There are times in our lives when the ongoing evolutionary energies offer us clear shift points. Often, it’s only with hindsight that we see how everything changed, sometimes just from one single moment. This upcoming season offers us the opportunity for such change, rooted in our hearts and the new values that have been slowly growing in us over the last few years. Many individuals are feeling deeply tired right now. This new phase helps us move through that; it brings us the fiery motivation we need to engage the uplifted frequencies calling us.
There are various astrological pointers towards this sea change. The first fire sign of the zodiac, Aries, is one of them. It’s the sign of The Fool in the tarot, representing the adventure of being alive, of innocently acting on our deepest desires. It’s also the sign of our developing ego – not as a problem to be fixed, or an illusion to be risen above – but as the vital vehicle of our being a unique individual that is here to serve a unique soul purpose.
As first sign of the zodiac, Aries is always a starting point. As such it offers us constant new beginnings. It’s the catalyst for a whole new cycle, building on the foundation we have created thus far, for nothing in the zodiac sits alone. This fire sign is the impulse of initiative, self-worth, courage and assertiveness, the bold instinctual action of the warrior archetype. Aries is like the flame of a match striking. It is immediate fire, hot, direct, with the capacity to transmute everything, either into the steady flame of a candle, a warming fire, or an inferno. In us, Aries is the immediacy of the spirit of life, our clear ‘yes’ or assertive ‘no’ of action and reaction. It holds our self-worth or lack of it, how we motivate ourselves and act on our passions, how we fight for what’s right for us.
Two planets are a particular Aries focus at this point, ongoing into 2024 – Eris, the Disrupter and Chiron the Wounded Healer archetypes. They station retrograde respectively on 21 & 23 July, offering us an integration of the Aries fire energies over the next five months. Whenever a planet changes direction, its symbolism is intensified. We are called to address the shadows of the sign in new ways, with the support of the planetary archetypes involved.
The placement of Chiron in the birth chart reveals where we may self-sabotage in indirect ways. He acts as a key to our tender spots – you know that very personal button in you that stems from childhood experience? Often this is about ‘not-ok’ness’, where we might hold back through subtle fears, where we deny rather than engage. With Chiron experience, healing is not necessarily the process, but rather allowing our raw places to be catalysts for opening. Chiron helps us allow the vulnerability of being human that is a truth of existence. His energy is always paradoxical, for he was both wounded and a healer/mentor. As Rumi so wonderfully expresses, ‘the wound is where the light can enter’. Mythical Chiron has an animal body, so the wounding in us is often rooted in instinctual layers of our body-being. We cannot approach it with rationale, or even words. It requires the soothing balm of love, just as the child you once were did.
Very different but equally potent in the sign of Aries is Eris, the sisters of Ares/Mars, ruler of Aries. In mythology, Eris, known as Disrupter, is the bearer of the Golden Apple that she threw in amongst the Olympian deities, creating havoc. Her mission is to reveal a deeper truth, to get to the core of the matter in order that justice is served. With both these planetary bodies station retrograde in Aries, there is a focus on being disrupted, shocked, or jangled so something can be revealed. This revelation opens an ongoing opportunity held by Chiron and Eris as they travel together through Aries, long-term that’s to 2025 and beyond. It is reflected by another longer-term opportunity, that of the Lunar Nodes moving into Aries and Libra for the next eighteen months.
The Lunar Nodes are points that reflect the dynamic tension between past and future in our lives, how we move between the two in our evolutionary growth. The Moon’s North Node represents the direction of that growth; the South Node reflects the foundation we’ve created from our experience, including ancestral and soul karma (meaning simply ‘the results of our previous actions’). The Nodes work together through polarity; they reflect a particular set of demands to grow indicated by the zodiac signs they are traversing.
On 17 July the Lunar Nodes moved into the signs of Aries and Libra. With the North Node growth direction in Aries, we are encouraged to stand strong in self-worth, to act on our own behalf in healthy ways. The South Node in Libra reflects how we naturally move away from that, simply because we live in a world of relating. We must co-operate to fully enjoy our relationships. It’s a dance of polarity. The new South Node focus reveals how we move out of balance through being indirect, through subtle manipulation or accommodating others in relating. It points to our habits and comfort zones that inhibit the development of a healthy sense of self and that leads to imbalance in relationships. This new focus of the nodal axis helps us to get clear on who we are, what we want, and how to live as an integrated individual in the world of relating. It’s about conscious balance between me/you/us.
The new nodal placement is a strong enough focus over the next eighteen months (NB the cycle is 18.6 years so look to events/experience/growth processes December 2004 – June 2006 for clues to this one). It’s amplified now to October by a square from Lord of the Underworld Pluto in Capricorn. A square represents an inner tension between different qualities so Pluto acts as a bridge to our nodal development; it supports (even demands) the healing of ancestral patterns and grounding of healthier ways of being, especially with our individuality and relationships. It calls us to mature in standing alone and standing together more consciously.
Capricorn (where Pluto is for 20 years in total) is the sign of self-mastery, with a key focus on response-ability. This dynamic alignment supports us both personally and collectively to get real with our reactions, to stop accommodating, manipulating, and appeasing behaviours, or forceful ones. It’s about honesty with response-ability, to become clear vehicles for new frequencies of individuality that can uplift our relationships in clearer connectivity. It’s a big clean up! As Pluto is square the Nodes at 0 Taurus to 29 Aries/Libra this is a rare time, not experienced for centuries. 0 and 29 degrees of signs are potent and intense shift points. It is not until Pluto enters Aquarius for good in November 2024 and the North Node moves into Pisces in January 2025 that we will realise just how we’ve changed, personally and collectively. We begin to see the higher frequency outcomes of these intense times we’re living in more tangible ways.
There’s another element to this long-term process that is upcoming and personal. This amplifies our focus on the next three months as a foundation-laying time. I’ve already written and shared extensively on the upcoming Venus retrograde journey in Leo. (see my blog Tending Your Heart’s Fire) and will continue to do so. As Venus rules the South Node and her consort Mars rules the North Node, we have a strengthening effect to the nodal shift into Aries & Libra. The Divine Lovers are facing off across the zodiac to create more conscious ways of being and relating, rooted in the heart, represented by Venus in Leo. The way to anchor this shift is via our individuality. We can only be conscious in relationships to the degree we are awake with our self-connection. It’s about fully accepting our self in all its humanity, but more so, daring to fully be oneself!
As Venus moves retrograde, she is at the point of a Yod, aka Finger of Fate or God, involving Pluto and Mystic Neptune in its own sign Pisces. A Yod always indicates a vital focus. This particular focus requires us to adjust between our responsibilities and the calling to mature held by Pluto, our soul’s yearning and purpose held by Neptune, and the very personal elements to what we love, enjoy, and are uniquely equipped for in our individuality, held by Venus in Leo. It’s a truly potent alchemy, especially with so many Sacred Feminine archetypal energies also in Leo at this time (revealed in-depth in my recording of online event ‘A Deeper Love’). As Venus cycles in the same sign every eight years, clues to the themes of this retrograde lie in the time-frames July-September 2015, July-September 2007, and July-September 1999. What was happening in you and your life then? How did you change and grow?
The mystery of who we are in an evolving collective field is calling. The fire energies are our guides. As are the frequencies of love and drive held by Venus and Mars, combined with the evolutionary pulse of big players, Pluto, and Neptune. There’s a strong element of destiny involved in these planetary connections. Clues to new elements of our soul’s journey are likely revealed around 13 August and early October (especially 9th). There is no end to our growth in a body. To be awake and alive is to be necessary to our collective evolution and our beautiful planet. It is time to allow these fire energies to kindle a spark of new life in you. We are all fools on an adventurous journey are we not? It’s time to fully claim the gift of you.
