Tonight’s full moon in Cancer is perigee again (as it was last month). This makes the moon appear gigantic at the horizon and also connotes big emotions, big turmoils and big revelations and resolutions.

In a bit of cosmic irony, Saturn turned retrograde exactly on New Year’s day, dampening the sense of enthusiasm we usually associate with the start of a new year. This reinforces the unavoidable fact that we’re still entrenched in a cathartic re-arrangment of our culture, politics and economy. We need a mystic’s perspective to navigate our current predicament — meaning a deep faith that despite the collapse of existing structures, the loss and turmoil, a Phoenix will rise from the ashes. And, wow — ask and you shall receive:

The arrangement of planets during tonight’s full moon create what is termed a ‘mystic rectangle’, involving the Sun in Capricorn with Saturn in Virgo, Uranus in Pisces, and the Moon in Cancer — all water and earth signs. A mystic rectangle features two oppositions, two trines and two sextiles. That combination of aspects is enough to unravel our best efforts to control or become too literal-minded, and perhaps this is why Dane Rudhyar interpreted this pattern as being one of “practical mysticism.” We’re forced into a non-secular orientation that takes us out of our box, our modus operandi. Surprisingly, we discover that we can function just fine from this new place. We underestimated our capacities. We need this particular type of soul training, this kind of reminder right now, to take on the task of the year ahead. Read more

Established astrologers — those that make some sort of living from the subject — are decidedly divided when it comes to the issue of Sun-sign columns. To some, Sun-sign astrology is a disgrace to the profundity and subtleties of the art. While others, myself included, see horoscope columns as good lure. If it weren’t for those tiny Dell Sun Sign booklets that I hoarded as a kid, I’d never have dedicated myself so determinedly to deeper study.

To pugnacious scientists like Richard Dawkins‘ dismay, it’s a dazzling testament to astrology’s oracular power that nearly every periodical in the world carries a horoscope section. Most of the Sun-sign columns read like fortune cookie banalities — and this might be the secret to their appeal (their association with eating dessert). But occasionally, amidst the riffraff and dross, a column appears that is both astrologically erudite and pop-culturally savvy — written in a manner that speaks to the urban poet (and astrology lover) within each of us.

Rockie Gardiner‘s astrology column for the L.A. Weekly, The Rockie Horoscope was just such a creation. Read more

Painting: René Magritte. The Lovers. 1928.

There’s one word to summarize the heaven’s predominate theme right now: Saturnine. The dictionary defines Saturnine as “sardonic or sullen.” We’re undoubtably feeling, and perhaps trying to avoid, this demand for sobriety right now. How could we not?

We’ve made it past a momentous election, and probably felt a tinge of postpartum depression after Obama‘s victory in November. And now the December holidays are winding to a close. So our last bit of respite, that tradition of putting things on ‘hold’ towards the close of a year, is about to fold up shop. And where are we positioned? Yesterday’s new moon in Saturn-ruled Capricorn was joined by Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Pluto also in the sign of the Sea-Goat. Venus and Neptune are in Aquarius (which Saturn co-rules) and this planetary pairing echoes the same Saturnian theme. There’s no where to turn or run. Simply put: Heaviness abounds. Read more

Buddhism anticipated the reluctant conclusions of modern psychology: guilt and anxiety are not adventitious but intrinsic to the ego. According to my interpretation of Buddhism, our dissatisfaction with life derives from a depression even more immediate than death-terror: the suspicion that “I” am not real.

The sense-of-self is not self-existing but a mental construction which experiences its own groundlessnes as a lack. This sense-of-lack is consistent with what psychotherapy has discovered about ontological guilt and basic anxiety. We usually cope with this lack by objectifying it in various ways and try to resolve it through projects which cannot succeed because they do not address the fundamental issue.

So our most problematic dualism is not life fearing death but a fragile sense-of-self dreading its own groundlessness. By accepting and yielding to that groundlessness, I can discover that I have always been grounded, not as a self-contained being but as one manifestation of a web of relationships which encompass everything. This solves the problem of desire by transforming it. As long as we are driven by lack, every desire becomes a sticky attachment that tries to fill up a bottomless pit. Without lack, the serenity of our no-thing-ness, i.e., the absence of any fixed nature, grants the freedom to become anything.

— David Loy Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 92 Vol. 24