Aries New Moon, April 5, 2008

 

Aries New Moon, April 5, 2008

The Aries New Moon is a second chance to start Spring. So Happy Spring.

I hope Spring is awakening in whatever part of the world you live in. Out here in Vegas the springtime green leaves are back on the trees and one of my neighbors even has a lilac bush in bloom! (For those of you who know me, I had to restrain myself from going there at night and picking some. Lilacs!) While back in New England, I hear it’s still cold and rainy on this April Fool’s Day. That’s what the cosmic energy feels like – some moments it feels like new life is just around the corner, and at other times, it feels like we still have to hunker down and wait out the storms.

Two things happened to me in the past two days that exemplify this. Yesterday at the grocery store, I walked by an older man (80’s) who was angrily telling a younger man (the store manager) to not push him – and the manager didn’t seem to care. Since I didn’t hear the whole story, I don’t know what really happened, but we have to treat our elders with some kind of respect, don’t you think? And yet the anger is all around – old issues that we need to let go of. Even my older friends at ping pong were getting annoyed at each other. Everyone seems on edge, like it’s a cold and rainy day without an umbrella in sight.

The other thing that happened was that on one of my walks, I go by horse farms, and just about a month ago one of the mares gave birth. I’ve been watching the cutest little filly slowly get her legs as she follows Momma around. She’s one of the most beautiful beings I’ve ever seen. Today on my walk, she came over to me at the fence and touched my hand! She felt safe enough to do that. She let me touch her nose before running off to play. I felt blessed.

One energy – different manifestations. There’s lots of anger around, lots of thwarted desires, lots of fear about security and then there’s also a sense of being in tune with the world and connecting with the new life. The choice of how we experience this energy is really ours. We can get caught up in what Tolle calls ‘the pain body’ and fall into unconsciousness and negativity or we can put our trust in the fact that Spirit is calling us to a new life - to be present in the NOW. Aries energy is sort of like that – the NOW.

Blame it on Mars! He is the ruler of this Aries New Moon. And while you’re at it, throw some blame toward Pluto as well. (Only joking! Planet DO NOT control us. They provide energy which influences life.) This duo, said to represent the two ends of the spectrum of desire – Mars symbolizes our personal desires while Pluto represents the urge to evolve – have been dancing with each other since last fall when Mars went retrograde at 12º Cancer. Making for some hard and frustrating times, as people are brought face to face with what really matters to them. Now Mars will return to 12º Cancer on April 4th, completing its retrograde mission – to figure out what we really want and need. Every two years Mars goes retrograde – it looks like it travels backward from Earth’s point of view – and all that assertive, passionate, desirous energy turns within us to help us figure out what it is that we desire most - after we let go of old desires that have outlived their day. In Cancer, part of the story has to do with feelings – letting go of old childhood wounds, old resentments, old loves, old needs – and now asking what and by whom do we need to feel nurtured today? It’s about family and our deepest selves. It’s about getting outside our “ego” as Eckart Tolle would define Ego and being present for the important ‘others’ in our lives. Or as Dane Rudhyar in The Pulse of Life puts it, “Cancer is man in the God-impregnated state; a Holy Place in which God has descended.”

Mars in Cancer can teach us the cosmic lesson of finding our emotional security WITHIN. While friends and family are the ones who matter most to us, they can never give us the security we inherently know can only be found in Spirit – the Spirit within each of us. When you think about the sign of Cancer, it starts on the Summer Solstice – a moment of cosmic silence, when the Sun Stands Still. The God-force within can only be heard in that silence. So Mars in Cancer can pick up on that energy and take it out into the world, through us. How will we use him? To grapple with the life we have or to bring war upon those we project our fears onto.

At the new moon, Mars will conjoin America’s natal Sun at 13º19’ Cancer. Will America manifest a new vision of the Warrior Archetype that Mars symbolizes, and use the skills of diplomacy, strategy and innovation to deal with the war in the Middle East? Or will we revert to the old dominating warrior stereotype that embraces “shock & awe” tactics against helpless citizens of another country that is not bowing to our power.