- Image: “There To Catch Should I Fall” by Gary Rosenberg
The energy of the cosmos reaches us in waves. It ebbs and flows like the tide, high one moment, low the next, coming in, flowing out, frighteningly stormy then beautifully calm. The same forces which propel the planets in their orbits radiate around us shifting and reordering at every level. At times these energies propel us forward into the new, presenting fresh perspectives and new experiences. At others they arrive as echoes, reawakening the past to bring it to completion. Last month was characterised by the former, this month by the latter. Throughout March the vestiges of the past arise once more for our attention. This is a month of tying up loose ends, the completion of lengthy processes and the review of progress thus far. This is how the universe works. We are initiated into the new even as we then face once more the old. This is the cosmic dance which shapes our lives and the life of this beautiful planet we call home. It is Sacred Source living through and all around us honouring its own cycles of birth and death, creation and destruction, light and dark, the known and the unknowable. We are born of these cycles and throughout this year our apprenticeship in how to live them fully and without restraint continues unabated.
The first two and a half weeks of March provide opportunities to reflect upon our personal past, not only to appreciate how far we have travelled in a relatively short period of time, but to also acknowledge those places in our minds and hearts still in need of healing, where we continue clinging to beliefs which limit us, behaviours which place obstacles on our path and feelings which wound us over and over. The human psyche is infinitely complex and healing takes time as we work through layer upon layer of mental, emotional and psychic energy calcified into form which needs to be returned to its fluid state in order to move through and depart our bodies, minds and hearts. We can visualise this energy as stone and gradually see it dissolve into soft sand, or as cold, hard ice melting into water or thick clay breaking down into soft soil in which new life can grow. Throughout the coming month contemplation of such images will assist with the process as we encounter some of the more intransigent areas of our psyche and face the consequences of their (and our) rigidity.
During the first week of March, Mercury takes a final look back to mid January when it turned retrograde, before heading forward into fresh terrain. If we have still to address issues from the beginning of this year, this week we can put them to rest once and for all. On more long-standing matters we are likely to pursue intellectual rather than emotional engagement at this point. We may strive for understanding as we encounter old patterns, experiences and feelings we thought were long gone. We want to know ‘why?!’ and expect a logical answer. Nothing else will suffice. Except there are no logical answers to be had! We are not in the realm of ordered meaning and consistent consequence. Something more primal is happening here: a reanimation of old energy patterns in need of deeper healing. They come with their own wisdom which may defy understanding. What we encounter this month may well blow any remaining theories and beliefs about ourselves out of the window, proving every last one of them false. How willing we are to open the window wider and let them go is yet to be seen, but if we haven’t fully opened the windows of the psyche for a while, the first few days of March are a good time to check and oil the hinges!
5th/6th March sees a Full Moon in Virgo as Venus crosses the degree of the lunar eclipse of 8th October 2014. She is the first of three planets to do so this month, reawakening the past here in the radiant present. Just how radiant our current present is will be largely dictated by what we have done to make it so since then. We had a choice at that eclipse: to use it as a catalyst for the emergence of our authentic self, or see it as an inconvenience, a struggle, and batten down the hatches as soon as possible to maintain the status quo. As the Moon is Full and Venus reawakens the past for our perusal we have an opportunity to review in detail the steps taken from there to here – choices made and unmade, twists and turns of commitment and desire, deceptions and revelations – each defining the quality of our next step and the destination at which we arrive, ready for the next phase of the journey.
Such reflection continues as Mars crosses the same eclipse degree on 11th March and Uranus on 14th/15th. We may be surprised by what these planets bring in the way of insight, for the past is not reanimated simply to taunt us but to wake us up to its power over our present and future. What was obscured by a thick fog of emotions may suddenly become clear and impulses we know we should have acknowledged then become imperatives to be acted upon without delay. This is a final chance to utilise the energy of the October eclipse before it fades to make way for the next eclipse, a solar one on 19th/20th March.
Before this, however, there is work to be done! Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto use the first eighteen days of this month to encourage the pursuit of freedom, but the encouragement comes with a warning: true freedom honours the integrity of the whole, it doesn’t impose the rights of one over those of another. We cannot simply be free to do whatever we want, when we want. The cry of freedom must be tempered with recognition of the responsibility freedom brings and the necessity of turning an open heart and questioning mind to our pursuit of liberation. ‘Liberation of what?’, we must ask. ‘And why?’. For to liberate ego to run amok under the guise of self-expression is akin to releasing a rabid animal in the name of freedom. What the animal needs is compassionate containment and those around protection from its ferocity. That way all can be safe. Liberation is a wonderful notion for sure, but we must be mentally, emotionally and spiritually mature enough to embrace the responsibility with which it comes before we expect it as a right.
The heavens highlight this maturity in the first half of March, offering opportunities to observe our desire for freedom against the backdrop of the reawakened past which may reveal precisely why liberation is as yet out of our grasp. We must tie up loose ends and heal those fragmented parts of ourselves which would use freedom to inflate the ego not shape it into a considered and effective force for good. The liberation we seek comes at the end of a process not as its first move. We may have to endure hardship and struggle along the way, not because we must earn a reward, but because freedom demands commitment to the challenges it presents and we must rise to those challenges in order to free ourselves. No one and nothing, no energy shift, no length of time, no magic can propel us from bound to free if we’re not prepared to know ourselves as we truly are, warts and all, when we get there.
14th March sees Saturn station retrograde in Sagittarius, heading back towards Scorpio for its final visit. We have an ally here. This stalwart planet who charges us with the power to endure and the ability to reap mature wisdom from life’s challenges supports us now to reflect upon the last eight months, distilling past experience into present wisdom. This process alone takes ‘backbone’, for we may resist the obvious messages in favour of something more in keeping with what we would like to believe. Saturn, however, does not deal with cosmetic notions but deep wisdom and will pull no punches in revealing to us where we are chasing ripples on the glistening surface instead of diving into the murky depths of truth.
16th/17th March sees Uranus and Pluto form their final exact square since they began their alliance in 2012. This culmination of a process of destruction and rebirth for so many people, still on-going for countless more, distils the wisdom of this lengthy and challenging process of change. Here we are offered clarity if we choose to accept it; the opportunity to see through fresh new eyes, like those of a child who looks out upon life without the jaded presumptive attitude of more advanced years. This final square reveals what it has all been about, and it may well not be what we thought! In the flash of insight it brings, yet more edifices to a tired self and outmoded life no longer needed are brought crashing to the ground. Let them fall, no matter the noise or the dust cloud that rises from the wreckage. The tower struck down is only that of the calcified ego freed to live in a new way once demolished by the Uranus/Pluto wrecking ball. In this final act of power they bid each other their farewells and prepare to move onward in their separate and distinct ways.
In a show of cosmic mercy, Neptune and the North Node form an alliance on 18th March which continues until the beginning of June. Here is the salve for our demolition wounds if we care to receive its healing touch. Neptune, the unbounded and compassionate heart reveals the path to wholeness and a future which promises to be something other than repetition of a painful past. No matter what Uranus and Pluto have demanded from us in recent years, Neptune reaches out now to guide us back home to wholeness, reminding us that resistance to life is resistance to our very selves, for we and life are one and the same. It does not happen to us, but through us. We are it, and life itself is the very air that we breathe. Neptune dissolves all that separates, which includes any notion that we are anything other than complete simply as we are. It bids us rest in the safety of knowing that no matter how life manifests we are whole at our core and a living, vibrant part of All That Is, just as All That Is dwells complete within us. The more deeply we can embrace this message the better, for the perception that we are separate from the divine, subject to its whims and moods, is an outmoded belief in need of release now. The in-coming Aquarian Age needs us clear on this, for its work cannot be done without the clarity of our true nature shining through.
20th March brings a Solar Eclipse in the final degree of the zodiac, the 30th degree of Pisces. Whenever we see this degree activated we are on notice of an ending. When a Solar Eclipse falls here the ending burns bridges and there is no going back. This is completion max! For some of us this eclipse and its following weeks may bring the realisation that opportunities once available but not taken are now lost to us. The cosmos cannot wait forever and there are times when it closes doors for good that we have refused to open wide enough to walk through. Whilst this realisation may come with sadness and regret, the unequivocal completion of this cycle of possibility clears the way for the beginning of a new one in due course. Our task is to learn from the past, to fully embrace our feelings in the present and to move forward with our eyes open wider to life’s messages which always show us the way and the when of our blossoming. It is increasingly vital that we learn to listen deeply to the wisdom inherent in the very fabric of each moment. That we more and more recognise we are not here to create but to be created, and our role is to align ourselves with the creation we are becoming in order to live it fully, with integrity and boundless joy born not of desires satisfied but of a greater purpose fulfilled through us. Greater than we could ever imagine or manifest when left to our own devices.
The final ten days of the month see us digesting what has been an enlightening three weeks. The past reawakened and the unequivocal completion of certain cycles can be a recipe for some disquiet whilst we process their impact. Patience is needed to allow our hearts and minds to settle and adjust to the ‘new normal’. But remember, Neptune and the North Node are on our side, revealing wisdom born of compassion for self and others, and an ever deepening opportunity to recognise the still but mighty presence which lives at our core. It is this presence to which we must turn and listen ever more deeply from hereon in. It contains all that we need to know.
Mercury brings March to an end by crossing the solar eclipse degree from 20th, further highlighting the availability of information if we pay attention in the right way. This is not about thinking our way through things, planning and scheming to make things right, but turning our attention inward to listen to the heart which speaks not in words but feelings and sensations, be it a subtle knowing or a forceful awareness of what is needed in the moment. This wisdom speaks clearly now for those with ears to hear and as March comes to an end, whatever we have lost begins to reshape itself into something altogether new. Its form will take a while to be revealed and patience is called for in the meantime, but no matter how convincingly our minds may sometimes tell us all is lost, our hearts reply that this could never be the case, for all things rest in the Universal Heart which abandons nothing and no one.