A Host of Stations

 

 Image adapted from a Sierpinski square in public domain courtesy of Solkoll

With Athena (dispassionate wisdom) and Sabine (confines) just about to go retrograde, some of us are feeling....well, a wee bit cornered. Or confined. Some of us awill be actively denying things which might get in our way which in truth are something of a mental blockade simply because we're not dealing with them.

Yes, life will get to us, no matter what we do. The trick is getting ourselves to meet life on its terms...which is often multo hard to do!

Of course...there will be those who will interpret Athena and Sabine's turnaround as a recognition. Such people are likely to be coming to have a far better (Athena) understanding of what their (Sabine) limits really are.

It's all in how you use it, people!  At least that's what all the (Athena) lore left us over the ages suggests. Of course, my favorite way of thinking of it is in Robert Hand-speak: use the energy wisely, lest it use you unwisely.

Ah yes...the Rob of Hand. Nice guy, Rob.

So when will Athena and Sabine go retrograde? Athena’s station is this Wednesday, January 16th. And Sabine's is the day after (Thursday the 17th). But since there will be other astro-doings to discuss later this week, I wanted to prattle a bit about things asteroidal. (No, that's not dirty!)

And the first thing to discuss is Mnemosyne, mother of all muses (not to be confused with the muthah of all muses...I'm pretty sure she didn't live in the Hood). 

So let's start with the 'muse' part. Whatever they are in Greek myth, in astrological application, the muses tend to refer to comes out of our reflecting on things. You know…how we express ourselves and what we say, considering how we feel or maybe what we’ve learned.

Or haven’t learned, yes.

...a moment of pause while we all muse on this idea…

We can hope that Athena going direct will awaken our internal ‘think it through’ process. After all, Athena is the very vibe of cool, logical, dispassion. And considering the points which are going on station this Friday-into-Saturday…? Well! They’re emotional emotional enough that going into these next couple of days with a bit of thought and a breath of clarity sounds like a good idea!

As for the ‘when’ of all this, the station effects start now - January 16th. And they extends through January 20th….or the first few minutes of the 21st, if you want to be exact, seeing as Mnemosyne goes retrograde at about 9 minutes after midnight (UT/+0 time) on Saturday the 19th.

Depending on how the four objects involved aspect other things in your chart, you may be feeling a bit more evasive (or being avoided) and Haumea-ish and less Mnemosyne. Or maybe your life will be filled with a lot of Scheherazade ‘telling tales’ influences.

A fragment of a 17th century fresco depicting the round of the Zodiac

(photo credit: Kober, 2007)

Whatever our personal charts say, there will be a ‘vibe’ which is worldly and ‘mundane’ – which has got to be the most misunderstood astrological term around! In ‘regular’ speech, ‘mundane’ means ‘common’ or ‘general.’ And it’s this second meaning which leads to the astrological sense of ‘mundanity’….but really, something like Mars conjuncting Uranus or Pluto does NOT indicate a mundane event!

Far from it. Yet when you see the term, it means ‘world-wide.’ And on the world-wide ‘mundane’ level, that which is happening now – or being (Athena) thought about now, is about to evolve. And let’s remember, it’s going to do its evolving with the Sun in Capricorn with last Friday’s New Moon in Capricorn has given us all some sort of something which resembles a report card.

With Saturn the sole rules of Capricorn, that Saturn is transiting Scorpio tells us that how well we are intersecting others and that work around us will be generating what’s afoot. At it’s dig-down-deep base and bottom, this is about your personal values, so start there. What do you value? How well that is working for others in your world…and the world in general…will have built up some reservoir of support or respect where all is well, and will have built up some sort of ‘debt’ (be that financial, emotional or otherwise) with others or even with yourself.

So here we are trying to cope, make the best of things and inch-by-inch get things moving in the right direction…and then we get to this four-part station. The players are as follows: Scheherazade the story teller… Mnemosyne (reflections, and what we see, understand or do because of same)…Typhon, symbol of primal feelings…and shapeshifter Haumea, the goddess whose endless pretenses, pretending and ignoring of human standards lead to her eternal demise.

Taken all together, the basic question becomes what is driving us? Some of us will get in touch with those issues and act from them, and some of us will deal with a life which, in provoking our innermost feelings and needs, will show us what our (Capricorn) priorities really are.

So it’ll be easy to have these next days be a product of being driven by compulsions we don’t even consciously recognize. Or maybe you’ll get annoyed with yourself because you did ‘that’ again!

Oh, when will we learn!

But there are huge positives to be gained now. For those who are wiling to bite the proverbial bullet (no real bullet biting is advised!) this can be a time to turn a corner and turn over a new leaf. Things which have been out of line or gotten out of hand can now be stopped.

(with regards to this diagram, darker shades indicate retrograde,

lighter shades indicate direct motion)

With Scheherazade going direct, those who do take on making changes may face objections in the forms of reasons, rationales and excuses (in other words, ‘tales’) as to why things have been the way they are, or why they should stay that way. Or they may be telling themselves 'stories' as to why they need to do something. There's also the idea that Scheherazade’s station is in an exact trine to Mnemosyne’s. And that combination suggests that there are going to be some who do their best to ‘reason’ (wheedle, persuade, daunt, circumvent, avoid, stonewall, ignore…etc.) whatever gets brought up for discussion!

Who’s to say the new is any better than the old?

Good question!

With Libra being the host sign for Typhon and Haumea’s turn to retrograde, it’s also not impossible to hear some ‘if you do that, I’ll do this’ sort of stuff. And though this may be difficult to deal with, those who understand that those who feel most threatened are the one’s most likely to issue threats will understand how to cope. Sometimes compromise is needed, yes. But sometimes pointing out the fallacy of the (Typhon) feeling which is being triggered and driving the ‘digging in of the heels’ is a far better route.

At extremes, this can be a moment when ultimatums get issued. Are they real? Sometimes, yes.

With all of this happening with Jupiter having moved into the degree it will linger and go direct in come January 30th, many people will be feeling impatient either because they want to ‘move on’ or are fed up with ‘discussing’ and looking for additional options. This is part of the whole Capricorn New Moon cycle, which in part is about learning to stand on our own two feet and not worry as much about what others say as getting things right.

But at the moment? Well, let’s just say there may be a few matches getting lit under a few tender parts and a bit of resultant objections. With the Sun and Mercury coming into unison as they reach the end of Capricorn, maintaining perspective on your own reasons (and your ability to reason) is part and parcel of all which goes on now.

If you can remember that the instincts which drive you (Typhon and Haumea) are coming from an emotional place…and the reactions or input you’re getting may set off your reactions, you’re in a good place to learn a lot. You may even learn a lot about others.

And that would seem to be the point – learning who we all are. As this station is winding up, the Sun and Mercury will move into that universal sign of greater theory: Aquarius. We really are closing out the end of the Piscean Age and moving into the Aquarian Age, which is the astrological equivalent to the rolling over of the Mayan creation cycle.

(Yes, I know it’s not the exact equivalent, but these two Cycles of Different Sources do seem to have some sync-power!)

The reason to think about this comes from the idea that every time the astrological ages change, we see humankind in all sorts of turmoil. The Ages don’t have a ‘finite’ date for end-and-beginning like the Mayans had. (We can but wish they did!) Instead, astrological ages move from one to the next sort of like the colors in a rainbow meld one into the next. So yes, there is a point at which you’ve ‘totally in the yellow’ but you sort of have to get there in order to know you’re there.

 Pages from the famous Mayan Dresden Codex which has helped us

learn so much about Mayan astronomy, their understanding of numbers

and their truly astounding concepts about time.

Fortunately, we do have some signatures. That’s the clockwork of major planetary symbols (etc.) moving into Aquarius. Saturn (reality) will reach Aquarius in 2020. That’s our next big step…with Pluto changing many a parameter starting in 2024.

Prior to that, every time the Sun or Mars or another of the personal planets moves into Aquarius, we get a different perspective on life. We feel the need to change because change is in the air and on the way.

And that makes this set of stations leading into the 2013 Sun/Mercury Aquarian ingress our chance to gain some ground for – and with ourselves.
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