The gifts of the Dark Feminine in relationship to patriarchal mindset, authority and power plays have been emerging in profound ways since the latest eclipse period in late October. This deep process continues through to mid-December. The planetary players are Pluto Lord of the Underworld in Capricorn, Wisdom Warrior Pallas Athena with Dark Feminine Black Moon Lilith in Cancer, and Disruptor Eris in Aries. From the eclipse period these line-ups flowed into an exact square between Eris and Athena on 10 November, continued with an exact opposition from Pluto to Athena on 30 November at her station retrograde, and continues with Pluto in exact opposition to Lilith on 13 December.
The archetypal energies of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer and Capricorn can be said to symbolise child, mother (or home/family), and father (or boss/authority). Energies that together create the fundamental patterning of our humanness, how we meet our needs for care, love and belonging, and find our place in the world. The current planetary players are revealing where our fundamental needs may be at odds with our impulse to mature. They carry disruptive alignments that call us to become aware of and address what’s no longer working for us, or for our collective awakening, in the most personal aspects of our lives.
In this potent mix, Lilith as Soul Mother is a guide beyond the familial undercurrents into the clear waters of soul. Pallas Athena conjunct Black Moon Lilith in Cancer points towards the dissolution of ancestral karma, where there is willingness to let go of fixed positioning that blocks or rejects deep feeling. This allows Athena’s creative Feminine intelligence to flow into the Mystery of how oneness can be known through all our emotional expressions of life, no matter how distorted they appear to the judgmental mind. We are then enabled to be the bridge back into our own deepening. Eris square to both Lilith and Athena acts as the disruptor of old systems towards deeper truth and alignment.
The timing of these ongoing aspects signifies we are reaching the core of our misalignments – if we are willing to look and engage – both in terms of our individual programming but also the archetypal realms of Mother/Father (from human to divine) and the shadows of distorted control/powerlessness in our families and collective systems.
The challenges of: What am I truly hungry for? ‘When/where do I feel most connected?’ ’Where do I truly belong?’ are key aspects of these alignments. As are our attempts to achieve and succeed, fulfil or satisfy our deepest needs and desires where they can never be truly met. The ways we have learnt to collude, adapt, accommodate to generate a sense of belonging are highlighted. Our adaptations in order to fit in, avoid challenge or taking self-responsibility are being called out. The potential is deep reflection about the complexities of embodiment, discovering new ways of living fully in our humanness from our divinity, with maturity and integrity, yet also tenderness and care. We are learning to reparent ourselves in healthy ways whilst also bridging our divinity and humanity with finer consciousness.
As we reach the most compelling of these aspects on 13 December – Lord of the Underworld Pluto in Capricorn opposing Black Moon Lilith with Athena retrograde in Cancer – patriarchal patterning and profound emotional, mystical intelligence reach a peak of contrast and conflict. These profound Sacred Feminine archetypes are both challenged and potentially empowered by Pluto in Capricorn’s call for presence with our illusions, pretences and shadows. The opposition reflects the soul’s journey through humanness and the calling to constantly come back to the Mystery of ‘who this is’ in a physical form. The contrasts lie between qualities such as: discipline and compassion; strength and tenderness; aloneness and connection; coldness and kindness; boundaries and accommodating. It’s the archetypal play of father/mother within the self and ways we have adapted our self (personally and collectively) to fit in or belong.
In this potential for deepening integrity and self-love, we are being offered the opportunity to deeply reflect on how we can support ourselves through Pluto in Capricorn’s demand of deconstruction of what no longer serves, i.e., inner patterning that brings us identity, security or status, and collective structures and systems that no longer serve. The key theme being: What do I give authority and power to that no longer has value? And it can be very subtle… In this, the Feminine is calling us to discover deeper frequencies of intelligence, to listen to the subtle messages that seem illogical or contradictory to the status quo.
These aspects suggest a way through any current challenges is through both empathy and integrity as motivators for evolution. The way of emotional intelligence is always acceptance of ‘what is’ first. The collective element to this is that we are all wounded, in terms of our disconnection from ‘mother’ i.e. our Earth and the Great Mother. As they are oppositional, the play may come through conflict with another acting as a mirror for the quality most needed within oneself. The uplift depends on the individual’s energetic make-up, so could be Capricornian in nature i.e. stepping up with self response-ability and integrity, or Cancerian i.e. opening in vulnerability, being unconditionally loving. However it plays, there is a calling for a deepening integration of the differing qualities and ways of being of archetypal ‘Mother’ & ‘Father’.
As these energies have been playing out over almost two months, this peak opposition calls us to be more deeply aligned with presence, yet also tender with our own frailties, as a key requirement of a potential watershed shift of consciousness. It’s a key integration point in maturity that potentially creates a new foundation for authentically aligned evolutionary living.
