Panacea’s station/retrograde

When at 12:07pm (UT/+0) on April 15th asteroid Panacea goes retrograde, it will do so positioned at 19 Sagittarius, a degree known for trials and difficulties specifically in areas of traditionally accepted medical practices - which metaphysically, should also probably look at as ‘healing.’ There are problems noted here with fire against water – an imbalance where there’s too little water going in, which as someone writing this blog a week-plus before it goes up, doesn’t sound all that happy.

Another note on this degree – which would automatically be emotional and possibly contentious merely by being the last degree of Sagittarius’ second and most ‘feelingly expressed’ decan.

And this is on top of Sagittarius being under any circumstance a sign know for high flying theories which don’t always equal sensibly when applied to real life and real human beings (humans being notoriously a flawed and messy race).

The last bit of lore I’ll sprinkle in here about 19 Sagittarius is that it’s a degree known for not just reacting well to pressure, but one which when pressured will often enough turn vengeful and problematic in that singularly distasteful ‘cut off both our noses to spite your having hurt my feelings!’ sort of way.

So we have all this frothing outrage on one side (the 19 Sagittarius side)…and we have asteroid Panacea as a symbol of ‘making or creating peace’ going retrograde at this degree.

To paraphrase an old saying…this sounds either veddy veddy good, or truly, wrenchedly dismal!

And yet…the concept of a station/retrograde is that we stop looking to internal sources for the ‘solution’ and start looking within and developing that attribute inside. If so, Panacea going retrograde may symbolize many people simply pulling back into their own world – whether that’s defined as themselves, their family, their community or their work. It could be expected that politics of the ‘isolationist’ brand could now surface and be seriously talked about.

We may hear of people ‘evicting’ others from their space, their house, their country or whatever else. Or that people are withdrawing their support – be that emotional, financial, political or otherwise.

In the long run, given that we’re moving into a globally integrated Aquarian Age era, isolationist ideas work in concept, but cripple the system. Still, considering we’re moving from the Pisces Age into the Aquarian Age at this moment, there’s every reason to think this is going to get tried…only to have it fail. And when it fails, given the nature of Aquarius, it’s likely to take down not just those who instigated the attempt to isolate, but a good many others.

 A detail from 'Peace and Prosperity,' a mural created

by  Elihu Vedder in 1896 which adorns the Lobby leading

into the Library of Congress' Main Reading Room in Washington, D.C.

Why? Because the concept of collateral damage, in Aquarian Age terms, is very social, societal, financial and (maybe most importantly) power-political and reputational.

As an astronomical body, Panacea is about as middle of the main-belt asteroid road as it gets. It gets as far as 3.04 AU away from the Sun…and comes as close as 2.8 AU to the Sun.

The boundaries here? Well, Mars (the asteroid’s belt inner border) reaches 1.8 AU from the Sun on the outside and Jupiter comes as close as 5.4 AU to the Sun on the inside.

So that 3.04AU - 2.8AU of Panacea? That’s so right there in the middle…which on one hand suggests that old saw ‘moderation in all things.’ It also suggests that we have the means and methods with which to make and find peace – they’re right there in front of us rather consistently. They’re not way out there like Pluto or Deucalion in the Kuiper Belt. Panacea (let’s call it ‘peace’) doesn’t come and go like some orbiting comet like Tempel-Tuttle which only shows its comet tail every thirty-three years or so.

Nope. Panacea is there for the finding in ourselves and in our regular, everyday life. Interesting that it isn’t metaphysically presented to us as something far-fetched or only occasional, considering how many of us are constantly searching for a sense of peace?

The Return of the Dove to the Ark

by John Everett Millais (1851)

And how long with Panacea be in retrograde? Until July 26 (of this year). But when we look at how long it will take for Panacea to get back to the degree it’s at today as it goes retrograde, that pushes us out all the way to October 5th, and that happens in the wake of the North Node passing over this same degree.

No, there’s no direct reason to tie these two things together, but….let’s just call it an astrologer’s hunch. The North Node passes over 19 Sagittarius and a few days later Pluto goes direct. That suggests that it will take most of this year (since we’re talking mid-September when this Nodal/Pluto thing happens)…it will take most of this year for what happens now to resolve itself.

And when it does, it will be because some social or societal “nodal” force does what it “needs” (North Node) to do. If it was what it wanted to be, the signal would come from the South Node. But no, the end of what I would guess to be the product of this time is delineated by the North Node: doing what we need to do.

We don’t want to, but we need to do it anyway.

From that comes an emotional (Pluto) experience which transforms our view on the world…and thus what we require of ourselves.

And once that happens, then Panacea – peace – comes back to this rather disruptive degree and moves on.

It’s indeed an interestingly suggestive tale. I’ll look forward to seeing what happens. Hopefully a few of you will post comments and let us all know how this works for you in your life. After all, that’s how we all learn, right?