Welcome to The Kosmic Mind Astrology Column written by Guest Astrologer Chad Woodward. Chad is an astrological researcher, massage therapist, healer, and artist PLUS a good friend of mine who I highly respect for his ongoing and unique explorations into the awesome potential of astrology and how it effects us on a microcosmic and macrocosmic level.
The Road to Awe by Chad Woodward, Astrologer
New Moon
February 02, 2011 @ 6:30:52 PM PST
@ 13 degrees of Aquarius
New Moon's Agenda: To manifest the power of the will consciously through co-creation to make dramatic and creative new forms in the world. To take ownership and responsibility of our role as co-creators of our world, and to take steps toward standing our ground and facing up to our fears. The energy of rapid acceleration is present, indicating the potential for breakthroughs and great leaps in evolution. Keyword: PENETRATION
New Moon's offer us the opportunity to become powerful co-creators, as each month when the Sun and Moon conjoin a portal opens, a portal through which intention is magnified exponentially. In other words, the few days surrounding the new moon, as well as the day itself, are highly charged with an energy that amplifies human thought and thus intention. This new moon is rather special, as it will culminate within a Full Moon (also the first of 6 Super Moons!) in Leo at the anaretic degree, the 29th degree, which makes it the last of 5 full Moons to occur at the 29th degree of the lower signs of the zodiac. In my previous article I outlined a process that was occurring within the collective psyche involving these Full Moons in synthesis with an intriguing Lunar Eclipse synchronicity. I have been heavily intuiting a definite shift in the collective field, as it seems the human species is now being activated by a powerful new template for consciousness itself. For me this was very exciting, but unfortunately for some, this activation has been rather difficult and arduous to endure. The symbolism of the lower signs can be compared to the symbolism of the "lower" and "physical" aspects of conscious perception, and thus would correlate directly to the biological human organism as well as the machines and tools we create which mimic natural organisms. When I first noticed the anaretic full moons I immediately had a vision of powerful energy streams penetrating the biosphere of the earth and the human body. I saw these streams entering through the crown chakra and down through each chakra of the body, forcing energetic blockages to be released or manifested to be dealt with. In that moment I intuited that this was a time to heal, to ground, and to get totally in our bodies, and I felt that this would be a preparation for other processes in the future that would be extremely ungrounding for many.
Since the beginning of these Full Moons my life has experienced many shifts, as certain people, places, and things around me have begun to die. I have witnessed the death of my Grandfather, who had battled an auto-immune disease for several years, and his condition accelerated for the worst just one day after the Lunar Eclipse on Winter Solstice, and he died about two weeks later. Prior to this, on Thanksgiving day, I got into a pretty bad accident that totaled my car, just days after the Full Moon at the 29th degree of Taurus in my third house(house of communication and transportation)! Shortly after this, and in complete synchronicity with the same Lunar Eclipse that had correlated with my grandfather dying, the school I was attending had to close its doors due to financial troubles that had been accumulating for several years.
At this moment as I write this, my Aunt is currently dying of a very bad case of Influenza-A or "Swine Flu" as it is called. Of course, I did have the Lunar Eclipse on December 21st exactly conjoined with Mercury in my horoscope at the 29th degree of Gemini. Mercury is the archetype of communication and travel (my car), and in addition Mercury rules my fourth house (death in the family), the house which governs home and family. I was very personally effected by this process, which is also clearly illustrated by my inspiration to write about all this (mercury, third house). Now you might think that this seems like a pretty bad string of "unfortunate" events, but I certainly don't see it that way.
In our dimension death "appears" to be the end, but this is certainly not true. All death is simply a transition to another state of being, as energy (which we are) can neither be created nor destroyed....everything is and always will be. For me, death is a road to another experience, another chapter of the soul's journey through the matrix of the divine mind. I had felt my grandfather would soon die, because even though allopathic medicine had tried its best to keep him out of pain, he had died a long time ago, and the drugs simply kept his soul from leaving. It was as if he wasn't quite in his body, and a piece of him was elsewhere. I experienced this phenomena a few years ago when another Aunt died of cancer, she had been battling the disease for several years....but within a year after an experimental surgery, she passed away. Immediately after the surgery I noticed a strange shift in her, something that others had noticed as well. Even though she was quite clearly alive, she wasn't completely in her body, as she appeared spacey and "angelic".
At the time, I was offering astrology readings (rather prematurely and naively I'll admit) at a local new age store, and one day as I was sitting in the store, a psychic who worked there, asked me an interesting question. She said, "Do you know someone named Mary Anne?" I replied, "Why yes, she's my Aunt". She asked me if she was sick, and I told her that she had cancer. She proceeded to tell me that she was about to cross over, and that apart of her was already in the astral dimension. This meant that her higher self, or higher dimensional aspect of being, was ready to depart from this life and the process had begun. Aside from my reservations against unasked for psychic advice, she helped to confirm my intuitions about what I was seeing, that even though modern medical science can keep us "alive" and subdue the pain of disease, it can't stop the inevitable which we all must face in the end, and it can't stop the natural (or supernatural) processes which permeate our reality. She died less than a year later. The reason I bring all this up, is to shed light on what disease is, and why we as humans manifest it.
From the modern medical view, disease is an enemy with which humanity must fight against with its tools and technology. When we get sick, our first response is to fight it....to get rid of it....and to perceive it as an invasion. From the holistic perspective, which has predominated the earth for THOUSANDS of years before modern allopathic medicine; disease is the manifestation of trauma which resides in the body and mind. Trauma is the result of stress on the organism, stress that can't be coped with or processed in the moment, and thus damages or imprints itself within the psyche. We have many bodies aside from the physical and perceivable one we know well, and trauma first resides in our higher dimensional bodies BEFORE it "manifests" or becomes a disease or an imbalance within the third dimension, or the physical body. This means that we have an opportunity to clear trauma or blockages before they become disease, and there are many gifted psychics and intuitives who can actually see disease in the aura. This subject is rather vast and is really beyond the scope of this article, but my point here is to address this because I believe we are at a transition stage where humans cannot go on as a deeply traumatized species. Our dysfunctions, which we have been conditioned to believe are normal, are now effecting the earth herself and her other inhabitants, as we are in the midst of a massive ecological as well as social genocide. This penetrating energy that has arrived within the biosphere of the earth is not ill intended as it might appear to be on the outside, it is simply assisting us in clearing what doesn't really belong to us in the first place. Our trauma was inflicted upon us, often by very well meaning parents or other authorities during our early development. Other trauma may have been inflicted by less than well meaning individuals, or even from an accident of some kind. The point is that, aside from whether it is our "karma" to receive such trauma in the first place, in the moment....our pain and our suffering is not ours, it was given to us. You may now ask the question, "Who would want to hold on to such pain and suffering then?". The answer is quite simple, because it's all we know and it's actually comfortable. Aside from the progressively popular "holistic" movement we are seeing develop, most people don't actually want to heal, and even though they would rather not suffer, they don't want to take the time or do the work to heal themselves. In our modern era, when we get sick, we go to a doctor so that they can "fix" us. In our culture we are conditioned to not take responsibility for our own bodies, minds, and sadly...even our souls. This mentality is still prevalent and is often applied when approaching many holistic treatments, and they will always fail when approached this way.
Humanity has been living in a seemingly dark age, an age of complete and utter unconsciousness and codependency. We give our bodies and minds freely, and into the hands of "experts", "priests", and yes, even "scientists" who claim to be able to cure our ills and woes. Sadly, the cure usually fails, and along with emptying our bank accounts and poisoning our livers, these doctors or experts merely "relieve" or delay death and suffering....but we are not cured, saved, nor even usually better off. This same pattern occurs in holistic and homeopathic treatments quite often when they are applied improperly, and most likely from the predominately left brain perception of an inept practitioner. This presents us with the paradox of the frog in the well, who believes there can be nothing more beyond it, or the penguins on the ice berg in delusion of their omnipotence. Individuals conditioned within a predominately left brained society would find it difficult to perceive from the right, and thus not truly understanding how right brained modalities are properly applied, which should be from a grounded and somatic vibration as opposed to a mental and intellectual approach.
I'm not against modern medicine or its technology, I believe its extremely beneficial and RELIEVES a lot of suffering, it definitely has its time and place, and I personally use it when I need to- but the reality is that our world is not one sided, it is a dichotomy. When we approach something entirely from one side of the spectrum we create imbalance, and we are not experiencing consciousness to its full potential. Science has now confirmed that the human brain is made up of primarily two hemispheres, left and right. The left side is our masculine, logical, and linear aspect, and the right our feminine, intuitive, and cyclical aspect. Modern science is an invention of the left side of the brain, and thus it is incomplete as an entirely universal mode of healing for the human species. It presents us with the paradox of the mind perceiving itself, from within the distorted perception of its self aggrandized delusion. As I attempted to address in my previous article, we are in the midst of a bridging back to the other side of the brain- back to our feminine, receptive, creative, psychic, and numinous being. I believe, at this moment, we are at the threshold of this shift....and at this point there will be no going back. It has been suggested that the discovery of the planetoid Chiron, unveiled the program for the integration of holistic/homeopathic (feminine/passive/yin) and modern/allopathic (masculine/active/yang) medicine. This program is revealed in Chiron's transit cycle around the Sun, and ever since its discovery (in 1975), it heralds the progressive assimilation of the coined "new age" modalities and ideology, and integration of holistic and modern medicine into the western psyche, which will theoretically culminate (flower) in the year 2024 during its first opposition.
This new archetype was birthed in the shadow, the wake, of the massive social conditioning program known as the "60's" or the "hippie era" which coincided with the first conjunction of the planets Uranus and Pluto since their "discovery" by astronomers. The social renaissance of the 60's, which I briefly outlined in my previous post, was the seeding phase of a roughly 80 year cycle we are currently in the midst of. The goal of the program was to shatter the western psyche, and to reawaken the Promethean and Dionysian archetypes which have been greatly lost since ancient times. This era has worked to shake up the sleeping populace, and to create an irreversible imprint upon society that would have the effect of slowly changing the entire infrastructure of our culture[1]. The next phase of this cycle is building up, and will reach several peaks from 2012 to 2015, which will also greatly amplify the Chirotic[2] process we are currently enduring. So, really, the human species is not truly awakening to something entirely new, it is really just remembering what it is like to be a functional human being, unearthing its deeply innate potential that was always there to begin with before it was conditioned out of us by ruling powers and elitists. Humanity is at a point of needing to heal, or needing to transmute the trauma that has been afflicted upon it. This energy is really about a very basic choice we must each make in this new era, do we choose death or do we choose life? Do we choose fear or do we choose bliss? Do we take responsiblity for our own minds, bodies, and souls....or do we stay in a state of unconscious indifference?
Fear is simply a veil to the truth of infinite bliss....
Conversely, I have noticed another aspect of this energetic process, one that is extremely exciting. I have felt an activation or awakening of potential within myself, and I have noticed it in others as well. It is as if we currently find ourselves at an intriguing crossroads, where particular blockages we once found difficult to move through, have suddenly vanished or have become much easier to handle. It seems many are being given the opportunity to fully step into their power, to their talents and abilities, and face their fears head on. Look to your life, and see where this may be true, you'll probably be quite surprised. This I feel is really the true intention of this activation, to push the human race to its limits and fully take on who they truly are. If disease manifests, or if a certain blockage arises within your consciousness, I would invite you to not judge it or label it an enemy, but rather see this trauma as a teacher who brings you a very special and personalized lesson.
Healing our trauma is really a matter of activating the positive polarity of the archetype of Mars. Over the past several thousand years, humanity has lived primarily within bounds of an imbalanced patriarchy. In astrology, the order of the planets from the Sun (from a geocentric perspective, which means Earth Centered), displays an archetypal process of evolution for the human psyche, and as a whole, represents the individualized consciousness of perception. In other words, it's a map of the psyche, and this map is ever changing and evolving through time. The Sun is the center, it is the spark of consciousness, and it governs the visual spectrum of the visible world around us. The Moon is the counterpart, the hidden and receptive realm of the unconscious, and governs the relatively unseen and yet emotionally tangible realm of the human psyche. Mercury is the synthesis of the first two and primordial archetypes of male and female, yin and yang, as it relates to the formation of the mind and the central nervous system within the body, as a direct manifestation of two diametrically opposed and yet cooperating principles. Here we see where the first principle of duality manifests within the psyche, as Mercury is the ruler of Gemini- the archetype of the twins which stems from the Greek myth of Castor and Pollux, which is likely a later patronized interpretation of a pair of male and female twins that represented the mind itself and its two distinctly individualized hemispheres (the word Hermaphrodite etymologically stems from the clever synthesis of Hermes and Aphrodite). Venus becomes the first encounter of the subjective self with a process of immediate socialization, as a direct result of the mind and its configuration of the world into duality, of light and dark. Venus rules the formation of identity, and its attachment to the objects, people, and ideas from which the mind creates via thought. This identity must then be projected, and presented through action and implementation, and this is the role of Mars. The archetypes of Venus and Mars represents the physical manifestation of the psychic and transdimensional principles of Sun and Moon into the perceivable matrix of the third dimension, as constructed through the Mind (mercury). Mars has the role of defending the psyche from the forces of the greater society, which is represented by the planets Jupiter and beyond. Mars is essentially our defense against trauma, and could be related to our physical/emotional/mental/as well as psychic immunity. Mars protects the female principle, Venus, which is our identity, from outside influences but also filters them based on evolutionary necessity.
Mars penetrates Venus, and seeds the psyche with the knowledge of the higher dimensional spheres, the planets beyond the individualized consciousness. Conversely, Mars penetrates the outer world with the seed of the individual as to take part in the grand co-creative act of the universe. An imbalanced Mars will defend until the death, and will fight all invaders from entry as it perceives them as the enemy which must be destroyed. In balance, Mars is simply the principle of standing one's own ground, of OWNING and taking charge of one's OWN psyche. Nature respects authoritative love, but not mindless aggression. When encountered with a threat, Mars will stand up to it because it has claimed ownership of its self. In imbalance, when something has been taken away, such as the true essence of the masculine, it fights as a means of psychological compensation because of fear, it is defending its trauma....as opposed to truly standing up to it. Nothing can control us if we allow it to, only if we give up ownership of ourselves and our society does it become invaded by external forces. The higher aspect of Mars is complete consciousness in the moment, complete readiness and preparation. When Mars is unconscious, he has let his guard down, and intruders will eventually get through.
This new Moon conjoins Mars in Aquarius, the sign of the collective will, the future, and community. Mars, as an active principle, represents the fully CONSCIOUS will, the ability to take charge of one's destiny to make things happen. This process is effective only with the highest awareness, for true free will only exists when one is conscious in the moment....otherwise we're being dragged along by unconscious programs completely beyond our awareness, and we only THINK we have free will. On the other side of this new Moon lies Ceres, the goddess of nurtrance and mothering. Here we see a process that is seemingly tempering Mars, fusing it with compassion and feminine awareness. As we set our intentions for this new Moon, it would seem the energy is very ripe for powerful co-creation with a group or with a community, and activating the power of the collective will. Now is the time to set intentions based on truly stepping into one's power to effect the greater society. It seems that the portal of this New Moon is inviting us to accelerate our evolution in various ways, to speed up the process through the conscious application of will. The new moon also makes a trine to Saturn in Libra, indicating that whatever we decide to manifest will have the potential to truly crystallize and become real and tangible in our world. The Jupiter and Uranus conjunction, both sit on either side of the powerful vernal point, or spring equinox point, the flame which drives consciousness toward higher evolution and awareness. This is indeed an exciting time to be alive! Setting powerful and far reaching intentions on this new moon is highly important, and it will culminate during the final full moon to occur at the 29th degree of a sign, and also the first of 6 Super Moons, which greatly magnify its influence.
At the time of the Super Full Moon on February 18, the Sun will be at the exact midpoint of Chiron and Neptune, the current portal to the numinous and multidimensional, and the full Moon will be opposing it. Again, Mars will join the conjunction, emphasizing once more the importance of fully integrating the healthy and balanced male archetype into our psyche. This has the potential to be a highly spiritual and mysterious time for the planet, as many interesting energies seem to be penetrating into our world through active portals. Embrace your potential and innate humanity, and let go of what no longer serves you at this juncture. Whatever dies, or whatever malfunctions, is in dire need of transmutation, and all stagnation needs to be progressively eliminated for evolution to continue on its current path. There is such beauty beyond the veil of fear and death. Do not fear death, and do not fear transformation, for each is the road to greater awareness, the road to awe....
Notes and References:
[1] So effective were the movements of the 1960's, that the US government even commissioned a study titled Changing Images of Man, in which it concluded that: "There are increasingly evident signs of the imminent emergence of new "image of man." It is a new image in the sense of being very much a challenge to the dominant scientific world view as that has evolved over the past few centuries, and also to the image of materialistic "economic man" that become enshrined in the institutions and economic theories of the industrial era. Yet it is not new, since traces of it can be found, going back for thousands of years, in the core experiences underlying the world's many religious doctrines, as reported through myths and symbols, holy writings, and esoteric teachings. The staying power of the new image is suggested by the facts that it reactivates the cultural myths whose meaning had become forgotten, and it seems to be substantiated by the further advances of the science which earlier played a role in seemingly discrediting it". -Markley and Harman pg. 200
This "new man" was a direct threat to the prevalent materialistic worldview that had, and still is, keeping the American populace under social and economic control. The government was deeply concerned about the far reaching consequences of this movement that they commissioned such a study as far back as 1968. A copy of the report can be found here: http://technoccult.net/library/changing-images.pdf. For furthering reading on the subject I highly recommend The Stargate Conspiracy by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. According to Prince and Picknett: "In 1973 the United States government commissioned a report from SRI International entitled Changing Images of Man, edited by Willis W. Harman and O.W. Markley, which concluded that the spread of what it termed 'the new values'- spiritual and ecological awareness and self-realisation movements- is becoming virtually unstoppable. This would bring about a transformation of society (particularly in the United States) that would radically undermine 'modern industrial-state culture and institutions' and result in 'serious social disruptions, economic decline, runaway inflation, and even institutional collapse'. This report anticipates a lessening of trust in authority and a reaction against a regimented, tightly controlled society. It also suggested ways of preventing this worst-case scenario by identifying existing institutions or traditions that could be used to control and contain the impetus of the new movement."- Picknett & Prince pg. 318
[2] Chirotic is a term coined by astrologer and researcher Barbara Hand Clow to describe the archetypal process and effect of chiron in astrology, see Chiron: Rainbow Bridge Between The Inner & Outer Planets.
Chad Woodward's Bio
Ever since I was young I found myself fascinated and mesmerized by the night sky, gazing up at its brilliance and immensity in awe. Somehow, this innate part of myself was looking for omens in that very sky, completely unaware of the vivid and profound art known as astrology, which has graced this planet for thousands of years. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I discovered the real horoscopic astrology that, from that point forward, would change and shape my life in ways I would have never imagined. It was truly love at first sight, a love that has only increased in its intensity ever since. Life with astrology is truly an adventure, as it unveils the magic of destiny, which has been sadly lost to our world for far too long.
My goal, as the late Joseph Campbell so eloquently stated, is to simply follow my bliss. Astrology is a guide to the unfolding of self and of the cosmos itself. It is in the proper application of this guide, that we as humans, can learn to no longer be an obstacle to the brilliance and intelligence of this cosmic unfolding. Currently, I am simply a researcher, massage therapist, healer, and artist doing my part in the ascension of the planet. I hope to share the joy and bliss that astrology can provide, as we learn to dance and flow in synchronicity with this great and mysterious divine plan.