The Venus Transit path
Thanks to our friends at Sunaeon.com, enjoy this animation of the Transit:
Mars, Venus & the Morning-Sky Dancers
I’ve remained uncharacteristically silent during the recent and ongoing Aries in-rush of planets. Now that the Sun and Mars are each in Taurus, it seems time to share some glimpses of what’s up from behind the Sacred Mars and Venus lens. › Read more…
Birth of Mars
April 15, 2011. Today is the Birth of Mars.
For Mars to ‘birth’ means quite a number of things Mars’ Birth Phase:
….visually means that today is potentially the first time you can place your eyes on him after his conjunction with the Sun on February 4 (Mars’ Self-Conception Phase), so long as your local horizon and weather conditions grant their permission. You’ll catch him just before sunrise if you look low over your eastern horizon. For most of us, it will take longer to see him. You can thank light pollution, high horizons or your own latitude for the delay.
…orbitally means that Mars is significantly distant in his orbit from the Sun for us on Earth to see him. He’s separated enough from the Sun after conjunction to return as the symbol of our masculine drive;
…collectively means that our current masculinity is just beginning – and I mean barely out of the gate – to get our head on straight enough to know what in the worlds he/we are supposed to be doing now.
…sexually means it’s time to come out of the closet and get on with being the BEST lover and receiver of love you can possibly be. It’s time to unsheath yourself from fear, shame and stereotypes so that you can give and be given to in ways ecstatic, gorgeous and leave you wuntin’ for nuthin’.
…astrologically means that it’s time for us to act in the direction of our Desire (notice the capital ‘D’). I’m talking here about the larger Desire at the heart of your Life, not the next craving from your tummy or genitals. Desire = that portion of Universal Purpose which you are wired to be the one and only translator and activator for something tangible, something real, something personal, accomplish-able and meaningfully juicy…to you. This guarantees that the right people – the ones served by your particular brand of genius – will take notice.
Collective Crock Pot
Since 4 February, we’ve been collectively stewing in our own doingness juices. Between then and now, Mars has passaged through his Gestation Phase, still invisible to our eyes and aptly through the sign of invisibility, Pisces. This has positioned our current, cellular relationship with confusion and transcendence within a context of “hurry up and do it!” Not fun for most of us. It’s forced us to deal with not knowing, being thoroughly confounded by our own inability to clarify, and/or to puts lots of energy into non-material efforts (ie, meditation or spiritual adventures). Be not surprised if the fruits of your recent labor turn into nothing or something radically different or over-delayed. Oh, you’ll see results for sure, but they will align with your hopes if they serve something bigger (Pisces) then you are imagining.
Add to this picture a host of more popular transits – Mercury retrograding into conjunction with Mars opposite Saturn in Libra square Pluto in Capricorn, as well as the Jupiter Saturn opposition – and the lesser knowns – Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Chiron in the relative beginning of each of their own new Journeys, Mars contraparallel Saturn and soon Chiron – and the outlook becomes anything but organized. Every bit of your material life – each parcel of which is a holo-extrapolation of every bit of your inner life – is being put through multiple sieves simultaneously.
So one aspect of your shadow – your hidden, repressed self – may believe it got away again undetected from you and everyone else, while one facet of your light – your conscious, expressed self – may feel secure yet again in its familiar accomplishments, but what’s really happening now is that your shadow is being dragged closer to your aware self while your light self may be standing on the abyss of a terrifyingly foreign version of who you are.
As well there is so much new now, so much that we can’t put our fingers on that we simply cannot know for sure what’s “new”, what’s to “know” and what else is a flat-out “no more and not ever again.” It’s like our bodies – our gross physiologies – are in a perpetual state of catch-up with the latest upgrades to our changing lives and hurry-up-and-integrate from the most recent fall-0ut from our healing process. If we ever thought we knew what was happening, it’s time to cut the b.s. to ourselves. A full Venus cycle ago (8 years), I taught a series of workshops I called “Becoming Best Friends With Your Personal I Don’t Know”. Was that ahead of it’s time or what?
The Sky of it All
Right around the time the Birth Phase becomes the Explorations Phase (29 April – 1 May), Mars will meet up with Jupiter just inside the huge, celestial cords of the Fish constellation (Pisces).
This is like the over-serious actionaholic and the loopy “it’s all good” partier at loose at an open bar…not enough structure, contrasted styles and a beyond ability to access higher states of consciousness with little interest or no ability at remembering anything the next morning. And yet, there they, and we, are.
So begins this Journey of Mars, 4 February 2011 into 17 April 2013. This is the ARIES JOURNEY FOR OUR COLLECTIVE MASCULINE where Aries is the domain of complete consciousness through which humanity moves closer to embodying our Sacred or Divine Masculine. We will do this Journey together through Mars’ 13 Phases over the next 24 months (2 are already complete). With Mars birthing into our view now, set your intentions for how your own Sacred Masculine wants to be made more alive, more powerful, more here through you. Look at your your own masculine self and qualities; examine your relationship to ‘him’. What’s he saying or screaming or crying about? What’s he feeling? What’s he needing? What does he want to do now?
To track with the current Journeys of Mars (Aries) and Venus (Scorpio), go here >
For an article on the Journeys of Mars and Venus, go here >
For a whole lot of juicy Mars Venus resources, go here >
To get in with your own Mars and Venus phases and journeys with Adam, go here >
For the next Mars Venus Live Meditation, go here >
Mars & Venus Dancing Journeys
The Ordinary is the Extraordinary
Uranus into Aries
The planet Uranus is now in Aries. For good. Permanently for the next 7 years. Done deal.
So what can we expect from this permanent and irrefutable fact, the likes of which we haven’t lived through since 1927-8. But that’s just it: Uranus is the unexpected, unpredictable outcome that blows your mind. It’s thoroughly anti-expectable. “There’s no way anyone could have ever known that would happen!” is heard more often from the mouths of the Uranus-affected than any other. While Aries is the sign of explosions, speed and personal freedom. As the first sign, it signals beginnings.
Uranus’ move into Aries =
1. new, unexpected beginnings and forced start-overs – even if we don’t understand why;
2. fighting (Aries) for freedoms (Uranus);
3. breaking the norms; exploding the past (if the past is inhibiting betterment).
I make it a point to teach students that in order to get a sense of what Uranus might bring, we need to first understand what the norm really is. This becomes the baseline. It can be gleaned from talking with our clients about that area of life or looking at how a country, company or state has faired within the house Uranus is moving through. But you have to start with a baseline, even if the best you can do is WAG (wild ass guess)!
There was recently an extraordinarily ordinary miracle that happened under the radar of the media. You won’t hear about this because, well, it’s flat-out ordinary. And in today’s world, the ordinary is the extraordinary. It is Uranus in action.
What Happened
A good friend of mine is an accomplished surgeon – he’s got skilled hands, a real desire to help people get better from injury or disease and an inviting, friendly demeanor with his patients. Makes for a pretty great combo, as his patients would agree.
Last Thursday – within 2 hours of Uranus entering the sign of Aries – my friend got a call from a smaller, nearby hospital who had just admitted a 2½-year-old boy who’d fallen out of a shopping cart onto his head. There was a large blood clot pressing on the little boy’s brain from below the skull. Brain stem compression was imminent. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Thursday night was too foggy for helicopters to fly and the smaller hospital didn’t have sufficiently skilled staff to handle this very special need (pediatric trauma and neurosurgery). This is just the way it is, I’m told. Hospitals come in various sizes. The further from big cities you go, the less likely you’ll find specialists for every need. Well, this night Uranus was in full effect….
What happened next proves it. The boy was super-fast ambulanced to my friend’s hospital and in that 3 hours, his surgical team, two anesthesiology teams, a full op nursing team and a few more angels and elves somehow all became available so that everyone would know what the boy’s situation was. When the little one arrived, this small army of dedicated medical souls were ready. At least two of these teams shouldn’t have been there; they were already past normal hours when the call came in. Most of the assemblage also had insufficient experience with pediatric surgery. And with the sheer number of bodies in the operating room, the need for everyone’s complete focus was imperative. I’m told that human error in these types of situations often increase because of added pressure. But the most mind-blowing and heart-opening fact about the whole event was that the hospital in which the surgery occurred had no pediatric ICU department! In other words, the hospital would never otherwise accept a pediatric trauma case – they’re simply not staffed for them. It “just so happened” that the doctors who were there happened to have prior pediatric experience and could lead their teams appropriately.
On that Thursday, the hospital’s rule against accepting pediatric trauma cases was ignored. Actual people – not rules – came together to save a life.
Here’s my friend’s description of the boy’s outcome and his observations:
“After surgery, arrangements had been made to transport the child postoperatively to the Pediatric ICU at a large teaching center about 3 hrs away, and the team consisting of a Pediatrician and pediatric nurses arrived at our hospital some 20 minutes after surgery completion….The boy improved rapidly, noted immediately after surgery, and calls to the teaching center PICU over the next 3 days confirmed continuing improvement with the expectation of an eventual full recovery.”
“What was remarkable was that virtually everyone involved in his care not only knew exactly what to do, but actually did what was necessary, from the ER staff at the original hospital, to the two ambulance crews, to the 12 or so people in the operating room each with a different function, to the PICU staff at the teaching hospital. Too often, system failures ie, lack of hospital planning and readiness, individual errors by staff, and sometimes just bad luck, conspire to reduce patient outcomes sometimes critically. This time everything proceeded “as it should have.”
Back to Uranus back in Aries
In our lives, start to get used to the unexpected. Watch your reactions to things out of your control. Increase how much positivity you can hold and for how long – even and especially in the most trying of times. This is the way to “handle” Uranus-related events – to say Yes to whatever’s happening both inside and out. If a traumatic event happens, Saying Yes may look like immediately accepting what has happened so that you can get on with the business of grieving. Saying Yes can also look like an act of defiance in some cases – you’re saying yes to what you know inside to be true, despite what the outside reality is commanding you to believe….accepting the truth and acting from that place. We are going to find others we want to team with for a common purpose. This isn’t just a social club, it will be for big purposes. And they will almost always have to do with changing the status quo, creating something new and better and/or personalizing something that fits your group’s needs.
Having no knowledge of astrology, my friend surprised me with this summary of the extraordinary confluence last Thursday evening in the hospital operating room:
“Maybe what we accomplished this time was a sublime piece of music we all played together, written and directed somewhere in a different reality.”
August Astroview
This round of the cardinal T-square will include Mars, Venus and the asteroid Vesta by the time of the New Moon in the wee morning hours of August 10. The astrology of this event strongly suggests personal effects of the more global T-square event. Mars and Venus are conjuncting for the 3rd of 4 meet-ups during this Venus Journey and, with Vesta and Saturn in the mix, this is a prime window for those devoted to both inner and outer evolution. In this potent astro-symbolism, we have the fires of our passion fueling deep change to our former social roles and responsibilities which we realize are in fact now dried-out and stale. The kind of change this complex event describes will not be taken up by many, as it would require too much release of seemingly “perfectly useful beliefs.” Yet, we do know better. If it feels that jumping ship will only land you in the terrifying unknown, look closer. That dark place is merely yourself, playing hide and seek for perhaps the last time.
The Big Blink
by Adam
In about 33 hours, the much heralded partial lunar eclipse (Full Moon in the path of the Nodal axis) will occur. Here’s my attempt to characterize what it may hold for us in light of our spiritual evolution:
This eclipse occurs amidst a crescendo’ing series of individually impactful transits. As such, it will trigger things. As I’ve chosen not to dip too deeply into mundane astrology (events, predictions, etc.), my focus has instead been on the evolutionary playing field which includes the human spiritual experience but is not limited to it. So, from that lens, I’ve been telling students and clients that this eclipse is occurring in the planetary/race’s soul as an ‘invisible beginning’ or a silent coagulation of mass intentionality. For most of us incarnateds on the planet, the eclipse will remain hidden deep in our unconscious. But for those awakened ones, which definitively does not mean Buddhas, saviors and avatars but anyone who has awoken to the deeper dimension of their creative spiritual potential, this eclipse in Capricorn/Cancer involving Pluto, Mercury, Uranus and Jupiter most prominently, is an opening, a holy blink in the Eye of God newly awakening to itself as us. It/We have the capacity, now finally, to consciously transition this bardo as seemlessly as an eye blinks. The planets involved and their sign positions speak directly to this interpretation of the eclipse event.
It might also be imaged as a collective Blinking – both as our individual selves and as a merged Oneness – of the Eye of God (or Aphatheta/Ka’tiim Sphere) on a scale not yet reached. We’re not only waking up and embodying and being our evolutionary Desire, we’re doing it holographically and holonically with large amounts of others. In all the awe of the Times!
Others who have referred to this post: Zacciah Blackburn
Venus’ Strange ReBirth
If you were a part of the most recent Mars Venus Meditation which generated more responses – calls and emails – than any other in recent memory, this wee post will be something in addition to the info shared there. If you weren’t…well, you missed ou– oh, wait a minute, we posted it online…go there now to listen. Lucky you!
If you’re sensitive to the feminine in life, perhaps you feel the very beginnings of a re-warming going on. A better sense that things between people are juuuuust beginning to soothe out. Maybe arguments which ended things then, now become the reason for apologies or more civil convo’s. Well, believe it. Venus is now becoming visible to any locale on our planet with clear views of the western horizon. Sure, she’ll be dim but you’ll catch her if do a bit of research about where to look.
Venus’ return heralds her ReBirth Phase. It’s a time of celebration and of finding that deeper breath in the be- and relief that she never really left us at all (the Goddess that is), she just took a sabbatical in a hellacious way: her Transmutational Underworld. But now, as I write, Venus is right there with Uranus, planet of all things chaotic, futuristic, new and next. And they’re meeting up right at the RIGHT fish of the Pisces constellation. What to make of this?
We’ve got three variables here:
- Venus’ ReBirth Phase – the larger theme
- Venus with Uranus – the inner and mundane alchemical formula
- Venus/Uranus in the Fishes
Mashing them up, we see this ReBirth may not be smooth sailing, may be filled with more confusion even if we finally get the facts we’ve been waiting/searching for, and just may result in really unexpected results leaving us scratching our heads how things ended up the way they did. It will NOT be lacking, however, in originality and apparent confusion. On a larger view, Venus’ alignment with Uranus at her ReBirth blesses us with yet another injunction to prepare for the unpreparable – extra stockpiles of love, patience and understanding. And keep stuffed into pockets and be ready to whip out your ability to help out another if you’re both willing.
An altogether and not-untoward Feminine ReBirth (of ourselves) to us all!
Back from Boston
The national astrology conference (NCGR, for National Council for Geocosmic Research) in Boston was big success. My definition of success, here, not the organizers, though i’m sure they’d check the same box but for different reasons. Success, to me, because there was a palpable sense of community, of connection. BIG GRATITUDE to the organizers for their thoughtul and heartful shaping of the weekend for everyone: Madalyn, Gloria and the others whom I don’t know.
For my part, I had a new experience. I was to lecture at the last time slot on the last day, along with my colleagues in other tracks lecturing in different rooms. Yet a few hours before the lecture was to begin, I felt quite tired and ‘complete’ in terms of the weekend experience – with the banquets, dinners and Mikey Lutin’s hysterical-and-profoundly-insightful musical one evening. For this very reason, I was relieved and grateful when about 30 people still managed to make it to my lecture and sit through the whole thing. I was told people really liked it and appreciated the beauty of the slides I prepared – photorealistic images of the night sky, Mars, Venus; new info like the “Mars Flower” – the celestial pattern Mars makes with its retrograde loops; and the astronomical info about the planets themselves. One respected colleague from Chicago later complimented the lecture as being “revolutionary”. My Aquarius Mercury really liked that!
I attended the lectures of some awesome astrologers doing excellent work to illuminate both our past and our future: Gary Caton, Wendy Stacey and Christopher Renstrom.
For someone who’s been largely in a ‘professional closet’ when it comes to interacting with colleagues, the conference experience offers me something I receive nowhere else: a meaningful exchange of ideas with others speaking my language (astrology). It’s like finding the perfect beverage to quench your thirst. I feel fulfilled and supported. HIGHLY recommended for anyone working in a specialized field: make sure to spend time with colleagues to compare notes, check your thinking and offer your insights for others.
New Venus Journey begins
Title: New Venus Journey begins (more…)
Location: Eastern horizon before sunrise
Link out: Click here
Description: Welcome to the new Venus Journey in Aries! Each Venus Journey is the grand cycle of feminine development within us personally and collectively. We\’ll be journeying this Feminine Path together through October 2010. Click here to learn more about the Journeys of Venus and Mars >
Start Time: 22:00
Date: 2009-04-02
Adam’s Blog
Announcements, insights and wonderings from Soulsign founder, Adam Gainsburg.
Feb 13 2009
As an astrologer who has actively, and quite succesfully, avoided astrological columns based exclusively on the Sun or Moon – both writing them and reading them – I am refreshed and shown new possibility by the 2009 Next World Astrology forecasts by astrologer Eric Francis.
I’m also someone who appreciates the devloped idea over the quick turn of a phrase, I feel as if I’m being nourished by the level of delineation he offers each of us. There is a sublime quality to his observations, as if he’s wanting us not only to understand what we’re in store for this year, but to discover for ourselves why and what it’s meant to actually mean for us. His writing here shows his intelligence and a certain creative blending of seemingly unconnected ideas which are often put together to catalyze an “a ha!” insight about ourselves. Reading through the section pertinent to me, I had several of these!
I was first made aware of Eric at the first Blast Conference in 2007 where he espoused to fellow astrologers and astrologers-in-the-making the importance of developing one’s writing skill along with one’s astrological skill. His is a background in legitimate journalism, among others, and he brings a perceptual nuance to a consistently emphasized call to awaken from our dream of who we think we should be and live from who we really are and are becoming.
Then last year, Eric invited me for an interview for his Planet Waves Radio, which you can listen to here. Don’t miss the other conversations he has there with Melanie Reinhart, Philip Sedgwick, Lynda Hill, Alan Oken, Donna Cunningham, and many others.
I offer my strong recommendation for anyone interested in a comprehensive and comprehensively deep analysis of what 2009 holds waiting for you!
[This is a freely written review of Next World Astrology by Eric Francis. Neither Soulsign Publishing nor I receive any financial remuneration from Eric Francis or Planet Waves.]
Feb 12 2009
A new feature of the new Soulsign.com is the “InnerView” series. It’s basically a venue for my curiosity to engage authors, teachers, scientists, healers, etc. in their area of expertise. Sure, i’ll be in over my head most of the time, but if they’re up for a conversation, I’m certainly up for advancing the collective dialogue in this small way.
First two InnerViews have been posted, which you can find under the Tools section at the top of any page. I’m honored to have had time with: Jessica Murray and Ross Bishop. Enjoy!
Feb 11 2009
A new record I’m sure has been achieved, though I’m the last person to be counting. Sincere, heartfelt gratitude to the each Soul who took the time to email their enthusiastic support and helpful suggestions for the launch of this new online home for Soulsign. As with any coordinated endeavor, there will invariably be some tweaking, but the ‘house is up’ and she’s a beauty. We hope you agree! ~Blessings~