A spectacular mosaic of images showing a 400 by 900 light year section of the Milky Way, about 25,000 light years from Earth. Photo credit: NASA

We’re at a threshold.  Just ahead of us is the Winter Solstice. Behind us is an autumn of intense psychic and spiritual labor.  We’ve shed dead skin, more than we know.  We’ve opened to the powerful, often agonizing work of giving birth to the future within us.  Today, as Neptune the Dreamer & Seer challenges Mercury to open our consciousness to the Oneness,  confusion, exhaustion, and a sense of disillusion may be floating to the surface.

Yet despite this—and perhaps because of it –we know something now, on a level so deep it penetrates both mind and body.  The cosmos involves us.  Its cycles and rhythms are those of our own lives.  Its darkness, rich with secrets, belongs to us. Its renewals evoke the new dawns within us. What the cosmos offers us this week and next is renewal–profound, galactic-scale regeneration.

Major cosmic events stand behind us and before us.  Directly behind us is the Gemini Lunar Eclipse, and its invitation to drink at the sacred well.  Immediately before us is the long-awaited 2012 Solstice, reverberating at the depths of the consciousness we share with all that lives. Between these two, Thursday’s Sagittarian New Moon, exact at 3:41 Eastern Time in the U.S., greets us with an invitation in its arms.

We’re already in its energy field.  The Dark Moon call to release whatever drags us off course is empowered by four harbingers of the renewal awaiting us:

• Mercury’s entry into Sagittarius Monday night, bringing the perspective of the Centaur & Arch to our awareness–a call to perceive the reality of the present moment, already beginning to shapeshift before our eyes, with faith, generosity, optimism, and wonder.
• Venus’ embrace of the evolutionary edge that is represented by the North Node on Tuesday, allowing us to orient ourselves to the True North of our souls–a call to hear the signal above the noise.
• Neptune’s challenge to Mercury the same day, pushing us to open past our fear to the Oneness that we access through the heart–a call to align our minds with our hearts.
• The Moon’s entry into Sagittarius late Tuesday afternoon (US Eastern Time Zone)–a call to nurture ourselves with the unfathomable mysteries of our cosmic Source.

The Cosmos is signalling us that it’s on our side.  The Dark Moon calls us to be still enough to hear.  And indeed, this is a Dark Moon that is full of fire and warmth.  The cosmic invitation to our weary souls and flickering spirits is this:  take heart.  Turn and face the greatest of the starry mysteries, it beckons.  Know it as your home.

This stunning image of the Milky Way was created from 3,000 individual images by Dr. Axel Mellinger.

Sagittarius, Home of Starry Mysteries Within and Beyond

The portion of the skies that belongs to Sagittarius, Centaur and Archer, is a vortex of mystery. It’s home to the Great Attractor, that unseeable vortex pulling everything in the known universe towards it.  It’s the location  of the Galactic Center, embedded in the fertile mysteries of the Dark Rift.  It’s full of more of the vast creation matrixes known as black holes than any other part of the sky.

Perhaps more than any of the twelve territories of the sacred hoop of stars that encircles our solar system, Sagittarius is our true north and spiritual home.   When we travel there, we turn lucky.  We see what the Buddhists call life’s “basic goodness” despite all that is unfathomable.  We feel the nearness and the incomprehensible vastness of the Mystery.  We acknowledge that we belong to it and embody it.

Embracing the  Cosmic Fire

Another composite image of the Milky Way’s mysterious center. Photo credit: NASA

In a sky that is suddenly full of fire, Sol and Luna fall into each other’s arms, ready to conceive the future.  Around them forms a magical finger of God, or yod.  This is the cosmic finger that just touched us at the Gemini Lunary eclipse, being  re-shaped now for the Sagittarian New Moon and for the Solstice.

Not until the Solstice will this Finger of God be exact.  Its extraordinary power, however, will infuse the new beginnings that are conceived at the union of Sun and Moon, at 3:41 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday.  Jupiter the Blessing Giver is the focal point, carrying auspicious potential.  Saturn and Pluto are the yod’s anchors, carrying the challenges we must meet to release Jupiter’s blessing of mastery.

Pluto asks that we attune ourselves to the rhythms of the Great Mystery in every situation.  Can you be aware, he asks, of the spiritual meaning at the heart of every situation, and engage with life at the level of Source and creativity?   If we can do this, we can meet the challenge of Saturn the Lord of Structure.  We can take the actions required to free ourselves of the ensnaring web of a past that holds no more life. We can make it real–and as we do, we release Jupiter’s blessing. Wherever 10 degrees of Gemini falls in our chart, we can attain a level of empowerment, grace, and daring described by the word “mastery.” 

The Cosmos As Your Fierce and Constant Ally

The sky is organized as our cosmic ally, both beside us and within us as we meet these challenges.   A third of the solar system is  exchanging energy and information in a powerful astrological relationship known as “mutual reception.”   Saturn the Master of Structure and Pluto the Regenerator are in on this, and so are Jupiter the Blessing Giver and Mercury the Messenger.

Venus, meanwhile, is fresh from a meeting with the North Node, the leading evolutionary edge, the day before. She’s helping us to value and embrace the direction forward.  She’s telling us to notice the patterns that connect to us dead skin, and to see the patterns that connect us to Life and its endlessly renewing mystery.

And just hours after the Moon is New, Uranus the Awakener turns direct, releasing the energy of his five-months’ vision quest into our lives.

Come, the Cosmos whispers to your heart.  Face the Great Starry Mystery as your ancient ancestors did before you.  Let the splendor of its distant fire, as close as your own heartbeat, renew you.  Connect through the quantum field to everything that is, has been, and could be.  Everything you need to know is already within you.  In the heart of the Mystery, seed your new intention.  Embrace the Cosmic Fire.