No More Normal

Reader Sistertongue has brought to my attention a stunning synchronicity that followers of current transits will appreciate. One week after the Grand Cross eclipse  in late June, an article in marketoracle.com reported that financial markets were about to make “The Death Cross:” Wall Street’s term for a bull market that’s turning the corner into bear territory.

August begins with one of the most explosive configurations of the Cardinal Cross period. As the Full Moon of July 25 begins to wane, Mars conjoins Saturn while opposing Jupiter and Uranus. Between the August 3 and August 10, Mars and then Venus will both oppose the Cardinal T-square to the degree. Jupiter and Saturn oppose each other again, this time from Aries to Libra. Given that August 9 is a New Moon, what we see here sets the stage for the month to come.

These transits mean business.

Centered in the Chart

Financial shocks are probable under skies like these. Economies all over the world are in turmoil, and government infrastructures are creaking and crumbling like old houses in a storm. It is very important this month to keep our heads about us and watch the flow of events for big-picture trends. The bigger our perspective, the more we will be able to respond creatively to what is happening.

For years now, astrologers have been talking about the Cardinal Cross period as an era of breakdown and renewal. June’s and July’s eclipses ratcheted the energy up to a new level. But as chaotic as things have already been, a new element of upset is being introduced in August by Mars, the saber-rattler of the solar system. A well-functioning Mars provides courage, which is just what we need right now. A low-level Mars manifests as panic and hostility.

It’s not that we will necessarily personify one or the other of these extremes: people are not caricatures. As Mars and his cohorts’ energies course through us and challenge us to respond, we will probably find ourselves vacillating back and forth between the constructive use of martial energy and its sloppier forms. But when we deliberately use our wills to stay centered—taking ourselves back, again and again, to our highest potential as expressed by our charts—we will be just fine.

In fact, we will be more than fine. We may feel more alive than ever before in our lives.

Who Do You Trust?

This month is an exercise in rigorous responsibility: that is, in being responsible with our energy.  We need to be hyper-conscious of what we’re putting out, and of what we’re taking in from the environment. We should be wary of going overboard with fear—even if people around us are afraid—at the same time that we should be wary of burying our heads in the sand.

At this point, we know that if we’re interested in the deeper meaning of events, the official explanations of what’s going on in the world do not serve us. Politicians will say whatever they think will get them through the mid-term elections; pundits will say whatever boosts their ratings; central banks will announce recoveries in order to stabilize the public mood; corporate spokesflacks will say whatever they think will get them off the hook for their industry’s abominations against the environment.  Since Pluto went into Capricorn, two years ago, these social institutions have been exposed as untrustworthy at best and criminal at worst.

If what we seek is wisdom, the only way we will learn anything from disingenuous sources is to listen to what they are saying as if it were in code. For example, if we want to know which way the financial winds are blowing by listening to the news, we must listen between the lines. We hear that the economic czars are dumping trillions of dollars worth of cash into the global financial system. But what does this really mean?

It doesn’t mean they have magically created more wealth. It means that they have created more debt; financial as well as karmic. It does not mean that the economy has returned to normal.

There isn’t going to be a return to normal.

More Alive

Transits this powerful have one main purpose: to shake us out of our lethargy. Astrologers have always associated Grand Crosses with earthquakes and other telluric events for this reason. Certainly we have had no lack of volcanoes, forest fires, unseasonable storms, and tectonic bucklings since the Cross began. But literal shake-ups are only the most obvious manifestation of the symbolism involved. On the level of global consciousness, fissures are appearing in the bedrock of group assumptions.

This is happening because it is time for it to happen. For those who are awake to them, these transits are psychological earthquakes—designed to destabilize our relationships, our spiritual lives, our work routines and our sense of what it means to be alive.

Some individuals will find enlightenment this month—if not bliss in the Buddhist sense, then a bursting out of denial that allows them to call on their ingenuity in new ways; ways that serve their own higher purpose, and that of the Earth.

Jessica Murray

Jessica Murray trained as a fine artist before graduating in 1973 from Brown University, where she studied psychology and linguistics. After a stint in political theatre in the heady early ’70s, Jessica moved to San Francisco and began studying metaphysics, where she has had a full-time private practice in astrology for more than 30 years. Her book, Soul-Sick Nation: An Astrologer’s View of America, is available through her website, mothersky.com.
In addition to her column in Daykeeper Journal and the monthly Skywatch on her website, Jessica’s essays appear in “The Mountain Astrologer,” “P.S. Magazine” and other publications. Jessica can be reached by email.