New Moon in Aries — April 05, 2019, 08:50 UT
The New Moon at 15+ degrees of Aries occurred on April 05, 2019. The Sun and the Moon were in trine to Ceres in Sagittarius. Chiron is in conjunction with Salacia in early Aries. Venus was in conjunction with Nessus in Pisces.
A notable astrological event earlier this year was Chiron’s sign ingress from Pisces to Aries on Feb. 18, 2019. Chiron was the first centaur planet to be discovered in 1977. The most important function of Chiron is that it raises awareness and addresses matters that are demanding attention. If we ignore the early warnings, we may end up in a crisis. However, through a crisis we can gain healing.
The orbital period of Chiron is about 50 years. Centaurs are minor planets orbiting the Sun between the main asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They often behave with characteristics of both asteroids and comets. Because of their elliptical orbits, the time which they spend in different astrological signs is varying. Chiron is moving slowly at the moment, because it is at its furthest distance from the Sun in Aries. It is going to spend about eight years in Aries, more than in any other sign.
Chiron is in conjunction with Salacia, one of the largest trans-Neptunian objects with the orbital period of 270 years. Salacia entered Aries on March 1, 2017. Chiron and Salacia will conjoin in the early degrees of Aries at the end of April 2019. Eric Francis’s delineation of Salacia involves sexual maturity and the matter of what is appropriate.
Salacia is named after the Roman goddess of salt water and the consort of Neptune. The god Neptune wanted to marry the beautiful nymph Salacia, but to preserve her virginity she fled and managed to hide from him. Neptune sent a dolphin to look for her and persuade her to come back and share his throne. Salacia finally agreed, and so she became the goddess of the sea.
The name Salacia is derived from Latin sal, meaning salt, and is sometimes translated to mean sensational. The Latin word salax can mean salacious, lustful, lecherous, provocative, or desiring sexual intercourse. Even though the official naming citation describes Salacia as the goddess of the calm and sunlit ocean, the etymology of the name suggests that she rather impersonates the gushing, overflowing waters, like some scholars have proposed.
There is another centaur planet in early Capricorn, namely Pholus, discovered in 1992. It was the second discovery of a centaur after Chiron. However, the first precovery image of Pholus was taken already in 1977, the same year when Chiron was discovered. (Precovery is the process of finding the image of an object in old archived images for the purpose of calculating a more accurate orbit.) The orbital period of Pholus is about 92 years.
The energy of Pholus can feel like a pressure release. Eric Francis has used the metaphor of shaking up a bottle of soda on a hot day, and promptly opening it. The soda keeps coming out of the bottle, and you can’t stop it. Pholus can have the action of revealing things that were hidden. It often points to multigenerational issues.
Nessus was the third centaur to be discovered (in 1993). The orbital period is around 122 years. Also themes of Nessus can point to ancestral matters. Nessus addresses issues to do with the abuse of power. Quoting Melanie Reinhart, “Nessus brings opportunities to understand and release deep patterns of helplessness, being taken advantage of, and of being oppressed.”
The astrological meaning of a planet rarely manifests in life literally according to the myth behind its name. The myth can offer hints for the delineation though. Polarity is an essential principle in astrology. There are two sides to everything, and between the two extremities there are many variations. All centaurs talk about dark stuff, but their meaning is symbolical. They offer us tools for transformation and healing.
Pholus in Capricorn is now square to Chiron and Salacia in Aries. This intense aspect pattern is currently transiting the natal chart of Finland. The lunar nodes of Finland lie on the Cancer-Capricorn axis. Mercury is conjunct the North node in early Capricorn and Pluto conjunct the South node in Cancer. In addition the transiting Nessus in Pisces opposes Finland’s natal Moon in Virgo and squares the natal Sun in Sagittarius.
Several cases of sexual abuse of children and minors have been unfolding in Finland as of December 2018. In Oulu region adult migrant men are suspected of sexual abuse and rape of young girls in several different cases. The suspects had been “grooming” on social media. By late February there were 29 suspects, of whom about 20 were men of foreign background. The press was dwelling on the subject, the social media was bursting with hate speech, politicians were insisting an emergency meeting of the government, funds has been channeled for preventing sexual crimes, and deportation for asylum seekers has been demanded.
At the end of March the shocking news unfolded revealing that the police suspects five native Finnish men of involvement in a pedophilia network. The leader of the group is a man who had held a prominent position in society. The victims are boys, none of which themselves had told the authorities about the abuse they suffered. The case is really ugly, but the public reaction has been considerably milder than what it was in the Oulu case.
The Finnish broadcast company Yle showed the British filmmaker Dan Reed’s documentary “Leaving Neverland” on April 2, in order to bring this difficult subject into discussion. Reed described his film as a “study of the psychology of child sexual abuse, told through two ordinary families who were groomed for 20 years by a paedophile masquerading as a trusted friend”. The same night there was also a Finnish talk show during which several support phone lines were open. There was a spike in calls following the screening. Many of the callers were now talking about their abuse for the first time. Some of the callers were concerned about the possibility that they could become pedophiles.
It is extremely difficult for the victims to talk about the incident. Other people don’t want to see the subject exists because it is so disturbing. The abuser often is not a refugee or someone grooming on the internet, but someone close to the family, a known and trusted person. According to Sexpo foundation, about 2% of men has sexual interest towards children. This means 40 thousand men in Finland. The percentage of women is less, but naturally this concerns also them. The healing is not possible before the problem has been recognized. That is why the subject must be brought into discussion. Hopefully Yle’s broadcast has helped in this.
The psychological term shadow represents the rejected, irrational part of our psyche, which we tend to project into other people with feelings of anger and fear. The more these projections are unrecognized, the blacker and taller grows the shadow. We all have a shadow. Deporting the refugees and asylum seekers is not going to solve the problem of the sexual abuse of children in Finland.
Suomen Delfins ry is one of the Finnish support organizations, which is giving support to those who have been sexually abused when they were children. It got its name from dolphins, because dolphins help their wounded mates and bring them on the surface to breathe. The dolphin which went to seek Salacia in the myth can be seen as the symbol of the healing process.