense square with Chiron’s position in Pisces. Thus, as Chiron would have you do, give some attention to whatever subject matter comes up with your next sleep (or lack of it).

When the steadily augmenting Moon enters Cancer as Friday segues into Saturday, it will be applying to oppose Pluto in Capricorn while also moving to form a flowing water trine with Chiron. Both of those lunar aspects will become exact early Sunday morning. Use that time to compare how your feelings have evolved from thoughts today.

Finally, when the Moon enters Leo after Monday is well underway (12:41 pm EST), it would be a good time to bring your experiences from the later half of this week forward and (if necessary) pull yourself together.

So, that’s your proposed protocol, in order to be on top of the flow rather than be pulled under with it, and to be looking up rather then cast down. Observing these markers may allow you to be both present and open to accommodate the illuminations of what looks to be a Leo Full Moon implicitly wound up with meaning, even as Tuesday winds down.

Offered In Service

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