Tau­rus, Johfra Bosschart

What are you?

Today we begin the sec­ond month in the Astro­log­i­cal cal­en­dar, and some­where in your chart, and for every­one at this time of year, we all need to lis­ten to the spir­i­tu­al mes­sages for us in this sacred space known as Taurus.

For the past 30 days you have been guid­ed and inspired by the Gift that is Aries, the abil­i­ty to find and forge your true pres­ence as you walk through the “eter­nal now”. As I will often say to my clients when­ev­er their pro­gressed Moon is mov­ing through Aries, (or when­ev­er a plan­et is mov­ing through their chart’s first house), the uni­verse is ask­ing you the first ques­tion of life, “Who are you”?

That is a very pro­found ques­tion indeed, of course. But Tau­rus brings you to per­haps an even deep­er and more chal­leng­ing ques­tion; life will ask you now not “who” are you, but “what are you”? Think about that ques­tion, of all the many cat­e­gories of being, the great range of attrib­ut­es, strengths, pow­ers and so very much more that go into the mak­ing of the “what” of you. Real­ly that is it, “What is that what?”; and that is the ques­tion you need to be ask­ing your­self in Taurus.

And, if you con­sid­er this ques­tion, for even a very short time, you will real­ize how very deep and pro­found it is. Exact­ly what is “the What” of being human? For you are not “a thing”, no not at all. You, and this is true of every mote and par­ti­cle of Cre­ation too, you are a field of Ener­gy-Forms or bod­ies, formed by a hier­ar­chy of these mag­nif­i­cent man­i­fes­ta­tions of Spirit-Matter.

You are a sparkling dew­drop of the divine who emerged from the One. In each life, “from the cen­ter that is every­where and whose cir­cum­fer­ence is nowhere”, from the heart of you which is a Mon­ad of Spir­it-Life-Con­scious­ness, you bring forth from your­self, in com­bi­na­tion with the sur­round­ing fields of Ener­gy-Forms, the nec­es­sary vehi­cles of being that are required for each dimen­sion of life that is Creation.

You descend or emanate from your Mon­ad or Spir­it Body Field which is the high­est part of you, into the next realm of your Men­tal-Intu­itive ener­gy-form or body, then from that descends a low­er Men­tal form, and then from this an Emo­tion­al body, and then a Vital body, and final­ly, to what you mis­tak­en­ly take to be your “true self”, you assume a Phys­i­cal body, the dens­est Field of Ener­gy-Forms that you require for life here on Earth.

And you need to know this, that each of these bod­ies are formed by par­ti­cles and forms from which they are made too. You are not an indi­vid­ual being what­so­ev­er, you are a host of hosts, a ver­i­ta­ble con­stel­la­tion or field of fields of ener­gy-forms, so that in fact you are very own lit­tle uni­verse of Spirit-Life-Consciousness.

Yes, it is in Tau­rus that you move from sub­jec­tiv­i­ty to objec­tiv­i­ty, you go from “I am” to “I am that”. You become you by these forms of being as you expe­ri­ence life as a rain­bow of sen­sa­tions, as you dis­cov­er your strengths, as you acquire your abil­i­ties, and by mov­ing into this earthy realm you forge the qual­i­ties of you as human. In Tau­rus, you expe­ri­ence the joy and won­der of being alive, of see­ing the beau­ty of the world, of liv­ing in a realm of shapes and col­ors, and sounds, and scents, and so many won­der­ful sen­sa­tions that are the heart of and forge the love of being part of LIFE, of which you are a most spe­cial part too.

But the ques­tion remains, what is “that what” of you, or bet­ter, what is the val­ue that is you? From your youth to old age, the val­ues that make you, the qual­i­ties of your being, will wax and wane, as the phys­i­cal strengths of your youth give way to the gifts of wis­dom and judge­ment of lat­er years. There are days when it all seems so per­fect, to be fol­lowed by days when you do not feel so very valu­able at all. Amidst all these ups and downs, of a life of joys and of sor­rows, what is behind the val­ue of you any­way? After all the many ways of val­ue, what is the foun­tain-source of val­ue of you?

As it was in the begin­ning, so shall it be in the end. You are a price­less jew­el of spir­it, a spark of the Divine. There is no way to mea­sure what is the what of you, for tru­ly it is the one Ener­gy-Form behind the entire­ty of Cre­ation; you are through and through made of Divine Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

But so is all of this, all of life, all of cre­ation is here because of Love. All of Cre­ation is pre­cious, all of it is here to be loved too.

You are here because of love, and you are here quite sim­ply to be that Love for one anoth­er and for this beau­ti­ful Earth and for the Stars above you too.

Remem­ber what you are,

Love one another.

Black Hole — Grav­i­ty Well

Tran­script of Radio Show: Bub­bles of Belief and The Grav­i­ty Well of Faith (4/10/2022)

(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Pod­casts)

I thought that it would help to pull back from any one issue today, as we focused on Ukraine, Zelen­sky and Putin last time, and zoom out and look at the prin­ci­pal plan­e­tary Avatars of mean­ing again, to look to Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to and reex­am­ine their message(s) for us at this time.

But first, I would also like to remind us, that the plan­ets and stars do not make the con­tent of what hap­pens here on Earth. They do not cre­ate Love or Hate, Peace or War. What we have, what we face and what we will make, the very real con­tent of our indi­vid­ual char­ac­ter, the sen­si­bil­i­ties and morals of our com­mu­ni­ties, and the real­i­ty of our eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal orders, all of that is some­thing that we have fash­ioned since the moment we humans moved into self-aware devel­op­ment many thou­sands of years ago.

Con­scious­ness, Pat­terns and Self-Awareness
The moment we began to become aware and see pat­terns, with­in our­selves, and between one anoth­er, and in the world around us, the moment we began to fash­ion ways of meet­ing our needs that we could pass down to those after us, the moment we became co-cre­ators of our­selves and this world, it is then that we became respon­si­ble for what we have done well (and not so well) through­out human his­to­ry. And this under­stand­ing, of how much we make and re-make our­selves and our real­i­ty, has become increas­ing­ly evi­dent over the last 500 years. We find at this moment in our jour­ney of awak­en­ing, that we humans have become one of the prin­ci­pal instru­ments of evo­lu­tion on this Earth. And, as always, since the moment we woke up the key to our future would for­ev­er flow from the great injunc­tion of Spir­i­tu­al Wis­dom and self-mas­tery, “Know Thyself”.

But how is it that we did or do this? What is this secret of our pow­er to cre­ate, and the pow­er to destroy our­selves and our world? What we under­stand is that this awe­some gift, with the pow­er of a being a cre­ator and destroy­er, was forged when we became self-aware, and we became capa­ble of hold­ing our expe­ri­ences in vehi­cles of preser­va­tion and trans­mis­sion, in sym­bols and sounds, in Knowl­edge and Wis­dom, and it was then that we became ever more respon­si­ble as the shapers and mak­ers of our destiny.

Vehi­cles of Knowing
These vehi­cles of preser­va­tion take many forms. In ear­li­er ages, but still very much present in our own time, the cus­toms, and life­ways of a group of humans, a fam­i­ly tribe, or a small com­mu­ni­ty or larg­er com­mu­ni­ty, who hav­ing dis­cov­ered how to secure their needs in their local area, (for water, food, shel­ter, etc.), we humans would cre­ate sto­ries and rit­u­als that held this knowl­edge of our world for those that fol­lowed. Our great­est trea­sure and gift to those who will fol­low us is this liv­ing Ener­gy-Form of Mind that per­sists from gen­er­a­tion to generation.

But these vehi­cles of know­ing and mem­o­ry do not just pass on prac­ti­cal or tech­ni­cal knowl­edge. For we humans are made of much more than naked ideas or thoughts. We also find it nec­es­sary, to enfold and encode our knowl­edge and truth with “Mean­ing­ful­ness”. We do not mere­ly think, we Think-Feel, or Feel-Think, and our expe­ri­ences, mem­o­ries, sto­ries, and wis­dom are held togeth­er and passed down in ways that hold us togeth­er with these ener­gy-forms of Love and Hate, Faith and Fear, Com­pas­sion and Self­ish­ness that move us deeply and pro­found­ly and tru­ly form our real­i­ty of one anoth­er and our world.

Bub­bles of Belief
I have called these vehi­cles of expe­ri­ence, (and this des­ig­na­tion becomes increas­ing­ly rel­e­vant in the more com­plex human com­mu­ni­ties of eth­nic­i­ties, cul­tures, and mod­ern nation states), I call these hold­ers of mean­ings our “Bub­bles of Belief”. It is Neptune’s role for us, as the Avatar of Under­stand­ing and Mean­ing, by its indi­vid­ual syn­od­ic cycles (one cir­cuit around our star to the next), and its inter­sect­ing cycles with Uranus and Plu­to espe­cial­ly, it is Neptune’s mes­sag­ing that can be most help­ful in help­ing to explain the waves of mean­ing­ful­ness that sweep through us and our history.

Again, I want to stress, that it is not Nep­tune (or any plan­et for that mat­ter), which forms the spe­cif­ic type of con­tent of mean­ing that any one group or cul­ture has cre­at­ed and fol­lowed. That con­tent and that mean­ing, is made by us, it has evolved and devel­oped over time, from the very dis­tant past, and that cre­ation and accre­tion informs our present cir­cum­stances, and it can also help us to under­stand how we might be shap­ing our future too.

In what we see from our record­ed his­to­ries, cer­tain­ly since the times of the ancient or clas­si­cal worlds, before the cur­rent era (BCE), and then increas­ing­ly down to our very own time today, we see how the pow­er of beliefs of one group or of one peo­ple or one cul­ture can have the most sig­nif­i­cant effects upon that group inter­nal­ly, and equal­ly upon those with whom they have con­tact exter­nal­ly. Indeed, what we can see now in the present day is that these Bub­bles of Belief influ­ence and shape the entire world in both won­der­ful and hor­rif­ic ways.

We humans are so very pro­tean in our nature, capa­ble of cre­at­ing or mak­ing the val­ue of our­selves and of the mate­r­i­al world we live in, bend­ing and trans­form­ing in a mul­ti­tude of ways, so that the range of cul­tures, beliefs, life­ways, and hier­ar­chies of val­ues expe­ri­enced over the course of our his­to­ry is quite astound­ing, rich, and var­ied. These Bub­bles of Belief form and shape our very notions of who we are, what it means to be human, what we aspire to be, includ­ing the notion of what is the mean­ing or pur­pose of our lives.

But because how very deeply we humans are made from and held by these Thought-Feel­ing Forms, their influ­ence over any indi­vid­ual, or group, or cul­ture or nation is very pro­found. It is one thing when we con­sid­er the more minor vehi­cles of tech­nique and mean­ing, the accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge that enables each gen­er­a­tion to lit­er­al­ly not have to re-invent the wheel! But it is entire­ly a dif­fer­ent order of mean­ing when we con­sid­er these larg­er Bub­bles of Belief and Mean­ing that shape a group or cul­ture or nation, mold­ing and hold­ing their spir­i­tu­al and cul­tur­al ideals, their cat­e­gories of right and wrong, of good and evil, of truth and falsehood.

Grav­i­ty Well of Faith
This is what I meant by includ­ing in the title for this show what I call the phe­nom­e­non of “The Grav­i­ty Well of Faith”. What do I mean by this? It is the con­cept that as groups of peo­ples, and even more as a set of sub-cul­tures are formed, and final­ly as a larg­er over-arch­ing cul­ture of a peo­ple or nation is estab­lished, their core beliefs become some­what like the obser­va­tions of the influ­ence of grav­i­ty, which is itself most pow­er­ful­ly observed when we see how the pas­sage of light from a par­tic­u­lar star is lit­er­al­ly “bent” by the grav­i­ty of anoth­er star or even more by a black hole. I would argue that in a Men­tal-Emo­tion­al way, the attach­ment and weight of belief and faith has a sim­i­lar effect of pulling those mem­bers into a deeply bind­ing sys­tem of real­i­ty, which cre­ates an all-pow­er­ful Idea-Feel­ing form that holds that group togeth­er as one. It is the way of that peo­ple, the “Spir­i­tus Mun­di”, the Spir­it of a Time, or the “Zeit­geist”, the defin­ing Char­ac­ter of the peo­ple in a peri­od of history.

Through­out human his­to­ry, we have wit­nessed the awe­some pow­er of what we might con­sid­er con­struc­tive and destruc­tive Bub­bles of Belief, as in the Ideas and Pas­sions forged by reli­gious beliefs, or the dra­ma of social move­ments striv­ing to advance social jus­tice. But we have equal­ly wit­nessed the hor­rors com­mit­ted in the name of faith, or the so-called advance­ment or tri­umph of one peo­ple by the destruc­tion of anoth­er. Tru­ly these more encom­pass­ing and com­pelling Belief Bub­bles hold and bind their believ­ers in a deep Well of fer­vor which can lead to the most dis­parate of outcomes.

Through­out his­to­ry, and cer­tain­ly in what we call the “mod­ern era”, the Grav­i­ty Well of Faith that holds all a peo­ple as one, the idea of a peo­ple defined by a geo­graph­ic area, a com­mon his­to­ry, a cer­tain set of cul­tur­al attrib­ut­es, etcetera, has been a prin­ci­pal dri­ver of human inte­gra­tion with­in that group and defined and shaped its rela­tion­ship with oth­er peo­ples or groups. Yet, beyond these nat­ur­al foun­da­tions for the defin­ing of a peo­ple, beyond what some have held as the true root­ed­ness found in “blood and soil”, we also have seen the very pow­er of an idea itself, such as “all humans are cre­at­ed equal” per­me­ate, chal­lenge and over­throw these more so-called nat­ur­al deter­mi­na­tions of what forms the Grav­i­ty Well of Faith.

The shift from pre­vail­ing Bub­bles of Belief, and even from one Grav­i­ty Well to anoth­er, has both been a prod­uct of our human pro­tean capac­i­ty and equal­ly the dri­ver of that trans­for­ma­tive evo­lu­tion. Tru­ly, we are and make what we are by how we Think and Feel about who we are, where we come from, what mat­ters to us, and, and how that fits with the larg­er world around us and oth­er groups with oth­er Beliefs and Grav­i­ty Wells of Faith.

Astro­log­i­cal­ly, what we can observe over time with regards to the cycle of Nep­tune through the Zodi­ac, is that there are sim­i­lar influ­ences cre­at­ed when it is mov­ing the Zodi­a­cal Signs, and espe­cial­ly when pass­ing through Pisces (as it is now), along with sig­nif­i­cant indi­ca­tions revealed by its orbital rela­tion­ship with Uranus (as well as its orbital pat­tern with Plu­to too).

Nep­tune, The Uni­ver­sal Solvent
For our pur­pose today, when­ev­er Nep­tune, known as the Uni­ver­sal Sol­vent, is mov­ing through its own sign of Pisces, we have seen a greater propen­si­ty towards the dis­solv­ing and warp­ing of the Bub­bles of Belief and Mean­ing for that peri­od. Our peri­od from 2011 to 2026 is like that of 1848–1862, or 1685–1698, and 1520–1535. In our time, as in those peri­ods, there was a surge of mys­ti­cism and cre­ativ­i­ty, of reli­gious and ide­o­log­i­cal fer­ment, and the break­ing down of the old cer­tain­ties as bor­ders between the orders and realms of soci­ety became more permeable.

What hap­pens in such peri­ods is that the for­mer cer­tain­ties of a reign­ing order of mean­ing begin to dis­solve, and indi­vid­u­als and groups become unteth­ered to a com­mon­ly held real­i­ty for­ma­tion. This move­ment beyond the lim­its or con­fines of pre­vi­ous held truths and beliefs can be lib­er­at­ing, and indeed this “let­ting go in order to grow” has been a nec­es­sary and sig­nif­i­cant instru­ment of progress. But it is also prob­a­ble, and many times we have seen this as well, that the break­ing of those Bub­bles of Beliefs which been held togeth­er the many as one in a shared Grav­i­ty Well of Faith will lead those unteth­ered souls into wider and some­times weird­er per­mu­ta­tions of mean­ings and faith.

Dan­ger of Disillusionment
Indeed, these new­ly “freed” indi­vid­u­als and groups of indi­vid­u­als, may become entan­gled and enchant­ed by a new-found faith or truth, which may or may not be true at all. Or they may look back, return­ing to a way of feel­ing and think­ing, to a way of being that was lost and wish to reclaim it. The prob­lem is that now being no longer cir­cum­scribed and held to some sense of a cen­tered self by a fun­da­men­tal Well of Mean­ing, their very long­ing for a cen­ter of mean­ing by which to hold them­selves togeth­er can be the very instru­ment by which they become pulled into and held by a new-found or redis­cov­ered belief. They forge an alter­nate Well of Mean­ing that is not based in a wide­ly shared real­i­ty that has pre­vailed over time, and which has been test­ed and affirmed by its func­tion­ing with­in the larg­er world.

Indeed, they often take com­fort and pride in stand­ing apart, hold­ing them­selves with a high regard for their role as restor­ers, or avengers, or redeemers, and by that very Well of Grav­i­ty they have forged, they may lead them­selves into a way of being that can cause great harm to them­selves and to oth­ers, as we have cer­tain­ly seen here and around the world long ago and in our present day too.

Now, giv­en we are in such a moment now, where the old cer­tain­ties, which were not with­out illu­sions to be sure, but they held us in a belief that we had moved more close­ly into a world where con­sen­sus and agree­ment would cre­ate some kind of “Gold­en Age”, but instead we find our­selves, as indi­vid­u­als, and in groups, and even as nations con­fused and uncer­tain as to our future, so that we find our­selves des­per­ate­ly hold­ing on to what­ev­er pro­vides some com­fort amidst the tumult of rumors, half-truths, pro­pa­gan­da, con­spir­a­cies, and the hav­oc foment­ed by weak souls wield­ing dead­ly pow­ers, well, what do any of us do to find our way in such a world?

The Truth
I am sure you know what I am about to say to that. For the truth is this, the Truth nev­er changes. It is what makes the Uni­verse and you and I, and it is encod­ed in the pat­terns that make the build­ing blocks of the phys­i­cal world, from atoms, to mol­e­cules, to organ­isms (like you and me), and the stars. The truth is out there, and in us too. We have seen these pat­terns of mean­ing with both our intu­itive gifts and our sci­en­tif­ic instru­ments. Yes, we feel and think about these wheels with­in wheels, pat­terns with­in pat­terns that form the web, the warp and weft of the entire uni­verse, from the infin­i­tes­i­mal to the infinite.

The First Grav­i­ty Well of Faith, The One
You, me, and the whole uni­verse are made from, shaped by and are here because of the first Grav­i­ty Well of Faith, the One. And long, long ago and through­out the ages, var­i­ous Wise Ones and Prophets, Sci­en­tists and Seers, and many who remain unknown have found their way to this sin­gu­lar truth. That we are all, no mat­ter where we think we came from, and no mat­ter what we may feel about one anoth­er, we are all here to come back to the source of all to remem­ber and under­stand that we are made as one by the One, forged by love and we are here to love one another.

What is the way for­ward, what is the path we must fol­low? It is quite sim­ple real­ly, which is why it is tru­ly true. I wrote this ear­li­er, and it bears repeat­ing now. The only way for­ward is to fol­low the path of Ever­last­ing Truth, which is:

That this Uni­verse is formed by one pri­ma­ry Ener­gy-Form, The Uncon­di­tion­al Love of the One for all the ones; That made by Uncon­di­tion­al Love, we are here to Love and be Loved Uncon­di­tion­al­ly too; and giv­en the Ener­gy-Form that holds all of Cre­ation as One is our Root Ener­gy-Form as well, then we are here quite sim­ply to Love One Anoth­er, and it fol­lows that we should Love the oth­er as we Love Our own true Self for there real­ly is no dif­fer­ence. Each one of us, all of us are in Truth sparks of the One and so we are here to live by the light of the divine with­in each of us, indeed in all that we do, and it is by this Love that we bow to the Divine that is the entire­ty of this won­drous Cre­ation too.

The Way Forward
The Ancient Wis­dom holds that the Love of the One is Uncon­di­tion­al and All-Encom­pass­ing. And we, who are sparks of this One Divine Light, we are equal­ly called upon to strive to treat one anoth­er, and indeed all of life, as our broth­ers and sis­ters, as our moth­ers and fathers, as dear to us as we are to our­selves; that we are here quite sim­ply to learn and so become that Light which is Love; and that our entire Jour­ney in Spir­it is for us to awak­en to our true nature which is to love and be loved in this Cre­ation, a Cre­ation in which we and count­less sparks of the Divine actu­al­ly form that liv­ing embod­i­ment of Love.

So, I would say the way for­ward is clear, as it has always been clear to those who fol­low the path of Light and Love. When you see some­one in trou­ble, there you are. When you see the evil that is igno­rance, there you should be light of under­stand­ing and heal­ing. When you wish to do what is right, there is but one thing you must do.

Love one another.

In my fourth show of 2022, we will return to the influ­ences of Uranus, Nep­tune, and Plu­to in under­stand­ing our moment in his­to­ry. Today, I would like to focus upon the role of Nep­tune in help­ing us to under­stand how we make our­selves and our world by what we believe.

If you wish to sug­gest a sub­ject or top­ic for a future show, please email me as I would be hap­py to hear from you. My email is: billattride@gmail.com.

Here is the main link to Astrologer Bill Attride Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride

Here is the link to the show on Sun­day April 10^th @ 2 pm EDT:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2022/04/10/astrological-musings-bubbles-of-belief-and-the-gravity-well-of-faith

The phone num­ber to call if you wish to ask a ques­tion dur­ing the live show is: (516) 531‑9638

Please join me on Sun­day April 10^th @ 2 pm EDT as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.

If you miss the show, it will be avail­able as a Pod­cast short­ly after on BlogTalk or my Apple Pod­casts.

Aries, by Johfra Bosschart

The First Step

Today begins your year­ly jour­ney around our star. At this time of the year, and wher­ev­er you have Aries in your very own chart too, you should give thanks for and cel­e­brate the won­der and the joy of the most pre­cious gift that flows from the Cir­cle of the Liv­ing Ones.

This most sub­lime truth is root­ed in the essen­tial promise of the One, cre­at­ed and pre­served and made man­i­fest by your very own Spark of the Divine. And what is that? It is this, that the truth of you, your quin­tes­sence, is revealed by your ever-renew­ing well­spring of Spir­it, in that inef­fa­ble agency by which you are here, right now and for­ev­er as the liv­ing spir­it who is sim­ply here to “be and become what you are, the Divine made man­i­fest upon this Earth”.

Aries is the gate­way of Spir­it, it is the com­ing of the Tran­scen­dent into Form, the word made man­i­fest in the phys­i­cal world. Yes, it is by this first Sign of Fire, of Spir­it, it is by Aries that you move through the por­tal between yes­ter­day and tomor­row, between what you were and what you are yet to be. Because, and this you must know, you can only be and become by mov­ing out of the shad­ows and into the light, by mov­ing through what we call space-time. You are tru­ly you at the cross­ing point between the Dark­ness and the Light, between what you were and what you will be. You are here to know this, that you are what you are, and you only exist, by mov­ing for­ev­er in The Eter­nal Now.

For the last 30 days, you loved and lost, you laughed and cried, as you walked in that most sacred realm of the Twelve Holy Ones, in the time and place of Pisces. Yes, Pisces brings the gift of clo­sure, as you sift through the har­vest of the past year and under­stand the immutable law which holds one and all togeth­er in the “Great Work”, the fun­da­men­tal keep­er of the flame which holds you to it, which is that “you will reap what you sow”. It is there that you tru­ly under­stood the unbreak­able bond between the growth of your wis­dom being root­ed in the deep­en­ing of your humil­i­ty. And you were held by the grace of for­give­ness, hum­bled by the under­stand­ing that it was your very stum­bles and over-com­ings that form the dia­mond body of your char­ac­ter and faith today. In the Waters of Pisces, you found the way to hold it all, the good and the so-called bad, to hold it all because of the com­pas­sion and love of the One who loves us all.

And now a New Year begins, and the Fire of Aries is upon you. Aries seizes you with the gift of Inspi­ra­tion, with Ideas that just come upon you, and that bend your heart and soul to the joy­ful exhil­a­ra­tion, the brand-new day filled by the light and by the pow­er of new beginnings.

Yes, in Aries you leap into action, to be and become what­ev­er you will be. But the les­son you must learn, the first les­son on the path of life is here too. At each por­tal, in each sign, you are asked a ques­tion, and the one before you now, well it is prob­a­bly the most pro­found. Quite sim­ply put, the ques­tion the uni­verse asks you now is this, “Who are you?”

To answer this seems sim­ple enough, but do not take this light­ly, for every­thing rests upon this. To tru­ly know the right answer, you must under­stand the “real” ques­tion now, which is “Why are you?”

Why are you here, what is this real­ly all about? Quite sim­ply and tru­ly, you are here to learn to be a bet­ter human. To dis­cov­er through Inspi­ra­tion and Per­spi­ra­tion, by Tri­al and by Error, through Suc­cess and Fail­ure, you are here to learn by Cause and Effect how to be a whole per­son, and how to become a wise being who choos­es to live by Love.

And it all begins here, with the first step, your next step. And then the one after that. Life is, well life is a jour­ney, of mov­ing in the Eter­nal Now, but from moment to moment and from one space into anoth­er. I like to imag­ine Life as like mov­ing through a series of doors, with you leav­ing one space and enter­ing anoth­er. And here you will encounter the ever­last­ing gift and test that is Aries, the gift of devel­op­ing your char­ac­ter, of your bear­ing, of forg­ing your presence.

As you go through each door, you will find that there is always some­one who is going through just ahead of you. And if you are for­tu­nate, you will have that per­son who is ahead of you hold the door open for you and per­haps lend you a hand. But often­times you will find that the one who is ahead is trou­bled, or thought­less, or angry, or what­ev­er, and that they do not con­sid­er who is behind them and they slam the door in your face.

And now you have it, your quin­tes­sen­tial test is upon you. What hap­pened just then, well that was bad, that was “bad” ener­gy that fell upon you. But now comes the ques­tion, “what will you do”, what will you do with this energy?

It would be so very easy, and real­ly in some ways effort­less, to just take that neg­a­tive ener­gy, and to pass it on to whomev­er is fol­low­ing you. The bad came at you, and you just got rid of it. That is so easy…but your life will not be easy if you do this, you will not grow and change, and you will not be bet­ter unless you are the change.

Instead, you must stop, for you need to real­ize that you do have a choice. You are sup­posed to choose here. If you real­ize that the neg­a­tive ener­gy-form you received is just an acci­dent of fate, per­haps a neg­a­tive “emo­tion” that has been passed down for many, many years. And you, well you can change it by choos­ing to take the path not tak­en, and to hold the door open for the one who fol­lows you.

And if you do this, you will change the world, and you will have changed your­self too.

And if we all do this, if we choose to turn the neg­a­tive into the good, to turn the dark­ness into light, to turn fear into faith and hate into love, well…

Well, that is the whole point after all.

Because you are a spark of the Divine.

And the rea­son you are here is because of love.

And you are here to be that love by lov­ing one another.

Today, and in all your many days to come.

May you make the first step be the right step.

May you be the Love that was the First Step.

May you be a one like the One.

And you will shine like the Sun.

Oh yes, that is the way, the only way.

The Way of Light, and of Truth and Love.

Tran­script of Radio Show: 2022 — Plu­to, Rus­sia & Ukraine, and the end of an Age 

(If you wish to lis­ten to the show instead, here is the link on BlogTalk or Apple Pod­casts)

As you all can imag­ine, I have had many clients and lis­ten­ers ask­ing me what “the stars” have to say about the cri­sis in East­ern Europe, specif­i­cal­ly Ukraine and Rus­sia in these past weeks. When we con­sid­er Mun­dane Astrol­o­gy, and when we con­sid­er nation­al and inter­na­tion­al events, we look at the charts of the involved par­ties, espe­cial­ly the charts of the nations and their leaders.

Giv­en the nature of the events in East­ern Europe and giv­en that we are in the last full year of Plu­to being in Capri­corn, (again which has been this over­ar­ch­ing sig­ni­fi­ca­tor for this peri­od from 2008 into 2024 form­ing the “end of an age”), we might well expect to see that Plu­to is sig­nif­i­cant in the natal charts and tran­sits of the respec­tive par­ties to this conflict.

What Date is Significant?
But here is pre­cise­ly where we run into sev­er­al prob­lems, which boils down to how do we deter­mine which astrol­o­gy charts are cor­rect. With the chart of an indi­vid­ual, we can usu­al­ly obtain the date and place of birth, and often­times the time as well. But it is often quite chal­leng­ing to deter­mine the true birth­date for a nation. A great num­ber of actions or events can be seen as being deci­sive, such as a dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence, like in our USA’s Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence on July 4, 1776, which seems to be the most impor­tant chart for under­stand­ing the nature and his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, and has become the date we cel­e­brate “our birth­day” as a nation.

But it may be more impor­tant to con­sid­er when inde­pen­dence is achieved by a final vic­to­ry, or grant­ed by anoth­er, or when a con­sti­tu­tion is adopt­ed for­mal­ly, and many oth­er moments, such as the fall of one type of gov­ern­ment and the rise or adop­tion of anoth­er. For many coun­tries there are mul­ti­ple charts, and the ques­tion remains open which is to be favored by astrologers at var­i­ous times.

So, we astrologers will often look to the lead­er­ship of a coun­try as being the nom­i­nal indi­ca­tor of the well-being or not of that nation. This method has a very ancient lin­eage in that long ago, astrologers would look to the chart of the King or Queen, of the Emper­or or Empress, to ascer­tain the fate of that king­dom or empire; it was said that as went the fate of the lord, so fol­lowed their sub­jects’ fates too.

Dates for Ukraine and Russia
So here we find our­selves seek­ing to under­stand the nature of this strug­gle in Ukraine, and we would need to have usable charts for Rus­sia and Ukraine, and for their respec­tive lead­ers. Now with respect with Ukraine we do appear to have what we need; we seem to have a rea­son­able nation­al chart based on the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence of Ukraine on August 24, 1991, and a true chart for the leader, Volodymyr Zelen­skyy, born Jan­u­ary 25, 1978.

But for Rus­sia, I have to say that it is much more dif­fi­cult to know for cer­tain. That is because there are sev­er­al charts that have been pro­posed for the cur­rent Russ­ian state, one for June 12, 1990, the First People’s Deputies adop­tion of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Russia’s Nation­al Sov­er­eign­ty; to Belarus, Ukraine and the Rus­sia Federation’s Min­sk Dec­la­ra­tion being announced on Decem­ber 8, 1991; to that being rat­i­fied by the Russ­ian Par­lia­ment on Decem­ber 12, 1991; to the rais­ing of the new Russ­ian Flag over the Krem­lin on Decem­ber 25, 1991.

Though there are sev­er­al com­pet­ing claims we per­haps can set­tle this for now by under­stand­ing this fact. The Russ­ian peo­ple them­selves cel­e­brate June 12 as their “Rus­sia Day”, (like we cel­e­brate July 4^th here in the USA), and that seems per­sua­sive enough for me to use this chart as the chart for the cur­rent Russ­ian state.

But we then have the more chal­leng­ing prob­lem of Vladimir Putin’s birth­date and chart. The offi­cial record offered is that he was born on Octo­ber 7, 1952, at 9:30 am in Leningrad, USSR. Many astrologers will use this because it has been avail­able. But there are sev­er­al poten­tial prob­lems with this chart. Russ­ian birth records do not have a time of birth record­ed. Yet the source of this time of birth ref­er­enced an offi­cial record. More­over, Putin was a KGB agent, and they are trained to nev­er reveal per­son­al infor­ma­tion, and to sub­sti­tute mis­in­for­ma­tion. There are oth­er researchers who have pro­vid­ed or derived oth­er times of birth for that day, and even oth­er years of birth such as 1950, and that Putin might have been born in Geor­gia and not Russia.

So, what are we do to with this? It cer­tain­ly seems rea­son­able for us to look at and com­pare the chart for Ukraine and the Russ­ian chart. And we can cer­tain­ly use Zelensky’s chart, but we will have to be more qual­i­fied and cau­tious about Putin’s chart.

Spir­i­tu­al Truth
As I men­tioned, what we will want to exam­ine is the true spir­i­tu­al sto­ry of what is hap­pen­ing, and that will be indi­cat­ed by the influ­ences that are brought to bear by Plu­to in this con­flict. What we must remem­ber is that Plu­to rules the will, it is the spir­i­tu­al agency or Avatar of the ener­gy-form that cre­ates and forms the unique bound­ary that dis­tin­guish­es one being or enti­ty from anoth­er. With­in that defined space, with­in what we should under­stand as the sacred space of spir­it, that atom, or cell or organ­ism, or in our exam­i­na­tion of Rus­sia and Ukraine, a Social Enti­ty, it is with­in that sacred space that the spark of the divine can estab­lish the expe­ri­ence of being a cen­tered and whole being, root­ed in spir­it and held togeth­er as a One.

For humans, our will estab­lish­es our unique space, and the cen­ter of our sense of being one of a kind. I am in my space, you are in your space, and we must nev­er force our­selves upon one anoth­er, we must nev­er vio­late the space of any oth­er, for the spir­i­tu­al law and truth is absolute about this, that “Thou shall not Trespass”.

But of course, we do tres­pass upon one anoth­er, per­son to per­son, group to group and nation to nation, and it is quite frankly why we have what we see pre­vail­ing in our beau­ti­ful home, it is why we have “hell on Earth”. That is the fun­da­men­tal truth for self-aware, self-cre­at­ing beings, that we will make our own hell, and we will con­tin­ue to do so until we learn to nev­er vio­late the space of anoth­er. Why?

Because the oth­er spir­i­tu­al prin­ci­ple hold­ing our­selves and our worlds togeth­er is that every­thing, and every­one is made from the same root ener­gy-form, the Uncon­di­tion­al Love of the Divine. We are made of love, and we are here quite sim­ply, to remem­ber, we are here because of love, and we are here to love one another.

Plu­to rules the fac­ul­ty of har­ness­ing and focus­ing spir­i­tu­al ener­gy, which is fun­da­men­tal­ly uncon­di­tion­al love, and so it gov­erns how we are held togeth­er in a unique vehi­cle, our own sacred space. When we are prop­er­ly cen­tered with­in our­selves, we may will­ing­ly join with oth­ers to cre­ate new and shared, sacred spaces for our alchemic unions and trans­for­ma­tions. Cer­tain­ly, there is some push and pull, the give and take that dri­ve the devel­op­ment of all com­bi­na­tions, but when­ev­er it cross­es the line from mutu­al­ly and rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly shared sac­ri­fice and com­bi­na­tion that is found­ed upon love and becomes instead a tak­ing or rup­ture of sacred space, then it becomes dri­ven by fear and by force and not love, it is then a false union that becomes the evil we know as trespassing.

The pas­sage of Plu­to in Capri­corn is end­ing, and it is prob­a­bly fit­ting that we have some clear­er exam­ples of the many “Crises in Insti­tu­tions” that it has brought for 15 years now. From the fam­i­ly unit to com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, to local, state, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al orders, the final bell is being tolled for the world that has been since the late 1700’s and the one we are now enter­ing in the lat­er 2020’s.

Charts for Rus­sia and Ukraine

So, let us turn our atten­tion to one of the more dra­mat­ic exam­ples of the mis­use of the will, the sub­ju­ga­tion of one nation­al enti­ty by anoth­er, which brings us to the war of Rus­sia against Ukraine. As we might expect, the posi­tion of Plu­to in the chart of Rus­sia and of Ukraine is rather sig­nif­i­cant. For Rus­sia, Plu­to is the ris­ing plan­et for the chart of June 12, 1990, and it is in the sec­ond house. (This is, you may remem­ber, is like the chart for the Unit­ed States). The 2^nd House rules a nation’s resources and wealth, or val­ues of a nation. But in the chart for Rus­sia, Plu­to is exact­ly oppo­site the plan­et Venus, the plan­et of val­ues, in the 8^th house. In an individual’s chart, the les­son of this aspect would be to learn to break the com­pul­sion to impose their val­ues upon anoth­er or con­trol another’s val­ues, so as not to fall into a pat­tern where in the end the form of rela­tion­ships is inevitably reduced to a strug­gle for pow­er and con­trol, which will often lead to some form of violence.

Not only does this set­up cre­ate a pat­tern for Rus­sia, that it might act force­ful­ly to impose their val­ues upon anoth­er, but this ten­den­cy is then mag­ni­fied by the place­ment of Mars in Aries in the 7^th house of rela­tion­ships, (which in a Mundane/National chart is the house of allies or ene­mies), and this place­ment cre­ates the les­son of need­ing to over­come a ten­den­cy to act too aggres­sive­ly in inter­na­tion­al relationships.

For Ukraine, Plu­to is the plan­et that is upper­most and placed in the 10^th house, which rules the chief exec­u­tive or rul­ing class, the nation­al pow­er, and the ideals a nation seeks to cul­ti­vate and attain. It is in the sign of Scor­pio, the sign of Alche­my, indi­cat­ing that Ukraine’s ideals are found­ed upon the aim to forge a trans­for­ma­tion­al union of the dif­fer­ing sec­tors and ele­ments of their peo­ple. Their chal­lenge in doing so is this, how can they find a way to blend their Moon in Aquar­ius, which stress­es the need for the “peo­ple” to be inde­pen­dent and free, and how to bal­ance and inte­grate that with their need to forge a strong union. It is an inter­nal strug­gle, where­as Russia’s Venus to Plu­to oppo­si­tion is a con­trast or con­flict that is expe­ri­enced as some­thing between Rus­sia and oth­er nations.

Chart for Vladimir Putin

When we look at Vladimir Putin’s chart, the place­ment of Plu­to is the same as in Ukraine’s, at the top of the chart in the 10^th house and in the Sign of Leo. Plu­to here indi­cates a very will­ful per­son with an unre­lent­ing desire to suc­ceed. If the use of pow­er is ground­ed and cen­tered cor­rect­ly, it could lead to great suc­cess and trans­for­ma­tion. But Putin has Plu­to squared to Jupiter, the plan­et of Beliefs and Truths, and this could fos­ter and inflame dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies and ambi­tions to impose “his truth” upon oth­ers, espe­cial­ly as Jupiter is in his 7^th house of rela­tion­ships, and Plu­to is the ruler of his Ris­ing Sign of Scor­pio. Scor­pio Ris­ing often indi­cates a per­son who is inclined to approach or see life as a bat­tle, as a zero-sum game. More­over, Putin has Mars, which is the ancient ruler of Scor­pio, in the Sign of Sagit­tar­ius, and with the plan­et of Desires and Actions in the sign of belief and faith, it fos­ters a per­sona with strong­ly held spir­i­tu­al or reli­gious posi­tions. Many with this place­ment take on the role of being a cru­sad­er for a cause, and often this can evoke a very strong sense of patri­o­tism. Tru­ly, Putin could see him­self as a defend­er of his faith and his country.

Tran­sits in Putin’s and Russia’s charts
If we look at the tran­sits in Putin’s chart and in Russia’s, I would like to point out that this, as Putin puts it, “mil­i­tary incur­sion” is just the lat­est phase of Putin’s war to refash­ion a “Greater Rus­sia” that he began in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, and the estab­lish­ment of nom­i­nal con­trol over two east­ern sec­tors of Ukraine. If we look at that inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2014, and this one of Feb­ru­ary 2022, there are some very inter­est­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties. In 2014, Putin had Uranus oppo­site to his Sun, where­as in 2022 he has Uranus oppo­site his Venus (which rules his Sun as a Libra), both of which indi­cate that some­thing dis­rup­tive and forged by the need to be free of lim­i­ta­tions or restric­tions spurred him to act. And in 2014 he had Sat­urn squar­ing his Plu­to and oppo­site his Jupiter, and this time he has Sat­urn oppo­site his Plu­to and squar­ing his Jupiter, and both indi­cate that he has been deter­mined to act through his world­view that he must impose his truth upon oth­ers. But he is also expe­ri­enc­ing in 2022 the tran­sit of Nep­tune incon­junct his Plu­to, and that forces an indi­vid­ual to recon­sid­er the true nature or source of their “pow­er”; that often occurs because they are being forced to rec­og­nize that their pow­er is not what they had or thought they had.

If we look at Russia’s chart, again we see very inter­est­ing links between these two peri­ods and to Putin’s chart as well. In 2014, Rus­sia had Plu­to oppo­site Jupiter, Uranus square Jupiter, and Sat­urn semi­square Uranus. The com­bi­na­tion of Plu­to and Uranus to Jupiter most cer­tain­ly was a demon­stra­tion of the Will to impose one’s beliefs upon anoth­er. And the Sat­urn to Uranus indi­cates the ten­sion of the estab­lished order or real­i­ty of Sat­urn stok­ing the need to exert Russia’s free­dom held by Uranus. And now in 2022, that very same aspect, but wax­ing not wan­ing of Sat­urn semi­square Uranus is back. But this time Uranus in on Venus and oppo­site Plu­to, and we should see an even greater strug­gle between Free­dom, Will and Val­ue now. But this time, Rus­sia is also expe­ri­enc­ing Nep­tune squar­ing the Sun, and now for all of 2022 Nep­tune is squar­ing the 10^th and 4^th house cusps. Much as Putin may be real­iz­ing that his pow­er is not what it was, Rus­sia is also fac­ing what might be best described as an exis­ten­tial cri­sis. Nep­tune squar­ing the 4^th house, will bring about a very con­fus­ing peri­od, where Rus­sians will ques­tion the foun­da­tions for their nation, and that has and will bring about a mount­ing rise in inse­cu­ri­ty. And Nep­tune squar­ing the 10^th house will equal­ly make the Russ­ian peo­ple ques­tion and to have doubts about their path or des­tiny too.

Chart of Volodymyr Zelensky

For Volodymyr Zelen­sky, he like Ukraine is born with his Sun con­junct Venus, indi­cat­ing a love of beau­ty and har­mo­ny. Zelen­sky is an Aquar­ius which is ruled by the plan­et Uranus, while Ukraine has Uranus as its ris­ing plan­et. Each in their own way stand for the pur­pose of life being guid­ed by indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and free­dom. More­over, Ukraine’s Moon is in Aquar­ius and oppo­site to Zelensky’s Moon in Leo, and this Moon is at the very top of Zelensky’s chart, his house of des­tiny. The Moon in a nation’s chart lit­er­al­ly rules “the peo­ple”, and this shows the very real embod­i­ment for the Ukrain­ian peo­ple he is cur­rent­ly hold­ing as his purpose.

Tran­sits in Zelensky’s and Ukraine’s charts
The tran­sits in Ukraine’s and Zelensky’s charts con­firm their shared sense of what is hap­pen­ing now. For Ukraine in 2014, Uranus was squar­ing its ris­ing plan­et Uranus, indi­cat­ing a cri­sis in free­dom. Sat­urn was squar­ing the Moon as well, show­ing the great pain the peo­ple of Ukraine suf­fered then. For Zelen­sky, Uranus was going over his Mer­cury, which would lead to a year where he was shocked and upset. Mean­while, just like Ukraine, Sat­urn was on his Moon as well, so he was per­son­al­ly suf­fer­ing emo­tion­al­ly. In 2022, Uranus has entered the 4^th house of foun­da­tions and secu­ri­ty for Ukraine, and now oppos­es its Plu­to or will; cer­tain­ly, a great test of will, a test of bound­aries is here for Ukraine. And Sat­urn is direct­ly on the Moon this time, bring­ing about even greater suf­fer­ing than 2014. For Zelen­sky, Uranus is oppo­site his Uranus, and for any­one this is one of the chief indi­ca­tors that one has reached the midlife, a turn­ing point that will present itself as a cri­sis of authen­tic­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. And, like Ukraine, Sat­urn is now oppo­site to Zelensky’s Moon indi­cat­ing a very chal­leng­ing time where one can feel cut-off from the sup­port one needs.

What will happen?
Most of you, and I too, would like to be able to under­stand what will hap­pen, to have the plan­ets pre­dict for us what the future holds. But as I have stressed time after time, the plan­ets do not “make” things hap­pen, they are the prin­ci­pal car­ri­ers of mean­ing, and that these mean­ings wax and wane as the plan­ets cycle with one anoth­er, with each plan­et and plan­e­tary com­bi­na­tion cre­at­ing waves of ener­gy-forms that cre­ate the gen­er­al con­di­tions of a par­tic­u­lar period.

But what real or his­tor­i­cal effect those ener­gy-forms have, well when it comes to us humans it real­ly depends upon us, upon our indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive devel­op­ment of con­scious­ness, and the degree to which we have risen above a more lim­it­ed and fear­ful con­scious­ness and turned to the light that is the truth of Uncon­di­tion­al Love.

We can cer­tain­ly know this; things are not turn­ing out as Putin had imag­ined. In 2014, he basi­cal­ly walked into Crimea and hard­ly a shot was fired. Now he is engaged in a true bat­tle, and not with just Ukraini­ans but with many nations in the world. I am very con­cerned that hav­ing com­mit­ted to this attack on, as he would put, his “fel­low Rus­sians” he now finds him­self in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion, and that there is a very real dan­ger to us all. The tran­sits in his chart that are grow­ing in influ­ence this year show him to be under real and grow­ing threats. And yes, it is equal­ly cer­tain that Zelensky’s life is in per­il now as well, as he has emphat­i­cal­ly declared to the world.

What we all need, in what­ev­er we can indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, is to remem­ber to hold our­selves to the path of Truth and Love and not give into fear. We need to sup­port one anoth­er, and show our sup­port for those in per­il, and try to hold to and fos­ter a qual­i­ty or state of being that restores peace in the world.

May the Light of Truth, Love and Under­stand­ing be with you all.