Urania's Well: Astrology for Changing Times
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Person to Person: New Moon in Aquarius/Pisces
"All our relationships are person-to-person. They involve people seeing, hearing, touching, and speaking to each other; they involve sharing goods; and they involve moral values like generosity and compassion."
Brendan Myers
The New Moon happens on February 18 at 6:47 pm EST, right on the knife’s edge between Aquarius and Pisces, and brings attention and awareness to ideas about the collective and how we treat each other. The importance of technology — everything from breakdowns to privacy issues to technology saving the day — is another topic likely to be front and center. In this upcoming month you may want to focus on considering how you can work with others and create effective change within a group. What can you do together that you can’t do alone? Who is your tribe, and how do you support each other? Who are your spiritual kin, your “fellow travelers”, and how do you connect with them?
The term “tribal mentality” is tossed around a lot these days as though it were something to be avoided — and in the implied meaning of restricted, fearful, insular thinking, no doubt it is. But human brains are wired to live and work in small groups, so we also can find a number of people who are exploring a tribal template as a basic unit for a healthy economic and social system. As the cracks in the industrial civilization we have built become more and more apparent, some are looking at tribal society as a promising, egalitarian model for a fossil-fuel-restricted, environmentally-challenged future. (See this and especially this) Others feel that “New Tribalism” is destructive of the values of a democratic society. (More about that here). We’ll be seeing ideas like these up for discussion in the coming month, and they will be well worth considering on a personal level as well. What communities do you belong to? How do you support them? How do they support you?
There is an historically-unprecedented level of global communication and travel today, which puts a thoroughly Aquarian stamp on the social groupings of our modern culture — we have a whole lot of freedom around where we live and with whom we interact. Don’t like the people you work with? Get another job. Your family or neighbors driving you crazy? Move to another town or state. And if you aren’t sure where to move, connect with your online tribe — people whose philosophies and attitudes tend to be much like your own. They’ll help you find a new place.
Our “tribes” are usually pretty flexible and so we have lost one of the foundational aspects of tribal culture — the individual’s commitment to tribe, and the tribe’s commitment to the individual. A strong tribe treats each individual and individual relationships within it as important to the overall health of the tribe, so it is the tribe’s business when individuals are having problems, and those problems are addressed by the tribe, usually with a focus on healing, not punishment. It’s a way of life that may tend to sacrifice privacy and individual rights and expression for the good of the group, but there is an underlying belief that each person is valuable and healing is possible.
This Piscean belief is not a popular one in the world today, and we see that clearly reflected in the online world in which so many of us spend large amounts of our time. Clever smackdowns of the latest celebrity’s or politician’s tweet and snarky memes are a currency of popularity in social media, and anyone wishing to actually discuss the ramifications of an idea must be ready to field personal attacks that have nothing to do with the premise under discussion. In fact, expressing an opinion may even endanger one’s physical safety, as so many feminist bloggers have discovered. I admit to being as amused as the next person by funny ripostes or Jon Stewart’s latest takedown of Bill O’Reilly, but the level of meanness and viciousness -- often disguised as humor -- in our online discourse these days is breathtaking. Ignorance is not healed by pointing fingers and repeating insults, and stupidity cannot be cured by verbal assaults. Only widespread, personal efforts to understand another point of view, remediate fear, and clarify misunderstandings will lead to a culture that allows us to live in peace with each other and the natural environment.
Sociologists and neurologists have found that human brains are wired to be able to understand only between 150-300 people as real, complex human beings. The rest of the human race must be classified and simplified in our minds in one way or another — hence the prevalence of stereotypes. But we also know that our brains are plastic, capable of evolving. I would suggest that individual efforts of mind and heart can greatly expand our ability to connect and empathize with people and tribes outside of our own, and we can learn to eschew those stereotypes our brains create so easily and consciously look for the underlying human connections. If we are willing to reach out and share wisdom and resources with each other, to try to understand and heal instead of punish, then we are working towards a society that blends the best of Aquarian justice and freedom with Piscean empathy and peace. One way or another, we all have an effect on the “tribes” we are a part of — it’s worth considering just what that effect is.
If you can help facilitate compassionate, insightful communication this month, that is work blessed for the times. The combination of vision and caring is irresistible. We’ll see more than a few people taking aggressive stands around their perceived personal and tribal rights and rites. There will be those playing the victim card, and those who will be genuinely victimized. There are no easy answers to the questions being raised during this Moon cycle, and those answers must be sought in awareness of and concern for the rights and feelings of others.
In the USA, we are likely to see more yet more news of epidemic illness — flu, measles, or whatever — and quite possibly some very foggy foreign policy. Whether that fog manifests as deliberate obfuscation or simply lack of focus remains to be seen (given the 3-ring circus that passes for government these days, I’ll go for both). Saturn, ruling the 5th and sextile to Mercury in the 5th gives me hope that we may see some positive reforms in the educational arena, and around children’s rights and safety. I would also not be surprised to find a lot of lofty ideas and opinions emanating from the entertainment industry, and a proliferation of soapboxes. The sixth house emphasis suggests possible military actions, public health crises, and/or issues around civil service.
I hope to see some of you at the Sacred Space/Between the Worlds conference the weekend of the March Full Moon. I’ll be giving a presentation on the astrology of the upcoming 5 years or so, as we move into the next stage of transformation that began under the Uranus-Pluto square (the last exact hit of that aspect will be March 17, but it will still be in orb for the rest of the year and into 2016) If you are feeling the effects of this deeply transformative aspect in your own life and could use some perspective, get in touch and we’ll take a look at the insights your horoscope has to offer.
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