Friday, February 28, 2014

New Moon in Pisces: Illumination in the Dark Night

At 2am on Saturday, the Storm Moon begins a new cycle.  The luminaries meet in the 11th degree of Pisces to provide a path to Illumination for those of us who seek it.  The moon is dark, we can't see it but we feel it...we are challenged to walk on blindly toward sanctuary.  This Dark Night of the Soul has been a long one.  Even when we feel it may be coming to a close, we are suddenly pulled back inward.  Endings are never what we think they should be, after all.  They are transitions instead, where transformation takes place in the evolution of our stories.

Opportunities for healing transformations have been in full force all month, and will continue, as Pluto and Chiron have recently exacted a sextile.  Mercury is now direct again, after a particularly disorienting retrograde jaunt from Pisces back to Aquarius for most of this month.  Of course, we're not completely in the clear until its release out of the shadow of the retrograde on March 21st...but at least now we can move forward with what we've rediscovered since this shadow period began at the end of January.  While the spotlight is on communication and our mental state (Mercury), the stress is still on bringing the unique ideas of our higher mind (Uranus, Mercury's higher octave, is still at the apex of a T-square with Pluto and Jupiter Retrograde) out in the open in original ways.  And soon after the new moon begins, Mars and Vesta, conjunct at the end of Libra, slow down to go retrograde together...followed by Saturn in Scorpio going retrograde the following day.  So, the planet of action (Mars), the asteroid of spiritual dedication (Vesta), and the planet of responsibility (Saturn) will soon be taking the spotlight as we move into a phase of difficult internal work on those things about ourselves that we've been ignoring while other things demanded our attention.

But first, Mercury paved the path to the illumination that our luminaries suggest in their conjunction.  We may have gotten caught up in helping others without giving the same attention to ourselves, which set us back a bit throughout this month...as we revisited those things within that weren't going to just go away.  Now, we've been faced with the task of our own healing...finding better, more proactive ways of keeping ourselves from spiraling out of control in destructive patterns.  This is when our ingenuity (a distinctly Uranian concept) comes into play, and we have to shake up our lives a bit in extraordinary ways to get back on track.  After all, if we don't do it...someone/something else likely will.  The path we've been trampling for the past few months isn't getting us anywhere new...and it looks all too familiar.  But in this dark night, the new moon seems to tug at us to go off the beaten path and we soon find a new one...one that promises something we've been seeking all along but somehow couldn't find it.

Leave your expectations behind this time.  Leave your worries, leave your self-judgments, and leave your ideas of perfection that only lead you to procrastination.  Walk on, unencumbered by negative thoughts or pre-conceived ideas.  Be new with the moon, and as she returns each night and shows more and more of her face...she will reflect your own becoming.  Be fearless and follow the directional flow of your soul.

Illumination follows a period of purification where we are often faced with our greatest fears and our darkest feelings.  The dark night of the soul may break us down and have us feel that we will never be the same again...but that's also the point.  We are never the same after we face our fears.  We become more powerful and more aware of ourselves, and our life changes because of it.  It's hard to believe, while we're still in that struggle, that we could ever relate to the word 'powerful' again.  It's human nature to size up personal power as it relates to things outside of ourselves...so at our lowest we see that this person is mentally stable, or this person is in control of her emotions, or that person is financially secure while we may pale in so many comparisons.  But true power is the soul stripped of all those outward manifestations and suddenly free to choose the path it means to follow.

Breathe deeply, and walk on.
Love and Gratitude,
Felina Lune Kavi