Samhain – a day of remembrance

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

Samhain (an ancient Gaelic word pronounced Sow’-en) is the ancient Celtic holiday that has come down to us as Hallowe’en (derivation of “All Hallows Eve”). Although it is associated today with witchcraft and doings of the devil, in pre-Christian times Samhain was simply the time when the veils between the worlds were at their thinnest. It was a time of reverence for the process of death and the mysteries of life. The astrological Samhain actually occurs at the midpoint of Scorpio which is the “cross quarter” between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice and falls on November 8th this year rather than October 31st.

The women that some now call “witches” were the wise women – the ones who understood the mysteries of the stars, the ones with an affinity to the healing powers of plants…the ones who helped to heal the sick and comfort the wounded. The ones whose power came directly from nature and bypassed the power structures of the Church and were therefore dangerous.

“History is written by the winners,” and therefore most of us were never told these tales of the brave and wise women and men that were healers of souls and teachers of the spirit. Instead, we were fed stories of evil witches and devil-worshipping pagans that were meant to frighten the masses into toeing the line of the political and religious establishment.

Samhain is a time to remember the dead, and I can’t think of a better way to remember our ancestors on the path of spiritual growth and wisdom than to watch the Burning Times Documentary. This is a beautiful film that depicts the struggle of women and men to survive the long period of the Inquisition that lasted several hundred years, and is an inspiration to continue to fight for the right to worship and honor the divine in all of Its many forms. If you can’t view the flash movie, visit the direct link here.

The world has still not ended, but the renewal is at hand

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

Despite lots of hysteria in some circles over Comet Elenin as a harbinger of doom, and more predictions by evangelical preacher Harold Camping that the world would erupt in flames on October 21st – we are still here. Comet Elenin broke down into small pieces as it zipped by Earth, and with the disintegration of the comet the theory that Elenin was actually Niburu, the lost planet disintegrated as well. And Mr. Camping’s prediction that the apocalypse would occur yesterday appears to have been incorrect – for the third time. Now that is persistence!!

We seem to be in the midst of more “end of the world” hysteria than at any time since the Millenium. Perhaps this is because as word spreads of the end of the Mayan calendar on the Winter Solstice 2012 it becomes tempting to frame the concept of “the end of the world” in our own reality. For Christians perhaps it’s the Rapture; for conspiracy theorists it is the return of our brethren from space. For followers of New Age spirituality it’s Ascension into other dimensions.

There’s no doubt that there is an acceleration of energy as we hurtle more completely into the Age of Aquarius. The shift of Uranus, ruling electromagnetic energy, into Aries which is so dynamic and initiatory has intensified the experience of human life. It’s impossible to deny that Something Important is happening on the planet, but the experience is larger than anything we can hold in our human brains. But still we try.

I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that the world will end on the Winter Solstice next year. But I do believe that life as we know it, and civilization as we have understood it, is undergoing a major transformation. For many people, having lost their jobs and their homes, the world as they know it has already ended. And now something new must take its place.

The next three years are an important time for humans on planet Earth under the influence of the square formation of Uranus and Pluto, just as the 1960s were during the conjunction of those two transformational forces. Not one of us will be left unchanged. But is that the end of the world? For some perhaps – but it is also a new beginning.

Pluto in Capricorn: Passing through the gate of wisdom

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

My friend Gary shared this article by Michael Meade and it’s so applicable to the current passage of Pluto through Capricorn. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, also known as the Greek Kronos, also known as “Father Time.” Saturn and Capricorn remind us that our life is short and that we must be smart about how we spend the time that is allotted to us.

In traditional cultures, the elders are expected to remember the essential things that everyone else keeps forgetting. After “growing up,” a person is supposed to grow down and become rooted deeper in the ground of being, like an old tree that draws from ever deeper resources. In traditional cultures, the elders were considered to be a valuable resource without whose guidance the whole society could lose its way.

Yet in modern life, instead of people growing “older and wiser,” people can simply grow older and older. People can live longer and longer without becoming any wiser for it. When there is no genuine growth in growing older, aging can become all about loss. The longer people live the more of life they seem to lose. Instead of developing wise and seasoned “elders” who can help others find meaningful ways to live, modern societies are in danger of producing “olders” who blindly seek ways to hold onto life at any cost.

This can be seen as the problem of the olders vs. the elders. Traditionally, elders carry a greater vision of life because they develop insight into their own lives. The elders are those who found threads of purpose and meaning amidst the illusions and delusions of life. Amidst the inevitable troubles of life, the bubble of the “closed ego” bursts and a deeper, wiser self is born. Such psychological maturity involves a shift from a self-centered life to one of genuine meaning and of greater service to others.

Yet, in a culture where older folks are in the majority and people tend to live longer and longer, there seems to be an increase of fear as well as a loss of wisdom about life and about death. There seems to be a lack of knowing elders who can recall essential things in midst of the great crises troubling both nature and culture. What is the point of living longer if it doesn’t mean becoming wiser and being more able to serve something beyond one’s little-self?

This is what Pluto in Capricorn is teaching us, and since it follows the passage of Pluto through Sagittarius, in which entertainment and “bigger is better” ruled the days, there is a fair amount of contraction that needs to be done now in order to make that passage between “little-self” and the deeper wisdom of the elder.

This process is probably particularly difficult for the Pluto in Leo generation, my own generation (1939-1958) for whom developing the ego and the little-self has become an art form. But we are the generation that is looking now towards the abyss of old age and wondering how we will be able to find our way. Meade says:

An old idea suggests that the only ones more idealistic than young people are the elders. It’s not that the elders naively believe that the great ideals of humanity, peace and justice, healing and compassion, are simply attainable. Rather, the idea is that without a commitment to such ideals a culture simply collapses into political infighting and economic warfare. The gridlock in the nation’s capitol may be an increasing national shame, but the grid lock on American imagination may be a greater tragedy in the making.

While the political parties fight over who might be the “adult in the room,” there is a desperate need for elders in communities throughout the country. Whereas the ’60s were characterized by change brought on by a youth revolution, the current morass may only be changed by an elder awakening. The revolution waiting to happen in this country may involve an awakening to the necessity of the role that elders can play in the great crises facing both culture and nature.

We are these elders we’ve been waiting for. It’s time to step up.

Androgyny and the Aquarian Age

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

I have always found it interesting that the worldly definition of “Uranian” according to Wikipedia is

Uranian is a nineteenth century term that referred to a person of a third sex — originally, someone with “a female psyche in a male body” who is sexually attracted to men, and later extended to cover homosexual gender variant females, and a number of other sexual types.

Delving a little deeper, I find that the origin of this association with the word Uranian with the “third sex” originated with a German scholar named Karl Heinrich Ulrich who was what we could today call transgender, meaning he identified as a woman in a man’s body. The term Uranian was picked up by Victorian writers such as Oscar Wilde, who wrote: “”To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble – more noble than other forms.” (Ulrich’s chart shows Venus opposite Uranus, and Uranus squares the Moon in Wilde’s chart.)

As we transition into the Aquarian age, it’s not surprising that gender roles are blurring and homosexuality is becoming more openly accepted. Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, the planet that inspires us to live a life that is authentically true to ourselves as possible. Uranus governs radical behavior and rebellion against the status quo, and this includes greater acceptance of lifestyles that don’t fit into the rigid social norms that fall under Saturn’s domain. With Pluto, lord of destruction and regeneration, traveling through Capricorn, Saturn’s sign, these rigid social structures (Capricorn) are being pummeled and demolished.

As an astrologer I use the term “Uranian” to describe any person or trait that reflects this desire to move past old ways of thinking and manifest an authenticity in one’s thoughts and behavior patterns and this goes far beyond gender issues. But a strong Uranus in a birthchart does tend to indicate a person whose gender identification is less than rigid although this doesn’t always manifest as homosexuality.

Androgyny is nothing new in the rock world (David Bowie, Marilyn Manson), but a new singer has taken gender neutrality to a new level. Justin Vivian Bond (Moon square Uranus) is not only trangendered, but uses the neutral pronoun of “v” to describe “vself” and says: ”I like my penis, and I am keeping it, but I am creating a transbody — a physical record on my body and a medical record that I am a transgendered person.”

Our local alternative paper reviewed a recent performance by Justin Vivian Bond, saying:

The gender-ambiguous voice is unrepentant, a queer mixture of the sexes, “monstrous.” Monster comes from the Latin monstrum, meaning an aberration within the natural order. In other words, the so-called monster defies categories. Not surprisingly, what we call monsters are often only reflections of our most profound terrors and desires. Less obviously, monsters reveal the fact that we each contain something of the other; elements of “you” lurk within “me.”

And with the hermaphroditic, we are reminded that even in our differences, we all possess male and female attributes. Writing about Michael Jackson’s violation of the rules governing racial and gender identity, James Baldwin offered that perhaps what is truly monstrous is not ambiguity but the fight against androgyny in an effort to reinforce conventional gender roles. What is terrible is a restrictive gender regime; a terrorist is someone who polices the borders of gender.

This is just the beginning, and the more radical societal changes become the stronger the backlash of conservatives who fear this kind of extreme alteration to their world view. This is part of what we will be seeing over the next four years as Uranus squares Pluto and takes us deeper into the Aquarian Age.

Uranus turns retrograde today!

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

Uranus turns retrograde I had been meaning to write about Uranus turning retrograde and then I read Beth Owl’s Daughter’s blog post from a couple of days ago:

I have been somewhat surprised to find that I am on becalmed waters.

Not because of a lack of things to do. On the contrary, I should be busy gearing up for the Fall launch of my next series of classes, both in-person and through teleconferencing. I have a deadline looming for my next article for The Meta Arts Magazine, preparations for my teaching session I’ll be leading with the Gaian Tarot Circle in a couple of weeks, and a myriad of other tasks and projects sitting on my desk. Some of them fairly urgent.

And yet…nothing seems to be happening. Is this the dreaded resistance? Self-defeating procrastination? Depression?

I told myself, okay.. Maybe I just needed to take a few days off around the Independence Day holiday. I did.

Then maybe I could do some long-term strategizing for the coming year or two, as I am very definitely feeling some fundamental shifting going on in my practice and how I intend to serve in these changing times in which we find ourselves.

And with the appearance of The Magician this week, I thought – okay! Here we go!

But instead, I still find myself on hold. I find myself dragging my feet, in maintenance mode only; not really wanting to start anything new. I sit down to my planning worksheets .. and I turn away. Instead, I feel a deep hush inside my spirit, as if waiting for something.

And what’s funny about this, is that during this same past week or so, my friends and my clients have been echoing the same theme:

Can’t seem to get the old engine to turn over… None of my customers seem to want to come back from out-on-holiday mode… Indecisiveness… Absent-mindedness… Seem to have lost my motivation and drive… Things feel flat… Stale… No one is returning my calls, and frankly, I am relieved…

How about you? Do you feel a sort of stasis right now? Is it just me and a dozen or so people who have confided in me, while everyone else is in high gear? Is it just lazy Summertime? Or something else?

Yes, dear Beth, it IS something else. It’s the change of direction of the planet Uranus!

Uranus has been stationing retrograde for a couple of weeks now, making it more difficult to begin those new projects. Uranus inspires change and the infusion of new energy, but when retrograde it’s harder to get those engines to turn over because we first must go back over old ground to see what can be preserved and can come along with us into the new energy, and what must be left behind.

As a planet prepares to change direction its motion slows down to a virtual standstill, and because Uranus has the effect of infusing us with a desire to create change we’re feeling the edges of that inspiration but not quite able to get things going. There is likely also a sense of being scattered and moving in many directions at once.

After Uranus picks up speed again those new ideas will begin taking root. Until then, keep the engine running and wait for the express train to pull in!

“Tell me something good.”

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

It’s human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Nobody wants to feel bad, or go through difficult situations. I have been an astrologer for more than half of my life now, so it’s hard for me to remember what it was like before I new about planetary cycles that were likely to bring challenges that required adjustment and change, but I imagine that it is pretty confusing. Life is going great, and then all of a sudden here comes a curve ball and suddenly I’m feeling depressed for apparently no reason.

Some of you have heard me say that I have the hardest chart I’ve ever seen, and I like to think that’s so that I can bring some understanding to the table when consulting with clients. When I talk about healing the core wound, or dealing with depression, it’s not just a concept – I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to consider suicide. I know what it’s like to feel that life will never get any better. But I also know what it’s like to have moved through these horribly difficult times and come out the other side with great joy and happiness.

Sometimes in a consultation the client will say “I’ve just had a terrible time but now I want to move on. Tell me something good.” And it would be easy to help her to forget about where she has just been and talk only about the Jupiter transits that are coming, or the fact that her Moon has just progressed into Sagittarius which will make it easier for her to avoid the pain that she’s feeling. But my experience tells me that before we can REALLY move on, we have to understand what just happened. Where did those feelings of despair come from? What was happening in the client’s chart when his wife had an affair? And perhaps most importantly, when will these bad feelings start to subside?

To me, this is the magic of the astrological consultation: to take the distress of feeling bad and transmute it into an excitement over the transformation that is occurring.

This may be a bad example, but I have been dieting for the past several weeks. I gained twenty pounds when I married Rich, and I’m ready to let go of that extra weight. At first I felt very panicky when I was hungry, so hunger felt “bad.” It was nearly impossible to tolerate. But when I started losing a few pounds I started to reframe that sensation of hunger and started to think of it as a feeling that is associated with losing weight. If I’m a little hungry, I will lose weight and feel better about myself and more energetic. I will be eating within a few hours so I won’t starve. That sensation of hunger brings less panic now and more excitement that the diet is working.

It’s the same when we are working through a deep core wound. We know it’s a core feeling if it seems out of proportion to the event that triggered it, or if it just erupted by itself. Sometimes this happens to me during yoga practice – all of a sudden I start weeping. This feels “bad,” but we can reframe the experience so that it instead feels like welcoming an old abandoned part of ourself into our heart. As we allow the ancient pain to fill our experience instead of use all of our coping skills to avoid it, we release the pain and become more integrated with abandoned parts of ourselves.

So don’t worry, I’ll tell you something good. But it might not be what you think!

The War on Drugs = War on Consciousness?

Posted on May 28, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

So says Graham Hancock, author of many popular books on the search for ancient civilizations, most of which reside in my own bookshelves.

Hancock writes:

We are told that the “war on drugs” is being waged, on our behalf, by our governments and their armed bureaucracies and police forces, to save us from ourselves. “Potential for abuse and harm” are supposed to be the criteria by which the use of drugs is suppressed – the greater a drug’s potential for abuse and harm, the greater and more vigorous the degree of suppression, and the more draconian the penalties applied against its users. …

The notable exceptions to this system of ranking according to perceived “harms” are, of course, alcohol and tobacco, both highly addictive and harmful drugs – far more so than cannabis or psilocybin for example – but yet socially accepted on the grounds of long customary use and thus not placed in any schedule at all.

Hancock’s recent book Supernatural is an accounting of otherworldly experiences in indigenous cultures throughout the world that he attributes to the ingestion of psychedelic drugs in order to expand consciousness.

Having grown up in the 1960s and indulged in the expansion of consciousness through chemical means myself, I have mixed feelings about the use of these drugs to facilitate the experience of higher states. There’s no doubt that psychotropic drugs offer experiences that are outside the realm of ordinary reality (thereby taking us into the realm of Neptune), but there is no guarantee that the psyche will be prepared for what is experienced there.

In addition, there is no guarantee that having once visited those Elysian fields through psychotropic substances we will be able to return with any kind of regularity or consistency as is possible if consciousness expansion is achieved through more natural, spiritual methods such as meditation or ecstatic dance.

Hancock’s point that the so-called “War on Drugs” has certainly failed to achieve its stated goal and in fact, has resulted in social harms that would not have otherwise existed. He writes: ”In the United States for example there have been more than 20 million arrests for the possession of the Schedule I drug marijuana since 1965 and 11 million since 1990. The pace of arrests is increasing year on year bringing us to the astonishing situation where, today, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds.”

Being blessed with a naturally skeptic and suspicious mind with Mercury (the mind) in Scorpio (needing to venture into dark places to find Truth), I, like Hancock, am suspicious of the reasons behind the so-called “War on Drugs” which has put billions of dollars into the hands of people in all levels of society, from police to judges to the drug dealers on the street.

I’ve noticed since Uranus (planet of liberation) moved into Aries (planet of individuality) last year, talk of liberty and personal freedom has reached an all-time high. A key in this discussion of personal liberty is the legalization of mind-expanding drugs.

Neptune in Pisces has the potential to cloud our judgment as it enhances the desire to transcend ordinary reality through any means necessary. But as long as Uranus is in Aries for the next six years, the quest for personal liberty has made the field for legalization of drugs a fertile one indeed.

Hancock’s closing quote is a clear expression of the upcoming square of the urge for personal freedom of Uranus in Aries to Pluto in Capricorn, representing the concentration of power:

Meanwhile it’s no accident that the war on drugs has been accompanied by an unprecedented expansion of governmental power into the previously inviolable inner sanctum of individual consciousness. On the contrary it seems to me that the state’s urge to power has all along been the real reason for this “war” – not an honest desire on the part of the authorities to rescue society and the individual from the harms caused by drugs, but as a means to legitimise increasing bureaucratic control and intervention in almost every other area of our lives as well.

This is the way freedom is hijacked – not all at once, out in the open, but stealthily, little by little, behind closed doors, and with our own agreement. How will we be able to resist when so many of us have already willingly handed over the keys to our own consciousness to the state and accepted without protest that it is okay to be told what we may and may not do, what we may and may not explore, even what we may and may notexperience, with this most precious, sapient, unique and individual part of ourselves?

If we are willing to accept that then we can be persuaded to accept anything.

Neptune in Pisces: The Magic of Illusion, the Illlusion of Magic

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

The mass delusion that occurred this weekend when preacher Harold Camping predicted the Rapture would occur to presage the end of the world smacks of Neptune in its own sign of Pisces. The word “rapture” is defined as “an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion; a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion.” The planet Neptune instills in us a desire for this ecstasy; any planet in the sign of Pisces longs to be overcome by feelings that are greater than one’s individual self.

Each of us has Neptune in our chart somewhere, and even the most pragmatic of us possesses a yearning for magic and to lose ourselves in an experience of something. Depending on the makeup of our charts and our choices, this may be an obsession with a television program, or to lose ourselves in a good book. It may be the high we feel when we’re running or participating in an extreme sport. It could be the high we feel when we take a big risk or make a deal happen in our job. Or it could be the transcendence and bliss that we experience in a long meditation when we achieve an experience that goes beyond the body. There is a sense of magic with these experiences – a feeling that there is more to life than the material reality that we see with our physical eyes. And there’s no doubt that this magical feeling opens the door into a reality that lies beyond the reality of our everyday existence.

Sometimes, though, the lines blur between magic and illusion. We know when we become lost in a book that when the book is over we will return to our everyday lives. We are clear that after the most blissful meditation we will open our eyes and regain the incarnated state. The blurring of boundaries between transcendence and material reality is the purpose of Neptune, and in Pisces that obfuscation becomes more powerful. This can bring an incredible expansion and shift in consciousness. But it can also bring illusion, delusion and confusion as we saw over the weekend and during the preceding months as thousands of Harold Camping’s followers gave up their worldly goods in anticipation of being taken to heaven.

This isn’t the first time such a mass delusion has occurred, and it certainly won’t be the last. It’s important to cherish the presence of magic in our lives while maintaining an intelligence of the difference between magic and illusion.

Skywatch is coming next week! If you’re not already on my mailing list sign up in the sidebar.

Happy Mother’s Day from Astrological Musings

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

Mother and Baby by Gustav Klimt

No wonder mothers have their own day – one could argue that they are the single biggest influence on our lives. A father can be absent at a birth, but never the mother! We spend nine months in the womb of our mothers, wrapped in her energy imprint and (some say) absorbing her experiences. She is the first human that we meet upon emergence from her womb, and if we are immediately taken away the longing of separation persists throughout our lives.

The astrological Moon represents our relationship with our mother, and sometimes describes the mother herself. Each sibling in a family may have a completely different experience of the mother, and not understand why their siblings feel differently about the mother than they themselves do. My own Moon conjoins Pluto, the planet of and for much of my childhood I felt annhilated by and terrified of my mother. We spent years without contact as I regained my footing after a difficult childhood. My sister’s Moon is in Virgo, and she felt (and was) deeply criticized by our mother – a challenging relationship but different in its nature.

Any contact with Pluto shows a dynamic in one’s life that is exceedingly important, and despite long periods of separation I always felt attached to my mother and somewhat desperate to find some kind of resolution. I’m happy to say that over the past ten years we have found that resolution and there has been a powerful transformation in our relationship with each other. I tell this story to demonstrate that there is always hope for important relationships in our lives.

Often clients will come to me to better understand their children, and these are some of my favorite readings. Some astrologers feel that doing a reading for a person who has not present in the reading is unethical, but I do not agree. If information can be provided that is for the highest good of all involved, such a reading can be an extremely useful tool to improving our relationships with others, and this is particularly important with parents and their children.

On this Mother’s Day I wish all mothers, daughters and sons a happy day of celebrating the beautiful individuality that we all carry with us, and offer wishes for peace and harmony in your path of growth and love.

Here’s something to perk up your day!

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Lynn Hayes

Every page is a new beginning.

Venus conjoins Uranus today, and since both are in Aries it’s gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight, if you heed the siren song of Venus, the planet of love and connection, hooking up with the iconoclast and rebellious Uranus. And with both in Aries, the potential for fireworks is high!

Jeff and Michelle are having a fascinating discussion over at the Sasstrology site. Uranus can bring sudden changes of fortune, and with Venus approaching Uranus this could mean sudden changes in our interpersonal relationships. Let’s listen in:

Michelle: They’re paired up in the sign of Aries, which is all about a new beginning. But Uranus can sometimes be about separation. So when we get Venus conjunct Uranus in Aries, it really begs the question, is it the beginning or the end? The answer to that isn’t immediately apparent, because Venus has just come out of Pisces, which is affiliated with endings, and then we’ve got the contrast with Aries (new beginnings), and then we have this unpredictable element provided by Uranus, which is associated with surprising plot twists. So this could signify a surprise beginning of a relationship; somebody brand new pops into the scene out of seemingly nowhere, but it could also signify separation. And again, that really depends on the strength and the quality of the relationship that you’re talking about.

Jeffrey: And sometimes a beginning brings on an ending. Venus is, among other things, the planet of love and relationships and romance. You may suddenly meet someone new, which—if you’re already in a relationship—could precipitate an ending. So one thing I would advise—especially because this combination is happening in impulsive Aries—is to look at where you are right now, if you are in a relationship, and think about what you value about it. Because sometimes if someone comes along and you get enticed, if the relationship you’re in isn’t strong enough, then it may crumble under that. But some people just take actions—even though they do value the relationship they’re in—because they just can’t resist what’s come up. Especially with this particular combination in Aries and with Uranus, which is about sudden risks and being impulsive, there is that possibility of just taking some action that you may regret later; like,I’m sure it will be a lot of fun in the moment, but you know, how does it fit in to the larger scheme of things?

Venus goes beyond relationships, inspiring a love of beauty and aesthetic quality in our surroundings. Now that Venus is in Aries, for the next few weeks we will want to bring changes into our lives to energize us and help us to feel excited again.

This transit will only last a day or two, so by tomorrow the excitement will have faded into the distance. But Mercury will be turning direct, giving us all something to celebrate!

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