Jupiter, Drakonia and the shadow of Neptune: A Reality which Plays with our Feelings

 The Sombrero Galaxy in infrared

photo credit: NASA/JPL - Spitzer Telescope Team

 

As the 8th became the 9th, Jupiter exited the shadow of its 2010 retrograde cycle. Maybe you felt it. Maybe something you had been trying to do last year finally got wrapped up with a nice, neat little bow.

Or maybe you just stopped trying.

Known as sole ruler of fiery Sagittarius and first/initiating ruler of Pisces, Jupiter symbolizes everything about life which makes us know (Jupiter) that there’s tons out there to experience (Sag)…to feel we’re in touch with (Pisces)…to learn about (Sag)…and to be part of (Pisces).

But the 2010 version of this vision – that’s over with now. As maybe you’ve noticed, life has moved on!

So that’s all we have to say at the moment about Jupiter. Well, except that it’s still in early Aries…which puts the focus on who we are and what we’re doing or being in this world. And yes, there’s also how at this particular moment, Jupiter is wafting along through space in astrological (not spatial!) conjunction with Lust (the concept of intensity of focus) and Mnemosyne (reflection as the best teacher).

That implies we are all focused on what we’re going to become. Or – alternately – what’s going to become of us. Maybe even what we can make of ourselves in this world.

It’s rather like that old phrase: ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’

 A nursery of new stars

photo credit: NASA/JPL - Caltech

Then there’s the next thing…how as of February 10th at 2:28 in the morning (UT/+0), Drakonia goes retrograde at 17 Libra. By anyone’s estimation, 17 Libra is a second decan (emotional) degree of an airy, ‘the ideal of it all’ driven conceptual sign. Libra is highly, seriously poetic - poetry being the very essence of the idea expressed emotionally. But it’s not all that tangible. We think of it as being all about ‘relationships’ when it’s really more about the quality of relating – as in, ‘can we relate?’

The whole notion that relationships are ‘just one thing’ is about as nonsensical as saying we should match to each other merely based on Sun signs. If your Sun is your basic perspective and personal ‘tool box’ fine – that’s a vital and important aspect of who you are. But that's only part of who you are. The Sun doesn't symbolize your values - that’s Venus. It’s not your emotionality! That’s the Moon. It’s not how you communicate – that would be the Mercury department. And it sure isn’t about whether you put the cap back on the toothpaste tube unless you’re a Sun sign Virgo, in which case you’re likely to have a bit of the Toothpaste Nazi in you or simply never care what happens to the toothpaste altogether. (Yes, there are sloppy Virgos! Shocking, I know!)

Anyway…if you want to pick your ‘true love’ based only on your Sun then I want to see your chart because I’d like to know exactly why you think someone else’s values, feelings, sense of humor and ability to communicate, be all Saturn reliable and responsible….why you think that doesn’t count! 

So back to this 17 Libra thing…this is one of those Libra degrees where the two ‘sides’ of Libra are more pronounced or more apparent. You know, like the two sides of the coin – or in this case, of the scale. It’s a degree where Libra presents with great wit and facile eloquence…but to what end?

That’s what one needs to always ask, as this degree can manifest as caring or cutting, interested or quarrelsome, informative or snarky.

And when you add in Drakonia, it’s hard not to think that whatever side of this sugar-vs.-snark line things fall down on, it might not be real. Or realistic!

Making this all double-triple confusionating is that this may not be anyone else playing you! You could be just maybe, perhaps, sorta (kinda) fooling yourself! On the other hand, maybe the biggest (and certainly overarching) concept to consider here is that the third thing happening today is that Neptune is entering the ‘shadow’ of its 2011/2012 cycle.

Probably the best way to understand what this means is to consider what we were talking about in terms of Jupiter. Last year, life was about what it was about at that point. All the parameters and details of what you were doing and what the world was doing…we recognize (Jupiter = knowing, understanding, comprehending) now that all that is over. Done. Finis!

We’re in a whole new cycle of learning about life and what life can become. There’s a difference between where you are now and where you were then.

That’s a ‘planetary cycle’ of a yearly type!

So now Neptune is starting it’s new cycle. With all planets which go retrograde (Sun and Moon don’t, though granted, the Sun is actually a star and the Moon is Earth’s satellite)….these cycles aren’t set flush, end to end. Some have days or weeks between the end of one and the start of another. Time off, call it. Or a free for all in planetary affect terms!

 Planet Neptune - photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you work with transits, you know this idea from having seen transits – most often by Jupiter and/or Saturn – which are one-time transits, as opposed to three (or with Pluto and sometimes Neptune, five-time) transits.

The farther from the Sun a planet is, the longer its orbital cycle. The longer that orbital cycle, the fewer degrees that planet transits in any given year, and thus the more likely it is that it will go direct-retrograde-direct (or even direct, retrograde, direct, retrograde, direct) over any given point before moving on!

With Neptune, we don’t get any ‘free time.’ Actually…we get anything but! The last Neptune cycle doesn’t actually end until February 25th (happy birthday George Harrison…) of this year. But meanwhile, the new Neptune cycle has begun. This next cycle will take us to February 27, 2012.

That these Neptune cycles are overlapping suggests – among other things – that the great human desire to glue everything down and say ‘Okay! That’s taken care of!’ isn’t much in the offing. The lesson of the moment, for all that we may want to “know” what’s happening, is that we can’t…or that we at least aren’t likely to.

That ‘knowing’ thing? That’s the Jupiter part. So part of our Jupiter lesson going forward is that whatever we try to be or become, we can’t know how that’s going to turn out for us – we just have to try.

Or….seeing as we are dealing with both Jupiter and Neptune, which taken together equal rulership of Pisces, maybe the point is that we should accept. Accept ourselves for who we are and proceed from that basis, accept that we won’t know what every little thing is going to be or become and do a little bit every day to try and reach our goals…to let go of the idea that we know what things “should be.”

 Constellation Pisces

produced using Stellarium software

With Jupiter in early degrees (see it above...just past Pisces?), Drakonia in second decanate (middle) degrees and Neptune in the latter degrees of Aquarius, we have a spectrum laid out for us.

Maybe that’s just the point. We can do what we do wanting or looking for some effect or response, but when we do, Neptune defeats us. In all things Neptune, the thing you are most sure of is likely to prove untrue while that you think least likely most often proves out.

And that, my friends, would seem to be a perverse little lesson on how not you, not me, no nobody runs this world. ‘What Is’ is far bigger and more complex than anything we can conceive of. Our egos demand and crave that centralized sense of centralized, viable importance, but when you look at the universe, how big or important are we – really?

And given that, who is really getting played and isn’t the biggest and most consistent form of being or getting played that which comes as a response to having a mortal ego?

So do what you can, but don’t figure that’s all you can do. Know who you are, but figure on learning more as you go along. It’s probably a bad idea to figure you know what ‘should’ be as none of us really have the capacity to know.

Is it us against the world? Us against our world? Or maybe it’s the human race living on its world, gazing out at the stars realizing…

…Realizing what? Playing who?

Maybe it's all about our feelings...and our inborn, human need to feel.

End of Month Roundup

 A cattle roundup in New Mexico

photo credit: US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Let’s just get to this, shall we...?

On Friday the 28th, Mnemosyne enters Aries, Kallisto enters Taurus and (nobody’s favorite) Scheat gets paid a visit by asteroid House.

A day later (on the 29th) House enters Aries, evidently not having been a House feeling at home with the ever-unpopular Scheat.

Sunday is a day off (i.e., status in progress stays static, etc.)...then Monday the 31st has the Sun catching up with Mars in Aquarius – probably the whole energy behind this ‘hurry up and spit it out, woman!’ post.

For those of you who don’t need details, you are now officially welcome to heave a grunt and be off about your days, ne’er to return (perhaps) until dawn o' February.

And for those care to explore a little more...? That we shall now do!

Looking at this list...(and back over past posts, if you are so moved)....there's a steady, continuing shift of celestial objects into signs more often yang (exploring of the unknown) than yin (building on the known). And what with Jupiter having just moved into Aries (and Uranus soon to follow suit), this would seem to be a definite  hint to get off our proverbial stick (or duff, if you prefer) and deal with life more constructively. Or personally.

Where we don't, it's likely that life will provoke us to whether we want to or not. You know - the ol' ‘you need to do this, and that and that other thing too’ sort of thing.

Why do you think she's known as Mother Nature? We go around being untidy and life makes us pick up our socks!

Ye Olde Yang Signs

What this sort of gets down to is that being busy is NOT the same thing (at least metaphysically) as accomplishment. And for those who aren’t sure which is which, accomplishment is the finished product - or at least the benchmark where all has reached a new and durable status quo.

Personally, I don’t think it’s any astonishing leap of coincidence that the words ‘busyness’ and ‘business’ are so very close, either. Those who want to ONLY do their own business are very good at finding those who can be sweltered into busyness for the whole of their life.

It’s also all a matter of perspective. What I may call ‘busyness’ you might call accomplishment. But if I can’t look at it with pride of accomplishment, it’s just busyness in my life. That ultimately proves we each know who we are better than anyone else. 

That difference is also a goodly part of what yin versus yang signatures are meant to prompt in us. If and where we are not doing our ‘business of life’ symbols in yang signs (and the yang-by-nature/left hemisphere of the natural zodiac) …the more objects are in yang signs, the more we are being prompted to do more ‘business’ and less ‘busyness.’ Life will make business more and more the imperative until we switch.

The Pro-active side of the zodiac wheel

In this light, Mnemosyne entering Aries is the memory of who we are, were...or maybe who we started out to be. It can also be a reminder of what we need to do. Or what we started into life aiming for. Our Purpose...or the purpose for which we do things, is now rather on the rise as part of a comparison. Jupiter in Aries is very present tense. But what we were, what we wanted to be, what we could have done?

There are those who will get to this moment and feel guilty. Even sad. Is it really so late to be the person you wanted to be? Or are you simply letting yourself not be or become that person?

Then there are those who love waxing nostalgic over 'the good old days.' Trouble is, those days never really were. Every time has its good and its bad. Life is just never the dream. So one could say that when life calls up old memories, there must be some other reason. What is that?

Kallisto entering Taurus is – to use all implied puns! – to be beastly about resources. Or to realize we have been  ‘beastly’ in our treatment of our own truest values. Though some might argue that Kallisto in Taurus might be a 'pillaging of resources,' I'd think the story of Kallisto has a maiden being turned into the beast through her desire to be chaste as a representation of the eternal (internal) human debate over whether we are afraid of our creative/creator essences.

The myth refers to sexuality, which would have been very apt in those times when they were still worried about making more humans so that humans would continued to exist! But this story about 'chastity' in a Taurean arena is far more than that. Taurus is a sign not only about what we make of ourselves through having sufficient self worth, talent and the will to use them both, but the physical resources which secure our existence, from which comes the modern Taurean "buzz word" of Taurus as money. If money is a resource, yes it's Taurean. But like Fanny Bryce said in the old Hello Dolly movie...money is like manure - it's useless unless you sprinkle it around, encouraging young things to grow!

Those things may be many things. Yes, we can help others, we can put money out into the economy, stimulating growth. But another key use of money is in the judicious growing of our dream person - the "me" we each want to be. 

Kallisto moving into this sign is life asking us to look at all these checks, balances and possible denials. Given that Kallisto is ultimately redeemed not in life but in death (the mythic Kallisto  gets set among the constellations as Ursa Major – the Big Bear) this may indicate how long it will take for benefits to come of actions taken now. Or it might simply say that forgiveness will come, though – as in the story – there is some question of how foolish we actually were to cling to our ‘chaste’ status.

Sometimes righteously virtuous simply doesn’t work as a human.

That Scheat is getting paid a visit by asteroid House as all this happens suggests that events of the day happen in the home, affect our feelings of ‘being at home’ in whatever measure – or that there is an overall bad reaction (Scheat) from/to something having to do with housing.

Sounds socio-economic, if you ask me. (I know, you didn’t. But it is my blog…)

With House entering Aries a day after it visits Scheat is a quick move to rectify something. What? As with what Scheat and House would represent in your personal world that depends a lot on where these two objects are place for you natally. Scheat is going to be in late Pisces, it being a fixed star. But House could be anywhere.

If you want to look these things up, go to the sidebar link on getting a free chart and use the Serennu link. Cast your chart as a list (much easier to look at!) and if you’re from a mm/dd/yy country, be sure to turn that around as Serennu is in Wales, where they use dd/mm/yy.

Probably the point here is that with the Sun conjuncting Mars by mundane transit on the 31st we have two principle figures of personal ‘doing-ness’ in prime ‘doing’ territory. Those who aren’t doing, or who are frustrated by something being in their way – or who are even scrambled like an egg on the inside by hesitancy or personal indecision…such people are likely to be testy, snippy, insistent and highly prone to criticism.

Remember that old slogan them that cannot do, teach? (otherwise known as ‘everyone’s a critic’)? This is a nicer way of saying that those who aren’t in gear using their resources to fulfill their own Purpose, those who have traded dutiful busyness for a life which builds towards achievement…they’re going to be feeling stressed.

And if you know these people like I know these people, they have no issue with trying to make their stress your stress.

My suggestion, be nice. Sympathize for a moment, express your faith that they will figure out what they need to do – then get the heck on with what you’re doing in your own life. Sacrificing your Purpose for someone who refuses to be purposeful is to fall prey to the Kallisto/Taurus sacrifice of self.

Not a good idea. Not now, and hardly ever since you can’t be a good You unless you are happy with the You you are really being.

But maybe more to the practical point is how this Sun 'pressing towards' Mars by degree and transit - in Aquarius - stresses things social and societal. It creates buzz and we shouldn't be surprised if some new 'buzzword' pops up about now.

Sign of corporations, social systems and income (between which there is an obvious dotted line), these end days of January may be frustrating in some ways and real 'live wires' in others. All things electrical are "stressed" here - and I do mean 'stressed' in every sense of the word.

As an air sign, Aquarius is very big on the 'idea' of the thing. As one of three 'two-part' (twin ruler) signs, Aquarius, no matter what symbol is transiting it, challenges us to understand the idea of the thing ...but then not just linger in the conceptual.

That's hard. It's hard for many - in many a way and for many an obtuse-sounding reason. And though patience is what we may have the least of during some of these days, it may be exactly the test at hand.

Remember - zodiac signs represent not just the 'flavor' of what's coming at us, but what we are being tested by...in ourselves!

So though being understanding and taking the time to comprehend and think things through may be the last thing you want to do - it may be exactly what gets you where you want to go, providing that you actually will require of yourself that you get to it and go somewhere.

Life is in some ways such an irony! But hey, seeing as the option is not really anything to contemplate, let's all try to use the great Aquarian virtues of unification, tolerance, humor and the ability to learn from our differences. It will probably pay great dividends.

And if not...? Well, at least with tolerance and humor we will happily weather these days ahead. Giggle wisely!