The Helix Nebula in the constellation of Aquarius, 650 million miles from Earth

A week ago, nearly half the planets in the solar system were moving through Capricorn.  The most dynamic of the Earth signs is  deep. It’s full of gravity and weight.  Now, the energy that brings winter to the Earth is about to shift.

Mercury, Messenger of the Gods, entered Aquarius early this morning.  Our Star will join both the Messenger and Mars the Warrior, who’s been waiting for them for weeks,  in the entirely different energy of Aquarius.  This is an air sign, unfettered in the way that all the Earth signs are.

After the serious, bottom-line perspective of Capricorn, Aquarius will feel like a fresh breeze coming into a place where there hasn’t been quite enough air. It’s been almost two months since we’ve had more than two planets in the open-minded, sociable, idealistic Air signs.

At first, the breeze will be a gentle one.  Luna will be in Taurus when Mercury arrives in Aquarius.  By the time the Sun makes his appearance into Aquarius on Saturday evening, the sensual, fertile Taurus Moon will have been busy.  Luna is preparing to make her own headlines today, with extremely potent Water and Earth magic. 

This stunning image of our Star last July combines two images. one of which highlight the magnetic fields which give rise to the solar flares that the Sun throws out into the Universe.
Credit: NASA/SD/AIA/NMI

A Cosmic Welcome for the Sun

Collaborating with the Moon in this cosmic wizardry are three of the solar system’s heavy hitters:  Chiron the Cosmic Healer,  Pluto the Regenerator, Saturn the Manifestor. Saturn has been sextiling Pluto since December, and Chiron for ten days.  Now the Moon brings her potent medicine of the right brain, the interior, the unconscious, and the body into the mix.   For a few hours in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, these four cosmic powers will create a string of creative sextiles, stretching across half the sky—from Scorpio to Taurus.  

Too often thought of as a second-rate version of the showier trine, the sextile is full of power. The potential it carries is life-changing.  It gives us access to the creative dimension, the invisible but palpable energy where one thing can become another—and where something can become nothing.

Sunday’s sextiles are a preview of something far more magnificent just a few months ahead.  In July, a Grand Sextile will span the entire sky .  At its heart will be a Grand Trine linking the three mighty energies that manifest abundance and blessing:

• Jupiter the Blessing Giver (who will be in Cancer, the sign where he is exalted),
• Neptune the Dreamer (in his own sign of Pisces for the first time in over 160 years), and
• Saturn the Manifestor (stronger than he’s been in centuries in Scorpio, thanks to a mutual reception with Pluto). at its heart.    Also known as the Star of David (because the Israelite King David is said to have had just such a star in his birth chart), a Grand Sextile links six planets in an interlocking, interconnected chain of creativity.

There’s only one caveat.  To realize the abundant potential of the sextile, we must do the work.  Not all of the work, but the steps that put the cosmic process of creation in motion.

Between now and July, the smartest thing we can do is use every opportunity that comes our way to prepare ourselves.  And there will be plenty.  Saturn and Pluto have been sextiling each other since late November, and will be for most of the year.  Chiron and Pluto are warming up now for a long sextile beginning in mid-February and continuing through May.  When the Moon extends the chain of creative energy, the potency is magnified.

This chain of creative energy will energize our reality with Cosmic magic four times over the next two and a half months:

• February 25, from 10:00 p.m. until 12::00 a.m. EDT on February 26, when Luna is in Virgo
• March 15, between 3:00 and 9:00 p.m.EDT, when Luna is in Taurus
• March 25, between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.EDT, when Luna is in Taurus
• April 11, between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. EDT, when Luna is in Taurus.

Sextile Magic, Round 1:  January 19, 2013

To understand the invitation that the Cosmos is offering us, let’s take a look at the dynamics later today.  From noon to 4:00 p.m. EDT,  Luna will expand and deepen the power of the Saturn-Pluto-Chiron sextiles when she moves through 7, 8, and 9 degrees of Taurus.  When she does the chain of magic will extend from Scorpio all the way to Taurus, the axis of transformation.

How to Tap the Magic

To  tap the potential of these sextiles, we must work with them, in whatever ways are authentic for us at the deepest levels.  We can pray. We can meditate. We can chant, sing, drum, dance.  Whatever we do, its power will lie in the joining of our heart and our will.

Let’s take a look at the energies that will be involved:

Saturn sextiles Pluto.This is the core aspect of life mastery.  It’s the opportunity to step outside victim energy, where someone else is always to blame—and thus always has the power.   When Saturn sextiles Pluto, we can manifest our own power.  We can change what needs changing. We no longer need to be a victim. We see another option, and that it is freely available to us.

Pluto sextiles Chiron. This is the energy of regeneration. Our potential to transform ourselves, down to the cellular level is powerfully activated by the sextile of the Healer and the Regenerator.  We can understand sexuality, eternity, and power in a very deep and embodied way.  We can transform darkness into light.

Chiron sextiles the Moon. This is the healing power of the emotions. The opportunity that Chiron and Luna will create is more far-reaching than expanding emotions’ ability to heal–critical as this is in dissolving the cold and rigid grip of the values of a patriarchal dominator culture.  Together, Luna and the Cosmic Healer will create the opportunity to heal our emotions themselves, by releasing the toxic energy of a fear-based reality.

Coming Up Next Week:  Energetic Shift

By next week something different will begin to be felt in the air.  The sextiles will have opened something up.  On Wednesday, the Aquarian Sun sextiles Uranus,  we’ll begin to feel which way the wind is blowing.­­­­­This is the first sextile the Awakener has made with the Sun in over ten years–since December 2002.   Then he was in his own sign of Aquarius.  Now he is in Aries, the energy of the Beginning, starting a new journey through the Cosmos.

Uranus has been known since ancient times as the Water-Bearer who nourishes humanity with the cosmic water of higher awareness.  On Wednesday, when he taps the creative level with our Star—who enters the sign that Uranus rules today—we will have the opportunity to connect with the cosmic heart.