No Where Warm
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars…
Have Angels replaced Demons in the New Age Culture? Has positive thinking, good news, Light and Love created an intellectual bulwark against the darkness that stains the bedrock of our human civilization? When the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with the god of war what collective energy will steer the stars? Is darkness the shadowy twin of light, as the populist phalanx advances a new political ideology and tyrants hunt scapegoats?
Perhaps we all have a dark double, a shadowy doppelganger who enters our lives in the shape
of a person, a political system, a way of life that we either idolize or loathe. Our shadow dances on our bedroom walls and lurks behind the locked doors of seemingly ordinary lives. And confronting the darkness, daring to break the silence, may be life threatening, quite literally, when we dare to speak out against an authoritarian regime or in an abusive relationship. Writer Leslie Morgan Steiner was in “crazy love” —with a man who routinely abused her until she had the courage to break the silence, confront those parts of herself that lay in the shadow.
Jung believed that there is an absolute Shadow. An unspeakable, unthinkable, repulsive evil in the world, a place where there’s no where warm. Perhaps this absolute Shadow is a repository for all our the pain-filled thoughts and intentions. Perhaps even the most distorted twisted human being is not wholly evil. Perhaps Demons are simply Angels with broken wings.
The fly-covered gore of deviance and cruelty strips away our innocence, pares down our naivety. If we loiter in the shadowy darkness too long we become calloused and cynical, prophets of doom. If we’re afraid of the dark, live only in sunny brightness, we may, as author Caroline Myss suggests, “ live in a climate of a spirituality of denial that an independent force of evil is real. At the same time, we are dealing with moral, physical, political, and financial crises that destroy lives.”
The popular world view remains resolutely dualistic. And yet the notion that there are infinite states of being, “many worlds” according to physicist, Hugh Everett, has germinated and sprouted into the the mystic crystal revelation and the mind’s true liberation: we can and do create our own reality; that our human brains are not merely thinking machines but powerful receivers of consciousness from the global mind.
The Full Moon at 22 Gemini on December 14th illuminates a silvery patina of light and dark. She ignites a hot spot degree that will gather more energy as we approach Christmas. This Moon trines Jupiter and opposes the Sun/Saturn conjunction which forms on December 9th, providing a “reality check”, shining light, giving us clarity, feedback, on the shadowy paradoxes of our lives and perhaps a greater awareness of the Morphic Field that pulsates in harmony with our thoughts and prayers.
In traditional astrology, based on the old paradigm of good, evil and patriarchy, Saturn is a “malefic” planet— he represents fear, and those mundane, boring aspects of our lives like hard work, thrift, caution, and self-control. As Saturn transits our birth chart, he points a stern celestial finger at those aspects of our lives that need focus and serious attention—the health of our body and mind, our relationship with money, illness and the inevitable threshold of death, the authenticity of our relationships, the unconscious habits and patterns that have been gathering dust in the basement of our psyche. Saturn requires his dues of patience, serious hard work, tenacity, and maturity—qualities we must muster when relationships flounder, when civilizations break down and must be rebuilt from ashes and rubble. 
Saturn is “the Beast” whose doppelganger is “the Handsome Prince.” Without the dappled darkness and the light, this potent symbol flat-lines into a two-dimensional portrayal of good and evil. Saturn is the Lord of Karma, the Dweller at the Threshold. Saturn holds the keys to the gate of self-awareness when we are brave enough to embrace the Beast and see that he’s a magnificent Fallen Angel.
Venus changes signs on December 7th. She dresses up in Aquarian clothing: unique, candid, communicative, and idealistic, a shift in the celestial symphony this month. She trines Jupiter on Christmas day at the degree of the Jupiter-Uranus opposition so expect things to heat up unpredictably as we approach Christmas.
No exact moment exists in linear time to mark the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Carl Calleman suggests the 9th Wave was activated in 2011, bringing with it an accelerated thrust for a more egalitarian world, a rising of unity consciousness, which has an idealistic Aquarian quality. But the Age of Aquarius will be an age of sentient robotics, wars detonated by the click of a mouse, ideological conflict, and the same old dualistic thinking of winners and losers, black and white, good and bad… unless we choose differently. There is nothing personal or individual about Aquarius. And the Jupiter/Mars alignment in the song “Aquarius” certainly does not symbolise harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding… though the counter culture contained a vision of the Handsome Prince who wore flowers in his hair.
At this time of global cultural conversion, may we choose to re-create ourselves daily. Embrace the unfathomable darkness, meet the Beast, and
let the sunshine in.
Aquarius— 5th Dimension
Featured Image Ana Beatriz Riberio
Military image, United Colors of Benetton
Kate Havnevik—Nowhere Warm
Betrayal punctures our child-like illusions of Love, expels us from the fusion-state with the archetypal Parent, shatters the projections that cloud our vision of our partner. Infidelity pins our butterfly-winged innocence to a deep awareness of human limitation and our own un-lived psychic life. In the torrent of emotions swirls guilt, anger and despair. Betrayal leaves no room for titillation, morality or judgement. Betrayal is about passion, hot sex, erotic energy, life and death. Betrayal is about broken hearts.
In the nuclear aftermath of an affair, therapists may guide couples through various stages of atonement, stripping the soul of sex of its nuances. As sex therapist, Esther Perel, points out, we speak of “victims and perpetrators; injured parties and infidels; confession, repentance and redemption…” Dr Shirley Glass, “Godmother of infidelity research”, writes in her book, 
In Venus’s inviting arms, Mars surrenders his brutish crudeness, puts aside his weapons of war to envelop her sensuality with a solid sense of power and strength. So think of Venus dressed in Gemini clothing – communicative perhaps, playfully flirtatious, curious in the face Mars’s attractive thrust of strength and the assertiveness he now displays in fiery Sagittarius… And yet he is moving away from his lover, moving backwards into an area of the zodiac, where we must all at some time or another confront issues of our deepest longings, our deepest repressions and frozen fears. In Scorpio we confront our shadow. With Mars in this area of the zodiac, we may feel brave enough to take action, to lean in, to draw our vitality from the deep well of sexual energy, bringing our creative offspring to life in the form of new ideas that come to the surface, new initiatives that are there but may not be quite ready to be birthed until Mars moves direct again on June 30th.
Betrayal is the means through which our fantasies are punctured and recognised. Venus-Saturn and Venus-Chiron – and in Beyoncé’s birth chart a Venus-Pluto conjunction – do not cause a person to be drawn into triangles, but they describe a deep and innate awareness of human limitation. In childhood a distant or unavailable parent will then unconsciously be attributed to our own unloveability because a rival will take them away. And yet it is the depths of our pain that we discover hidden treasure in the dark silence of renewal. An affair becomes the crucible where we burn away stagnation and destroy our false selves. Our recovery and healing thrust us back into a more authentic life.