Sep 2011
Got to Serve Somebody

The Sun’s in Virgo and the Moon’s in Pisces at the Full Moon on September 12^th. Both are misunderstood signs, so this lunation can be hard to deal with.

It isn’t that Pisces and Virgo are inherently any more difficult than any other zodiacal pair; it’s that our society doesn’t value the impulses they represent– impulses which we are brought up to assume are steering us in the wrong direction. Unless we look beyond their stereotypes we will misinterpret the urges that come through us during their transits.

Both these signs minimize the ego. Neither sign buys into society’s messages about success, messages that tell us to focus exclusively on Number One, and that we’re undermining ourselves unless we do. Neither Virgo nor Pisces prioritizes individual aggrandizement over collective good. Their special genius is to pinpoint flaw (Virgo) and acknowledge suffering (Pisces), which prompt acts of service.

It is a shame that such urges are given short shrift in the modern world, where empathic communion with our fellows and the ability to do humble, diligent work, are, at best, dismissed; and at worst, disdained.

During September Chiron, the Moon and Ceres are in Pisces; and Mercury, the Sun and Venus are all in Virgo. We will be encouraged to reflect upon our attitudes towards service (Virgo) and compassion (Pisces) all month long. These oppositions will ask us: What are we to do with our instincts to help and to empathize, in a culture that failed to encourage these qualities in us when we were growing up, and fails to respect them now?

Self-Critique

This is what we do: We gently distance ourselves from the limitations of our upbringing, and look around, with clear eyes, at what’s really happening. Unmitigated by cultural nonsense and group think, the Here and Now itself will rouse our true natures to respond appropriately. First tentatively, then enthusiastically, our inborn resources will rise to the fore. They’ve been waiting with bated breath for an invitation to do their part.

The healthiest kind of self-critique (Virgo) under skies like these begins this way: with retiring our old stories. That’s the first step in making ourselves available to the era we inhabit. The fact that ours is an era replete with immense and ubiquitous crises is not random. The cosmic plan has provided opportunities galore for us to explore our capacity for helpfulness and empathy.

But there is a step even before this. In order to distance ourselves from obsolete cultural pictures, we have to know what they are. To be of use during the Cardinal Cross years, we have to root them out. Even the most independent-minded of us has absorbed any number of collective fantasies over the course of being socialized into our tribe. To pierce through these stories and become fully functional, we need to ask ourselves:

Do the ideas in our heads about what’s “normal” compare with what’s really going on?

It’s ironic that this is harder to do for those of us in the still-somewhat-operational First World, where food and clean water are available and our nights are uninterrupted by missile-firing drones. The down side of a non-life-threatening lifestyle is that anachronistic mass assumptions stick around longer.

What’s Normal?

One of these is the assumption that, sooner or later, the economic conditions of the 1950s will come back; and that life will settle into a Leave-it-to-Beaver- or Brady-Bunch-style “normalcy.” (It says a lot that we have to go back a couple of generations in order to find an exemplary sitcom that portrays a dumb, happy nuclear family; the kind that represents ür-normalcy to many nostalgic Americans. As exemplars of domestic normalcy, Ozzie and Harriet have been replaced by dark, dysfunctional clans [e.g. Shameless, The Riches, Arrested Development].  Even more revealing, of course, is the fact that we have to turn to television to find them, rather than to statistical reality).

In last month’s Skywatch we talked about how those of us who live in the relatively functional parts of the world are going to be less and less able to isolate ourselves from the disasters that are rocking other parts of the globe. Americans, especially, a notoriously insular tribe, seem to be shrouding themselves in the belief that the post-WWII years of booming industry and unquestioned consumerism represent base-line reality. According to this worldview, today’s economic, military and meteorological crises are merely temporary aberrations.

But it is increasingly difficult to find a spot on the planet to which Brady Bunch “normalcy“ bears any resemblance. Included in this shrinking pool we might still count patches of the USA, Western Europe, and isolated pockets of stability such as Singapore. Just about everywhere else in a state of emergency: either in out-and-out systems collapse, as is true in the narco-economies of Latin America; in continuous war, as in Iraq and Afghanistan; or in dire privation, as in drought-stricken Ethiopia. Most of these stricken countries are struggling with multiple catastrophes at once: right now almost every African state is in a state of crisis that is chronic, acute, or both.

As the old ways devolve, we are seeing the inevitable rise of reactionaries such as the American Minuteman movement and the English Defence League. The word reactionary does not mean merely “extremely conservative.” It describes a state of reaction — as opposed to a response — driven by fear and resulting in overcompensation.

A reactionary tries to push away and repudiate the source of his phobia. The postmillennial specimen of this breed is motivated by a dread that the world’s calamities will spread to his own home town, like a plague virus. Thus the cruelty shown to the sea-tossed asylum-seekers who approach the shores of Australia and Italy seeking safe quarter, only to be turned away.

Inhumanities like these vie with expressions of humanity everywhere we look. The choice to identify with either one or the other confronts us every day. We are constantly being asked to choose (this is the meaning of the Crossroads in esoteric thought, and the Cross in astrology.) If we believe that the purpose of life is to learn, then our goal is to choose the humane way. If we believe that the world’s chaos is a phase in a great collective growth arc, our goal is to keep our sights trained upon where the evolutionary trajectory is leading.

In the case of the Virgo-Pisces axis, the consciousness shift has to do with deepening our response to the suffering among us. Especially when Neptune goes into Pisces to stay (Feb 2012-25), the efforts of the reactionaries — those desperately trying to dis-identify from the masses –will become increasingly far-fetched, awkward and implausible.

The realization will come to every one of us sooner or later, no matter how many lifetimes it takes: victims of catastrophe are not Others, but human beings like ourselves.

Autumn Equinox

After the Full Moon peaks, we will enter a powerful Solstice period.  The Sun opposes the Aries point (discussed in detail in my lecture, “The Emperor Has No Clothes”) on September 23^rd, one week after Pluto stations direct while squaring Uranus within two degrees of exactitude. Crossing the Autumnal threshold will set off the Cardinal Cross.

Find Virgo and Pisces in your chart. Identify what house they fall in. Notice what aspects they make to your natal planets and angles. These clues will point you to the ways you can use this month’s call to service.

The interface between the transits (what the sky is up to right now) and our own individual chart (our soul plan) is the answer to the question September’s skies are prompting: “How do I serve?”