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June '13
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by Terry Lamb

We are experiencing a tsunami of transformation. So far, the tidewaters have pulled back, the energy of old consciousness has been sucked back into the void created by the tremor as the World Tree begins to sprout rapidly in response to the shift of the Great Year (the 2012 Event). We were born at this time so we could experience this. The soul considers it very valuable indeed, because we have access to the memories, growth, and burdens we have built up over the previous 26,000-year cycle. This is augmented by the currently ever-present and recently activated Uranus-Pluto square.

We have extremely rare access to the depths of consciousness where our soul history resides, where the warp of human behavior has been threaded through the weft of the Cosmic Design (universal law). The soul sees this as an opportunity to straighten the distortions and attune to the spirit that unites us.

This is all great in theory, but the practice is a bit dicier. As these energies surface—a fact for every being alive at this time—they bring out the full spectrum of feelings. This often appears random: We don’t know why we’re crying or laughing or depressed. Or we “overreact” to what would seem a minor experience that is actually triggering a deeply buried memory.

This means that we have to cut ourselves some slack. There is a movement in psychology that is shifting from a focus on self-esteem (which has a basis in judgment and competition) to self-compassion (which rises beyond judgment to care), and that is what we must practice now on ourselves. Most of us have unresolved traumas to be released, whether current, ancestral, or karmic. This is something that involves activation of the primitive (reptilian and mammalian) parts of our nervous system, which report to us faithfully the emotional-sensory reality of our experiences (that is, how life-threatening an experience is or was, and how we dealt with it). Consequently, we cannot control our emotional responses at times as these experiences are revisited for release. This is not to suggest that we cannot gain mastery of our behavior, because we can; and it is precisely these revisitations that afford the opportunity to do so.

The good news is that the social engagement system—the wiring of our system that has happened during human evolution—overrides traumatic reactions. This means that we can heal ourselves and each other through contact with other living beings.

Now especially, as we complete this Mercury cycle whose energies began flowing in early February, we can look back and see how far we’ve come with this healing, whether or not we were aware of it. It’s also true that everyone has been making this passage, even if it is not yet visible in their world.

It has become obvious to me over the years that astrology has perhaps more value in retrospection and review than it does in prediction. Not only can we learn what happened (symbolically if not actually) when from the chart, but we can follow events and, as we respond to current circumstances, observe our reactions and trace them back to their origin, whatever their source—current life, the prenatal epoch, ancestry, or karma.

This allows us to choose how to act in situations where we might have used a distorted perspective in the past. This is astrological healing.
We are about to shift into a new Mercury cycle; the fade-in commences on June 9. This one takes us on a related, similar journey to the one we leave behind, as it is still in the Water signs. This Mercury retrograde is the polar opposite of the last one in that it encounters a completely empty sky. Mercury makes no contacts with any other planets during its retrograde save the Sun and Moon.

This Mercury retrograde will put us on retreat. This does not mean we will be inactive, but that there will be a deep inner process happening which surfaces as events only as the Messenger interacts with our natal chart.

In other respects, life goes on. The planets have been clustered so that their energies come to us in an organized, stepwise fashion since the beginning of the year. This has made it easier for us to take on a singular focus and reduce elements that would scatter our attention and efforts. As May opens, we have two more contacts to go before the planets have completed their confab. These are the conjunctions of Sun and Mars to Jupiter. They will complete a process that started in late 2012, a new beginning that has been echoing the deeper process of the 2012 event and facilitating the release of this new energy into our lives.

We will be working with the deep process for many years to come, but in the short run we are starting to catch up with ourselves and get our feet under us in a new landscape. This new reality is still being dreamed into form by every mind as it looks into the future. In our own personal sphere, we will see a new reality beginning to emerge in June.

One of the vehicles of transport for our new life is Jupiter, which will enter Cancer on June 25. This is a very big shift, as Jupiter’s stay in Gemini has carried other energies on its coattails—the eclipses in Gemini-Sagittarius and the Transit of Venus/Venus retrograde last June. This made our experience of Jupiter over the past year “more than your average transit”, since it absorbed into its release issues that carried deep karmic/ancestral threads tied to our relationships. Coming as it did on the heels of another planetary cycle affecting relationships (Saturn in Libra), we were primed to test our ties with others in the light of a need for greater authenticity. The relationships we have—or are considering—now have made the passage, if not passed the test.

When Jupiter is in Cancer (its exaltation), it is a Cosmic Mind-Alterer: we simply feel better, regardless of what’s happening around us. It opens the door to a new room of consciousness and invigorates it all at once with its warmth and optimism. It gives us a much-needed rest from anxiety and makes it easier to live in the present moment more. (We won’t talk about Cancer’s nostalgic side right now.)

Jupiter in Cancer immediately participates in two patterns: a Water Grand Trine/Kite with Saturn, Neptune-Chiron, and Pluto; and the Cardinal square of Uranus and Pluto, forming a T-square. The Grand Trine is harmonious and greatly augments the warmth and flow of Jupiter in this sign, while the Kite configuration with Pluto at the apex permits us to make changes smoothly and easily. The T-square is more intense and challenges us with the biggest dilemmas of our life, but Jupiter releases them into our world with a blessing.

This means that for the coming year of Jupiter’s stay in Cancer, we will have quite a roller coaster ride. It can be bracing, exhilarating. But if we let ourselves get frozen in place, we will find the ride to be less than fun.

Neptune and Chiron, which have been working on background since late March, come into greater prominence in June. The Sun in Gemini squares their positions in Pisces, opening the time tunnel (aka wormhole) that we move through each year in the two weeks prior to their retrograde. These planets turn retrograde in June, on June 7 (Neptune) and June 16 (Chiron).

Before they start their apparent backward motion, we have the opportunity to make the most of their energies to push ourselves through the wormhole into ever more rarefied vistas of inner development and healing. The more we focus with our intention on the spirit, the more we will get from these transits. Neither Neptune nor Chiron are concerned with fulfilling the needs of the ego; instead, they lead us to inhabit the spirit, to allow the spirit to sit at the throne of the Self. This often looks like foolish behavior to those who do not look at life from the inner perspective, but through the energies that these planets represent we can see the inner correctness of our path.

As the month passes, we move more into the energy of Cancer with the personal planets, bringing a culmination of the transformative process we undertook in late December last year, the start of the yearly Pluto cycle. This is the halfway point, illuminating us with new mental, emotional, and Self-awareness as Mercury, Venus, and the Sun reach their oppositions to the Great Denizen of the Underworld. Think about what you started at that time—what your focus was around New Year’s Eve. The seeds planted then are reaching their fruition now.

Uranus’s cycle began with a big bang at the end of March, and we are still seeing how that will play out in the coming year. This cycle, more than others this year, will provide the perspective we need to foster our relationships. Unexpected plot twists, sudden reversals of direction, and quantum change are Uranus’s stock in trade.

Saturn is nearing the end of its retrograde, which started February 17 and culminated on the April 25th Lunar Eclipse. This led us to dig in extra deep for new insights, which were augmented by whatever appeared or disappeared in your life at that time. Our Saturn process will not be complete until Saturn leaves Scorpio in two years, but we will see a major situation being fulfilled by the end of September. For June, we still need to keep working with due diligence on our Saturnian projects (started October last year), even though other planetary energies dominate.

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