Week Beginning 18th March 2013: An Eclipse Season Approaches
by Sarah Varcas
With Mercury having stationed direct at 7:59 p.m. GMT on 17th March, ending its three weeks of retrograde motion, we begin this week with a feeling of renewal and an opportunity to begin making progress again! The past few weeks have given us opportunities to recognise just how deeply we are connected with all things and everyone else, and how our energy systems entwine to create either conducive or obstructive patterns in our lives. Sensitivities have been very high, with a planetary emphasis on the sign Pisces, and there has been much to process in the world of emotions! The good news is…. things are now beginning to shift, and a movement of planets into the sign of Aries signals that new beginnings and fresh energies abound in the coming days.
A feature of the heavens this week is isolation of the Moon’s North Node, who’s off doing its own thing in Scorpio for much of the time. The North Node speaks to us of our destiny, our fulfilment, and has a lot to say about the evolution of the planet and ourselves along with it. When standing somewhat alone like this, we can be sure that it’s cooking up something to shake us up a bit in due course. We’ll find out what come next month when an eclipse season begins. But in the meantime, we have an opportunity now to consider carefully just how well we can embrace the unexpected and respond to the uninvited. If our default setting is to try desperately to wrest control over life and its twists and turns we could be in for a troublesome few weeks (we have been warned!), but if we can open up to the possibility that the unexpected comes not as a curse but as a blessing, albeit one heavily disguised at times (!), we have an opportunity now to prepare to receive the blessings of the universe during the coming two and a half months.
So what can we do to prepare? Well… breathe, for one thing, deeply and with gratitude for the opportunity to be alive, now, at this time of incredible change and so much potential on this planet. The breath is our closest ally in this life. Without it we are nothing. It can ground us and energise us, fuel us and calm us. But we so easily take it for granted. So this week, paying attention to our breath is a good way to get back in touch with the essence of our existence and the energy that passes through us, creating one huge web of life. The more we can do this, just breath and be thankful, the more grounded we will be when the twists and turns of life take us by surprise. The less we’ll need that sharp intake of breath that characterises shock in a human being. The more we’ll be able to just breathe through it, knowing that whatever is occurring, it is our breath that will carry us through.
And we can also welcome the new beginnings that come to us now, with the Equinox on 20th March (GMT) and the shift of planetary focus into Aries. From 22nd we will have four planets in this first, fiery sign of the zodiac (Sun, Venus, Mars and Uranus), inspiring us to remember that every ending truly is a new beginning. It’s an old adage and one that we may glibly throw out there when the time seems right, but deeper contemplation of its message can reveal to us a profound truth that is essential to our well-being, for if we cannot see beyond the ending, the new possibilities will remain forever on ice, frozen in a limbo future that we never allow to become the present. This Arian energy around us now positively shouts at us that we cannot live in the past without suffering unduly. It’s just not possible. And, more to the point, it’s just not acceptable anymore! The past is gone, however sweet it may have been, and it is incumbent upon all of us now to gather ourselves, our energy and our focus into the present, ready to respond to whatever awaits us there.
This is always good advice when approaching an eclipse season as we are now (18th April to 26th May), but it’s particularly good advice when the eclipse season coincides with the next Uranus / Pluto square on 20th May! (More on all of that in the coming weeks, of course!) So… this week feels to me like a great one in which to recommit to the present, be grateful for the blessings in our lives (no matter how hard they may be to find at times!), and to live life not yearning for a hazy past or fearing a scary future, but alive and awake in the sparkling present moment in which there is so much opportunity and potential if we would but see it and be glad…
If you want to study astrology with me the Introduction to Astrological Interpretation course could be right up your street!
