September 26th ~ October 3rd
“The Storm” by Pierre-Auguste Cot
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm’s all about. ~ Haruki Murakami
Eclipses often serve as turning points. This is especially so if they fall at a sensitive degree of your natal chart, as it did for my own chart on Sunday. Great beginnings and great endings occur when the eclipses touch us personally. And so my husband packed up his music and his trumpet and left for that celestial big band in the sky just one day before the Solar Eclipse. He is so missed.
Eclipses are not your ordinary New and Full Moons. They serve as demarcations and pivotal points in our lives that can even change our lives forever. We can feel their imminent effects weeks before, but the ramifications are felt for months, if not years afterwards.
The reason the Eclipse on the Equinox was so effective, was not only because it occurred so close to the Earth’s axis, and not only because it was a South Node eclipse, but also because it was directly opposite the Saturn/Neptune conjunction. These planets have been closely aligned all Summer, and have since stationed retrograde (in July) and returning to the last degrees of Pisces. This gives us the feeling of having to tie up all of those loose ends. All the straggly parts of our lives connected to the past.
This conjunction plagued us with uncertainty, threatened to destabilize the structures in our lives, and left many with the feeling of not being able to make any plans, or see their way forward in a clear way. But what we should have been doing, and especially now that Saturn has returned to Pisces (Neptune returns to Pisces around the 23rd of October), is to connect with ourselves on a very deep level. Whatever you may call it, whether that be conscience, Spirit, Soul, higher consciousness, it is that essential part of us that knows, even if we don’t consciously know. It is this which will guide us in these uncertain times.
Connecting with that inner knowing requires a certain amount of faith and belief that we are being led precisely where we need to be, even if it doesn’t appear to be that way. Often what our ego wants, is not necessarily what our soul wants or needs.
Saturn/Neptune aspects can be very destabilizing, and can be associated with loss. Saturn represents all that we are accustomed to having in our lives, and perhaps always assumed on a certain level that it would always be there. Neptune can dissolve these and render them invisible. Conversely, Neptune represents our dreams and ideals. And Saturn with its cold grip on reality threatens to block, delay and even stop us in our tracks.
The combination of these planets also have the remarkable capacity to make our dreams manifest, and to give credibility to our ideals. But often at some sort of sacrifice. The etymology of the word literally is interpreted as making something sacred or holy. And we do this for what we perceive to be a ‘higher cause’ or that which is perceive to be divine.
On February 20th, Saturn and Neptune will perfect their conjunction at 0º Aries 45’, the very first degree of the first sign, all symbolic of some sort of New Beginning. This can be devotion to a cause, the commitment to a higher Ideal, and a reset for our dreams and ideals for the future. What is significant about this being in the first degree of Aries, is that we are given the opportunity to even go off in a whole new direction.
In the mean time, tie up those loose ends, release what needs releasing, gather to you the essence of your life’s experiences dreams and hopes, the lessons learned, the wisdom gained, and allow these to permeate your mind and soul. We are in a sacred period of distillation. For it is that essence that we are going to be bringing with us as we take those next steps into the new world that is waiting for us on the other side. And it is a process that we are all needing to honor.
There have been a number of shifts of the inner planets over the past few weeks and coming up. To see who these may be impacting your sign, check out this week’s horoscopes below.