Inauguration 2013

January is named for Janus, the two-faced Roman God, looking both into the past and into the future. He is the god of beginnings, transitions, gates, doorways, endings and time. Our President certainly evoked Janus in his Inaugural address Monday by looking backwards to the Constitution's tenet "that all of us are created equal" and with his historical references to the progress we have made on social issues; and by looking forward to the work that still has to be done so that that phrase has meaning for gays, blacks, women, immigrants and all Americans, regardless of economic status. Civil rights in our founders time merely meant white land owning males. In the 21st Century it has to mean more. Why is this?

The dawning of the Age of Aquarius-some say it lasts 325, others 1,000 years. We are undoubtedly in it now as evidenced by the Presidents's speech and his redefinition of the words in the Constitution to include ALL the people. The dawning (few can agree as to the dates) might have begun around the time of  the last Neptune and Pluto conjunction in the late summer and Fall of 1891 and Spring of 1892. These planetary cycles conjunctions occur once every 490 years and initiate huge political, social, cultural shifts.

If you take the meaning of the planets individually, Neptune is our faith in the Divine, the unseen, the unfathomable, the boundless, the longing for an idealistic world and Pluto is power shifts that slowly but irrevocably undermine the old way of doing things, we get a sense in this time period that human consciousness must be morphing into a more permeable state. With this might come an understanding that our supposed classifications, our arbitrary distinctions of gender, religion, creed, faith, color of skin, social class, ethnicity, geographic boundary, sense of separateness, individualism and narcissism do not actually exist.

In redefining for the 21st Century what "all of us are created equal" ideally means President Obama is paying heed to his innate Aquarian ideals, having that sign rising on the eastern horizon in his birth chart and which sign the Moon, representing the people, is in in the US birth chart. Those of us who have Aquarius in our natal chart-be it on the ascendant, as did Washington, Adams and Monroe and President Obama does,or whose Sun is there, Lincoln and FDR, (Jefferson had Sun connected to Uranus-a similiar dynamic) are humanitarians.

Aquarius is an air sign so connected with truth, knowledge,and communication to groups of people. The water carrier is a man, the only human zodiacal sign, spilling water out of the bucket to reach as many people as possible. Altruistic, with a strong sense of First Principles, they investigate, coordinate, synthesize, plan and reform. They can be unconventional, inventive, intellectual, detached and individualistic, but are there to support groups.  There are some Aquarians who look backwards to Capricorn and therefore are more conservative, while others who look more forward to the next sign of the zodiac, Pisces, where understanding and sympathy reign. January, Janus' month, includes the beginning of Aquarius which began last Saturday the 19th at 4:52 PM EST.

Our Constitution dictates that the Presidential Inauguration always occurs on January 20th at noon, therefore always with the Sun in Aquarius. This year there were 2 oath takings as the 20th fell on a Sunday.  This is interesting for cycles scientists or astrologers as we have 2 charts to look at to foretell what Obama's 2nd term will encounter when. Actually we can only guess at how the symbolism might play out, but we have a good suspicion of when. The Sunday chart is alot more heated than Monday's chart for the inception of the new term, as the Moon has left Taurus and its contact to a very prominent Mars and moved into Gemini which is about to meet Jupiter in Gemini and was very close to Obama's Moon during his Inaugural Address (which happens once a month).

The President was on his game on Monday with his speech defining not so much the specifics, but the forwarding looking  philosophy behind his second term.  As David Brooks said in his op-ed piece in the NYT yesterday, Tuesday the 22nd, President Obama made a case for a "pragmatic" and"patriotic progressivism".  Patriotic progressivism sounds to me very much like our January god Janus, looking backwards and forwards at the same time. Go Aquarius- you humanitarian where the rights and dignity of all are respected equally.

Happy New Year II

I am sure I wasn't the only one, when writing the date on a check this week (if you still use them as I do), who made note of the turning of another year. I also found myself wishing everyone a "Happy New Year". But what is it that we are celebrating?  Unlike the Mayans who ended their calendar on December 21, 2012 at that winter solstice, based on the Sun's apparent path through a particular spot in our galaxy, we are noting the passage of time in a calender system that has no basis in any actual astronomical event.

Should we care whether our celebrations are connected to our revolutions around the Sun or not?  Do we lose something when we have mandated turning points in time that have no connection to what is happening in the sky?  The ancients celebrated at this time of the year because they wanted to make sure the Sun would end its solstice (standing still) and rise back up higher in the sky. Epiphany, which we celebrated yesterday, reminds us that the Magi found the Christ child following a star in the sky. Easter is always celebrated on the first Sunday after the Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. Some of our celebrations are connected with actual astronomical events and some are not. It seems our January 1st "new years" are more psychological than anything else. If you had a "bad" 2012 then you are glad it is over, if you had a "good" one then you do not want it to end.

In any event, this time of the year makes all of us aware of the passage of time. In throwing out our old calender and starting a new one we naturally think of time as linear-one day, one week, one month, one year following upon the last.  Many of us got caught up in the Mayan "end of time" hype because we are used to this linear concept of time. One span of time ends and we suddenly experience fear of the unknown because a calender ends.

But there is another way to understand time-connecting it with where we are in space. The orbiting of the planets around the Sun and the rotation of the earth on its axis makes time cyclical. Ultimately time has to be coordinated with earthly and apparent Sun movements (as the Mayans knew). Even today, with the GPS system, scientists correct our clocks based on the earth's rotation. Historically time and space have always been connected. Einstein in his relativity theories has mathematically proved this to be so. The concept of time depends on the spatial reference frame of the observer. That is why in astrology we speak of the Sun making a revolution-because that is what we are seeing from our viewpoint.

If you begin to tune yourself into these more subtle nuances of our concepts of time, that time is circular, you will begin to understand that you have a "new year" at times other than January 1st.  Astrologers or cycles scientists understand this connection between time and space when we draw up charts for a moment in time in a specific location.  A new beginning occurs when any of the orbiting planets around the Sun "returns" to the place it was when you were born.  This means you have had one complete revolution-be it a day, month (Moon), approximate year (Mercury, Venus), 2 1/2 years( Mars), 12 years (Jupiter), 29 1/2 (Saturn)  and so forth, depending upon how long it takes the planet to orbit the Sun.  These are the planetary cycles beginning at a moment in time and where the planet is in space following through and ending at another point in time when that planet returns to the same place in space. Each one is a "new year" for you.

New beginnings are all over the news. Each new beginning is associated with a moment in time, when that new beginning is based on the Sun's apparent revolution or earth's rotation on its axis. No moment of time repeats itself exactly. The Constitution has mandated the day and time a new Congress opens each year, but each time it convenes the only planet that is approximately in the same place is the Sun, as the Sun returns to the same place in space (apparently) each year on the same day (approximately).

The 113th Congress convened last Thursday at 12:01 PM.  Astrologers, or cycles scientists, make a note of the time and draw up the moment of convocation for this new Congress in DC, which will be in effect until it ends on January 3rd, 2015. Everything that is going to happen in this Congress's life span is contained in the enfoldment from the moment of its inception. As long as we are here on earth we are under the spell of the Earth's rotations on its axis and in its orbit around the Sun. Space and time are coordinated. What happened in the 112th Congress will be different than what is going to happen in the 113th because it was initiated at a different time and the planets were in a different place. What happens in Obama's 2nd term can be seen in the chart for the moment his oath of office is take on the 20th at noon. His first term will end and a new one will begin.

January is named for the Roman god Janus.  He is the two-faced god looking backwards and forwards at the same time, from the present moment.  As Einstein developed in his relativity theories-time is dependent on where one is in space.  When an astrologer or cycles scientist sets up a chart using the time and place the action is taking place whether it be a baby's birth, a marriage ceremony, a new job, a new Congress, signing a paper that initiates a new endeavor, laying of a foundation stone for a building or an Inaugural oath, this chart represents the space and time continuum-the revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the rotation of the Earth on its axis.

We are a part of something greater outside ourselves that we have no control over. Whether you begin to understand and feel this unique relationship we have to the cosmos through  a 12-Step program, a yoga, pranayama or meditation practice, through a religious ecstatic experience or are given a spontaneous grace hardly matters.  What does matter is that we recognize and feel viscerally, the truth that our friend Marcus Aurelius spoke in the First Century-we are all made of the same stuff and connected with all that is was and ever will be.