A Generous Spirit

                                               photo: Bruce Lhuillier

This full Moon in Sagittarius has a powerful connection to generosity.   The Moon and Jupiter are close, close enough to bring the joyful generosity of Jupiter, and especially Jupiter in the sign of Sagittarius, into our consciousness.  Jupiter is the planetary ruler of Sagittarius.  His large spirit of creativity and optimism fill us with a kind of divine happiness.

             photo: Aaron Greene

It’s a season of generosity as we approach the Solstice and the light of the Sun stays with us into the night, and Tuesday we have a full Moon to continue that joyous radiance into the darkness….

                                          photo: Aaron Greene

But why is Jupiter associated with generosity, with expansiveness, with laughter? He is a god of lightning, yet he is not associated with fearfulness, but rather with courageous hope, fertility and growth.  Here he is in eagle form, fertilizing the pomegranate trees.

photo: Bruce Lhuillier

Jupiter at this moment is in a perfect square with Neptune.  Together they rule the constellation Pisces.  Neptune is king of the oceans where the fishes (Pisces) live.   Both Pisces and Sagittarius are  associated with spirituality in many forms, with priests, with compassion.  Sagittarius especially has an all embracing enthusiasm for strangers and foreign  religious traditions, but it is also the sign of the fanatic.  And here is where the dark side of Sagittarius emerges.  There is a kind of twist which can take place so that instead of accepting and enjoying difference, Sagittarius may turn into the witch hunter, the inquisitor.   

                                          photo: Bruce Lhuillier

This might have something to do with the sign of the Sun.   When the Moon is full in Sagittarius she is opposite the Sun in Gemini,  the mental aspect of the Zodiac. The airy thought process of Gemini can become become tangled and tormented, and what appears generous and friendly, one moment becomes dangerous or intolerant the next.   The expansiveness of Sagittarius morphs into greed and hoarding.   Everything is tangled and choaked in too much fertility.

                                           photo: Bruce Lhuillier

The moment for this full Moon on Tuesday is full of twists and turns, surprise and revelation.  All the planets are in aspect to one another. A Pluto-Saturn South Node combination is facing off against Mercury, Mars and the North Node, and Neptune is in contact with Pluto-Saturn and Jupiter as well as Mars and Mercury.  Eris (Lady Chaos) is there as well with relationship to Sun and Moon, and Pluto and Mercury and Mars… This is a moment to understand that nothing is black or white, but to contemplate every color in the rainbow.

 Mercury and Mars across from Pluto and Saturn could mean we blow our stack over nothing… or speak up for the environment.   Chatting with a friend tonight we marveled that we see so many hawks, ospreys, herons now which were almost made extinct by DDT, until one woman, Rachel Carson, spoke up, against the manly disdain of Congress and much of the scientific community.   And when I came home, and looked at Rachel Carson’s astrology chart, I discovered she was born at the time of the full Moon in Sagittarius. This very mental and very spiritual   woman was  born with her Sun in Gemini and  Moon in Sagittarius!   

 

Teachers

photo: Robert Fuhro

Over the last few weeks I have been watching some herons as they build nests, sit on their eggs, and now feed their chicks.  Each visit to their swamp, I am awestruck by these huge birds who gracefully use the Air element as if it were as solid as Earth, or as supportive as Water.  Yesterday food was transferred to ravenous babies with wide open beaks.  This Gemini new Moon might mean we are all hungry for food from the teacher, Hermes/Mercury.  This is an opportunity to focus on what is available to nurture us, and what we have to share with someone who might need nurturance from us.

                                            Clay tile: Sarah Fuhro

Mercury the planet who directs Gemini, is known as a trickster.  Teachers come in a variety of forms.   Some teach as directly as the heron feeds her chick, some teach through painful illusions.  At this time, as Saturn approaches Pluto, we can expect some very powerful lessons.   The old question of what to wish for, becomes paramount.

                  photo: Bruce Lhuillier

Neptune is in a square to the new Moon in Gemini.  The image for this planet’s degree in the chart is: A MASTER INSTRUCTING HIS DISCIPLE.   In the beautiful photo above,  water has a chaotic lesson to teach.  There is no clear direction or flow.  Gemini energy is often like this, with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ bouncing back and forth through the brain.  Our teacher pushes us in opposite directions with equal force.

Maybe the one lesson we can absorb right now is Liberation from the Past.  Tomorrow as the Moon begins her new cycle we will see only the light of the Sun.  The seed Moon in Gemini will be lost in the brilliant light of her companion until  she moves out from under his beams and travels on her own, and one clear twilight evening we will see her set in the West….

clay tile: Sarah Fuhro

On the Wings of Desire

Each full Moon propels us to rock between two contrary seasons and ‘opposite’ signs!  For me, this spring has been an endless ricochet between the beauty of the earth held in the horns of Taurus,

and the deep wet chasm of death, Scorpio, washing through me,  which ties me up each spring between joy and despair!

                                            photo: Bruce Lhuillier

The desire to hold on to the beauty of this moment, this time, is the the Taurus Sun.

                                            photo: Sarah Fuhro

But the profound desire of Scorpio to understand mortality, to plunge into the depths of our spiritual nature held in this full Moon.   This is the measure of the art of Alchemy, which arises each spring in my heart:

‘Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.’ August Wilson

                                                            Painting: George Hallowell     photo: Bruce Lhuillier

As an angel, Michael seems to have an ethereal approach to his battle with a snarky demon, but for most of us, it’s not so easy.   This battle is reflected in the astrology chart for the full Moon with Saturn and Pluto in friendly relations with both Moon and Sun.  They demand our attention, perhaps to say:  ‘you are making to much of your demons.’

All this reflected in the Sabian Symbol for the degree of the Moon:   The King of the fairies approaching his domain. …..beyond both outer nature and the realm of the proud ego, a spiritual world exists to which the intuitive consciousness of man can pay allegiance.  This is the deep work of Scorpio.   And this is the Desire body which all Western mystery traditions hope to develop in us.  It is our ability to sense spiritual messages in the material body, which is part of this tradition.   Scorpio is often associated with sexuality because in moments of intense love making we understand, through the body’s pleasure,  that our spirit has no boundaries.

                                          photo: Bruce Lhuillier

Taurus Sun and season is talking of Desire for something, someone outside of ourselves. Love in the spring season (Taurus); when everything is about love, is ruled by the Lady of Love herself, Venus.  At this moment Venus is also in the sign of Taurus, and she is in the company of that crazy planet, Uranus, who says there are always new ways to be yourself.  Venus and Taurus make a nice aspect to Mars, Scorpio’s ruler.  So it seems that the desire of Taurus and the desire of Scorpio speak to each other at this moment of full expression!

                                               photo: Robert Fuhro

Mercury, the magician, the healer, the speaker is whispering in the ear of the Taurus Sun on Saturday evening.   The full Moon opens us to greater depths of communication.  Scorpio Moon asks us to explore what moonlight has to offer in familiar places.  Instead of holding tight to the days of spring unfolding, I will try to open my hand to the message of wider light and meaning…

                                   photo: Bruce Lhuillier

 

The Wisdom Tradition evolved over the centuries to address our deepest human needs. Sarah Fuhro is a practitioner of its many forms; including Astrology, Tarot, Flower Essences and Druidry. For an appointment call 508 652 9880 or email her at sarahfuhro@gmail.com.  In addition to personal consultations, Sarah teaches workshops and private classes, offering both clients and students knowledge powerfully rooted in the past, presented in the language of the present.

A Bull’s Horns

On Saturday we begin a lunar cycle in the sign of Taurus.   Taurus is about love, and especially love of the Earth.  It marks a time sacred to the goddess, she who made all things beautiful!  The planet Venus is the ‘ruler’ of this sign.  Taurus in the sky takes the form of a bull with crescent horns.  Astrology calls Moon in Taurus ‘exalted.’  And while the Moon visits Taurus each lunar cycle, it is only at this beautiful time of year that the Moon is ‘new’ in this sign.

                                 Terra Cotta Bird Woman from Egypt..3500 BCE Brooklyn Museum

The celebration of Beltane, the fire festival of joyous love comes just at this precious degree (14º-15º) of the new Moon.  Taurus is often associated with wealth, but this Beltane, I feel the poverty we have created here on our planet.  It is not just the poverty of large portions of humanity, our sisters and brothers, but the poverty we have created through the determined destruction of our beautiful home.

                                                      painting: ©Bruce Lhuillier

My feeling of sadness during this season of beauty and fertility, is perfectly described in a passage from Philip Carr-Gomm’s book, The Druid Tradition.*

‘the rise and fall of the blackbird’s song drew me back to my everyday state of consciousness, and as this happened a great despair overwhelmed me, and I looked into the blackbird’s eyes and I knew why he looked so sad. This world, this everyday world exists too, and it is the only one of its kind. The essence of all that has lived here can never be destroyed and it will live forever in the inner world and perhaps on other planets and at other times, but here, now, it is unique and it can be destroyed and it is being destroyed. The world is mortal too, like us. ‘

When I look at the chart of this moment of birth for the new Moon, I see we have passed beyond the crazy shaking energy of Uranus, which was  focused on Sun and Moon  at the moment when fire dislodged the protective aura of Nôtre Dame de Paris.  Neptune is the planet which creates a secondery theme for this new beginning in Taurus.   Neptune is the mystery we can only grasp through image, and vision.   Here is the passage from Philip’s book,  which preceded the one above.  In this passage, he paints a picture of a place where all the species decimated and made extinct by our indifference live on.

                                               painting: ©Bruce Lhuillier

‘The blackbird paused in his singing, looked directly into my eyes, and then began a song that rose and fell in a way that led me into a peculiar trance-state I had never experienced before. And there, in that state, I just knew his answer. He did not speak or tell me – his song simply took me there. And there was here, only different…..there were dragonfly and butterflies everywhere: chequered skipper, large blue and Adonis blue danced their way over flowers only my grandparents would have seen. Mother Shipton moths competed with pretty chalk carpet and dark brocade moths in the undergrowth of cowslips. Stone curlews, lapwings, hawks and falcons flew high and free in the sky above.’

                                     painting: ©Bruce Lhuillier

Over the years since I first read this passage, I have thought back to it many times.  There is no way to heal the Earth through despair, nor can I shrug my shoulders and say, somewhere  the essence of this damaged world exists whole and repaired.   And so I look to this new Moon in the sign of Earth-Love, Taurus,  and ask for a celebratory heart.  I think of the Great Blue Herons building their nests in conservation land not far from my house.   They cannot afford to stop to weep for the swamp drained and ‘developed.’  Those few who are left build in what remains.

               Photo: Robert Fuhro

This new Moon chart has most of it’s planets in a bowl shape with a handle made of the asteroid, Pallas Athena, she of the ancient wisdom tradition.  Wisdom is often built from mistakes made and mistakes acknowledged.

The passage on extinction continues: ‘And we are the first generation to know this. To know that our Mother can die. Might die. For a child this realisation will, all things being well, lead to an increasing maturity. Let us hope that our understanding of our Mother Earth’s mortality will lead us to a sober maturity rather than a nihilistic despair or an insane attempt to actually ensure her death.’

                                           painting: ©Bruce Lhuillier

And so as we circle and dance at Beltane, we weave our love and joy for the Earth’s beauty and bounty into our fear and hope for the future.

*Philip Carr-Gomm, The Druid Tradition, Element Books, 1991

Philip Carr-Gomm is the Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.  His book are many, and he created a course in Druidry which has enriched the lives of thousands of people around the world.  Philip lives in Lewes, Sussex. https://www.philipcarr-gomm.com.

The Wisdom Tradition evolved over the centuries to address our deepest human needs. Sarah Fuhro is a practitioner of its many forms; including Astrology, Tarot, Flower Essences and Druidry. For an appointment call 508 740-7039 or email her at sarahfuhro@gmail.com.  In addition to personal consultations, Sarah teaches workshops and private classes, offering both clients and students knowledge powerfully rooted in the past, presented in the language of the present.

 

 

 

 

Tipping Point

A full Moon pulls excitement from the Earth into the light of  travel and wonder, and reflects it back to earth.  The opposition of the Aries Sun and Libra Moon is charged with the full power of Mars and Venus, but other players add to the tumult as well.  

                                             photo: SarahFuhro

In New York, visiting  friends and art exhibits, the light and dark of this moment were everywhere.  I visited the Miro exhibit and saw his range of Venus and Mars expressed in a very particular alphabet he invented, almost as notes on a scale!

                                              Joan Miro

The next day I wandered through the Tolkien  exhibit to see his play with a language he retrieved from the Elves, and images of magical power of the forest.

                calligraphy and painting JRR Tolkien

What are we to do with in this time of blossom and new green leaves?  With a chart so full of contradictions, and the energy of upheaval, and sudden reversal, we can rejoice  in the note of harmony, love and balance of the harmonious Libra Moon.

 

The most perilous forms of balance are the feats I perform to go deep into new and unknown territory,  while I try to keep a firm hold on the Earth’s tender brown hands.   At this full Moon, Uranus shakes the Sun from a few steps away.  Uranus has just recently moved into the sign of Taurus.  Taurus is an Earth sign with sacred connections to the age of the goddess, the feminine.    The destruction of Nôtre Dame feels like a deep wound  to the energy of the earth and to the Lady who inspired this masterwork.  The beautiful beams of the cathedral were made of wood from Beech trees. Those beams were constructed to recall forest groves in  which  people gathered to celebrate and worship.  Beech trees this size no longer exist in the forests of Europe or America.

          photo: Robert Fuhro

A few degrees from the Sun, is the asteroid,  Eris. She is a point  of chaos and opportunity.    Nôtre Dame in flames– I know full well that nothing this deeply embedded in our hearts and psyches can be be ‘replaced! or ‘renovated.’ I am left with the terrible realization that through this loss, the earth is changed forever in ways we cannot fathom. Pluto, the great transformer,  conspires with Eris to to shake the foundation of this moment.  Our fears can devour our creativity if we are not aware of them.

                                        painting: © Bruce Lhuillier

Moments after the full Moon in Libra, the ‘silver wheel’, moves into the sign of Scorpio.   After an attempt to balance a very difficult trio, Sun, Uranus and Eris, the Moon stands on the threshold of an exact opposition to revolutionary Uranus.  This may be the moment  when we see through a veil we have constructed.   In Scorpio we give up on pretense. In cosmic wisdom,  Scorpio follows Libra in the zodiac.  The Libran effort to make everything beautiful and balanced is cast off. The Moon will begin the long journey towards a new cycle, releasing all she accumulated from the past two weeks.  A Scorpio Moon is a good time to clean and sort what is to be kept and what is no longer needed.

Demon Wars

Many battles won or lost,

take place in moonlight,

when the big hoop

is caught in a tree top.

 

Tonight was my battle,

into the morning hour,

when birds mark location,

and speak of their intention.

 

These battles end in draw,

no end,  no beginning.

No winner will be

announced to the world,

yet all is changed.

Sarah Fuhro  April 2018

Nature Spirits at Work

This is what we can expect from the new Moon:  ‘Nature Spirits are seen at work in the light of sunset.’

                                                                                   

                                                painting: Amelia Royce Leonards

But what is the ‘work’ of Nature Spirits?   And how does the light of sunset make them visible to us?    This evening as I drove to a gathering, the Sun set in front of me, casting long fingers of light…..I thought about this symbol for the new Moon, and wondered what Nature Spirits might be at work in the patches of wood land that remain along my route.

The Asteroid Ceres (Demeter), our Mother the Earth is in a warm trine with the Moon and Sun in Aries.  Is the ‘work’ of nature spirits to dance in honor of the beauty of the this planet?   Is it to mend at twilight what has been disrupted and torn during the day?  As humans wringing our hands over the fate of our planet, have we forgotten there are other realms at work in the health of the earth?   

                                           painting: © Bruce Lhuillier

The symbol for the degree of Ceres is ‘The ground hog looking for his shadow on ground hog day.’   Ground Hog Day is Imbolc, February 2nd, the day of the goddess Bride, she who is healer, poet and black smith.  The memory of this long held sacred moment has been in the burrow of the groundhog, the bane of gardeners, and a very down to earth being, who rests all winter, and is ready to start spring on this sacred moment of Bride!    Now we are poised on the first new Moon after the Spring Equinox, to relive the miracle of rebirth in every aspect of our lives!

                          photo: Robert Fuhro

This morning I lit a candle to Bride with a special wish for a friend.  Friday morning, in rhythm with the new Moon and Ceres,  I will light the candle to ask that the earth might feel how my heart overflows with gratitude!

 

                                            photo: Sarah Fuhro

Something about dark and light, shadow and the last rays of sunset mingle here, at this moment of new Moon, new beginning.   Aries is the entry sign to the zodiac procession, the parade of animals which circle the earth.   Friday, as the Moon begins her new cycle with the Sun, and the fiery signs of Aries and Sagittarius set one theme for this moment, there is another element at play in this symphony of light and dark.   The theme is initiation.  Like the man in the Tarot card which represents the Sun and Moon’s degree, we face a challenge from which we cannot turn back.

The person in this card, has come through two steps in the process of growth and evolution.  Like him, all of us, at this precious moment of Sun/Moon/Earth Fire must make a decision about where we go next.  This card is considered a gate to ‘scrying.’   If you enter deep concentration, and look at the ships on the water, they begin to move on the waves.  Continue to focus on this card, and the man will turn to face you, and may offer help to understand your own initiation.

There is another aspect to this chart, this moment of new Moon, which has to do with looking at the past.  Saturn is in relationship to the Sun and Moon, and speaks from a place of the past (South Lunar Node) and deep intensity of concentrated power, Pluto.  Don’t be surprised if something or someone from your past reappears.  This combination of Sun/Moon/ Ceres and Saturn may give each of us a way to know that we too are ‘Nature Spirits  at work in the light of sunset.’  Dancing in the woods at twilight may be an act of great power to heal and mend our home.

                           Painting by Henri Matisse

How you know it’s spring.

photo: Sarah Fuhro

How you know it’s spring:

desire.  Desire for participation.

dance. Stepping quickly from

stone to stone at the brook.

demand. Knowing there is a question

which will soon be answered.

dumbness.  Sorting black and white

peas into separate bowls.

drama.  Hearing the phone ring

and letting it briiiing, briiing, bring.