The Equinox brings a shift in he relationship between our Star and the Earth.

At 4:44 p.m. this afternoon, one of the four great hinges of the cosmic year swings open.  The plane of the Earth’s equator passes through the center of the Sun, just at the moment that the Sun moves into 0 degrees of Libra and triggers the Aries Point from across the sky.

This is a mystical moment in the relationship between the Earth and our Star, the Sun.  Night and day are of equal length. Dark and light are in perfect balance. Only twice each year do we experience this pure equilibrium. And it changes everything.

In the very next moment, a new season begins. Those of us in the northern hemisphere begin to move towards the autumn mysteries of  transformational shedding and descent.  In the southern hemisphere, the polar mysteries of sprouting and budding start to unfold.  Either way, what this new season will bring is power.  The fourth of Uranus and Pluto’s world-changing squares lies ahead, triggered by the Libra Sun as it approaches, with lunar and solar eclipses in Aries and Scorpio on either side.  The time ahead will be a saturated with transformational potency.

Transformational potency, of course, is a signature quality of the Cosmic Feminine since the Deep Time.  With Venus as the ruler of the Autumnal Equinox Sun, we are entering her territory.  As it turns out, at the 2013 Equinox, she’s at the center of a feminine power initiation  — and so are we.

Venus and Psyche, Persephone and Proserpina, and Psyche: Three Faces of the Transforming Feminine

There’s another, very powerful dimension to this Equinox. It empowers us to participate in the cosmic ceremonies of transformation just ahead.  At the moment of the Equinox, the planet Venus — ruer of the Equinox Sun — and goddess asteroid Proserpina are almost exactly conjunct, in 13 degrees of Scorpio.  This is the closest — and thus the most potent — contact in the Equinox sky.

Traveling through Scorpio with Proserpina are two other of the goddess asteroids who hold the secrets of feminine transformation. They are Persephone and Psyche, and they show us “before” and “after” phases of  the feminine underworld transformation.  Persephone is the young innocent feminine who suddenly finds herself in a new realm, saturated with strange power. Proserpina is the transformed queen of the hidden realm where transformation takes place.

Psyche has been compared to the energy of the soul.  She’s the part of us on a soul journey, a quest to become faithful to Love, which means to learn how to move beyond fear.  

 Underlying the power of this Equinox union of the transforming goddess asteroids with Venus is this: these relationships have a history. They go all the way back to the Deep TIme, when the primal energies of the Cosmic Feminine were being overthrown, cast out, and suppressed, Venus played a role in the stories of Persephone, Prosperpina, and Psyche.  It was Venus who urged Eros to shoot his enchanted arrow into Hades (now known to us as Pluto), causing him to be overcome with desire for the young Persephone, running through a meadow and reaching for a blooming narcissus bloom.  It was Venus who, jealous of Eros’ love for Psyche, set the young woman on a nearly impossible quest.

There are two way we can read Venus’ role in this story. If we take our cues from the energy of patriarchy, we see Venus as jealous, competitive, and vengeful.  If, however, we see her in the perspective of cosmic evolution, a different motivation begins to emerge. For the feminine, whose power is always carried within, return to power requires that the internal transformative power be catalyzed.  An obstacle, a privation, an abduction, a persecution — any trauma will do if it’s felt deeply enough.

The Asteroid Belt and the Evolution of Consciousness

Asteroids are formed of planetary remnants, some of them as old as the Sun.  Orbiting the Sun in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, they represent energy that ‘s either been cast out of consciousness or never integrated within it.  Whichever it is, their energy must be recognized, related to, and either integrated or dismissed.  that we have to “deal with” before we can link the gifts of our inner planets — the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars — with the wisdom and power of the outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.  

This Equinox meeting of the asteroids of the transforming feminine with Venus is an initiatory one.  The Cosmic Feminine reclaims parts of her deepest power that have been split off and cast aside by a patriarchal culture.  Not only is the transforming feminine of little apparent value to the patriarchy, on a deeper level, she’s profoundly threatening to the culture of domination.  The yang power of the patriarchy can only exist when it’s above the surface and in control.  The feminine, yin power, however, is the power that arises from within. It’s not power “over.”  It’s the power to be, become, and transform.

It’s significant that the Venus-Proserpina conjunction occurs at 13 degrees of Virgo, and that these two, with Persephone and Psyche, are gathering within 13 degrees of the sky.  You may recall that at the Virgo New Moon, the Sun and the Moon merged their vibrations in 13 degrees of Virgo.  With its connections to the cycles of both Venus and the Moon, the number 13 has long been associated with the Divine Feminine.

The discovery of a celestial body triggers a process in human consciousness. Once  seen in the sky, we begin to see its energy in our lives. The chart of the moment of discovery helps us understand the gift that the new planet, asteroid, comet, or deep space point is bringing to our consciousness.  In an insightful reading of the discovery charts for the asteroids Prosperina and Persephone, Marina Partridge at Darkstar Astrology explores the differences between them.

The Proserpina chart is “far more confrontational” than those of the Persephone discovery, Partridge notes. She sees a “much feistier” energy, “much more at home with her sexuality and beauty” than is true for Persephone. With her Sun conjunct Venus and sextile Neptune, Proserpina has the gifts of charisma, erotic intelligence, and inspired, mystical creativity.  Unlike Asteroid Persephone, the erotically innocent maiden, Asteroid Proserpina embodies a cosmic feminine who is wise, powerful, and fully sexual: 

Persephone is Eve before she took the bite of the apple and Proserpina is Eve afterwards. The serpent symbolism associated with Proserpina could also be about releasing the Kundalini, the serpent bringing about sexual enlightenment and Lilith wisdom.

On to the Equinox, and beyond, into the always-ancient and ever-new mysteries of the Transforming Feminine. In the Cosmos within you, and in the Cosmos around you, she is already stirring.