by Robert Wilkinson
This article covers significant aspects, degree symbols, and other important factors in this month's Cancer Solar Eclipse Lunation chart which will throw us into authentic expression as it shuts down old limitations, roles, and duties. It's purification time!
This Lunation, along with the inner planets, stretches out the occupied span running between Pluto in Capricorn and Jupiter in Taurus so that it now involves Gemini and Cancer. This span shows us where the outer emphasis is in our lives, and what we're experiencing in our worldly realm. This makes for a "Bowl," where we initiate through Capricorn and close through Cancer wherever this occupied span falls in the houses of our birth charts.
However, as mentioned in many articles up to now, due to Saturn we still have a "Bucket" Pattern, with Saturn focusing the energies of all the other planets. That makes the house transiting Saturn occupies in our birth charts extra important as a focus for our stability and personal authorship of our lives. I explained more about the importance of Saturn in the previous article in this series.
As with last month's Solar Eclipse in Gemini closing the occupied span a month ago, now that the Sun and Mercury have moved forward, Cancer is the energy that closes the occupied span. Think of this as a time when all our experience begins with a Pluto in Capricorn type of energy, proceeds through Neptune and Chiron in Pisces, awakening into a Uranus in Aries experience, and then solidifies and envisions through Jupiter in early Taurus. This pattern will hold for another year.
As it is, the planets in Gemini and Cancer help us complete the Capricorn through Taurus span of understanding and stabilization. At the New Moon in Leo, the span will include Leo and early Virgo, giving a Grand Earth Trine and shifting the pattern from "Bucket" to a "Splay" Jones pattern. I'll explain more in the Leo New Moon article.
So wherever we have Capricorn through Cancer in our charts is active, with Gemini and Cancer as crowded sectors due to the inner planets, with effects to play out wherever Saturn is transiting in our chart. The general theme is that we can find enormous clarity amidst the fracturing over the next 4 weeks, either leading us to a more mature and structured peace in our lives, or using peace, we can find a new inner authorship and/or mature perspective we can use to deal with our world.
Saturn falls in the middle of the 3 sections of Libra. The middle third of the signs are said to be the emotional, social or cultural level of that sign's experience. That would imply the focus of these Eclipse energies (like the ones in Gemini) will show us a way to balance our feelings, or our social-cultural views and activities. This will help us be instructed or instruct others about kindness, cooperation, assistance, and/or protection.
Venus rules the sign Saturn is in, and so is inextricably linked to Saturn in the Eclipse. As Venus is in the last third of Gemini, and the last third of a sign is said to be the individual, mental, or spiritual area of that sign. Venus in Gemini is influenced by Gemini's ruler Mercury, which is in Cancer, making the Moon very powerful as the "final dispositor" of these and all the other planetary energies.
Thus Saturn is ruled by a planet in Air, which has Water as its backdrop. Follow the ideas and views, and you will find new sensitivities, new ways of viewing old information, and getting chances to weigh alternatives as you stand on the threshold of a new cycle. Find balance and new rhythms in the subtle shifts, and open to a self-reliant self-initiative that is in your long term interests.
Remember that in reading a Lunation chart (as well as a horary, inceptional, electional, or any event chart) the forming aspects show things to come, while separating aspects show things already past. This New Moon and the planets in Taurus, Gemini, and Libra make several very important forming aspects.
The only forming aspect the Lunation makes is the close square to Saturn, showing that the brakes will be put on old duties so we may accept more important ones. It's probably the most prominent energy in this chart. It's the end of old "drags on our line," where we get to learn how to make basic personal decisions that help us integrate our sensitivities and sensibilities with our more important responsibilities to ourselves, our Souls, and our Truth-of-Being.
This Eclipse will definitely shut down elements of our lives related to where we have 7-14 degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn in our charts over the next 18 months. You will know what is being shut down as various transits through these zones affect your planets along with cutting loose effects from this Eclipse Sun and Moon. As I mentioned in an earlier article about this Cancer Eclipse, there will be BIG shifts throughout 2012 due to Pluto opposing the Eclipse point, these radical developments continuing into 2013 and beyond, so get ready!!
Other important forming aspects made by other planets include a close Mercury septile Mars, quintile Saturn, and a wide triseptile to Pluto, Venus biseptile Saturn and an out of sign trine to Neptune, Mars trine Saturn, and Jupiter triseptile Saturn and trine Pluto. These are all very powerful, and work in very different ways.
Mercury septile Mars throws houses ruled by these planets into dynamic choice and shifts in direction. Most affected are those with planets or points around, 7-9 Gemini, 28-30 Cancer, 20-22 Virgo, 12-14 Scorpio, 3-5 Capricorn, 24-26 Aquarius, and 15-17 Aries. Astute students will note these zones were where the Grand Irrationality occupied 2009-2010, so expect Mercury and Mars induced activities that directly relate to the choices made then.
Mercury triseptile Pluto anticipates it triggering the Grand Irrationality in early July which you will read about very soon in another article. Mercury quintile Saturn should bring unique insights and gifts around Saturn lessons learned the past 9 months, with an ability to see things differently, and perhaps find wisdom in an old feeling or insight.
This trine will help Saturn, a heavily activated planets in this Eclipse. It will harmonize our Aries/Scorpio sectors and planets with our Capricorn/Aquarius sectors and planets. It will result in an ability to see a bigger picture as well as new patterns before they manifest. This will happen at times when we need to go into solitude to receive a new inspiration, whether through a new admiration, a new receptivity, or a new wider integrated vision.
Jupiter trine Pluto in this chart (and all year) shows a practical stability as we go deeper into unknown zones, core understanding, and profound insights into seed forms and structures. This will assist our practical imagination, our power to demonstrate skills in repetitive situations, and put the down times to good use. It's also a great time for purification to stabilize our inner and outer resources.
This will prove extraordinarily productive for those born in late February, late April, late June, late August, late October, and late December. Also affected through unique circumstances and specialized abilities are those born mid-February, early March, mid-April, early July, mid-August, mid-September, mid-October, and mid-December.
Of special importance in this Eclipse is the Venus-Jupiter-Saturn septile series pattern. Though Venus is just separating from a septile to Jupiter, this is a very powerful large scale irrationality pattern that will impact all our charts in Venus, Jupiter, and Pluto ruled and occupied areas. Relationships are at critical forks in the road, opportunities and truths are at critical forks in the road, and the deep transformational process beckons us all to heed a new law.
So the areas of our charts most affected are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, and Pisces, with those paired by rulership at critical junctures relative to the rest. The active zones of this 3 point Star pattern are 4-6 Taurus, 26-28 Gemini, 18-20 Leo, 10-12 Libra, 1-3 Sagittarius, 22-24 Capricorn, and 13-15 Pisces.
As this pattern is active for the next 18 months, every time a planet transits across any of these 7 zones you can expect something from this Eclipse to pop! In the near future keep an eye out in mid-July, end of July, second week of August, end of August, late September and early October, and especially through mid-November 2011. By February 2012 many decisions will have been made about how our Venus, Jupiter, and Pluto are functioning, and much will be understood in very plain ways.
The key to this is Saturn. It is being subject to a quintile, square, biseptile, trine, and triseptile in this chart. That's a lot of different ways for Saturn to manifest!! Mainly, the square will help Saturn's energy to demonstrate the positive qualities of all the other aspects to the degree we have learned to "do" Saturn the past 9 months.
Also, now that Saturn is again direct, it's moving away from the opposition to Uranus and square to Pluto, no small things which should bring great relief to all of us! However, we'll all have to learn to navigate the years' long global upheaval indicated by Uranus square Pluto.
In this Eclipse we must get clear about how we come to judge what we do how we do, and turn away from lesser things that unnecessarily limit our best functioning. As mentioned in an earlier article, this is the time when we get to practice kindness and willingness to teach those who present themselves for the teaching. Spiritual Warrioring will be put to the test in diverse ways, yielding consequences for seeking what we have sought.
There will be unexpected breaks and turning points in how we reach out to a greater future with others, and how we deal with letting go of parts of our past that will open the doors to a new set of values upon which a future will be built. Find those with whom you can cooperate in guarding, protecting, or nurturing that which will ensure some form of future supply.
The separating aspects show reality already experienced, or things already set into motion. That's why now that Saturn is again separating from the Cardinal T-square it will lessen the intensity of some things already fractured up to now. Though separating from their sextile, Jupiter will be favorable to Neptune all year, fostering opportunities to commune with collective consciousness, Mars separating sextile to Uranus and quincunx to Pluto shows productive initiatives set into motion, with hard adjustments, health or work concerns, or forced shifts in communication style in the near recent past.
The waves of activity set into motion between the first Mercury conjunct Jupiter in mid-March through the final Venus and Mercury conjunct Jupiter on May 11-12 are now taking solid shape in sustainable ways, with long term expansions to come during the last half of 2011 and first few months of 2012.
A New Moon sets the seed forms for what the following 4 weeks will demonstrate, while on the other hand the effects of this Eclipse will last 18 months. This Solar Eclipse New Moon falls at 10 Cancer. While I've given you a sense of this degree up to now, this is where we go into depth. According to Rudhyar this degree is one of "Spiritual fulfillment or the acme of civilized being." Also "Actualization of potentialities and outpressing of real selfhood."
He goes on to state that this degree is about "the arduous training for perfection in order to fully manifest an ideal," where we are "dealing with evolution of consciousness and of personality at a preliminary stage." Here is understanding with a lot of work still to be done in crafting the conscious mind. We are told this operation will result in something of "social value," and he suggests "Craftsmanship" as a keyword.
This is a culminating degree where we complete some social or emotional "crafting," and have brought to a level of completion some decision that forced us to give up the lesser so the greater could have life and substance. We opened to the dance between the visible and invisible, found patterns to imitate, searched for "elementary understanding," and now will fulfill this level of our evolving consciousness. Rudhyar says it falls in the span of Expansion, the Process of Individualization, Act of Stabilization, and the Scene of Decision on the Emotional-cultural level.
According to Dr. Jones, creator of the Sabian Symbols, we find the Solar Eclipse Lunation degree is "A large diamond not completely cut." He says this relates to self-justification in a cultural setup, and how our reality depends on our "arts and skills" to build and/or sustain values and their promise. Here we "expand dimensions of significance" to make progress.
He states that here our "pilgrimage through the lower places of being is revealed as a continual service to higher meanings" though which we know ourselves. He offers us the keyword LATENCY, and says that when positive, this degree "is an effective gift for dramatizing the potentialities of everything at hand."
So over the next 18 months this Eclipse will help us craft what is latent into forms that have social value, and refine the base into the sublime. Here we can show our skill and artistry to create something of value that can help us see the promise of something. We can then express our "true selfhood" in a valued form, showing us one of our "paths to perfection" related to our "acme of civilized living."
Of the planets that rule signs, there are 1 planet in Fire signs, 4 in Water, 3 in Air, and 2 in Earth. This preponderance of Air and Water indicates a lot of mental, communicative, relational and interactive energy that is both restless and sensitive, and with 4 planets in Water there will be much to feel, gather, nurture, and care about.
Due to the insufficiency of Fire, find inspiration in recent initiatives and pioneering efforts to BE your better self. The test continues for all of us to find balanced, graceful, elegant, and just ways to do whatever is being mobilized.
Pluto in Capricorn continues to teach us deep lessons about practical, organized economy of energy and efficiency in sprouting seed forms of the new "laws of our lives" we can relax into. Be organized in finding and demonstrating your role and take some time to enjoy it! Also, through the harmonious trine from Jupiter these next 9+ months keeping the Earth energies of this Eclipse front and center, we can safely purify what needs purifying and be leaner and more solidly able to rely on our material and non-material resources.
In the past months we've learned how to make many types of adjustments in perspective and how we relate to create a better world for ourselves in connection with others. Now that we're riding the waves of the new archetypal roles we began to live in 2009-2010, we can use gentle and balanced forms of will power, training, maturity, and sense of our new roles to play to move into new vistas, new worlds, new lives, and new ways of doing our Being.
The next 4 weeks is a time to make critical decisions about what we value and skills we need to cultivate as we continue to let go of the past in practical steady ways. We are still being liberated from the ghosts of the past and letting go of burdens we no longer need to bear. Having found what we've been looking for and opened to new ways of doing our Being, we can be more natural in our search for deeper insights into meaning and processes as we reach out to new and more complex vistas of potential interactions.
Due to the Jupiter in Taurus influence that will be with us for about a year, keep finding gentle, simple, and stable ways to move into your new life while becoming part of the "corrective force of Nature Herself." In practicing our unique individuality we can become the answer to some collective need, whether large or small. This is the time to define who you are apart from any inner or outer neutralizing factors that keep you from awakening to your uniqueness.
We've all had chances to adjust our perspective and become more natural and joyous. Over the past several weeks we've all gotten at least one new look at old ideas and ways of coordinating our lives on our terms. We now can have more confidence in simply "being ourselves" as we allow the ageless Divine Wisdom to act through us, and can leave behind old ideas and memories that kept us split internally.
This period is showing us the baseline platform for the further extension into our emergent archetypes that demonstrate our authentic self. We saw the emergence of concrete forms of those images from August 2010 to January 2011, and now that we've done the review related to past and present actions creating present and future consequences, it's time to pick up our quest.
Here we continue to secure conditions, values, and resources while hitting a fork in the road between our past and future relationships, truths, philosophies, and our understanding of core principles regarding the use of power and how primal patterns replicate themselves. As with June's Eclipses, here we can continue to find a sense of balanced peacefulness by knowing what is no longer a part of our life, and liquidating whatever parts of our past would hinder our entrance into new realms of development. This Eclipse will shut down old feelings, cares, family relations, past memories, and primal neediness these next 18 months, allowing space for new forms of these to take shape in coming months.
Keep feeling your way to decisions and actions, and then go get new information, new understanding, and new views of what's possible in the future that helps you separate from the past. There are wider interactive possibilities that will involve using skill to craft what is of value in those realms
These will ultimately lead to a different understanding of alternatives as we stand on threshold of new ways of doing our Being. So look forward while looking back, since unique perspective are available that can make leaving the past behind much easier while securing what is needed to solidify future potentials.
There are gifts, stabilizing understandings, and new ways of being an individual promised by this Lunation, so feel, decide, and focus while staying balanced, mature, and elegant in crafting what you will.
On a final note, I was reminded that this Eclipse will be seen by no one on Earth. And yet Eclipses still work to shut down some things in our lives. Perhaps this Eclipse will not be very obvious or visible in how it works, seen by few if any, but still serve to release powerful energies and/or block old patterns due to the strong Sun and Moon square Saturn. Just musing about how a lack of visibility can still be associated with powerful events....
Here are the articles on the June Gemini Solar Eclipse so you can see some of the continuity between these two celestial events:
Astrology in June 2011 - On The Threshold of A Partial Solar Eclipse at 12 Gemini
The Solar Eclipse at 12 Gemini June 1-2, 2011 Pt. 1 - Who Does It Affect and for How Long?
The Solar Eclipse at 12 Gemini June 1-2, 2011 Pt. 2 - How Will It Manifest?
© Copyright 2011 Robert Wilkinson
Hello Robert. I celebrated the eclipse by reading and pondering these three excellent articles that you wrote. Your output is prolific, insightful, and amazing. As I am a political wonk and like to follow national and international news, I am very intrigued by your reference to a new law emerging. Saturn in Libra no doubt. Also the fact that the eclipse is physically minor and hardly visible opens to door for the possibility of the great work of the planetary elders going forth quietly behind the scenes.. A new day is clearly dawning politically and economically for the human race. It is exciting to be here at this time and help with the birthing process. Thanks again for your transformative insights. The ride is just starting, eh? Look out chrysalis, here comes the butterfly. Namaste.
Posted by: dcu | July 01, 2011 at 02:48 AM
I have little knowledge of Astrology but thank you for your calming style that has helped this Dec 10 1964 Sag get through recent weeks and against all odds still feel oh so positive about the future.
Posted by: Brett | July 01, 2011 at 04:30 AM
Wonderful article Robert. Lack of visibility.... Invisible like thought forms. Powerful ideas..I especially love the doing our Being. Be Here Now sounds good. Love is all we got or need.
Thanks for All you do. You Gotta Whole Lotta Love!
Posted by: Mel | July 06, 2011 at 05:13 AM
During this eclipse this cancer was in the north doing a shaman course..(I have mercury 13´in cancer trine jupiter and neptune).
It seems to me that I am getting a better communication with the spirit world - but also getting a lot of quite bad/dark projections from people around me..a bit nastiness, bullying, etc. This is a bit worrying..if this continues..I met some people that work with the spirit world - they are nice and warm to me.
But it seems like the rest would like to crucify someone again.
Posted by: ull | July 09, 2011 at 11:37 AM