Archive for May, 2010

Full Moon in Sagittarius – May 27, 2010, 23:07 UT

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

From the ocean rose a giant,
Mighty Tursas, tall and hardy

— Kalevala, translated by John Martin Crawford

The Full Moon in Sagittarius feels edgy and unpredictable. The Moon proceeded into the opposition aspect to the Sun just when Uranus was entering Aries for the first time in 84 years. The ruling planet of Sagittarius, Jupiter, will soon follow Uranus into a new sign, but at present it is processing the challenging last degrees of Pisces.

The Gemini Sun is in conjunction with Centaur Thereus. Quoting Eric Francis: “…the Centaurs all possess a Sagittarian quality of journey, quest, or adventure — though it’s often expressed on the inner level. …The Centaur metaphor is usually a man’s torso with a horse’s body, so there is that sense of transit, of movement, and the sound of a horse’s hoofs hitting the ground passionately. There is the contact with the ‘animal nature’ — the instinctual level of reality.â€?

The mythical Centaur Thereus used to capture mountain bears and bring them home, alive and snarling. The name Thereus means “beast-like.� It is obvious that Thereus was strong and fearless.

To the ancients, the bear was symbolizing resurrection. The hibernation is a kind of death, from which the animal awakens when springtime is approaching. A she-bear usually wakes up to a new season with newborn cubs.

In Greek mythology, the bear has a relation to the Moon goddess Artemis, also known as “The Mistress of Animalsâ€? (Potnia Theron). She often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. In ancient Greece, one of her most celebrated shrines was that of the bear-goddess of Brauron in Attika. Young women playing the bear used to celebrate a festival for Artemis, who was not only the goddess of wilderness, but also the protectress of girls and women.

Apropos of the theme, in the Full Moon chart, asteroid 105 Artemis can be found prominently in early Capricorn in conjunction with Ceres and Pluto, and in exact square to Uranus at the Aries Point.

In Norse mythology the bear is sacred to Thor, the son of the chief god Odin and the Earth goddess Jörd. Thor is a fertility god and a strong protector of the world. Invoking Thor could help in the struggle against the exploitation and pollution of the Earth.

As a thunder god, Thor is the equivalent of Roman Jupiter. Thor’s magical hammer has the power to throw lightning bolts, and it is also his main weapon when fighting giants. Giants represent unconscious forces and they act as harbingers of chaos and disorder.

Thor’s rune is Thurisaz, which stands for both Thor and the giants. In psychological terms, Thurisaz represents the shadow and repressed material in the unconscious. Once the shadow is acknowledged and integrated, it can become a great source of strength. Jung believed that the shadow is the seat of creativity.

Numerous Old Norse sources mention berserkers, Odin’s warriors who wore bear-pelts and rode into battle in a trance-like fury, or a holy rage. There are many theories about what caused berserker behaviour. An explicit connection between the berserker rage of soldiers and the hyperarousal of post-traumatic stress disorder has been made.

“The Crescent Moon Bear,� a Japanese folktale, which is retold by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a Jungian psychoanalyst and a post-trauma specialist, deals with rage and forgiveness, and healing from rage.

In the story, a badly injured husband returns home from war and refuses to sleep in the house or eat the delicious dish that his young wife cooks for him. He rages continuously. The wife goes to see a healer, who advises her to climb the mountain, find a crescent moon bear, and bring back a hair from the throat of the bear. Then the healer would be able to help the woman. She climbs the mountain and with patience manages to get the hair.

Patience will help anger, and it is called for in order to heal the pain beneath our anger, so that we can move on. Our rage can become teacher. We can use it as a creative force, but it takes a conscious practice to contain and heal rage. Estés writes: “So rather than trying to ‘behave’ and not feel our rage or rather than using it to burn down every living thing in a hundred-mile radius, it is better to first ask rage to take a seat with us, have some tea, talk a while so we can find out what summoned this visitor.�

Thereus carrying the snarling bear into his home cave?

References:

Eric Francis, Sagittarius Secrets Revealed, act one

Metamorphoses, Book XII

Theoi Greek Mythology, Kentauroi Thessalioi

Wikipedia, Potnia Theron

Theoi Greek Mythology, Artemis Cult 1

Wikipedia, Berserker

Freya Aswynn, Northern Mysteries & Magick, Llewellyn Publications, 2006

Wikipedia, Thurisaz (rune)

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves, Ballantine Books, 1997

New Moon in Taurus – May 14, 2010, 01:04 UT

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Sedna is not happy today. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by a drilling rig explosion on April 20, is still gushing thousands of barrels of oil daily into the sea. Efforts to stop the leak haven’t been successful so far.

Sedna is a trans-Neptunian object which astrologically has a strong association with the climate change and other environmental issues. She is conjunct the Taurus New Moon and wants to be heard now! At the moment she is also tightly opposite to the Sun of her discovery chart. My attention was drawn to this current transit by the Planet Waves astrologer Len Wallick. Thank you, Len!

Sedna is a peculiar little planet with her extremely long orbital period at somewhere between 10,500 and 12,000 years. She works almost as a fixed point in the chart. She will reach her perihelion within this century, before moving farther away from the Sun again for another 12 thousand years or so. We could say that now that Sedna is relatively close to us spending “only� about 100 years in one sign, we are able to experience a transit of Sedna.

Sedna is named in honor of the Inuit goddess of the sea. Sedna was a beautiful young girl who had many suitors. She and her father had no food. One day a hunter came and said that if he could have Sedna, he would give her father fish in return. Sedna’s father agreed. The hunter was really a birdman who took Sedna to a big nest on a cliff where she had nothing else but rotten fish to eat. Sedna cried for her father to take her back, so he came to rescue her, but the birdman caused a terrible storm which nearly sunk their kayak. In desperation, Sedna’s father threw her into the raging sea. Sedna tried to hold on to the boat, but he chopped off her fingers, which became marine animals. Sedna descended into the depths of the ocean and became the mighty queen of the underworld.

There are several variants of the myth. In some of them Sedna is an innocent victim, in others she is portrayed as a hungry and greedy creature. But all tales agree that she became the goddess of the icy waters. When Sedna is happy, she releases her mammals and allows the humans to eat from the bounty of the sea. If she is not respected, she sends storms and starvation. Then a shaman must visit her in the deep waters and calm her down again.

Astrologer Karen Hamaker-Zondag has noted that Sedna wants to be known. She gives us subtle warnings. If we don’t pay attention to her, we may have to deal with her strength.

In the New Moon chart, Ceres (the goddess of grain) and Pluto (the god of underworld) are retrograding together in the early degrees of Capricorn, one of the four cardinal signs, and squaring the Aries Point. The first degrees of any of the cardinal signs are related to the Aries Point, the point where affairs of the world become personal. Chiron (cave) which has just recently entered Pisces, is in conjunction with Neptune (water).

In the light of the chart aspects, the news release on the day of the New Moon, concerning the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, made sense to me. The local newspaper on Spitsbergen, Svalbardposten, reported that the temperature in the secure seedbank is too high, and that there is water in the surrounding tunnels.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a backup storage for seeds from gene banks around the world. It is an effort to protect the globe’s rapidly diminishing biodiversity. The seed vault is located on Spitsbergen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The vault is an underground cavern surrounded by arctic permafrost. The permafrost will help maintain the low temperature of the seeds even in the worst-case scenario of global warming, or if mechanical refrigeration should fail. Seeds from most major food crops could preserve for hundreds of years. The seeds of important grains could survive far longer, possibly thousands of years.

There has been significant public interest in the seed vault project. The laying of the first stone took place on June 19, 2006. This was an Aries Point event, having its orientation in the future, symbolized by the North node of the Moon in the first degree of Aries. The Sun was in exact conjunction with asteroid 55555 DNA (genes) to the degree. The Sun-DNA conjunction was opposing Pluto, and the opposition was aligned with the Galactic Core, emphasizing the large scale of the project.

The opening of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was held on Feb. 26, 2008 with Centaur Bienor at the Aries Point. In the Lunations solar eclipse article only few weeks earlier Eric Francis had phrased it like this: “Bienor may be associated with the strength of mankind expressed through technology, and when we combine it with the Aries Point, it affects ‘everyman’.” Pluto had recently ingressed Capricorn for the first time squaring the Aries Point. Sedna (cold) was in conjunction with Ceres (grain) in the same degree of Taurus (seeding). The Ceres-Sedna conjunction was in opposition to asteroid DNA (genes).

“Biological diversity is under threat from the forces of nature … and from the actions of man,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at the opening ceremony of the seed vault. Today the biodiversity of the sea is in jeopardy in the Gulf of Mexico because of the actions of man. This is a wake-up moment for us. We have to start noticing Sedna.

References:

Wikipedia, 90377 Sedna

Wikipedia, Sedna (mythology)

Wikipedia, Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Sedna, Karen Hamaker-Zondag, Astro Logos Ltd

For varmt frølager, Svalbardposten 14/05/2010

Wikipedia, Svalbard Global Seed Vault