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Refining Our Beliefs - Sagittarius
This is how people live. Sleeping on the bank of a fresh water stream but with their lips always dry with thirst.
In your dream you’re running towards a mirage. And as you run, you’re proud of being the one who sees a false oasis.
You brag about it to your friends. “Look, I have the heart vision!”
But listen, this love of spying far off keeps you from tasting the real water of where and who you are now.
The real way is who and where you already are. What you search for is sleeping in your very being.
And that which sleeps and dreams of sweet water is the taste of the divine in you.
~ Rumi
(as shared by Michael Meade)
The past month has been a wild ride, for the collective, and for my small microcosm. First the shock of the US election, then the flood of predictably provocative headlines about the resultant calamities hurtling our way. Into this tender time, I bring a very shy 7-month-old kitten, Zephyr, into my life. His first full day here is Election Day itself, during which he ventures out from hiding, cautiously checking out me and his strange surroundings with a surprising degree of courage for a terrified kitty. But the next morning—not a good one for many of my readers—Zephyr reads the room, takes one look at me with horror in his widened eyes, and hides the remainder of the day and night. “Nope, I don’t like that energy, he says!” It would be another 8 or 9 days before he would warm again.
Next, various places around the US, including my own Sonoma County, and the UK, were visited with heavy rains and flooding. Some areas around here reported getting 25 inches! So it’s from this prolonged season of Scorpionic dark waters that we must now joltingly sequey to our New Moon in Sagittarius, ushering in our holiday season of lights. Joy and optimism are the conventional energies we think of with this confident Fire sign archetype, but I don’t think too many of us are quite ‘feeling it’ yet. This will take some work.
Scorpio Lingering: Mars-Pluto Opposition
As always, it’s important to consider an archetypal Sun-sign flavor along with the various seasonings offered by the other planetary energies. In this case, we’re still under the potent influence of the Mars-Pluto opposition (and will be to varying degrees until April), which was exact at the 29th degrees of Cancer and Capricorn respectively at the Scorpio New Moon. This feisty head-butting between Scorpio’s two co-rulers is with us in the Dec. 1 New Moon as well, albeit with a wider orb, and Mars now in prideful Leo, and Pluto in change-it-up Aquarius. The battle of the two Wills in Fixed signs is something we’re going to have to contend with.
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Of course taken as a power struggle, Mars opposing Pluto fuels the oppositional fervor that’s occupying the public media spaces, but Pluto’s ultimate aim is healing and regeneration. Not for the faint-hearted, Pluto’s methods tend toward the drastic, as it means to get to the very bottom of a wound and clean it out to allow a true rebirth. Hence its reputation for upheaval, blood and guts. (The 8th house, naturally ruled by Scorpio/Pluto, presides over surgery, among other things.) In Carl Jung’s depth psychological approach—which I use in my astrology counseling—it is said that that which we are most afraid to encounter (in an embodied way, I would add) is that which will allow us to transform.
In other words, without the Scorpionic encounter with our demons, we cannot shift to a higher frequency (to use the language of The Gene Keys system of personal change), or release our true ‘genius’, or innate gifts, that long to express in the world. Sustained engagement with our shadow material is ultimately what frees us to experience and participate in life more directly, from a fully resourced place of clarity and Wholeness.
The Mars-Pluto opposition can inspire us to take action (Mars) for deep, transformative change (Pluto) on outer planes as well. In the Aquarian age, it may no longer be okay to simply let the world go by, hoping things will get better if the right person or team is at the helm. Astrological ages process backwards through the signs, so the age we’re leaving is the Piscean, that of Christ the savior. Passivity is a known feature of Water sign Pisces, so it may take a while to shake this approach out of our systems. But it’s good to know that joining with, even breathing with community will be the directive going forward. The ‘avatar’ of the Aquarian era will come through ALL of us working in synchrony, not a lone savior.
To this end, real change must be rooted locally, and within ourselves. Mars opposite Pluto can thereby inspire us to take action to root out complacency, and take the risk to initiate (a Mars gift) from our grounded core values. Some of us may be in a better position, or in a better timing than others for lending our energy in community in some small way, while others may be called to the work of effecting regeneration from within, through inner transformation. Both are vitally needed.
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Into the Aquarian Mists: Death-Rebirth Passage
It takes both changed individuals and changed communities to ultimately link up through time and space to create ground-up, lasting renewal, which is where the Pluto in Aquarius signature is aimed. But it won’t be easy! As a preliminary, we can expect Pluto’s processes to be digging up and throwing in our faces (by way of getting it out of its system, we hope!) the darkest shadow material of Aquarius, such as the rise of autocracy and the spread of surveillance and AI. Respected Indigenous teacher Ilarion Merculieff said in a recent talk that our work is that of changing our consciousness, which is the higher potential of Aquarius. And that if we don’t, the Earth will continue to increase her energy level, shaking off more and more humans until enough of us become “People of the Fire”, or “People of the Heart.” (See link below.)
In this time of deep uncertainty, rather than focus on what we despise, or fear, the best we can do is keep our eyes on the vision of ‘the more beautiful world we know is possible’ (to quote a phrase from philosopher/author Charles Eisenstein), which in my book involves care and respect for the Earth and equality for all beings, grounded in the living wisdom of the Divine Feminine. Sagittarius medicine brings an important antidote to Scorpio’s focus on the Underworld, as it chooses to focus on the good, and on what is worth aspiring to.
At this time, however, Scorpio energy dances equally alongside the ‘uplift’ Sag impulse, as there is an urgent need for us to face the roots of our traumas, both personal and collective. The Mars-Pluto opposition affects us personally to greater or lesser degrees, depending on how these planets impact our charts and, it is particularly important here in the U.S., because Pluto has been in its final stages of completing the return to its natal position (27° Capricorn) in the U.S. natal chart. This signals a death/rebirth moment for the nation in Pluto’s 248-year cycle through the zodiac.
The ‘return’ of any planet to its natal position marks a time of death/rebirth of that energy, but with the archetype at hand being Pluto, who itself signifies death and rebirth, and with this ‘return’ coinciding with Pluto entering a new sign (Aquarius), astrologers have long anticipated the moment of the U.S. Pluto return as a Big Deal. As part of our Plutonic shadow work, in recent years we have been undergoing an intensive look at our nation’s trauma, being called to examine our white supremacist colonial behaviors, particularly the genocide and attempted erasure of the indigenous peoples who had tended the land for thousands of centuries , and the forced labor of African slaves, upon which the country depended to become a world economic power.
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December 2020 was another potent inflection point such as the present, when we were practicing ‘social distancing’ with the global pandemic. This marked the start of a new cycle of Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions in Air signs, after their having been in Earth signs for the prior 180 years. Known as ‘The Great Mutation’, these Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions, like Pluto ingresses, have a significant impact on the pulse of society—given that these two planets describe our interface with society. Their having entered a new Air sign phase starting at 0° Aquarius has been hailed by many astrologers as the real ‘beginning’, or cusp, of the Aquarian age – although that beginning is not truly definable, given that each of the Zodiacal ages lasts 2200-2500 years.
Anyway, here we find ourselves, now poised with Pluto in 0° Aquarius ready to move forward, no more Rx’s into Capricorn, leaving many if not most of us feeling confused and ill-at-ease. The uncertainties we now face with the ‘ingress’ of another Trump administration calls us more than ever to employ our tools for staying centered and connected—to our hearts, our bodies, our places, and equally important, our friends and communities. Relationship is going to become increasingly important in this age of great transition. Aquarius champions, among many other things, friendship and community.
Suspending Assumptions
A word that has been coming to me recently has been one my husband used to use years ago when contemplating the works of quantum physicist David Bohm. Suspend!, he used to interject at times, invoking Bohm’s philosophical lynchpin of ‘suspending assumptions’ in the middle of a conversation. Somehow the word dropped into my post-election mind, and feels to me the right medicine for the time, as the warring, ‘othering’ attitude of Left vs. Right, or ‘Righteous vs. Pernicious’ seems to have run its course. We didn’t get the result we hoped for, so perhaps it’s time for a new tack. What if every time we catch our thoughts cycling in a fear space, we stop, take a breath, and suspend?
It would be timely to pull out our old copy of The Power of Now, whose author, Eckhart Tolle, was born with Sun in Aquarius, in the 11th House, the house naturally ruled by Aquarius. Coming into the present, we pull in from fear-driven, future thinking, or excessive mourning of a past we cannot retrieve. (Some grief is of course entirely healthy, and necessary.) The capacity for suspending racing thoughts and emotions to achieve a degree of detachment is one of the Aquarian gifts that will help us gain some perspective in these turbulent times. As Sufi seer and acclaimed author Doris Lessing wrote, What we live through, in any age, is the effect on us of mass emotions and of social conditions from which it is almost impossible to detach ourselves. Impossibility aside, we can nevertheless put detachment in our Sag quiver and take aim at a more spacious perspective!
Following this Sagittarian Archer impulse, we must be patient with the process of relocating our sense of purpose, one that may involve adventuring into entirely new territory in this era of Change. As Sag is the archetypal pilgrim in quest of renewed vision, so we too are called to don our pilgrim’s robes when under its influence. Travel, a strong Sagittarian pursuit, whether inner—through the world of higher ideas—or outer, to lofty mountaintops, is the means by which we can gain new perspectives, and thereby experience a new, vitalizing understanding for our lives. Into my Inbox today dropped one intriguing such tale of a man’s awakening literally amidst the Himalayan peaks, in which he gained new perspective through the complete cessation of thinking. (Hard for this busy Virgo mind to imagine!)
But as Richard Rudd advises, we must be wary not to succumb to Sagittarius’ ceaseless striving towards ‘peak experiences.’ Awakening can and often must happen within the ordinary. Travel to and through the planet’s natural wonders and rare beauties has compelled most of us at one point or another, but really, any focused time spent in alive Nature (which includes our own bodies, and our local parks) can serve as an enchantment. As teacher/mythologist Michael Meade said in a recent talk, “For the Ancient Ones, Nature was the Holy with a green garment on, so it’s a pilgrimage to go there. It’s a ‘divine errand.’”
The Discerning Voice Within
One of the wonderful gifts of being outdoors in presence with the Earth, whatever the season or weather, is that it brings us into the moment, and calms our thoughts. Beauty, of course is one of the Earth’s great healing generosities. In his powerful book, Beauty, beloved writer/philosopher John O’Donohue suggests that beauty is God itself. Personally, I feel that the quest for and service to beauty are a powerful compass of meaning at this time, whether outdoors, through the arts, or within ourselves, as expressed through kindness and gentleness.
Along the Sagittarius theme, O’Donohue in his book discusses the need for accessing our sage voice within, one that I feel can help guide us through the confusion of our time of seeming dissolution.
There’s a discerning voice that distrusts the status quo, falsity, and complicity, and wants to hold out for that which is true and beautiful and kind and compassionate. This voice sounds out the falsity in things and encourages dissent from the images that things tend to assume… [This] voice whispers from somewhere beyond and encourages the human heart to hold out with dignity, respect, beauty, and human love. That whisper brings forgotten nobility into an arena where violence has traduced everything… This is the voice that keeps us directly in contact with the unalienable presence of beauty in the soul. Regardless of all the disappointments in life, this voice always remains to be heard deep within us.
Ilarion Merculieff, in his recent series of conversations with social activist Shariff Abdullah on “Ancient Wisdom for Turbulent Times,” (links at the bottom) stresses the same theme, that the way forward requires dropping into our hearts. To get there, he stresses, we must heal our traumas—only then can we stop the mind. He says,
Right now the mind, which is the center of ego, wants to talk so much, because it’s afraid it’s going to die with our new direction. It’ll keep on chattering – it always lives in the past, [considering] shame, remorse, rage, jealousy or fear, or a projecting of something into the future that hasn’t happened yet. We’re being called to come to the Now. Because in the present moment there is no Time…The answers we need as to what to do are in our hearts.
Further expanding this perspective, through a lens of Sagittarian optimism that stands against the prevalent sense of doom, Shariff Abdullah urges us to consider the disruptions of our time as that of a birth (which he points out is often in itself a process of messy upheaval): The problems that we now have are the trigger points that spur us to a new society. The things we label as ”the problem” are really only what gets us to a new society. These are the points of birth, [signaling] that we’re about to be born into something. This is the point where we hit metamorphosis.
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Navigating the Sea of (Mis)information
A post-election opinion piece in my local newspaper described how the author was done believing in the ‘bubble’ of the Democrat-leaning, corporate-ruled, media machine, and now determined to take back his time—to go fishing, and to reengage with other hands-on pursuits. I understand the impulse.
But it’s not so easy. Not only are we deeply entrained into checking our devices for news about our collapsing status quo from sources whose opinions we trust (objective, uncensored, and ‘unspun’ facts being increasingly rare in a bought and sold media world), in addition, we find ourselves in an astrological time of great hunger for all manner of information, as evidenced by Jupiter’s ongoing tour through Mercury-ruled Gemini until June 2025.
Whatever sign Jupiter presides in describes the qualities of how we seek to expand our horizons, and how we hope to find our joy. So in its sojourn through Gemini, which is curious about all forms of learning and information, many of us have been partaking of the ever-expanding information pipelines. Maybe we found our Jupiter-in-Gemini joy and humor (or release of tension) prior to the election watching talk show hosts roast our President-to-be, or our virtue uplift in watching the Democratic Convention speeches; sadly, that thrill is gone. With Pluto now signaling through Aquarius, it could be time to change up the mental programming, as well as our diet of information, if not our very approach to thinking itself.
Here is a brief David Bohm clip (where for added clout he sits beside the Dalai Lama!) offering sage advice (a prime Sagittarian preoccupation) even more relevant now than it was when he stated it decades ago. Bohm counsels that we listen deeply to the views of others, without resistance. “We cannot do this if we hold to our own opinion and resist the other,” he says. One of the greatest obstacles here in our mashable truth era, however, is that we so fiercely believe in our own media sources, which routinely put down and distort the ‘opposition’s’ truths and their media sources, that it becomes a major feat for those with opposing viewpoints to listen deeply to each other, as each comes with volumes of media intake supporting their beliefs.
To this end, we may at times find ourselves in a cul de sac of exasperation when attempting open-minded dialogue. It might be that Jupiter in Gemini can be better used to support the work of self-education in various forms—Gemini being about learning in general, and Jupiter (ruler of Sagittarius) about synthesizing our learning into functional systems of meaning, and expanding our horizons. Once we broaden our perspective, maybe we can add our communicative ‘weight’ to the great change that the planet so desperately needs in small, creative, and less provocative doses. And not through ‘head-on’ Mars-Pluto opposition-style confrontation.
The strong Air sign signature already in play with outer planets Pluto in Aquarius and Jupiter in Gemini will become even stronger when Uranus enters Gemini next July. This will continue to compel us to engage with Air sign themes of the mind and the exchange of ideas, and ideally in ways that offer new perspectives that our discerning voice resonates with. Suspending old ways of thinking, and gently exploring the ideas of others not necessarily part of ‘our tribe’, is a good start!
Direct Knowing
Sagittarius presides over our belief systems, and how we interpret reality. Working with its polarity partner Gemini, the Sag archetype takes the various pieces of information and knowledge gathered through Geminian curiosity, and works to distill a beautiful, cohesive synthesis that serves as a sort of compass. Astrology is one such system of way-finding, dating back to Babylon and Egypt. The legal system is another (although these days its effectiveness is in question!). And the major religions, of course, another.
But in an era where collapse is at hand, not just environmentally and politically, but also with systems of belief, we find more and more people defining themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Can spirituality fill the hole left by an empty politics and religion? Maybe here too, we need a reframe.
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Richard Rudd discusses in his book, The Gene Keys: Embracing your higher purpose, the necessity of moving from the victim mindset to a freedom mindset—freedom being the ultimate ideal of Aquarius. He suggests that spirituality itself can unwittingly lure us into a victim mentality, in that it makes us feel we have to do something (practice more, better!) in order to find fulfillment in some other, heretofore unobtainable reality than the one with shadows and emotional pain that we know. “If you create an unattainable reality, then you can spend your whole life longing for that reality without ever having to directly experience it.” This encapsulates the Sag dilemma of being attached to the questing, without ever settling in to embodying the treasure, and being transformed by it.
Rudd proposes that ‘enlightenment’ isn’t really what we’re after, being that it resides in the ordinary. “In fact,” he says, “high levels of frequency tear down the very illusion that there is such a thing as spiritual experience…True freedom has nothing to do with how we spend our time on the material plane. True freedom is not an effect. It is a kind of ever-expanding spaciousness [an Aquarian phenomenon], that arises spontaneously inside you as you come to understand how deeply victimized you really are by your own core beliefs.”
Imagine if we could experience a sense of spaciousness around all the what ifs we now attach our thinking to, around the fears of having our notions of fairness and respect crushed, or around the very real losses and challenges we have or are ongoingly experiencing. Air sign medicine comes through the breath, lending us the space to adapt to whatever presents itself.
When we can reach a place of inner spaciousness, the Sagittarian gift of Intuition is most likely to be engaged. And it is the intuitions of the heart that will serve as our to navigation system through the chaotic waters of the times ahead. Such direct knowing is not mediated by the head alone, but from full-bodied experiencing, such as we find in breathwork practices, movement practices like Qi Gong or yoga, or other forms of mindful presence…perhaps even fishing!
The ‘truth’ that Sagittarius is after, in the end, is not a set of teachings we encounter or a summit we ascend, but something we come to know in our Being. It is achieved by facing the inner ‘truth’ of our Scorpionic traumas, and forging ahead across the new ideas, cultures and terrains that this noble Fire sign impels us to. The seeker’s quest is complete at last when she can set aside her know-it-all stance and come into a state of Presence, now able to continuously see the grace that persists through and around all life, despite its ongoing trials, and despite its ordinariness.
It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.
~ Brother David Steindl-Rast
New Moon Astrology
I’ve touched on the Mars-Pluto opposition above, but as well our Sagittarius Full Moon includes a T-square to Saturn from Jupiter opposite Mercury, with Jupiter widely opposing the New Moon. The Saturn-Jupiter square is the prime wedge in this configuration, affecting our communication, our feelings, and our sense of mission. The square asks that we hold the tension of Jupiter in Gemini questing through the sea of ideas, with Saturn’s wanting to hold steady in the diffuse but creative, fertile realms of Piscean unknowing. To know, or not to know, we might ask ourselves!
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Links For Further Meandering
The Gene Keys – https://genekeys.com/about/
Charles Eisenstein article, The election may not mean what we think – https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/transcript-of-the-election-may-not
The Best Day of My Life, ‘peak’ experience https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=2712&op=audio
David Bohm on Suspending Assumptions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbB4WT_7a60
David Bohm – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm
Ilarion Merculieff and Shariff Abdullah talks – Ancient Wisdom For Turbulent Times
Talk #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is2zhv0Rf-4 Talk #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgj_EcS_Mrk